Hurley With Burners

    Arriving to find the car park at Hurley was a good feeling for the day ahead, hoping that the wave would be fairly quite. After getting changed and heading down to the river, Jacko took us through some mental preparation of which we can use for mentally getting ready for our competitions. We did things like noticing which things are the same around us so that on competition day we don't treat it as any different to a training paddle. We then got on with our own warm ups individually before getting onto the water for three competition rides.


    Dropping onto the wave for my first ride, I had it all planned out... Two spins, blunt, back pan am and an air screw. I nailed my spins and linked one of them into a blunt which got a link bonus. The back pan am I actually landed and stuck! And unfortunately I missed the air screw. The second ride I caught my edge doing the first spin and the third run I landed my airscrew but flushed on the back pan am.

Half way through an Air Screw
    For the rest of the session my focuses were to be sticking about 90% of all of my moves. I found myself sticking the majority of my airscrews which was really good. I feel like I have made lots of progress from the Hurley Classic where I first landed an air screw.

Landing an Air Screw
    We all went back to Jacko's to review the footage from the session and to score each others rides. My first ride I scored 170 points which was a huge conference boost for me and checkpoint of my goal. My second ride I scored a grand total of 0 points due to my spin to catching edge combo! Jacko said that I needed to slow myself down as my boat just wants to rip about but I need to home my skills a bit before I can handle what it can fully do. I also needed to take the time to set up for my tricks instead of trying to do what I do in holes, link into moves from others. 

    We headed back down to the weir but there were a few more people there then there was in the morning. The wave was also quite holy and hard to control but at the same time it was quite sticky, which was nice for trying harder moves. aAfter doing the two comp rides everyone was buzzing and happy which made the session 10x better. Everyone was hitting moves that they have been trying for ages which was great to see. I started to land my back pan ams. In one ride I did a huge back pan am, an air screw and even tried an airscrew on my off side for the first time; and landed it! I got back into the eddy and Jacko told me I would have scored 270 points just from those 3 tricks! This got me really pumped as my last wave competition I scored 17 points in a jam format. Now to be scoring 270 in one ride is a big achievement for me. 

Throwing a back pan am
    Overall it was a great day on the water and I feel like I have made lots of progress and I'm more ready for selections in two weeks!

Blunt 




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