33 ways to prepare for the ski season

Warning: Some of these might not actually be that useful…

1. Sign up to unofficialnetworks.com. Laugh a lot. Learn a bit.

2. Tie a tourniquet around your ankle then fill your shoe with crushed ice. Leave for one hour. Repeat on other foot.

3. Watch at least 18 hours of ski-related videos to get you (even more) pumped for the season.

4. Buy combination ski lock. Be unable to resist trying it out. Return four months later having forgotten combination. Deploy hacks.

5. Go running. No cost. No hassle. Better skiing legs, fast.

6. Look us last year’s biggest snowfall totals. Decide you really should visit Japan.

7. Commence temperature training. Visit your local butcher and pay £20 to do lunges in the walk-in freezer in your undies for 30 minutes.

8. Afterwards, burn two €50 bills to warm up.

9. Buy gaffer tape. Always good, strong (silver if you’re a show-off) gaffer. You’ll need it for you ski bag frays, Go-Pro attaching, ski edge protecting…

10. Decide to do that knees bent, bum against wall get-ski-fit thing for a month. Give up after a 14 seconds… on day one.

11. Don’t fight it. Pretend you’re eight. And pop on your ski gear, in October, because you want to. Feel a bit of a tit when caught by a loved one. Mumble some ridiculous excuse.

12. Look up the French/German/Italian/Norwegian/Swedish/Japanese for “You just stole my line, douchebag”.

13. Decide this really is the year for a bandana. Check mirror. Think again.

14. Fill base gouges. Ruin carpet with dripped P-Tex. Edge skis. Ruin carpet via bloody finger. Wax skis. Somehow make slower. And get more mess on carpet. Book a proper service, and blame awful handywork on eastern european ski tech.

15. Run a bath. Ignore mundane tasks such as washing. Instead use industrial quantities of shampoo (ideally not yours) to perfect Plake hair. Check reflection. Decide bathroom mohawks rule.

16. Find the nearest ice rink. Walk across the ice 15 times in your ski boots carrying two pairs of skis, poles and a small child. Pretend you’re looking for your car and sporadically drop things.

17. Get on the trampoline and start practising your cork 900 tail grabs (minus the skis).

18. Invite friends round. Open beer. Watch Blizzard of Aahhhs. Get a bit pissed and chunter, “We could do that steep Cham stuff, and quicker”. No you couldn’t. And stop calling beers brewskis.

19. Find a big hill. Walk up it. Roar! And get mighty ski legs.

20. Randomly start Googling hotels in Haines, and which airlines fly to Anchorage. Add these Alaska notes to last year’s Alaska notes, which will probably be with the year before’s Alaska notes…

21. Put on all your gear (including gloves) and practice reading your piste map, taking photos and working your Go-Pro with zero manoeuvrability.

22. Book some UK slope time. You can learn that trick you’ve always wanted to nail, but never get round to when you’re racing round resort, in the usual must-go-faster Fall-Line-approved style.

23. Drink less beer. Eat less pizza. Boycott burgers. Ignore kebabs. Feel 20 years younger. Ski like Zurbriggen. Well, he  is 52.

24. Replace burgers and kebabs with a Tyrolean diet of speck, cheese and potato. If it works for the Austrians…

25. Make a plan. Decide on what you want to do/achieve and book early. No wriggle room for you or anyone else later. You’ll not regret it. Balls to work commitments. They can wait. Skiing cannot.

26. Work on your 80s hip hop Spotify playlists.

27. Head to IKEA on a Saturday, 8:50am, and practice queuing European style (get those elbows out).

28. Drop a few killer lunges at work. In an Anchorman/Roger Moore 1972 style. (But best avoid in tight trousers.) You’ll laugh and get mighty quads and gluts for killer hamstrings.

29. Adjust your body to drinking at altitude. Or if that fails, shoot grappa on the roof.

30. Stock up on High5 50g sachets (Energy Source are best). Then stick in a bottle of water when you’re ski knackered or have no time for lunch. They’re awesome. Cheap (less than a quid). And no hassle.

31. Read all of last season’s Fall-Line mags and circle all the places you want to go/ gear you want to buy/ tricks you want to learn with a fat marker pen.

32. Buy a new pair of gloves and immediately throw one away.

33. Decide this is the year you’ll finally invest in some snow chains, then practice putting them on/taking them off your motor in a howling storm. Remember: you are the boss. They do NOT control you.