Merry Christmas everyone!
Thanks for checking out my new blog. I'm still trying to figure this whole blogging out so bare with the weird format. I hope you're all having a great time over the holidays. I'm spending the holidays with my family in Whistler, getting some awesome riding and training in here. It's finally snowing hard and the conditions are improving. The park has been open for a while and continues to showcase new features everyday while the halfpipe is set to open any day now. It's been a slow start to the season in BC so in order to get some good early season training my coach, myself and two of my friends (who are also competitors in Whistler Valley Snowboard Club) decided to head south to Copper Mountain, Colorado where they already had a world class halfpipe. There are some huge competitions in Colorado in December which all but guarantee that the resorts will build amazing halfpipes early in the season. With this in mind we booked our flights, packed our bags and saddled up for a new adventure.
We arrived to find a halfpipe in near perfect condition! The down side, an average of -20 degrees celsius weather forecasted for the entire week. Being from the north I felt right at home riding in these conditions. The first day I spent getting comfortable riding a halfpipe again as well as getting used to my new board. We were riding alongside some of the best riders from all over the world who had also traveled to Colorado to ride this amazing halfpipe.
After riding we did some video review and had a great session of preseason goal setting with our coach Joe. We also waxed our boards in order to ensure they were as fast as possible the next day. This became routine for the trip: riding hard all day then waxing, reviewing video and goal setting. I was excited to have the opportunity to ride such great conditions in the early season and to have a crew pumped on achieving our goals.
During the week I was focusing mostly on my line in the pipe, riding position, straight airs and small rotations. Why wasn't I doing back-to-back inverted 1080s you ask? Well, by focusing on 'the basics' I will be able to BOOST out of the pipe higher than the American flags, that were soaring high over our heads, in no time. I made a lot of improvement over the week on my consistency and feel like I have a solid foundation of skills to build on over the course of the season.
On the last day of the trip we spent the day training in a different way... instead of hiking the halfpipe relentlessly or riding the park until the last chair, we spent the day watching other people snowboard. We made the short drive over to Breckenridge Mountain, where they were hosting the first ever Winter Dew Tour, to see how the world's best works their magic. We were watching the finals which included the likes of Shaun White, Danny Kass, Hannah Teter and Kelly Clark, all of whom are Olympic medalists (3 of them gold). The way that these professionals performed was amazing! It was really inspiring to see this level of riding.
Thanks for tuning in :)
Andrew
