If
you can believe it, this winter had a worse start than last season: lots of
rain and not-so-cold temps well into mid-December. Though disappointing, especially after a big
snow at the end of October, it did provide for an extended pre-season
conditioning portion to the workout schedule.
So at least our bodies were in great shape at the start of the season.
Boards Ready to Go Fast!
Once
we got on snow for practice after the holidays, there wasn’t much time to get
the legs and mind into top race condition.
You can see the limited snow in the start of video #1. We had our first races of the year postponed
due to the poor weather and the 2nd round of races were in jeopardy
until we finally got some snow and cold weather. So practice days were sparse and it took a
little time to knock the rust off when we hit Holiday Valley, NY for the first
competition of 2013. The good news is
there was steady improvement and faster speeds on the course by the time we got
to Race #3 + #4 on Sunday. The athletes
had a really strong practice session prior to the races that day as well. A quick video note, due to camera issues
there’s no race footage for Ale.
The
weather at Holiday Valley was cold, overcast, spitting snow and sometimes
sunny. It was nice to have snow and for
it to finally feel like winter. Ale and
Gray did a great job all weekend long.
This was Ale’s 3rd year racing and Gray’s 1st
season of competition. Having both
athletes there, practicing each morning and racing all day, really created a
neat ‘team’ feel to the weekend.
Ale @ the Top
Gray Ready to Rock
It was
cool to have support from ‘Team Canada’ throughout the weekend too. They decided to adopt us and were cheering
loud and ringing their cowbells every race.
Another element making the trip worthwhile was the dedicated,
full-length SBX Course at Holiday Valley.
Nothing like hitting a course right off the bat that’s as long as what
we would experience at Nationals. Lots
of features through the entire length of the course provided for a real test of
how prepared our bodies were from the off-season gym training. Much discussion on the way home about how helpful and fun it would be to have a dedicated SBX (and SX) course situated on a local mountain.
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