This competition trip begins tomorrow. Actually, Katie left this morning and she will meet us in Boston tomorrow afternoon. We've been home a little over a week and tomorrow morning we'll leave for 17 days of competitions on the East Coast. The comps begin with the final stop of the Revolution Tour at Sugarloaf, ME. JD Dennis is far in the lead to win the overall title for the Rev Tour in SS. There are a couple of guys who can dethrone him but, they'd need to do really well and JD would need to do very poorly in order for their stars to align. If JD does win the overall title, it will qualify him for our 3rd event on the East Coast, the US Open at Stratton, VT. Following the Rev Tour, we drive straight to Killington, VT for the final stop of the Grand Prix. Katie will compete in HP and SS while Ashley and JD will compete in SS (for which they've qualified from the Rev Tour events). Finally, we make our way to Stratton on the 16th of March for the Burton US Open. JD will either fly home on the morning of the 16th or he'll be at the Open practicing with Katie and Ashley. We hope to have him there.
Having about a week to catch-up on office work was helpful…and stressful. It’s funny for many people to try to imagine what the heck an administrator for a snowboard program could possibly do in an office. This week was largely filled with reconciling accounts, planning for things like the Development Contest this Saturday, summer camps, Nationals, coach training, clinics, and especially planning details for this trip. I, quite literally, spent weeks searching for the most affordable and appropriate travel arrangements I could. I still haven’t made lodging arrangements for our week at Stratton (for the US Open) because I just haven’t found something that I think is an affordable enough option for our riders (without being a total dump).
Yesterday was pretty stormy at Bachelor. I heard it was a great day for riding but, it definitely wasn’t a good training day. I stayed in town to work and asked JD and Katie to take the day off for rest. Ben and Ashley had the previous day off so they went up and rode with Adam. I got a heck of a lot done yesterday and I’m feeling like I’m ready to leave the office at this point. Adam, Coggin, and Eric do an outstanding job of running the programs while I’m on the road. We communicate often but, generally they are doing, or have done, everything that I think of along with quite a bit more.
Today is looking gorgeous on the mountain. We’ll be up there! Being coached doesn’t mean we just go ride together. We’ve done a lot of hard work this week. Work is a relative term; it is still snowboarding after all. Work means things like trying to overcome bad habits that are ingrained in muscle memory. This is very hard and can be quite frustrating. The reward is that fixing a bad habit can add to the consistency of landing a trick, the ability to add another 180 onto it, and especially add to the aesthetic of the trick. The reality in the snowboard world is that this is a subjectively judged sport (for freestyle events). Not all 720s are created equal and, just because you can land one doesn't mean you'll be competitive with a rider who can do a much "prettier" 720. Work can mean trying to get a 50% trick up to a 95% trick. Hard work can also mean spending an entire day pushing comfort levels on rail tricks. The soft snow this week has made conditions ideal for safer rail training. This weeks storms were very un-Bachelor like (except yesterday). We had snow at night and in the mornings but by the time we got up there the visibility was good, the snow had stopped, and the winds were light. This happened nearly every day and was perfect for us to make progress before our upcoming events. However, today will not be for hard work. Today is beautiful and will be used for us just to have a lot of fun, push ourselves, and release energy before we sit on planes for the entirety of tomorrow.
