Whew! I think my season is finally over! After the last World Cup in March, we traveled to Tremblant, Quebec to battle the elements and each other for the North American and Canadian Champion titles. Several years ago, someone came up with the great idea to combine Canadian and US nationals to make one big race with better points, more competition and hopefully better prize money that was more economical for the racers to attend. With one event, we could crown a US Champ, a Canadian Champ, a Canadian Junior Champ and the North American Champ! This year, they also added the dubious distinction of a “Canadian Master’s Champion” for the racers over 30 (like me) in order to motivate “older” racers to keep racing.
I knew that I was tired after a long season because when I arrived in Tremblant and looked in my bags, I realized that I had forgotten to pack a speed suit! Even after all of these years of racing, I still make some rookie mistakes. Because of the warm weather and the rain, the conditions were extremely tricky, with soft sections, icy sections and sections with ugly chunks of ice to negotiate. The combination of fatigue and tough conditions meant that I would have to dig deep within myself to come up with the drive and the skills to be successful in Tremblant.
During my first qualification run in the PGS event, I looked up and watched the course worker slide through the finish line ahead of me in my course! When I got to the bottom, the timing lady was writing down the times and she wrote down a time of 28 seconds for me! The next best girl had a time of 32.34! All of the girls gasped. The timing lady said, “Yeah, Alexa, she is fast, eh?” I knew that I had had a good run, but it wasn’t 4 seconds better than the next girl good. The volunteers checked the timing tape and determined that my time was in fact a 32.62. That was more like it. After all, Jasey-Jay posted a first run qualifying time of 29 seconds to win the men’s side – there was no way that I had beaten him.
We rode and we rode, battling each other through the rounds of the finals and battling the challenging snow conditions. Jasey and I were able to draw on our years of experience to deal with the conditions and win our respective PGS races!
Jasey and I drew on our experience and our love of snowboarding the following day to have repeat performances and win the PSL event.
Following the Championships, I flew to Copper Colorado to participate in the USASA Nationals. This event is more of a recreational/developmental series that culminates in Nationals at Copper. I was lucky enough to be able to attend and meet some of the 1400 competitors in the event. USASA Nationals has an “Open” category that I raced in as well as age group categories ranging from 7 years old to over 70. A woman was on the chair lift with me, she turned to me and said, “I am a Kahuna!” I looked at her and blinked surprised. “I am in the 50 plus category!” she clarified. I was so impressed to see how many people were in Copper to compete in the GS, slalom, halfpipe, snowboardcross and slopestyle events and how well the event was run.
After winning one event and coming in second in another event, I spent my week in Copper forerunning for some of the other races and watching the up-and-coming kids and being inspired by the excitement of the adults. The adults invariably came through the finish line whooping for the joy of snowboarding!
Following the USASA event, I returned to Vancouver and joined my team in a training camp at Cypress Mountain. We had a variety of weather, which gave us an opportunity to test every snow condition that we might have thrown at us during the Olympics and develop some good feelings. We also had some new equipment technology that we tested out in order to help us get one step ahead of the competition for 2010!
Check out the shot of me on the North American podium with my teammate Kimi and US riders: Lynn Ott and Erica Mueller!
Regards,
Alexa
