Jock Time, Part IV: In Anticipation of Winter/The Need for Speed

It’s a disturbing but pleasurable 20 degrees out; nonetheless I have keenly felt the necessity of gaslighting myself into looking forwards to winter. My main method for doing so (as I grit my teeth and bike uphill in the rain on days that have been less nice) has been to fantasize about the joys of winter sports, particularly cross-country skiing. 

 Last winter, in yet another agonizing round of, “what kinds of low-impact substitutes are there for running,” I decided it was time to get serious about cross-country skiing. After a few relatively successful excursions shuffling around in local parks, I took myself to Poubelle du Ski, determined to get some serious skis. The store clerk took my weight and measurements and gestured at the array of beginner ski kit options: “You can have stability, or you can have speed,” he said. “I want speed,” I replied, offhandedly. He looked me up and down. “No you don’t,” he said, and passed me a very sturdy-looking pair of skis. Clocked and chastened, I clumsily bundled up my fresh skis, poles, and boots, and made my way to the cash register to pay. 

 A few days later (following a frankly very humiliating attempt to make sense of the ski boot bindings that culminated in my returning home without having experienced either the thrills of speed or the reassurances of stability), I was looping around on the Parc Maisonneuve trails, starting to develop a proper sense of the glide, feeling the gentle (if still bitingly cold) breeze in my face as I slid down subtle inclines, and getting absolutely smoked by eighty year-olds in spandex. I was, I could admit to myself, very bad at skiing. The prospect of ever becoming good at it was, frankly, vanishingly unlikely. And yet – I felt free.