Snowboarding season has basically just ended (we have a few more weeks, but the main season is over), and it definitely was a good one. I raced in some extremely fast races, landed lots of new tricks, and progressed even more than last year. Last Sunday was race day for me at USASA Nationals, and I did better than I expected. I had moved to open class earlier this season, so the competition got tougher at the regional races. I qualified 18th in time trials, and took second in my first heat to move on into quarterfinals. My second race was pretty intense, racing two amazing riders, one of them an Olympian and the other a US Team hopeful. I took every risk I could at every turn in order to give myself the best chances at beating one of them, and most of it payed off, as I stayed with them until the bottom, where I unfortunately took too much of a risk on a turn and crashed. My final placing was 11th, which was a lot better than I expected.
Last Wednesday was Jadyn’s nationals race day, and I left school early to go watch her races. I arrived at Copper, threw on my snowboarding gear over my clothes, and jumped on the gondola, getting to the course in time to watch her first heat, which she won pretty easily, and then hung out with her until her quarterfinals, which, after a tough battle between her and another girl, she won. At that point, I unfortunately had to go to track practice, in which time she won her semifinal heat, advancing to finals for the first time in her 5 years of competing. After my track practice was over, I heard she placed second in finals, taking the silver medal at nationals, and decided to drive back over to Copper for the second time that day to watch the awards ceremony and see Jadyn get her medal. Afterwards, we went out and ate dinner to celebrate.
And that was the end of the competition season (although I didn’t mention Isaac putting a decent run down in slopestyle on Sunday to finish 20th or Jadyn’s 12th in halfpipe/11th in slopestyle. That happened too, but wasn’t as exciting to write about). I had some amazing races this year, at Ski Cooper for both USASA regional races and the more competitive NorAm/Hole Shot Tour and Rev Tour comps, as well as at Crested Butte.
Track season has been pretty good – a lot better than last year – and I’ve gotten a couple PRs plus a few top-8 finishes, which scores points for the team. I’ve run the 100m dash more than ever this season, with our top sprinters being either injured or absent, which has been great for my speed (although not so much for my endurance. Definitely need to work on that a bit). I ran a 12.98 at the first meet of the season, followed by a 12.80 during the second meet and a 12.63 at our meet at Eagle Valley yesterday. Our 4×100 relay team has been kind of sporadic this season, with a ton of different runners subbing in for others being gone (I don’t think we’ve had the same 4×100 team for any two of our meets this year). Our best time of 47.3 doesn’t even come close to our times from last season, which was kind of unfortunate because we were aiming to break the school record of 45.8 this season.
I’ve been focusing on long jump more this year than ever, leaning away from the high jump this year a bit, and it’s payed off, even without any real coaching. Two weeks ago I jumped a new PR (by 5 inches) of 18’1″, taking 7th place in qualifying, and making my first long jump finals in a varsity meet ever. I was so stoked on finally clearing 18 feet, although I think I could’ve jumped farther if I didn’t have other events going on at the same time, because at that meet I had just finished long jump and the 100m, ran the 4×200 immediately afterwards, sprinted back over to the long jump pit for finals, then immediately ran back over to the starting line for the 4×100 with barely any time to warm up.
Spring break is coming up after next week, and I’m hoping to get some good training in for track, and break some more PRs at the meet right after break ends. We have a few more weeks of snowboarding before all the mountains close, which should be a lot of fun without the competition training.