Wednesday, January 19, 2011

2 races down, second town and moving on

We have had our first races for the season. After arriving in Big White on Wednesday we were greeted by fog and sleet on the Thursday, with a little fresh snow! This meant that the afternoon free-riding was restricted to tree-riding - which was very fun but cold too. The course was still being built but we were the 'test-riders' for the starting wu-tangs. Lets just say they were bigger than anything I had ever seen and fairly tricky to get over!

Friday training day was foggy once again. Apparently Big White is called as such for a reason, it is often a "Big White"-out. The conditions were somewhat similar to a horrible day at interschools at Buller. I'm sure many of you can sympathise that we were, therefore, somewhat relieved when training was cancelled and replaced with only course inspections (that is slow side slipping). The course was big, fast and a little terrifying if I'm being perfectly honest. I had definitely never tried something like this before.

After not being able to train on Friday we were eager Saturday (foggy but not so bad) race morning to get to the course nice and early and get as many training runs as possible. Unfortunately for me I dropped in third out of everyone and managed to have a fairly large crash over the second feature. I still managed to qualify though did not snowboard as well as I could. I crashed out in my first heat giving me a final result of 14th - not too bad.

Sunday, was another foggy day; suprise, suprise! I had a better training session and was much more confident on the course so saw it as an improvement though my placing stayed the same coming 14th again.

We travelled from Big White to Mt Hood on Monday the 17th and I was pleased for the change in scenery. I just want to relax a bit more, as I think my snowboarding really suffers if I'm too stressed out. It has been a great treat to have a couple of Aussie friends, Courtney and Amanda, to hang out with here. Courtney and I have had some delicious milkshakes - great race preparation, who needs to carbo load? Training day was puking snow, the course is quite small in comparison to Big White but still fun. Our first race day, today, was gorgeous and sunny. I qualified in 14th - AGAIN! I was please with how I was snowboarding and had a great start in my heat. I was riding down in a close third into the last little stretch when a lovely girl from quebec decided to t-bone me into the last burm. She came off second best though and landed on the gate; that's what you get for trying to pass an Australian! This meant no hope of catching up to 2nd and my day was over, I think in about 12th place. I JUST WANT TO RACE AGAIN NOW - definitely have the fire in the belly!!

Stay posted for pictures, this place is beautiful!

Sending smiles from Oregon - fingers crossed for race two tomorrow!

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