Lessons from Snowboard racing:

Greetings dear supporters and readers; I want to share how much I learned from my experience in Canada.

Snowboard takes so much energy out of you, and then on top of that, going from sea level to mountain heights always gets me —altitude sickness. Your body has to work extra hard to adapt.

I knew the workouts would have to change when you change sports. And I did change my workouts, based on what the coach from the Brazil’s snow team advised. Knowing and trying is one thing —living it on your skin is another. I kept my triathlon training but tweaked it a bit. Turns out I have to tweak it much more, because I should not have been that tired from racing. It is also normal, since I give my all on race days.

It’s good now that I know where to focus and spend my energy. It’s an endurance sport but there’s also a lot of explosion. So the lessons I learned are:

*Gym workouts are essential. More reps, different stability exercises. More lifting per week. Glutes have to be rock hard.

*Cycling, a lot of climbing repeats —mimicking a snow ride, it may only take a minute to go down the mountain, but you go hard in that minute. The body feels it. Those leg muscles have to be firing.

*Running, also repeats where you go all out at times.

There it is. I just wrote my homework for the year. That and of course technique training in the snow.