I was pretty excited to be ending my time in Canada by a trip to Red Mountain, BC. I had heard a lot of good things about this little resort. This piece of advertising pretty much sums it up:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Z0MBLHF20
To tell you the truth, Red did not disappoint. We got up on Friday morning for some pre-training riding on a reported 6cm of fresh snow. It felt like so much more. I teamed up with Thomas one of the 16 year olds on the team and we spent all morning hiking a little hill to get freshies and cliff drops a plenty. Unfortunately for me I had one pretty awkward moment where I realised I was perched right on a frozen waterfall with no where to go. The locals had some pretty helpful advice to yell from the chairlift, 'Just send it', 'Go for it', 'Do it'. I took my time in the public arena to get to down a little lower by sliding on the ice and then went for it. Very comical I'm sure from the chairlift. It definitely wasn't graceful!
Aside from the amazing free-riding we were at Red for a couple of British Columbia Provincial Series races. The course was long but the features were not huge meaning that it was a good chance to actually ride on the course. Though, I did my best to fall over the wu-tang at the start in as many different ways as possible. Apparently one of my front flips over the feature in front of a few girls I was training with was pretty spectacular - I nearly landed it.
On the Saturday I qualified fastest by over a second which should have put me in a good position to take the win. Unfortunately in my semi-final when winning by about 50 metres coming into the last burm I decided to throw myself into the stubbies, this ended my chances of winning the first race. VERY ANNOYING! I was definitely not consoled despite destroying the other girls in the consolation final.
Sunday was another solid day of qualifying, this time my time put me in front by 3 seconds over the next female qualifier. Surely I could keep myself together for this final race of my season. I won the semi easily and was feeling good going into the final. I picked the right gate and pulled out first. However, I thought I needed to make it just a bit more difficult for myself and take just one more fall over the wu-tang. This put me far behind with a lot of work to do in the next 1 min down the course. I caught 2 of the girls but couldn't catch the girl in first place. 2nd definitely felt like 1st loser in this race but I guess it's part of the sport. I've just got to work out how to actually ride to my potential in racing, definitely a challenge for the future.
Please stay tuned for photos and video from the race. I have some funny ones of people taking themselves out.
Oh and in other exciting news, a new FIS points list came out (this is how athletes are ranked against each other, gaining points depending on what races they do and how they do in them). I'm currently the highest ranked Australian!!!! Pretty happy with that small achievement and it puts me in a good place for next season.
I'm spending my last week in Steamboat, CO, my body is slowly recovering from all the hits it has taken and I'm starting to feel ready to get back to Uni. It has been gorgeous and sunny here with a really great powder day tomorrow. I'm home on Tuesday and looking forward to catching up with everyone.
Sending smiles from sunny (and delightfully warm) Colorado.
