Ukkohalla Practice day… Tuesday 28 July
The stunning glassy lake we saw under the mist first thing, promised amazing conditions for our practice riding. BUT this was very short lived as once the carriers were full and the riders were out, the chop was ridiculous! The deceptively high cable and short lines should have made for a really springy cable, but instead we had far less tension than anticipated, really choppy water and so the big air tricks weren’t coming easily and the obstacles were catching a few of us out. We all struggled with getting on and the looming competition threatened to kill the fun buzz from yesterday.
However, the discovery that we could take rowing boats from the chalet to the cable brightened things up no end! With no vaguely proficient rowers amongst us, we were going round and round in silly circles and soaking the rear passengers! The sun was glorious and almost too hot! But after soaking up some rays, we then we sat back and watched the erratic route everyone else took, quite literally ‘in the same boat’! Oh and then came back to our chalet for a sauna!!! It was feeling like being on a school trip again!! Tough this competition lark!
The afternoon saw fewer riders on the cable and even though the Germans, French, Spanish and Dutch were now on site, the chop from the morning had subsided a little and helped recover a few ‘lost’ tricks. Under the watchful eye of team Captain Ralph Young, we all worked through our tricks, practiced some competition run ideas and generally got a bit more used to the cable and the layout of the obstacles. After more exploring of the facilities, discovering more massive saunas, wet rooms and hot tubs, and a huge dose of Facebook pirating, we all copied the course layout and made a plan of our proposed trick runs: a safe run and an ideal run. Ralph and team member CK with loads of competition experience guided us through our plans, picking out what we could add, how we could score better by re-arranging our run.
With an early morning practice session in the morning and official team training time, this would be the last chance to work out what we were going to do in the competition. True to tradition, the morning promises to be a media frenzy with all the other teams filming us to build their ‘game plans’. It was all smiles today from the familiar faces, but it starts to get serious tomorrow!
Wednesday 29 July 2009 | Permalink
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