We are well into the winter season racing now with kids and parents travelling all over the place to take part in races in various countries. But it won’t be be that long before the summer season is upon us once again. As with the past few years the number of races available to people is high and if you wanted you could race virtually every weekend (pity the kids that have to do that what about a break?).

The minutes of the ASC meeting that took place in November have been published on the Snowsport England website here.

Worth a read if you want to get a picture of what is happening this coming year, although does raise a few questions.

Snowsport GB has been in financial trouble for sometime now but things are definitely coming to a head now. What a disaster on the timing though and obviously raises more questions than it answers.

This article was in the Times yesterday. There’s a lot of work going on in the background to make sure they get to the Olympics in a few weeks time but it doesn’t exactly help with the preparation.

Various updates have taken place over the past few days for various races and information around them.

Can find the latest information on Britski.

The latest list of entries received for the English Alpine Championships can be found here. Closing date is the 1st Feb. Also the Ski Cross has now been cancelled due to lack of entries.

The last set of minutes for the SSE ROTP (Race Organising Technical Panel) have been published on the SSE Website (unfortunately not able to put a link in here) to find them,

1. http://www.snowsportengland.org.uk/key_committee_minutes-841.html

2. Scroll to the bottom of that page and the ROTP section

3. Click on the November 2009 option

Last week I spent the time in Les Houches, France with Natasha for the Anglo Scottish Cup race. We were there with lots of friends from various clubs who also had children taking part in the races. It was the first snow race for Natasha, not something I was expecting to have to attend with her, but during the year Natasha asked if she could give it a go, what more could I say!

Attached here is a survey of Skiing and Snowboarding focusing on Female participation. Some interesting facts, will comment another time.

So spent all last week in the French Alps in Les Houches where there is now quite a lot of snow, even had to put the snow chains on one day and use them to get the car out and back to the apartment.

Driving there and then coming immediately back to the UK you realise just how badly prepared we are in this country for a sprinkling of snow. Sure we don’t get as much as the Alps so justifying the cost of all the equipment is not practical but boy there is a huge difference.

Arrgggghhhh. Ok so I have been foolish this time and forgotten the PIN for a new Barclays account. Normally I always write this in my encrypted password file but this time I didn’t for some reason! So I have not been able to get online again since.

Yesterday I decided to call the Barclays helpdesk and request a new PIN as you can’t do it online. Eventually went through the normal press 1 for this 2 for that etc and got through to ‘Malcolm’ who was very helpful but the conversation was incredibly frustrating.

The other night I was in London for a couple of days and staying overnight as normal and Natasha also spent the day in London with friends. They were staying overnight and she was staying with them. My hotel very close to Warren street tube station and they were staying over at Farringdon.