Countdown

With only 7 days, 15 hours and 45 minutes (but who's counting?) till I leave to Florida its time to start preparing for this adventure! Besides packing, which I'll most likely do last minutes, there are some other things that I really need to start preparing. First of all, which I'm doing now is part of mentally preparing for the trip in order to get the most out of the experience. This mainly involves setting some goals. I have to be careful in setting these goals, because I haven't skied in a couple of months, so part of the training will be getting back to old levels and getting over muscle aches. Thus, the goals must not be unrealistic.

However, I still want to get the most out of my trip and improve of course, so I do want to set challenging goals that will push me to the very limit and make sure I maximise improvements. Since it is off season training, goal setting is different than during the season. There are no competitions, which means the goals will be focussed on improving basics and technique and long term investments rather than getting the best results in the shortest period of time. If I can spend this time improving techniques due to which I may not immediately jump further, but improve during the season, it will be more than worth it. All things considered, I'll list my goals. I'm a little scared to have them black on white, because I want to achieve whatever I say now and am afraid that I'll fall short, but that's part of growing...

In slalom, at the end of the season I was working on some changes in my basic technique already. This was side tracked a bit because there were competitions coming up and thus results were more important. Now I can go back to focussing on this technique and get the hang of it properly. Ideally, the tips that I have now will all start to come together and I will be able to really master it and therefore improve in results too. If this happens, I believe I should be able to clear the 13 meter pass and more importantly, consistently clear the 14 meter before that. Ideally this results in being able to start sets on the 16 meter rope and thus slowly letting go of skiing at 18 meters.

For tricks I'm extremely excited because I can put a lot of time into learning the new tricks for next season, which is harder to do during the season, since I have to keep up a steady competition run. I have listed some tricks that I want to be able to put in next years run. This means that the tricks I will be learning should be good for ideally 100% of the time. These tricks include a wake line 360, which is not entirely new, but should become the first trick and thus must not fail, ever. Furthermore I want to have 2 540s stable enough to incorporate, again I have started working on these, but to have them credit all the time will take some work. In toe hold, I also want to learn 540s, but as water turns instead of wake turns. Furthermore I should get the wrap in wrap out sequence steady, which is I would say 70% steady on a good day and should be brought up to 100%. If these go well I can also start with a TWO, which is a 360 wake turn and TWBB, which is also a 360 wake turn, but from back to back rather than front to front. If none of these words made sense, I hope I'll be able to show videos of them on my Facebook page when I learn them!

Finally, in jump, I will really focus on basics. This is actually for two reasons, first and foremost, it will definitely pay off later and also I might be skiing on new, bigger skis, which I'll have to get used to. Secondly, a more logistic part, there is no ramp in the lake I will be skiing, and the off-season is really good to work on all the cutting before the ramp. In this I hope to especially work on cutting the wakes, since this will set me up to learning a 3/4 cut for next season. This, combined with bigger skis, should set me up for big jumps (literally) next season.

Besides this, there are things I need to prepare travel related, but they have nothing to do with the actual skiing. I want to download some movies, books, and songs in order to have something to do besides sleeping the entire plane ride. Also I want to quickly check all my materials, so I don't get any unpleasant surprises once I've arrived. And lastly, I've done some shopping as an early birthday present to myself, so I'll have some clothes to suit the amazing weather in Florida! This should keep me busy till take off!!