Mount Sunapee Giant Slalom

Today Whitney stepped out of her comfort zone and did awesome. Her coach told her she should compete in a slalom or GS race this winter so she could compete in one of them at USCSA Nationals. Makes sense that if he's going to send her all the way across the country to race that she compete in two events. We looked over the schedule and it worked out that she could do a bx race yesterday and GS today. The race was at Mount Sunapee, a mountain Whitney has been to many times and loves. She said it is probably one of her favorite mountains to ride. Today was a NH Series race, a new series to race in for her. The director was super nice, they ran things pretty efficiently, and it was a good day.

Whitney's main goal today was to not get disqualified. As it turns out that wasn't a problem. She was the only open class rider there today. Actually it was an interesting mix of riders. It was mostly kids from Sunapee, most seemed to be 12-17, then there was Whitney, then a handful of older riders. And by older, I mean older. I'll have to post some race day pictures but one of the guys racing was in his 60s, one was 82 (!), there was an older woman, and a few more older men as well. Most of them were racing on alpine boards and wearing hard boots. Surprising since they're not of the age to really be riders when snowboarding was getting big, especially alpine stuff. Rock on!

Since we hadn't been to a NH series race before we were early to the mountain. Whitney was shocked at the great parking spot she got, front row. We figured out where they were doing registration, she got organized, and when they were ready she checked in; then we had more time to wait. The really nice thing was that the course was at the bottom of the mountain so I just had to walk out the lodge, onto the snow, and there we were. You could see the whole course from the bottom, except maybe the very top/start gate. That was a nice change from watching bx races where you usually can only see a little bit of the course.

Whitney had several trips down the course as practice runs. She took her two timed runs and did really well for not having raced GS before. She said on the first run she was a bit late on the turns for a few of the gates but then was fine. At one gate she said she hit a small patch of ice that threw her off a bit. The second run was much better she said. She felt more comfortable the second run, didn't hit the ice and held her line better.

Although as always she was nervous for a race I think this one was better than most since she didn't have the pressure to win, it was to just stay up and finish. She had a good time, made some new friends, conquered the GS, all in all a good day.