Being ok with losing.

Well Rev Tour was less than stellar. I knew going into it that I was going to take it easy, and treat it as practice instead of a competition. So I didn't watch anyone else's runs, didn't look at scores, and just straight aired every hit both runs. I got 18th out of 19. Rough.

It's really hard to lose. It's hard to know you didn't give it your all. It's hard to be asked "So how did you do?" and attempt to justify last place with "Well, it was my first day back in pipe after an injury so I didn't want to try anything." I'm going to work extra hard between now and the next Rev stop I'm doing (Sun Valley in March), so I can actually be proud of my results there. It'd be nice to have a huge five again, and even nicer to be able to put back to back fives in my run. Hopefully I'll be able to get there.

As hard as I try to be mellow and be ok with losing, I really can't be. I'm just not that person. Character flaw? Oh well.

First Competition is Tomorrow!

Well here goes nothing.

Surprisingly, I don't feel nervous for tomorrow morning at all. I think I'm just in a good mental state.

I know I don't have a serious chance of fighting for a top spot in the half pipe contest tomorrow- I still see myself as being in recovery mode. Until four days ago, I was still just making turns. Now I'm slowly building my confidence back up in pipe, but I don't feel like I'm ready to throw a five first hit or go for a seven. In fact, I'm pretty sure I'm just doing straight air runs tomorrow.

I feel very relaxed though. I'm going into this thinking the only person I'm competing against is myself. As long as I ride better tomorrow than I did today, I've won. I think that's how I should go about this whole season- strive to progress every single day and treat each day that happens as a victory.

I'm not concerned with what any of the other girls do in their runs. I probably won't even watch them. I don't want to ride better than someone else, I just want to ride the best that I can for myself.

Louie Vito was recently asked in an interview something like "Does Shaun White being here today affect the run you're going to do?" He responded something like "No, because I don't want to beat Shaun White. If he comes in 19th, that means beating him could mean 18th place. I want to beat everyone. It doesn't matter if Shaun is here or not." This is kind of the same thing for me I guess- it doesn't matter who I'm competing against or what they do in their runs; I'm going to ride my best no matter what. My only concern is myself.

When you stop worrying about other people, your mind can find ease. (I'd like to attribute that to Buddha, but I made it up :/ )

Burton Mountain Festival

The last three days have been the Burton Mountain Festival at Northstar. This year they cut out the Pro-Test contest so it was just a couple days of demos and contests that didn’t exist or something (the Know-Buddy contest was going on- apparently prizes were being handed out randomly in the park for tricks.)

I tried out a bunch of different set ups during the weekend and I’ll be posting reviews on them soon.

Forget Lick The Cat, Sage Kotsenburg, it's all
about Lick The Sheep.

I also hung out with the guys (and girls) who travel with the tour and they were super awesome. We rode, hung out, blah blah blah, whatever. They were all super cool and it was neat to learn about their jobs traveling around to all the mountains. Hopefully I’ll see some of my new friends again before next year!

Grant and the Babe Wagon

The Burton Store in the village also held a contest throughout the weekend. There was a thirteen item scavenger hunt and each item had to be photographed and emailed to the store.

Josh Fricke supplying the "Slash shot" I needed for the hunt.

I ended up winning it with a little help from my friends and got a sweet prize pack from the store.

Ignore all the junk behind the RED hats. I haven't learned how
to clean my room yet.

Probably the best part of the weekend was getting to see my old friend James again. We had awesome times together back at Mt. Hood two summers ago but I hadn’t seen him since. Catching up with him, partying, and playing on our snowboards was a rad surprise.

Me and Mr. James Fleege- Never ask Danny Toumarkine to take
a picture for you. You'll end up with 40 blurry rapid-fire photos.

The Burton Mountain Festival was another incredible reminder of how fortunate I am to do what I do. Some people come to Tahoe one week a year for a vacation. I get to live people’s vacations every day. Too many good times, and too many friends.

The "training" has begun.

Last year I didn't have much progression and I'm kind of bummed about that. The big issue I think was me not having a coach. I don't have the fundamentals of snowboarding in my muscle memory like the kids I ride with who have been doing it for years have. Without a coach I just kind of send it and hope for the best. For me to get better I really need someone who knows what they're doing to tell me what to do.

This year I'm going to be working with this awesome coach, Chris Hargrave.  I worked with him a little bit two seasons when I was on the Northstar Snowboard Team and he was one of the coaches there. He really knows what he's doing and has coached some really talented riders. Chris focuses on fundamentals and perfecting every little piece of what goes into each trick, and that's what I want. He is also someone who actually cares about coaching. I think that's a very important quality for a coach to have- passion to help others get better.

I met with him last week for our first session together. I thought we were only going to take a couple runs but we ended up riding for like 2 hours. We spent that whole time basically just making turns. He broke turning down into a bunch of little parts and tried to fix the way I move on my snowboard. The objective was to make powerful turns that would translate into effective pumping/edging in the pipe. We also worked on switch ollies for a bit, and I've never felt so awkward trying to ollie before! haha

In this past week I've been making a conscious effort to use the things he taught me. I think I'm really starting to get it, and my switch riding almost feels as comfortable as my regular riding now.  Because of how my riding has changed, my knee no longer hurts when I'm making turns. Good Sign!

I have a great feeling about this year. I think my injury might have been a blessing because I now have the opportunity to basically relearn snowboarding, but correctly this time. I'm super excited for what's to come!