I’m boring.
Or maybe, I’m predictable.
But every year, my primary goal for ski season is the same: I want to ski as many days as my current age. I like this goal because it means I push myself to ski at least one more day each year.
This season, I have a friend who had a truly audacious goal: to celebrate his 50th year on skis, he was skiing at 50 different resorts! His goal got me thinking and wondering what type of goals other skiers set.
To find out, I posted this question on TheSkiDiva.com forum: What were your goals for ski season?
Here are the highlights from nearly 50 women who responded.
Numbers, Stats and Days
While I’m all about the number of days, surprisingly few other women were counting to reach their goal. A few might say, “hooray I skied 23 days this season,” but usually this was in the context of other goals, such as improving technique or overcoming fears and challenges.
One women, in particular shared that her goal this season was to “quit tracking days, runs and vertical.” All this keeping track of statistics was stressing her out and her goal was to enjoy the ski season more and push herself less.
Constant Improvement
The majority of comments focused on improvement, learning and mastery. As one woman put it, her goal was to “improve, not plateau.” Others wanted to learn to ski trees, powder and moguls. Some wanted to improve their stamina and be able to ski non-stop top-to-bottom, while others were looking to progress from greens to blues, or from blues to blacks. A surprising number of women wanted to learn how to jump and improve in the terrain park (I am in awe!). One woman wanted to learn how to tune skis (check in right here!), while another started racing and participated at the Masters level!
Family Time
As you might expect, I was especially interested in goals which included family. One woman shared that her goal was to get her three-year-old daughter “hooked on skiing.” It worked! Another wrote that she wanted to get her adult daughter “to ski and love it.” Guess what? That goal worked out, too! But my favorite comment was from a mom who wrote that her goal was to ski with her five-year-old son. They skied together and she happily reports that skiing “is the only sport he does with a massive grin on his face.”
I can understand that!
Have Fun, Be Safe
For many skiers, these four words summed up their goals for a successful season. Clear, simple and happily achievable!
What’s In a Word?
I chose the word “goal” to describe my quest for a certain number of ski days this year. But other women wrote that they prefer the word “plans” or the word “hopes.”
Whether you call them “goals,” “plans” or “hopes,” I hope you and your family have had a fun, safe, rewarding and enjoyable winter!
If you’re so moved, please share your goals, plans or hopes for the season just passed…or even the season coming up.
Thanks for spending some of your valuable time with me! With summer coming, I’ll be posting less and relaxing more, but the ski writing will continue, ramping up again come fall.
Enjoy!
What were your goals for this past ski season? Did you accomplish them? What are your goals, plans or hopes for next winter? If you don’t make goals, why not?
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My goal is definitely to challenge myself to be on the mountain with my kids! Ski as many days as they are old combined! 😉 thank you for your inspiration this season! I felt like I had a mom in my corner, and it felt great… Thanks
Oh Holly! This comment makes my day. We all need moms in our corner – our own and our friends. Thank you so much for sharing that. Spending more time with the kids is a fantastic goal and I love your goal of skiing as many days as their ages combined! Enjoy every minute — winter, spring, summer and fall! Cheers!
Hmmm, you know I do set ski goals but I don’t think of them as goals so much, especially because some of those goals are not objective types of goals. I am constantly striving to improve my technique and become a better skier. That is a hard thing to measure and set goals to. However, this year has been focused on ski technique and I made some progress there. I am starting to get the motions down that are causing my skis to come alive and last SA I was feeling them kick on a regular basis (especially the left ski). I did not race NASTAR this year, but instead focused on keeping my front edges biting and hips forward at all times. A buddy of mine this last weekend had me working on exaggerated up/down
I would say most of my goals (and again fuzzily defined) centered more on the writing and my website. I garnered a good number of quality Twitter followers, I focused on putting more graphics/images up on my site (attempting to place an image with every article, original or purchased) and I mostly succeeded at that. Starting with the “winter months” I also managed to get my visit numbers up. And of course establishing relationships with folks like yourself and Mr. LaPlante fall within that set of goals.
I guess, I need to start thinking in the same fashion as I do with biking (goals published on my site) and one of those goals HAS to be a trip to Killington!
This is great, Wisconsin Skier! So happy to hear about the growth of your ski blog this winter! Even better, it sounds like you’re work on improving your technique is paying off!
I second your goal of visiting Killington next year — NASJA will be better for your presence!
Cheers!