12th January 2012 at 03:44PM

Well it's the new year, the BARSC and Anglo-Scottish races have already come and gone, and we're now well into the January block of training leading up to the Welsh in about a week and a half.

The Anglo-Scottish races proved to be a mixed bag of results for the Ambition Children, with most struggling to string two good race runs together in one day. Conditions were far from perfect though, to be honest, with the huge dumps of snow having already started there when we came out on the 30th of December. Suffice to say, 'bobsleigh track' seems to be the most suitable description of the conditions at the slalom race at least, which didn't make it easy for our guys to get two good runs in the bag. Anyway, I think there were some lessons learnt by all there, where, some of the girls found out that you've got to go for it from the very first gate of the first run to have any chance of doing well. But it's all a learning curve and at least that's something they'll take on board for next time!

The view from the top of the GS course in Les Houches...

A notable mention has to go to Will Wheeler though, who, just like at the BARSC slalom, came back from a mistake-ridden first run to storm the second to end up in 4th place in his age group overall (from 7th!). Although, he was originally down as in 3rd place when the race finished, but somewhere between the race finishing and the prize giving two hours later, Will had mysteriously jumped from 3rd to 4th... Ah well, still a great result and by far one of the best second runs of the day!

After that it was a case of dropping some of the guys off back at the airport, and then myself, Ella, Olivia and Freya (with Lucy joining us) travelled back over to Leogang to start the next training block. But by the time we got back, the snow had already started falling by the metre, and the next three days of training turned into three days of epic powder skiing. I think Ella had the steepest learning curve of us all... whereby the end of the third day, I think she was quite fed up of me having to dig her out of holes along the lines of the one in the photo below!

(In case you're wondering, this photo is upside down, can't get it to upload the right way up for some reason!)

Since the powder though, we've had some amazing training conditions, which look set to continue all the way up to our departure to the Welsh in a week's time!

Benn