Race Day

Today was the big race day. We were up early to get going since they had to be at the race course by 7:45. Whitney and Chad were out the door by 7:15 to hit the chair lift when it opened so they could get to the course. They started the course inspection on time and Chad was allowed to go down the course with her for the inspection. This is really helpful because he can help her figure out what lines to take, point out things she may not notice about the course, and give her any last minute tips. After that, there were two practice runs, although Whitney was able to sneak in a third.

I was able to get up to the course shortly after the end of the practice runs. I bought a walking ticket and took the chair lift up. Then I had to walk down past the slopestyle course to the boardercross course. Shortly after I got there, they had the riders meeting, which goes over the basics - the rules (no intentional contact), how they're going to run the race, etc. They then did the time trials. Each of the girls went down by herself against the clock, then when all the girls in an age group were finished, they were ranked by time. The race officials then set up the brackets. Whitney finished 13th in the time trials. She was in a bracket with the girls that finished 3, 4, and 12. They cut her age group to 16 racers (18 had entered) so had four brackets of four. For each bracket, the first two finishers moved on, the last two were out. In the semi-final round, the top two moved on to the finals and the bottom two moved on to the consolation final.

Whitney had an awesome start when she went out, she said it was her best start she had gotten. She ended up with a lot of speed and on the top of a pretty rough (bumpy) part of the first curve and had to speed check so she didn't end up in the nets and off the course. She had a great race the rest of the way down and finished 1.5 board lengths behind the girl in front of her, which put her in fourth place. By the time all the racing was finished, she ended up in 13th place. She's really happy with that. It is five places better than last year, she feels like she raced better than she did last year, and best of all, she had a lot of fun.

It was really helpful to have Chad out here with us this year. He was able to help her figure out the best lines of the course, gave her tips to run better, and waxed her board last night. Probably the biggest help to Whitney was helping her figure out the start. The start was almost straight down, like going across a half pipe but more straight on the downhill part and the uphill was a bit more open. It was crazy! The two of them worked on the half pipe here for a while the other day to get her start better and it really helped.

I think it's great having Chad out here because besides helping her with the race, he and Whitney are having an awesome time boarding around the mountain. Having someone with Whitney has been nice, I don't have to worry about her being out there by herself. If he wasn't here, she wouldn't be boarding in the trees or high up on the mountain. He knows her skills and she can keep up with him, so all is good. They're really looking forward to another great day tomorrow, a day of fun boarding, before we head home on Wednesday.