Chile Races & Camp = great training 

Greetings friends!

I’m back from 2 weeks of action packed days in southern Chile. We went to Corralco again, where I had a total of 6 races.

My low back was still achy so I kept up with stretching, mobility and strengthening exercises and improved to almost normal by trip’s end!

It was time to test a few new things: a snowboard knee, a snowboard prosthetic socket, new boards. The boards never arrived on time, which was actually a blessing: there was little snow on the bottom of the mountain and a lot of rocks, so the boards I took are all scratched (deeply) on the bottom – hurts to look at! The race courses were fine and had enough snow, but the off piste and volcano (which we hiked up to its peak last year) didn’t have enough snow coverage unfortunately. So we couldn’t adventure out so much unfortunately.

On the very first run of training, I was testing my new socket, but failed to realize before going to Chile that it was a tad too tall. On a simple fall it “jabbed” me on the hip, hurt a lot and it swelled like a golf ball! I couldn’t use my prosthetic for 2 days bc it was hurting, but I was aggressive on icing and taking ice cold plunges on the lake behind our cabin to reduce swelling, plus pain killers. So I was back fast, and racing!

There is still a lot to improve, of course, but the training went well, some of the stuff we worked on helped me fix my technique. The races were good also, I did the South America Cup of Snowboard Cross with FIS abled body athletes; Para Snowboard Continental Cup and Brazil Open (which had Snowboard Cross as well as Giant Slalom and Parallel Slalom). 

Those were intense and fantastic days, I feel good and more prepared for the upcoming season!