2 Days At Hurley

Burners on Wednesday:

    As it is half term Jacko suggested an afternoon session at Hurley. Before we got onto the water we were all discussing selections and how it might pan out. We then spoke about how some of us find the second session in the day to be a better session in terms of performance. So, after warming up we got on and did some training, leaving the competition to later in the day.
   
    After feeling all warmed up and ready to go we all got off of the water to decide how the competition would run. The girls went first so all of us boys went and stood on the bridge trying to re-enact a crowd situation. After the girls had their rides it was time for us to go get ready for our rides. My first 2 rides went really bad, after either flushing or catching edges or just not going big enough. Once Emma told me to go big I realised that I was trying to rush my moves again and stopped paying attention to each move. The 3rd ride was my best, I landed an air screw, back pan am, huge blunt and two spins. This is by far my best competition ride!

    We all then got back on the water and had a really good afternoon. I started to work on my back pan ams on my off side, which was a huge challenge, as it felt so strange to throw the boat the opposite way. Towards the end of the session I was getting really tired from putting in all of my effort. Jacko told us to have a short break to give ourselves a short rest. He showed us a way to practice moves like back pan ams and blunt off the edge of the bank. He said we should have tried it if we didn't have fancy carbon boats!

    We finished off the day with a few good rides which allowed me to end my day on a good note and take away lots of positive notes.

All To Ourselves on Thursday:

    We started our cold days training at about 10 o'clock and had the wave all to ourselves. The 3 of us did our warm ups and headed over to the weir. As it was really cold I had a few rides of just surfing about to warm up fully before throwing any moves.

    After getting as warm as I could it was time to start throwing and working on landing and sticking back pan ams as well as straightening my airscrews, as they seem to be going off to the side.  Despite the cold we kept on going round and throwing our moves. I also had to work on keeping my rides intense as I have a tendency to start carving about if I can't set up straight away. Because we had the feature to ourselves it felt like we were constantly working and had very little rest to recover. So I decided to get out to stretch my legs as well as empty my boat because my cag-deck leaks like a sieve. After getting back on, Heidi left, as she was coming back for a night session and wanted a break. Emma and I continued on training and decided we'd have 10 more rides and we'd get off and have a break. So I decided that before my 10 rides were up I wanted to land an Air screw, Back pan am, backflash and a pan am. Which  can happily say I managed!

Throwing a back pan am

Trying a blunt on the right

    When it came to the second session it was raining and I had wet kit which made it even colder to start off with. But we carried on and started our session off with some warm up rides to get back into the training spirit. 

    

    As nice as it is to have the wave to ourselves it is really tiring, so I felt my energy levels drop really quickly and slowly stopped landing the moves I was trying to throw. 

    We decided that we'd have another five rides then call it a day and try to end on a positive note. For my five rides I tried to use them as competition rides but due to energy levels I got past the 2 spins and a blunt and was too tired to try and throw anything else. I then played in gate 3 for a bit to try and get my right blunt up to the level of my left. After 2 rides of doing this I felt a small amount of progress which was good. 

Emma throwing a right blunt

Throwing a pan am