Racing Mindset

Gidday folks,

The involvement & commitment that goes on during a race season is serious, I was thinking about it the other day.

There’s a lot of things involved and they all play a special & important part in the final result. Things like your equipment, mindset, level of fitness, and so on add up. 

When competing, ideally you wanna be in the best shape possible and with a clear mindset for the goal at hand. It’s hard to stay “ON” nonstop. You need moments of relaxing  (days/weeks/months, it depends) and just maintaining your base shape. Then when it gets close to the race you start dedicating more and more hours to training. It’s a shame that at the end of the season I’m at my best level fitness, and would love to keep going, because I’m finally in the best “fighting shape.” It takes a lot of work to get there, too bad we have to step down from it… until the following season. One could try to stay ready in that level always, but personally I’ve been through burn out phases and could never maintain that shape at all times. 

Mindset: That goes hand in hand with your fitness I believe. Or perhaps one compliments the other. If you get nervous and mess up the very special seconds at the start of the race, your whole training / fitness level may not help. You wanna be calm & focused to lessen the chances of making a mistake. It’s a frustrating thing to train that hard, a lot of money & time invested on you, only to see DSQ or DNF next to your name (Disqualified; Did Not Finish). It has happened to me, and I see it happening around me all the time. 

Equipment: Another quality piece. I believe if your in great shape, have talent and know what you’re doing on a snowboard (plus knowing what to do on a race), chances are the board is not going to decide the outcome. But it is a huge deal, when we get to details. And very few seconds set apart the racers at the end of the course. There’s so much that goes on with these boards: the material, length, size of the turning radius, feet positioning and very important: type of wax used for the conditions at hand (and how often it’s waxed). I always try to not let board define my races, but you have to wonder when you get to your destination with 2 boards (one for each type of race) and your competitor each have 6 to 10 boards -there’s a reason for that…

All of that to say: a lot goes on for me to enjoy and be successful on those precious few seconds that a race takes.