While skiing this past weekend, I discovered that I had this new body to try out.

So I weigh less, but not that much less. And I don’t weigh much more than I weighed in my mid-thirties.

No, what’s really cool is that I have a lot more core strength and a left leg.

Well I always had a left leg, but it was very weak. For example, I could not stand on my left leg for more than 10 seconds at a time. So downhill skiing was about making big turns on my right leg to slow down, and really short turns on my left leg, because it was too weak. As part of my training for my marathon, I had to improve my cadence, and that had the salutary effect of forcing me to run on both legs.

The new core strength, for it’s part, lets me move my hips and do a turn without throwing my body from one side to the other.

The net effect is I can make much faster, tighter turns than I could before.

But a new body is like any new piece of equipment, it takes some time to get adjusted to it.

My wife and I were skiing down The Face at Homewood, when in sheer panic I turned left hard.

On the left you see what I was expecting to do. See marginal left turn setting up a bigger right turn. On the right you see what did happen. I turned so hard that I ended up having my skiis point uphill, and then proceeded to ski backwards. Because my core was so strong, I was actually able to stay up for about 3-5 seconds, before I even figured out what the hell was going on. Finally, when I realized what I was doing I stopped.