plasticsnow

I'm moving!

2009-04-26T21:45:00.002+01:00

In celebration of having two sponsors on board and because I want a site format that gives me more flexibility to combine posts on snowboarding, work, life, general stuff I come across and the photos that Jools takes I've set up a new blog over at www.tailfish.co.uk

I've imported all of the posts from here and will be working through them all to categorise them and tidy up the formatting. It's been a busy weekend and I haven't got round to getting it fully sorted yet but hopefully you'll continue to follow me over there!

Nearly Nose Grab!

2009-04-16T08:34:00.002+01:00

Nearly Nose Grab!, originally uploaded by plasticsnow aka Kat.

Here's a shot Jools took of my second run in the Big Air at the Brits. After landing a clean Roast Beef for my first run I went for the nose grab on my second. As you can see I didn't quite get the grab but I still cleared the knuckle and rode away clean!

Considering I've previously bounced nicely off the knuckle and fallen I was stoked to get two clean runs in qualification. I was even happier (and a bit sad as well) when I discovered I'd missed qualifying for the final by one place.

Season Round Up & Exciting News

2009-04-13T16:55:00.005+01:00

The Brits is over and I've had a good year in competitions with 9 podium places from 11 starts as the 2008/9 season draws to a close. Not only that but I've come close to qualifying for the overall final on a couple of occasions (Big Air at the Brits is my nearest miss so far!)

So here's a quick summary of how I got on:

All of my scores have been added in to the TTR comps to take place this month so the following positions might change slightly but at the present time my world ranking is 150 ranking list, there are still a couple of TTRth and I'm 8th in Great Britain. Fingers crossed if the TTR rankings don't change an improvement of 5 places in my overall ranking.

TTR Ranking at 12-4-09" width="1001" height="625">

It's been a tough year as well, I injured my foot at the Castleford leg of the Snow Tour which meant that I rode through the pain barrier there and was still riding injured the following week at Milton Keynes. This injury, which effectively put me out for 8 weeks after I'd also ridden in the Burton Black Metal at MK (where I discovered it wasn't quite fixed) combined with a change of job meant that we didn't take our planned month long trip to Laax over Christmas so that I could get some coaching and enter the Burton European Open. It's such a shame, as I learnt so much out there the week before the Brits and the coaching really helped my confidence, however, we're already working out how we can get more time away next season so hopefully I'll get some more coaching and if everything goes to plan give the BEO a go as well.

Oh, and on to the exciting news.....I'm now officially a SNO!zone Sponsored Rider! Yes, following the Brits I've found out that they'd like me on the team because "you embody everything that SNO!zone is about....energy and enthusiasm! So I'd love you to join the team". So finally my bubbly nature and determination to progress and succeed has impressed someone enough to get some proper, official sponsorship!

I have to say a huge thank you to Lisa Allan and SNO!zone for giving me this opportunity because it'll be a huge help, the more riding I can get in the easier it'll be to progress and improve my tricks (and the less I have to spend on slope-time the more I can spend on coaching!). It really is brilliant to find someone who hasn't been put off by the fact that I'm over 30 as well. I may not be able to beat all the kids on the comp scene but I'll keep giving it my best shot!

Back to the Grind....not the jibbing kind

2009-04-06T09:13:00.001+01:00

I'm writing this on my way to London, on the train, heading to the office after two weeks away in Laax. It feels a bit surreal, here I am suited and booted and fighting for a seat on the train ( I won) when this time a week a go I was waiting for the gondola to take me to the mountain top for boardercross (I won that too).

Anyway, I just wanted to round out Brits week with an update on the slopestyle (3rd in Masters, 19th overall). I'll admit to being a bit gutted with my overall position, I'd hoped to finish a couple of places higher but it wasn't to be. On a positive note though, it was the biggest, cleanest slopetyle comp I've done in 4 years at the Brits, with my second run being completely clean with all kicked knuckles cleared. It really does go to show what some lessons and hard work can do! If anyone is in Laax and wants some freestyle tuition then Marc Pfander comes highly recommended.

Rebecca Cullum also got her rightful Big Air prize, no public apology though as she decided against having a presentation with just her on the podium (it's not much fun, especially when it's not your fault) but she appears in the right place on the results list so it's all good.

Hopefully I'll slowly ease in to work this week, luckily with Easter I have two, 4 day weeks, and a trip to Castleford & Halifax to look forward to. I'm going to do everything I can to keep the riding momentum going and get myself to a good enough standard that this time next year I'm blogging about the spins I've thrown down on the big kickers!

For a collection of Brits photos by Jools Smith, check out his Flickr set

Medal Free Wednesday

2009-04-01T19:42:00.003+01:00

No medal for me today unfortunately, but the weather was good and I was happy with my half pipe runs. I'd out a couple of runs in on the half pipe yesterday but hadn't really done anything spectacular (let's face it, when you only ride pipe once a year it's hard to be spectacularly anything except for spectacularly bad!). Due to my superior planning skills I was up the top of the mountain early enough to get about 6 practice runs in which was triple what some of the slackers managed, I was getting near the lip of the super pipe on my first hit but my skills on the backside wall are lacking somewhat and I wasn't really able to keep my height or speed in the increasingly slushy pipe. I did however manage a clean first run of frontside airs (with grabs) and backside airs (less grabs) and then for my second run I went for another mix of front & backside airs and went for a frontside 360 (today was the first time I’d tried these). Unfortunately I butt-checked it but it gives me something to work towards for next year’s comp.

As I said I didn’t place in the top 3, my gut instinct tells me I placed 5th out of 5 Masters but as I'm happy with how I rode I don't mind not winning another medal.

Tomorrow's comp is the slope style, it's a 9am start at the top of the mountain so no partying for me tonight. Also because of the large number of entrants and the fact it takes 20 minutes to lap the comp park and the run to the lift and back we only get one run, so I have to make it count. I've got my run all planned out and if it all comes off OK I'll be happy. My main aims are to do decent grabs on all three kickers and keep my bum out of the snow (last year I managed the kickers pretty much but not the butt part as I fell on the rails).

On another note it looks like Rebecca Cullum actually won her age group in yesterday's Big Air comp and placed 4th overall, unfortunately as yet there has been no announcement of this to the masses nor has there been a re-run of the podium presentation so that she (and her sponsors) get a moment of glory. This really disappoints me because it's one thing to make a mistake by not presenting someone with their prize but quite another not to fix it publically and fast! So at present it's really only those people with access to the press office or who've spoken to Becca that are aware that she actually won. I do hope that Soulsports do fix this before the end of the week.

Hard work pays off!

2009-03-31T20:11:00.002+01:00

Woohoo! I am so happy right now, all my hard work and the lessons I had last week worked out and I placed first in the Masters Big Air at the Brits. It was perfect weather today, bright blue sky and nicely shaped kickers meant that things couldn't really have been better. The delay to the competition start (the banners weren't up in time) meant that I got a few warm-up laps on the triple set of Swatch kickers, this gave me a chance to get my legs warmed up and a few different grabs nailed. Of course my legs were already pretty warm as I'd had to run back to the flat to pick up my lift pass which I'd left behind when I swapped jackets.

Once the competition kickers were actually open I headed over and sized up where I thought I needed to drop in from. I set off, put in a mini-speed check and landed just past the knuckle, definitely more speed required. By the time the comp was due to start I'd had a further 2 practice runs and got my drop in point and speed sorted....bring it on!

By the time it was my turn to compete the nerves were starting to kick in a bit but I dropped in and went for it....up the kicker into the air, and a good solid Roast Beef grab, over the knuckle and down on to the landing, clean ride out. Definitely a good jump. I was the first of the two Masters to jump and I couldn't see what Lynsey Ashdown had done off the kicker but unfortunately she fell on landing.

My second run I decided to go all out and go for the nose grab, this is pushing it for me, I'm really not keen on any grab that means I have to shift out of my nice, safe, centered stance. Unfortunately I didn't quite reach my nose but I was pleased that I still managed to get some good air and landed cleanly. I was disappointed not to get the grab but more than pleased that this year I managed to get two clean jumps past the knuckle, cleanly ridden out. Lynsey slammed on her second jump too but until prize giving I wasn't sure if I'd won or not as I wasn't sure if a fallen spin would have scored higher than a clean straight air or not. Thankfully it did!

The one downer on the day has to be a major admin error that occurred at prize giving. Rebecca Cullum had been riding really well all day and had landed a really nice FS360 over the medium kicker. This has been a bit of a bogey jump for her since she knocked herself out cold and landed herself in hospital doing this trick, so I was really pleased that she not only landed it but made the final by qualifying in 5th place (6 went through). Unfortunately when it came to the prize giving for her age group they had missed her off the list somehow (she'd certainly placed 2nd if not 1st as both she & Sam Rogers had qualified for the final) and she didn't get given a medal....as yet we don't know if she placed 1st or 2nd in her group, or even if she should have made the overall top 3 as well. As you can imagine this was both a shock and an upset, no one likes to be missed off the prize winners list, especially when you want to show your sponsors how well you've ridden and what you've achieved. I really hope that this is made good tomorrow by having a new presentation with the right people on the podium, but whatever happens, not only has this upset Rebecca, but it will also upset the girl who was on the podium but unfortunately shouldn't have been.

I really feel for Becca because I similar thing happened to me at Warmwell the year before last when I made the final and placed 4th overall behind 3 sponsored riders. I should have won the Best Unsponsored Female prize but it was given to someone else because they thought I'd won it already. When I pointed this out I was simply told I'd just have to win again another time! I really do hope that Becca gets better treatment and this gets fixed tomorrow because after her hard work she deserves her moment of glory!

My first run: Roast Beef

Victorious in Masters Boardercross

2009-03-30T19:36:00.003+01:00

It's been a mixed day for weather with heavy cloud hanging over the Boardercross course but it was well worth me heading up the mountain, although when I did my first run through the course. The first run through you get of the course is just side slipping through to check where each of the features is but without actually racing over it. A good thing too as you literally couldn’t tell if you were going on a bend, roller or kicker until you were on it! Thankfully they sprayed everything with blue paint before we started our official warm-up runs so even when there was no sun you could at least see what you were about to hit.

I decided to drop in quite slowly for my first practice run, not slowly enough though as I sailed over the first kicker and saw the landing vanish way behind me and I landed on the flat half way to the first roller....speed checks and pre-ollies were definitely called for as you came out of the gate that was for sure. After a second warm-up run where I timed the first kicker a little better we started our timed qualification runs. We each had two of these to determine seeding and gate choices for the races themselves.

My first run was OK, but I was a bit unsettled on the triple rollers so was actually quite pleased when I arrived back at the start to find that the timer system had failed and I needed to do a further timed run. After catching my breath I dropped in for my first official timed run and the sun came out, this time I rode much better, rode smoothly over the rollers and then felt I'd done a good time. My second timed run wasn't so good, I caught a heel edge as I went up the third roller and landed on my hip & back half way to the first corner...OUCH! Not only had I half lost my goggles but totally winded myself as well, I wasn't going to let this stop me though so up I got and started riding to the next 2 bends, straightening my goggles as I went and frantically waiting for my lungs to refill with air. I have to say it's quite a scary experience but I figured that my riding with my mouth open enough air would find its way in to me before I suffocated. Luckily I caught my breath before I hit the kicker line but it wasn't enough and it turned out that I qualified in 2nd place, 0.7 of a second behind the first place qualifier. Suddenly my doing boardercross for fun did an about turn and I wanted to win.

We lined up for the final, and the start gates dropped, I got away in second behind Philippa Tattersall, the girl who'd beaten me in the timed runs, I had a feeling that she'd beat me away but I bided my time and hit the kicker a few feet behind her. Just as I thought, she'd taken it too fast and on overshooting the landing she fell, I landed, curved to the right and passed her as she lay in the snow. From this point on I focused on my technique and keeping as much speed as I could, I had no idea how close behind me she was so I hit the rollers, making sure I sucked my knees up to avoid getting air, rode the banks pumping to get faster and then just ploughed on to the finish. It worked and I won!

So that's one comp down and 3 more to go, tomorrow is the Big Air and I'll be aiming to hit the 13m kicker as well as I did last week. Hopefully the weather will be good and my legs will be good to me, I really want to land two good clean grabs and ride away without stacking this year, I believe I can do it; I just need to make sure my body believes it too.

A special mention has to go to Hayley Sutherland for competing alongside me, at 46 and only having been snowboarding for a year she overcame fear and panic to complete both timed runs and the race...a well deserved and earnt third place!

Brits Bib Collection: Total Fail

2009-03-29T18:26:00.002+01:00

Well it's Sunday, officially practice day and bib collection for the majority of snowboarders and skiers entering the British Snowboard & Ski Championships, so after dropping my stuff off in the apartment I headed to the registration point at 2:10pm, 10 minutes after the office should have been open. I do this every year because if you leave it too late there's a huge queue and it takes ages to get sorted. I was greeted by a sign saying the office would not be open until 3:30pm. So back home I went, grabbed some food and a shower before heading back at about 3:40pm. To be greeted by a big queue and the start of the whinging. When you pre-register on line you're told you need to bring your passport with you when you collect your bib to prove your eligibility (a non-British national won the Big Air in 2007 so they're clamped down after that minor embarrassment). Of course if you haven't pre-registered then you don't know this, so lots of people turn up and then when they find out (often not till they've been queuing for a while) they have to head back to pick up their passports.

Now I am a prepared person, I've preregistered and prepaid online, I've also sorted out my year's licence and have my passport & bib deposit with me....so it would be nice to think that there'd be an express line for pre-registered competitors to whizz through. It seems that that's too easy, no, I had to queue in a hot, windowless room for 90 minutes! Trying to keep your place and avoid queue jumpers and help out the kids who need a parent or guardian to sign their entry form but whose parents haven't come down with them. When I finally made it to the front of the line it became apparent that the 3 girls handling the registration/collection were not processing a person each, no, one was handing out the wrist band, one took the bib deposit and gave you the bib and then one entered your info on the spreadsheet (or checked your details if you were pre-registered). The whole process took me 30 seconds, yes I waited 90 minutes to spend 30 seconds proving my nationality & getting my bib.....and there certainly weren't 180 people in front of me.

So please pretty please can we have a bit more organisation next year Mr Brass? Perhaps a sign or someone outside to remind people that they need a passport, that you only accept CHFs for bib deposits but CHFs or GBPs for competition entry and that you won't take Euros at all and can we also have a pre-registration collection point for those of us that try and make your life a bit easier by paying for everything online and ahead of time.

Oh and it would be a bonus if your staff were able to tell people where the Rider's Meeting is (or even perhaps say to people as they gave them their bib "Don't forget it's Rider's Meeting at 7pm in Location X". I asked where it was and was told they didn't know but probably in the Rider's Palace. Since your programme has bad weather meetings in the Rocks then I'm guessing that it's actually outside at the Après Arena, but I shouldn't have to guess, I should be able to politely ask and informed member of the team and get a correct answer.

I know you all do this for the love of the sport, and that the people doing registrations etc are effectively volunteers and I appreciate they you all have to put up with a lot of unnecessary hassle, but it's an experience like this that starts the week off in a frustrated manner and makes you wonder if anything is going to run to plan. I'm hoping that this is the bad dress rehearsal before the main event....fingers crossed!

UPDATE:

Since heading back to the apartment and typing my post queue mini-rant, we headed back out into the snow (yes it's still snowing!) to hunt down the location for the Rider's Meeting, after a bit of wandering and bumoing in to people it transpired that the Rider's Meeting was cancelled, becuase they'd not put the location in the programme and because they were over running with registration (at least I heard that was the reason). Unfortunately they hadn't told everyone, or put a note on the wall outside the registration room so there were plenty of lost looking people wandering from the Rider's Palace, where the meeting used to be held in previous years, the Rocks, where it said bad weather meetings would be (it's snowing, seems bad to me) and the Crap Bar.

I'm counting this as the same day, same problems, so hopefully tomorrow will be a little bit smoother.

Where'd my sun go?

2009-03-28T18:14:00.002Z

So today was suposed to be sunny, all day was suposed to be clear until 4pm and then snow overnight and tomorrow, well everyone got that wrong, including the local weather. We headed up at 9 so that I could warm up before my lesson and it was cold, wet, windy and dumping once again....gutted! After yesterday I was really looking forward to another day of good visibility so I could practice the big air kicker a bit more, but it wasn't to be. The wind was whipping up so badly that we headed to the rail park to work on my boardslides, all was going well until I misjudged the kicker for the second box and caught my nose on the front of the board.....head, shoulder, back slammed one after the other into the box before I bounced on to the snow. Apparently jumping is important, although it does help if you can see where you're headed. After a few more laps of the rail park we went over to check out the slopestyle course, it's looking nice! It's all set up ready for the comp and it's going to be fun to hit, there's a choice of bonks at the top, a wallride, box/rail choice, the mini half pipe and then the line of three kickers.

I'm really pleased that I've managed another first this trip and hit all the toys in the course prior to the comp day..not only that but I hit all the kickers without too much panic. I didn't make the landing of all of them but then again neither did my instructor, the slow, wet snow was causing us a few problems but it was good fun and it's given me the confidence that I can do the course and have fun without going in to total panic mode.

It's also really cool that my old uni friend, Adi, has made it out to Laax as well. This will be our first time riding together and it looks as though he'll get his wish of more powder tomorrow!

Jools Shredding: mini-vid

2009-03-27T20:00:00.004Z

Jools was riding down from the park today to pick up his camera kit as the sun had finally come out. He captured some of the run on my Flip Mino....until it all went a little bit wrong (skip to 1 min 35 if you're only interested in the incident)

Jools Shredding in Laax from IAmKat aka plasticsnow on Vimeo.

Self affirmation...I can do it!

2009-03-27T18:45:00.000Z

I'm exhausted, totally mentally and physically drained today. The sun had come out by the time we'd reached the park at around 9:20 this morning and I managed to get a few warm up runs on the triple line of kickers before my lesson kicked off. It was much nicer being able to see where I was going again but I managed to keep on top of my nerves and avoid speed checking again. A good thing too, because after 3 laps of the kickers with Marc he decided that it was time for me to hit the smaller of the two big air kickers (the jump I'm planning on hitting in next week's Big Air comp), so after practicing my nose grab on the first of the triple line we pulled off to the side and up on to the bigger kicker drop in which is basically the top-side of the half-pipe.

Marc took me down to the point where he wanted me to drop in from and off he went to show me the speed I needed (having given me strict instructions to straight line the drop in and not to speed check. So after he'd landed I stood up, took a few deep breaths to try and calm the panic and dropped. Now this is about the same size kicker that I've attempted at the last 2 Brits and I've yet to clear the knuckle on it, in fact I only hit it last year to encourage one of the younger kids to give it a go, and he didn't. So there I am running in down the side of the pipe, gathering speed and the switch in my head flicked to "too fast, go slower", in went the speed check and I resettled myself and took off from the kicker.....through the air I flew and landed just before the knuckle on the flat table top....ooooops not enough speed!

After confessing all to Marc about my errant speed check we headed back to the top of the park, again I hit the top small kicker with a nose grab before heading back over to the comp kicker. More deep breaths, and off I went, the speed switch again kicked in but this time I managed to hit override and I got to the kicker without having put in any speed control, up the kicker, looked over the top for the landing and I was in the air, and still in the air, there went the knuckle, I touched down on the actual landing, managed not to have a mega case of girly-legs (this is where they buckle beneath you and you fall over for no reason) and rode all the way down to the lift!

STOKED!!! I had done it, admittedly I was still a bit wobbly with fear but I had done it, survived and ridden out. This had been my main goal for the week and I'd achieved it. Not only had I managed to hit the jump before the competition but I'd cleared the knuckle and ridden out. Oh, and this kicker is probably the biggest I've ever hit with a flat table of about 13m between the kicker itself and the knuckle of the landing!

Of course the morning didn't stop there, we lapped and lapped the kickers and I gained in confidence to the point where I was landing well down the landing and grabbing (and holding the grab for a reasonable time) the board and confidently riding away.

As yet there's no photographic proof but I'll obtain some of that before the end of next week....in fact I'm hoping to get some sorted tomorrow if the weather is good. In the meantime I shall be repeating the self affirmation "I can do it!" over and over to ensure I don't bottle it in the comp next Tuesday.

Bring Me Sunshine!

2009-03-26T19:05:00.002Z

First up I have to say a big thank you to everyone who after my whinging has wished for sunshine, especially Cityrat59 who today sent me sunshine from Sweden. Yes, there was a hint of sun today, not at first admittedly but it did make an appearance now and again from mid-morning.

The day started off with a call from Marc, my instructor, to say he was struggling to get the to the top as the lift from where he lives was closed, but that I should get up and start hitting the kickers. Jools and I headed up but the lift to the top was closed so we lapped the bubble run until it opened. On arriving at the top we faced poor visibility & high winds, so after a couple of runs through the rail park we headed into the No Name Cafe for a hot chocolate meeting Marc on the way. After a quick warm through Marc and I headed out and did a warm up line on the kickers, as we took the Poma lift back up the wind picked up and it was like being in a blizzard, you couldn't see anything, so back to the No Name we went.

After about 5 minutes the wind dropped and there was a hint of sun, and by that I mean a tiny sparkle in the cloud, certainly not enough to mean that I could actually see the kickers...so we were back to feeling the way with Jedi legs! I must be building in confidence because this didn't freak me out quite as much as yesterday, and in fact I think the fact that I couldn't see the second kicker meant that I actually kept my nerve (actually just thought to hell with it!) and managed to straight line in from my landing of the first kicker and sailed over without a speed check, something that Marc has been trying to get me to do for days now. I'm really pleased because I managed to keep this up through out the day and was straight lining the first 2 kickers without the fear being to great.

As the morning progressed the cloud cleared and periodically the sun came out so that for probably 50% of my runs today I could actually see where I was going. I worked hard not to let the vision freak me out and make me slow down and for the most part I managed to override the little switch in my head that says "Brake" when I get a bit scared.

Overall it was a really good day, and although I still can't quite get the hang of nose grabs I'm certainly getting closer to holding the board rather than just flailing my arm in the direction of the front of my board than I've ever done. I'm hoping my arms grow over night and I manage it tomorrow!

No photos today because I was to busy riding, I'm not sure what tomorrow will be like, it's started snowing again but I'm hoping it'll snow tonight and clear up for about 10am....who knows though, whatever happens I'm sure we'll make the best of it.

Jedi Legs or Jelly Legs

2009-03-25T19:23:00.002Z

Today I turned 34, and it appears as though the wishes of everyone on Facebook & Twitter have come true and I have suffered another powder day here in Laax (it's obvious not enough people read this blog!)

On the bright-side though my kicker lesson this morning wasn't cancelled, on the downside though the park was right in the cloud line so it was like riding in thick fog. So it wasn't really a bright-side when you think about it, especially as I spent two hours in fear of my life. As Marc reminded me though, comp day may well be bad weather and if I can ride kickers in conditions like today then I'll be fine if the weather is actually good for a change.

So off to the kicker line we went, and it was time to ride with Jedi legs.....feel, don't see young Padawan! I have to admit that if I thought I was scared earlier in the week then I was definitely confused, no fear was what I felt dropping in on the kickers for my first run this morning. Luckily I survived in one piece and over the course of the morning I lapped the kickers, building in confidence and reducing the number of unnecessary speed checks I put in before the 2nd kicker.

Rumour has it that it may be a bit brighter tomorrow morning, but considering it's still dumping outside at the very least I'm guaranteed a soft landing on the kickers first thing!

Should I Be Sectioned?

2009-03-24T19:07:00.005Z

OK, so according to Ruth's comment on yesterday's post my use of the phrase "Unfortunately it's due to dump tomorrow" is grounds for being sectioned....so I suppose this brings me nicely on to thoughts about whether snowboarding is a sport, hobby or winter holiday, and more importantly who's right, her or me?

Taking the second point first, I'd have to say we're both right, and not just because I don't want to piss Ruth off and have her invoke the Snow God's causing them to dump over Laax for the next 10 days but also because it all depends on your perspective and what you personally want to get out of a day on a snowboard. I'm sure Ruth won't mind me saying that she's not a "park monkey" no, she's a total powder hound. She very bravely upped sticks from the UK and moved to Vancouver a couple of years ago and now rides the weekends at Whistler as much as she's able. She's bought a split snowboard that basically allows her to use it as skis (with skins on the bottom) to walk UP mountains, she then turns it back in to a snowboard to ride down again. So for her, dumps are important, I mean seriously no one in their right mind is going to do all of that just to ride a hard packed piste, it's all about the powder, and I'm sure she can do a much better job than I of explaining why she does it (or you could read some of her blog posts). For me on the other hand it's all about the park, well certainly it is on this holiday, especially after our trip to Le Grand Bornand in January. I'd been hoping that I'd be able to ride the park with the kids on the Anarski Camp and get some practice in for next week's Brits, unfortunately we had 1 day of decent weather out of 7, all the rest were snowy. While we had lots of fun and I improved my general riding skills it meant that I didn't hit any decent sized kickers and so was basically the same standard as I was after riding in the UK. So to counter that (and the fact that I haven't ridden since that trip) I'd arranged lessons for this week to tackle kickers and build on my skills, so for me good weather is important. No instructor in their right mind is going to take a pupil out in heavy snow and poor visibility and get them to huck off a kicker when they can't see the run in or run out (and if it was anything like today, get blown off course in mid-air). No, for what I had planned this week, at the very least you need a nicely shaped park, low winds and if you're lucky some sun to soften the landings a bit.

Which I suppose brings me on to how people view snowboarding, for me it's very much a sport, and while I perhaps don't take it as seriously as I used to take my gymnastics and figure skating as a kid, I definitely see it as a competitive environment that I want to succeed in to the best of my ability. Part of this has been my aborted attempts to get fit by running and also a change in diet to lose a bit of weight to avoid putting my joints under excessive pressure. Most of all though it's been finally accepting that getting some lessons in freestyle would be beneficial, and then finding somewhere where I was confident of the level of coaching to feel that I would get a decent return of improvement in comparison to my investment in the lessons....I can certainly say that based on the two lessons I've had so far I've found that in Laax. Snowboarding to me is a sport, something to learn and progress at and then use those skills to compete against others. In addition to that I compete against me, each time I do a competition I have something that I want to achieve, be it a new trick or even simply not falling for my entire slopestyle run (this year's plan for the Brits slopestyle!) so powder is a frustration, it's effectively scuppering my plans for improvement and ruining my chances of staying upright in the single run I have in the slopestyle competition.

That's not to say that I didn't have fun today riding in the powder, we shredded from 1st lift (well actually 2nd because the restaurant staff had to go up ahead of us), the visibility was pants but we had a laugh. My lessons were cancelled but Jools and I rode around with the kids that are out here for the Brits too. Much fun and many slams were had by all, I cart wheeled my way down the slope after catching my nose when I popped a lip on the edge of the piste ending up with snow everywhere, including filling my goggles.

Anyway, it's still snowing, I won't moan but inside I'll admit to being a bit disappointed that tomorrow loks like another day without lessons and will be a day shredding powder instead. I'm not sure if that's the birthday present I wanted but I'll try and have fun for everyone stuck in an office wishing they were somewhere snowy instead!

Pics from today:

www.flickr.com

Back in Laax

2009-03-23T19:19:00.004Z

So here I am back in Laax, Switzerland for the 4th year and my 4th British Championships. My first trip out was in 2005 and it was proably the scariest experience I've ever had. Each year it's got a bit easier but I fully admit that the competiton park out here has always felt a little bit out of my reach, although I've improved year on year I've never felt fully happy with the way I've ridden. Part of that is my own high standards, and I think part of it is that it's just too big a step up from riding in the UK for someone who only rides on real snow a week or two a year.

This year I'm doing my best to counter that by having a week of lessons focusing on kickers before the comp kicks off next Monday. It's been good so far and Marc, my instructor, hasn't laughed me off the mountain (thank goodness!). Yesterday we started off in the Beginner Park so that Marc could take a look at my level and make sure I would be able to put my money where my mouth is with the request of what I wanted to learn. He made a few tweaks to my binding angles and forward lean on my highbacks (I'm now riding +24, -12 as opposed to +21, -9) and he adjusted my body position running in to the kickers and I immediately felt less sketchy and a bit happier riding at speed. After we'd done a few laps of the park we moved over into the Swatch Park (part of NoName), where there's a row of 3 kickers of increasing size (7m, 8m & 10m) and we started sessioning these. It's always a bit un-nerving, I find, hitting new jumps but having survived the first run through, hitting the first 2 kickers I started to relax and enjoy myself. My 2 hours was soon up and after lunch I spent the afternoon working on my "homework" and practicing hitting the kickers ot get used to taing more speed into them and speed checking less. By the end of the day I'd hit all 3, although I did go a bit too fast over the last kicker and scared myself by almost clearing the landing.

Today was another good day, starting off straight away on the Swatch kickers we spent 2 hours building up my speed and as I became more settled I started to jump a bit more off the kickers rather than just riding over them. I'm still not quite able to over-ride my nerves between kicker 1 and kicker 2, Marc's been trying to get me to hit the 2nd jump without speed checking but I keep putting in a little scrub of speed. I am getting better though.

Unfortunately, it looks like it's going to dump tomorrow (Metcheck), so I'm not sure what the conditions are going to be like for sessioning jumps or whether my lesson will be cancelled, I'll just have to wait and see...if it doesn't go ahead then it looks like I'll be off with the boys playing in the powder.

These are the first two kickers in the Swatch Park

Le Grand Bornand Trip 2009

2009-01-18T20:54:00.002Z

Yay! I’m currently in Le Grand Bornand on my first snowy trip of 2009 as part of the Anarski Camp. Having cancelled my month in Laax following my foot injury and change of job it’s good to be away and having fun in the snow once more. We cheated a bit getting here by cashing in some of the hotel reward points I gained while working in Southampton and stopping in Dijon Friday night to break up the journey, driving the final 300km on Saturday morning. The TomTom/Jools’s navigation skills and my kick ass driving got us here at lunchtime and we hit the slopes for the afternoon.
Checking out the park we found a good range of kickers from green to black and good mix of boxes too. It looks like it’s going to be a brilliant week, well as long as the snow stays away anyway. We had to give up and come down the mountain at lunchtime today because the visibility got so bad that you literally couldn’t see 5 foot in front of you, and on an unfamiliar slope it’s not much fun so we called it a day and later in the afternoon we set about building a kicker and quarter pipe out the back of the Anarski Chalet.
I’ve been playing about with Nokia Sports Tracker, and will be posting up some of our sessions on their site, so click here to see where I've been riding. I’ll also be uploading some pictures as and when I can on Flickr. As yet I haven’t found any free wifi so uploads may be few and far between so I don’t run up a huge bill....but even if I don’t update the blog until I’m home you should be able to get a bit of a picture of what we’re up to from those sites.
Hopefully tomorrow will be bright so we can hit the park again, but if not there’s a plan for some tree runs and of course the back yard jib session!

Battle of the duvet

2009-01-07T09:26:00.005Z

5:20am and my alarm goes off, it's dark, I'm warm and toasty and it's cold outside. Add to this the fact that I'm working from home and it all adds up to me not wanting to get up to go to the gym. Seemingly the other half feels the same way, saying he'll get up in an hour and walk in to work rather than driving so I can stay asleep for a while longer. Excellent, I burrow back into my feathered nest and start to drift off, 5 minutes of bliss are soon over when the realisation that we're both lazy quitters hits him and we're up dressed and in the gym by 6:05. Ah well it was nice while it lasted and if I'm honest once I was up and dressed it wasn't too bad. It's just that first battle with the outside world that causes the problem.....I love my duvet, I actually think I love my duvet more than I love my snowboard, today however, I won the battle, it may have scored the first goal but I rallied and won in overtime!

Today's workout was an easy one, because I was working from home and didn't have to rush for the train I put in an hour rather than my usual 30 minutes. A mix of cross-trainer, treadclimber and bike it was part fat burn and part low level cardio. I'm trying to keep my workouts balanced and a session like this is great to still work my legs without over doing the knee impact. So that's 2 hours exercise already this week and we're only on Wednesday. Tomorrow's another couch to 5k session so hopefully I won't be too tired after work otherwise I may be tempted to grab a post-commute nap rather than wrapping up and heading out into the cold.

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More of plasticsnow aka Kat's stuff tagged with 070109

It's a wee bit chilly!

2009-01-06T21:06:00.005Z

Well let's start today's post off with an indication of just how cold it is today.....

Yes that's the peanut oil in my kitchen and it's solidifying! So it's a bit chilly as you can tell.

Despite this, and the fact that I was pretty much numb from waiting 20 minutes for the bus and then walking home from the bus stop I did make it out for the first run of week 2 in my couch to 5km training. It did help that Jools came with me to brave the cold, although I suspect it was more to make sure I didn't quit half way round....he even made me take the tough route with the longer hill in it...git! Still we made it and did 3.78km in just under 30 minutes, because we'd taken a slightly different route we weren't as far away from the house as normal so I didn't bother with the full 5 min walk for the warm down. Considering it was -5oC out there I don't think that's bad going at all. Today I'd stepped it up a bit and after the warm up we did 6 reps of 90 seconds running followed by 2 minutes of fast walking. I must be getting a bit fitter because the hill didn't seem to hurt quite as much as when I had a false start of exercising 2 weeks ago.

Today was also weigh-in day, my BMI has decreased slightly but I haven't lost a full pound in the last week. I'm not too worried about that though the main thing about all of this exercise is increasing my fitness and toning up as opposed to losing weight. I haven't been dieting, just making sure I'm eating healthily so I won't be crying in my pillow tonight.

I'm hoping that this cold weather will mean that when I hit the slopes my lungs will have adjusted slightly and I won't be as wheezy as usual, we shall see I suppose.

So there we have it week 2 of actual outside running is 1/3 over, now I just need to keep the momentum and finish it off!

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More of plasticsnow aka Kat's stuff tagged with #W2R1

Snow!

2009-01-05T20:55:00.002Z

It snowed last night, Jools woke up at 5:15 this morning to put the heating on before we headed to the gym and informed me it'd snowed over night. It has to be said though that it was rubbish snow, about 1cm and not worth taking the day off for, so I didn't bother taking any photos of it and instead of heading to the skate park with our boards we went to the gym and work instead! It has to be said that the snow was so rubbish that my train to work ran on time!

On the positive side I started my second week of fitness with a 30 minute treadmill session using a new Nike+ workout: Master the Treadmill with OK Go! This is a mix of speed intervals but no inclines so it was relatively easy on my legs although it did give me a good session. I'm enjoying having these treadmill workouts on my iPod, it breaks the monotony and also keeps me going. If I was running for 30 minutes straight I'd give up but these do seem to work a bit like the carrot and the stick method. So at the end of Monday, I am 3.8km on the way to this week's total. I'm not sure whether I'll do my planned couch to 5km tomorrow as it all depends on the weather, I'm OK with running in the cold but if it's too icy then I won;t risk it and I'll do a gym session instead. I'm not going to let the weather knock me off track in my quest for fitness but I'm not going to risk slipping on an icy patch before I get to go away either.

And with that, I give you today's proof! (plus a bonus shot of my tasty lunch from Wasabi)

Couch to 5km - Week 1 Completed

2009-01-04T16:58:00.003Z

Well I did it! I have successfully completed week 1 of the Couch to 5km workout. It was hard, mostly because it's so cold outside, especially today.....

so cold in fact that the duck pond was frozen and the resident goose was looking mightily displeased at being surrounded by mini-icebergs, and also because I'm lazy and given the choice of staying at home wrapped in my duvet watching DVDs and running round the village then I'm more likely to choose to stay in. I battled the feeling though and toughed it out for today's final run of the week.

I ran further again today, I'm really pleased because I didn't have quite as bad a stitch as my last run and although I again felt like quitting as I passed the house I kept going for the last 10 minutes, so yay me!

It seems that the Nokia Sports Tracker was a bit off earlier in the week. Today's reading came out at 4.4km so 400m less than last time out but I know I ran further, so I re-checked the route on the gmap pedometer site and it seems it was right today and wrong earlier in the week. Not to worry, I've amended my log so that my summary for this week's running is now correct at 15.85km. Not too shabby for my first week I don't think.

Next week I have 3 gym sessions planned before work, which will be a mix of treadmill runs and low impact fat burning along with the next week of couch to 5km. So hopefully I'll get even more distance under my belt and start to feel the benefit even more. If nothing else it's helping me get used to the cold, which should be helpful for this month's week in France!

So here are today's screen shots and a summary shot of the week's workouts:

Why can't I have this on my doorstep?

2009-01-03T19:16:00.006Z

Right at this very moment I am sad and annoyed, and disappointed and frustrated...why? Well I've just read this article (Air time: The brand new ski camp where 'progression is inevitable') which just dropped into my email inbox as part of my addiction to Google Alerts on "Snowflex". In essence there's a a Summer Camp in Copper Mountain, USA that has a barn in which they've put 2 Snowflex slopes, 1 for sessioning rails and one which is for kicker (jump) practice, complete with foam pit! They're even planning a diving board style launch for practicing cliff drops off.

Having trained as a gymnast in my younger days, I used foam pits for training and know they are beneficial, I also know the benefits of Snowflex, as especially this year it has really helped me progress in kicker riding, so much so that this October I went off my biggest jump ever, the Snowflex kicker in Noeux Les Mines, France. What I don't understand is why the UK, the place where Snowflex was born, designed and developed in Yorkshire can't understand that we need sites like this over here. I know the Snowflex guys go a grand job of promoting their product but they seem to be faced with so many negative thoughts that although we have some really great Snowflex slopes in the UK there aren't any near where I live (technically my closest Snowflex slope is in France) and no one will invest in something like this. I know that there are plenty of freestyle skiers and snowboarders that would love to have something like this on their doorstep, or even within travelling distance but the investors and people running the slopes are so hung up on indoor snow that they can't see that this would bring them in a whole new client base.

To me the ideal location for this would be the old Wycombe Dry Slope (owned by the people who own/run Tamworth Snowdome), this burnt down a few years ago and apparently they'll be turning into snow shortly (a 100m ish indoor slope), although they will be keeping the 300m outdoor dendix slope to keep the skiers happy. The way I see it though is that the Snow Centre in Hemel Hempstead is due to open in April 2009 and it's less than 30 miles away. I don't think that there are enough people, with enough cash to keep 2 indoor snow locations that close together open.

So why not turn a tiny bit of Wycombe slope into a Snowflex freestyle zone. People would come more regularly as inevitably it'd be cheaper and it would give the perfect training ground for the youngsters of the South to prove that they too can snowboard as well as the Northern guys that have a wealth of Snowflex slopes on their doorsteps. For those of us that can't get away for seasons because we're too old and have proper jobs or are too young and are stuck in school this could be what turns us into a real prospect in snowboarding. Add to this the fact that as yet the Snow Centre haven't mentioned freestyle skiing or snowboarding on any of their newsletters and you could be filling a very big gap in the market.

So please, someone out there must have the cash and the foresight to give this a go!

Early start, low intensity

2009-01-02T20:05:00.003Z

We started today with a 6am session at the gym, even though we're not back in the office until next week we thought it would be good to get into the habit of getting up and heading to the gym at the same time as a work day just so that it's not a huge system shock on Monday morning. Admittedly we did head back to bed for another hours kip when we got home, but surely that's what holidays are for!

Today I focused on a low intensity work out, not wanting to cripple my knees just yet I thought it would be a good idea to take things a bit easier today and do a bit of fat burning rather than an aerobic work out. First up was a 25 minute session on the cross trainer. The aim was to keep my heart rate in Zone 1 (fat burning), with a max heart rate of 131 bpm, but as this means only doing about 33 revs per minute on the cross trainer it has a fit and keeps pausing, so I actually had to keep it at about 135. I followed this with 20 minutes on the Treadclimber, this is a weird, split treadmill which you walk on rather than run on, with each leg on a separate treadle which moves up and down as you put pressure on it. It takes a bit of getting used to but it means you get a work out similar to hiking, putting extra pressure on your leg muscles and it will hopefully help me if I end up hiking the park when I go away.

So I worked out for just under an hour and hopefully burnt off a bit of fat. I haven't quite decided if tomorrow's session will be the 3rd of my Couch to 5km runs or a gym session, it all depends on how I'm feeling. Either way I'll have to get my 3rd run in tomorrow or Sunday to complete my first full week of training.

Today's workout proof:

Couch to 5km - Week 1 Run 2

2009-01-01T13:54:00.004Z

I'm not one for going out and celebrating New Year's Eve, we don't really go out drinking anyway, so it seems silly to go out and pay even more than usual for the privilege. Instead I stayed at home, played Spore on the brilliant iPod Touch that Jools got me for Christmas and drank a couple of cans of Guinness in the comfort of our own home. I then went to bed about 23:30, so much for staying up to see in the New Year.

On the positive side though it did mean that I woke up at a reasonable time this morning, with out a hangover and managed to convince myself that I did want to get out of my warm bed and go for run 2 of the Couch to 5km programme I'm following.

This is a repeat of the run I did 2 days ago, and I'll do it again on Saturday. I still found myself getting stitch at the end of the 6th rep of 60 second running but ignored the proximity of the house to my location and battled on! The result, I covered an extra 300m than last time. The Nike+ sensor is still lagging behind, but as I can use the Nokia Sports Tracker for accurate distance on the road I'll leave the Nike+ calibrated for the tread mill for any runs I do at the gym.

Wii Fat

2008-12-30T19:19:00.002Z

Now I'm not working away anymore I'm attempting to use my Wii Fit a bit more, if only to stop it stropping the next time I leave it for 200 days! Even if I don;t get round to doing much apart from some yoga and strength work it'll be a helpful way to monitor whether all the exercise I'm planning on doing actually helps me lose weight, or whether I'll just eat more becuase I'm exercising more.

So tonight I did the fitness test, I weigh 155lbs (just over 11 stone), have an ideal BMI (just) and my Wii Fit age is 20! Considering I'm 33 I feel pretty good about that. According to the Wii my perfect BMI for absolute health is 22, which means I have to lose about 15lbs. I'm not sure if I want to lose that much weight, and if I do then I want to do it slowly rather than going on any silly crash diets, so I've set a target on the Wii to lose 2lbs in the next 2 weeks. If it happens I'll be stoked but if not, I'm not really bothered, as long as my jeans still fit then I'm happy!

Couch to 5km

2008-12-30T14:06:00.002Z

As part of my getting fit for the mountains health kick I've decided to try actual running, you know the type of thing...outside, on the path as opposed to indoors on the treadmill. Jools has been trying to convince me that it's a good idea for a while now but I've tried to avoid it. I've finally given in though and so today (after a mini-false start before Christmas) I started the Podcasts for Running series of podcasts from iTunes. These were created by Robert Ullrey and are based on the Cool Running website's Couch to 5km training programme.

The idea is that by following the training programme and using the podcasts anyone can get off their ample butt and with regular, progressive training run 5km. So I'm going to give it a try! Since I'm in France for a week in a couple of weeks time it's unlikely that I'll do it in the recommended 9 weeks (plus I'm lazy and running makes me tired), but I'm going to do my best to keep at it and see how I do. Even if I stay at one of the earlier levels but exercise regularly it's got to be a good thing.....right?

So here are today's screen shots from my gadgetous tools....my Nike+ sensor is slightly out on the mileage, I think this is because I calibrated it on a treadmill and that confuses it a bit. Not to worry though because I also tracked my route using Nokia Sports Tracker which showed my distance as 4.48km. I know that's almost 5km but I think the overall aim is to run for the full 5km and not just do what I did today which is a mix of walking & running!

7 Random Facts About Me

2008-12-29T11:55:00.006Z

I was hit in a virtual game of tag over Christmas, as it's the first time I've been tagged in one of these I thought it was only fair to join in, especially as it'll get me started on another of my New Year's resolutions, to blog more!

It was Sukhjit who tagged me and you can read about her here. When she contacted me on Twitter to tell me I'd been tagged she expressed an interest in plastic snow so I've included some details related to that.

I've always been sporty. When I was 5 I started ballet and acrobatic classes, because I sucked at ballet (I failed my first ballet exam) I took up gymnastics at the age of 6 and continued until I was 18. When I was 12 I started figure skating, I did this alongside my gymnastics and competed in both. I stopped both sports when I went to uni in 1993.
I used to be a cheerleader. I blame my mate Adi for this, he was on the American Football team at uni and convinced me that they needed cheerleaders, so I spent Sunday mornings on the sideline of a muddy field in Bristol (in mod Winter) in a short skirt waving pom-poms while trying to stay warm.
I have very little contact with my family. Since leaving for uni I haven't really seen eye to eye with my mother so I don't really see her, my dad or my brother much. I haven't been home to stay at Christmas since J (my other half) and I got kicked out of the house on boxing day 1997 because I was spending too much time studying for my final exams and not enough watching Jerry Springer with my mother.
I studied Biomedical Sciences and have a pass degree because I didn't complete my final year project. I also spent 2 years working in a Haematology lab as part of my uni studies. I decided it wasn't a job I wanted to do long term so moved away from NHS work.......until now
10 years after leaving uni I'm back working for the NHS again, all be it as a freelance business analyst rather than in a lab. It's my first freelance job and it feels very much like it was meant to be!
I started snowboarding at the age of 27, I'm now 33 and have competed in 3 British Championships and a number of other competitions. Some of my friends think I take it all too seriously as I tend to view it as a sport rather than a lifestyle or just a holiday, but I think that if you're going to enter competitions you need to do some amount of training, both on the slopes and off otherwise you'll never perform as well as you can. I'm currently 59th in the Ticket to Ride World Snowboard Tour Rankings
I love riding plastic snow! Sad as it may seem I really enjoy riding dry slope in the UK as well as mountains when I'm away. I find that snowboarding is the best way to get fit for snowboarding so I make use of the facilities in the UK which allow me to ride all year round. There are 3 main types of plastic snow in the UK, dendix, snowflex and permasnow. Dendix is the original diamond's with holes in, and even though I almost broke my thumb riding it, I miss the fact that there aren't as many comps on it as there used to be. If nothing else you'd really try to stand up on your landings 'cos it stung so much when you fell. Snowflex is my favourite plastics snow. Developed by Briton Engineering it has foam padding under the surface and no holes for limbs to get stuck in, having ridden in 4 comps on this surface over the summer it's improved my riding and my confidence no end and in my opinion is much better for progression than riding indoor snow due to it's consistency and nicely shpaed jumps. Permasnow is hole-less like snowflex but is abrasive and eats snowboards......AVOID! or at the very least ride a very, very old board.

So there you have it 7 things about me...and now I get to tag 7 people myself:

artbizness
rustedsteel
Joanna Geary
Gbay - her 7 things
Swinhoe - his 7 things
markhawker
warriorgrrl
Whatleydude

Just noticed that's 8! But someone's bound to not bother

Rules as copied from Sukhjit's blog:

Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter.

Getting a head start on New Year's Resolutions

2008-12-29T11:47:00.003Z

Today is Monday 29th December, so not quite 2009 yet but I thought it would be good to start my New Year’s fitness regime now rather than wait a few days, especially as I’m due to hit the slopes in a couple of weeks.

So at 6am I was down at the gym, raring to go and managed to get a good workout done without giving up. Today’s work out consisted of a 10 minute warmup on the cross trainer followed by 30 minutes on the treadmill using a Nike Plus training session, Treadmill Training: Mixed Terrain 1.

Regular readers will know that I allow my inner geek to invade my workouts as well as my normal life, so I currently run with a Nike Plus sensor on my iPod which tracks distance, time etc and a Nike Traix C6 heart rate monitor, so that I can tell when my heart’s about to explode and I should ease off a bit. What I’m going to try and do is use this blog as a training diary to keep track of what I’ve been doing, when I’ve been doing it and also to pull together all the different sites I use to track how well I’m doing.

Hopefully I'll manage to keep it up as I could do with dropping a few pounds and making sure I'm fit enough not to get over tired on the slopes this year

So much to blog about....

2008-11-28T09:03:00.002Z

...the new job, being able so sleep in my own bed at night, Tuttle and #amp08. First I need to do some work though, so I'll try and get an update post up this weekend.

Burton rocks!

2008-11-03T10:31:00.006Z

Photo by Jools Smith
Love 'em or hate 'em you can't deny that Burton do a lot for the snowboarding scene. The Burton AM Tour gives youngsters the chance to not only gain Burton tour points but TTR points as they get to compete across Europe. They also put on the annual series of comps in the UK, the Burton Scrap Metal (previously Black Metal) and it was this series that I was lucky enough to ride in on Friday. Why lucky? Well it gave me the chance to have my first proper attempt at riding a street style rail, complete with stairs to add to the scariness.

Yes there have been similar rails at slopes in the past but until now I haven't felt brave enough to try them and there haven't been any of quite the same format as this years rails, designed by Steve Revill.

Steve is the freestyle slope coordinator at MK SNO!zone and it's down to the standard-rise since he's been working there that I even started riding at MK again after what was an 18 month break.

He'd put together a straight rail and a kink on a stair set and it was good to see even the good riders getting challenged to try new stuff and push themselves over the course of the evening. I was quite sad that I'd missed the other 2 legs of the event due to injury and the travel distance but really glad that I made the trip to MK on Friday night.

It was a really advanced setup, quite literally "nothing for beginners here" with a mini wall-ride, side on gas pipe, the stair set, skip (with attached wall ride), pole-jam gas pipe over a gap of doom (well that was how I was viewing it anyway) and a spine with a bench rail on top. Not being a fan of gas pipes let alone side on gas pipes I do like to have something to warm up on first but there was no chance of that, so it was just a case of suck it up and get on with it.

I did very nearly end up starting my new job with a bruised and battered face after face-planting in the snow on my first attempt at the stair rail, but luckily my grazed chin isn't too obvious and my lip wasn't as split as it felt at the time! I managed about 5 or 6 goes on it before my foot told me it was time to give up....well give up on the stair rail anyway, I kept riding everything else for the rest of the night.

As the pic above shows I still have a lot of work to do before I actually look any good on a stair rail, my arms need to be lower and my knees a bit more bent, but I did it, it wasn't quite as horrific as I thought it was going to be and with a bit more practice I reckon I'll be able to start working on some new tricks on it.

I don't know if the rails are going to live at MK now that the tour is over, I certainly hope so though because I think they'd be an awesome addition to the board night setups.

So thanks to Ferg from Burton for organising the tour, Lizzie from Burton for giving Ferg the money to do it and Steve for designing some epic rails! I'm already looking forward to next year!

A new job, and a new Novotel....

2008-11-03T10:21:00.004Z

..today I start my new job, after 2 years of living in hotels, first in Belfast and then 14 months in the Southampton Novotel I have moved on and taken a job that is based in London and requires a lot less travel and overnight stays. So it's ironic really that on my first day I'm heading to Birmingham for 4 days/3 nights and funnily enough will be staying in the Birmingham Novotel! Not that I mind too much as it means I can get a few more hotel points on my A-card, which they only brought into being in the 13th month of my 14 month stay in the hotel.

I'm going back to working as a Business Analyst and I'm really looking forward to being involved in a more hands on way than I have been on the project I was working on in Southampton. Even better I'm back working with one of my bosses from the Belfast project so I'm not going fully into the dark unknown.

So as I sit on the train to Brum, I shall toast new beginnings with my breakfast smoothie and look forward to new challenges!

One year on...

2008-10-20T20:47:00.004+01:00

A year ago I wrote this blog post about the 2007 Westbeach Snowflex Series Final and in it I said "There are 3 sizes of kicker at NLM, small ( a mere roller/bump in the slope), medium (apx 5ft high) and then way too big for me to hit (2.5m high)."

Well this weekend was the 2008 final and we all headed back out to France to the Loisinard Stadt de Glisse, where, I'm pleased to report, not only did I jump off the big kicker (more than once) but I actually landed the right way up!

OK, I will admit that my landings weren't 100% clean, but I did grab my board on every attempt and I didn't land head first once.

With my foot almost completely mended, and a shiny new snowboard to try out we arrived on Friday lunchtime for an afternoon session at the slope, I'd decided to take things easy with my foot still twinging a bit if I put too much pressure on the ball so I wasn't planning on doing any spins, my mission this weekend was to work on the smoothness of my jumps and try and go a bit bigger than I have done on previous occasions. Well I certainly achieved that! On the Friday I spent the afternoon getting used to my board and hitting the mid-sized kicker, I was having lots of fun and my foot wasn't causing me too much pain, although I was a bit stiff after the session having performed a lovely heel edge catch and slammed backwards into the ground, even with the lovely padding beneath Snowflex and my back protector you can still get a touch of the old whiplash, but it wasn't going to be enough to stop me on comp day!

Saturday dawned, and it was a bit grey and cloudy, this was to be a disappointment from a photographic point of view but didn't really bother the riders. After warming up the comp kicked off with the first of the qualification sessions, under 16s and women were up first and we all started working on our tricks, I started dropping in from higher up the slope, really pushing myself to go high and long while Lynsey & Rhianna were dropping in from lower down but working on spins.

After the first quals, we moved on to a rail jam session which Rhianna went on to win in the girls comp, I'd stopped riding to rest my foot and to focus on what would become my mission of the day....hitting the big kicker. I'd spent the morning watching people drop in for it, watching the speed they had, where they were landing and had decided that I could drop in from just below the cornice and as long as I committed and didn't speed check too much on the way in I should clear the flat table and reach the landing.

So in the 2nd stage of the comp I decided to go for it, I set myself up, and dropped in.....I then talked to myself all the way down the run in (I can't help it, it may look/sound weird but it helps me OK!), put in a tiny speed check to settle myself and get on the right edge, rode up the kicker, was in the air, grabbed the board (note to self - don't flap, if you flap you'll go off balance and land on your head), watched the knuckle disappear underneath me, passed the first landing line and landed....the right way up! Woohoo! Stoked!

At this point relief and girly legs took over and I sat down, but I'd done it, survived and apparently looked pretty good in the air too!

In the end I finished 3rd, but more important to me was the fact that I'd hit the big kicker not actually looked too bad when I was doing it, my landing wasn't quite there but the guys were all telling me that it was a bit sticky so I'm not going to beat myself up about it.

Once again I must say a huge thanks to Wayne of AKA Snowskate, Sue at Westbeach and the Snowflex team because without the invention of Snowflex and this series of comps I wouldn't have progressed as much as I have over this summer. I'm hoping to take the skills I've gained and carry them on through the winter and keep the progression going because this time next year I want to be spinning of that kicker!

Just watched this & really want to go riding!

2008-10-10T19:58:00.003+01:00

So I was catching up on Jamie Nicholls blog and followed the link to the AKA Snow Skate movie that he's starring in. It's really made me want to go shredding, unfortunately there's no chance of that until I hit Noeux Les Mines for next week's Westbeach Snowflex Series Final.

In the meantime check out the vid!

Thank you for the music

2008-10-01T20:43:00.004+01:00

A bad music day!

I've mentioned before that I'm a bit odd when it comes to music, but recently I've been playing with Blip.fm the great thing about Blip is that as my friends listen to music and blip it I can listen to what their listening to, either by being on the Blip site and listening to what ever comes up or by seeing their Blips appear in the other social networks I use (Twitter, Jaiku etc) and if I spot something I like the look of then I can click the link and have a listen.

One time that music is really important to me is when I'm snowboarding, if the music that's playing over the speakers isn't right then it can put me off and I'll ride really badly. It's all mental of course but I find that the right music helps me to get my rhythm and settle down to do a good run. I have a number of playlists on my iPod for snowboarding, there's my general riding playlist and then there's my comp list. I've recently re-done this one and of the 7 tunes on it 4 I've found through my social networks.

It's funny really but on reflection I get very attached to music, and if I like a track and it spurs me on then I can happily listen to it over and over (as my followers on Last.FM may have spotted), so it didn't bother me that over the course of Saturday's comp (9:30 - 15:30) I listened to just 7 tracks on shuffle. I was just happy to know that no matter what point I had to dro pin for my 2 runs I would have music playing that would make me happy, and that would just be there in the background to help me ride my best. It has to be said that DJ Tony who does the Snow Tour events plays awesome music, and in fact a lot of the tunes I have on my standard riding list I've heard him play at comps but I want to make sure I'm safe guarded against power/sound cuts like happened at Breahead earlier this season or just against the odd rogue track that gets through that just doesn't click with me.

So here's the list and where I found them, many thanks to those of you who Blipped them and helped me on my way to glory on Saturday (well 2nd in Masters & 5th Overall)

Point of No Return by Immortal Technique (random web searches for Immortal Technique)
Ante Up by M.O.P (not sure where I got this one but it's been a fave for years)
Don't Stop Me Now by Queen (The last song to play in the Crap Bar one night Brits 2006 with Sansom & Callie)
Amores Bongo by The Herbaliser (not a Blip but a Tweet by Joanna Geary)
Code Monkey by Jonathan Coulton (Blip by Alfie)
Handlebars by Flobots (Blip by TomVS)
Life Gets Better by Ed Solo & Skool of Thought (Blip/Tweet by Mark Media for Joanna Geary)

There are other songs I've listened too that I've added to my general playlists but these are the 7 I currently love!

So if you have any songs you think I should be listening then Blip me or leave a comment and I'll check them out.

Mind the gap!

2008-09-28T19:20:00.006+01:00

Overall Men's winner, Jamie Nicholls going huge over the gap of doom (Jools has just informed me it was actually a chasm of doom but he didn't say so earlier in case it scared me even more!)

On Saturday the 2008 Quiksilver British Big Air Championships took place at Milton Keynes SNO!zone. This was the second of the 2 star TTR ranked indoor events of the British Snow Tour and as such it was important for me to ride (only for myself and my mission to finish higher than 155th this season, but still important).

Over the week I'd convinced myself that I'd be fine to ride with my injured foot, the swelling had gone down, I was walking much better than I had been after Castleford and I even managed to put my boots on and bounce round the living room strapped to my board on Thursday night without being in too much pain. The diagram of the kicker set up helped convince me too....How could I go wrong with a choice of two sizes of table top kicker. If I didn't feel like I was up to hitting the 9m then I could go for the 5m and even then if I came up a bit short it wouldn't matter, I could ride over the table and onto the landing and no one would think any less of me.

So you can imagine how I felt when I logged onto the Snowboard Club site on Friday night to see that they were in the middle of building a 10m GAP kicker! Yeah, no table, just a big ditch between me, the jump and a safe landing! Of course by now it was too late to pull out and get my money back (and £40's worth getting back) so at 6:30am Saturday we left the house and drove to MK.

Jools was of course being supportive and giving it the old "well if we get there and your foot doesn't feel right then it doesn't matter, you don't have to do it" line, but I think we both knew, after last week's performance, that by going I'd committed myself and it was 99% certain I'd be riding in the comp.

That was of course until I got there and saw the size of it....

click through to Flickr to see notes on the dimensions

Click through to Flickr to see the notes on the dimensions

Then the butterflies kicked in and I started to dither. Obviously someone had pointed out that this was a mixed ability comp and that there was no way the little kids would be able to get the speed to get over 8m of empty space so there was an after-thought kicker on the right hand side. This at least gave me the chance to check that my foot was working OK, it seemed it was and after a few warm up runs over the small kicker I did a few runs into the left side step up kicker to get a feel for the speed I'd need to clear the gap and to smooth out some of the bumps on the run in. Chicken that I am though I admit I did pull my normal comp trick of not hitting the jump in the warm up. I wanted to make sure that if my foot only had enough strength in it for one landing off a kicker this size that it'd be in the comp so I could claim a prize in the Master's category (there were only 2 of us that had entered!)

So my time came and I dropped in for my 1st qualification run (everyone gets 2) and pretty much straight-lined it in from the top, talking to myself all the way down to convince myself not to bottle it. I hit the jump (the one on the left in the pic), was in the air, over the gap (6.5m) and landed on the table, just short of the actual landing. I didn't care though, I was in one piece, the right way up and not in any pain! Then the shakes kicked in and I started to feel sick (adrenalin's a wonderful thing). So back I went to the top to await my second run. Again I hit the midsized step up kicker, this basically means that the landing is higher than the jump, so you really have to bend your knees to make sure you don't clip your board on the edge and fall. Although I didn't grab the board, I did make the landing and was more than happy with my performance.

Me!

So I settled down to watch the men's comp, and was merrily enjoying the show when they announced the 5 finalists for the women's comp, had I heard right? Yes it appears I had, I was through, having qualified in 4th place behind, Sam Rogers (front flip over the biggest jump), Lynsey Ashdown (Indy/straight air over the big kicker), Mel Kern (360 over the small kicker) and in 5th was Sophie Nicholls (Cab180 over the small kicker). The age range of the finalists spanned 19 years with me at 33 and Sophie at 14!

So I had to do it again! James Thorne the MC tried to convince me to give the big kicker a go but in the end I stuck to the mid-sized step up. I'd have loved to have tried it but I think the niggling thought about my bad foot would have put me off just enough to have a nasty fall, and it just wasn't worth it.

I survived the final in one piece, I'm in no more pain than I was when I started and my foot's only a tiny bit blacker! I placed second in the Masters behind Lynsey and the top 3 overall slots stayed the same as qualifications. I won't know if I finished fourth or fifth until the full results are posted next week but I have a sneaky feeling Sophie was riding well enough to push me down into 5th.

Thanks must go to everyone who was there supporting me, and my fellow Twitterers whose replies to my Tweets throughout the day really helped spur me on. Also thanks to Jools Smith for standing in the cold all day and taking shots for me and all our friends.

You can also check out Jamie Nicholls' blog for his perspective on the day.

Nose Press

2008-09-25T23:08:00.002+01:00

DSC_9413.jpg, originally uploaded by Jools Smith.

So this is me, nose pressing the box at Castleford a couple of weeks ago. I'd spent all day riding Halifax at the Westbeach Snowflex Series and then came back to Cas to spend the evening at the FBBB event. Unfortunately I was too tired to ride for long but I did get the chance to give the jacket I'd won at the Westbeach comp a good testing!

Righteous Kill Ad at Stockwell

2008-09-24T11:31:00.002+01:00

Righteous Kill Ad at Stockwell
Originally uploaded by Annie Mole

I was flicking through my contact's streams on Flickr and spotted this shot sent to Annie Mole (the Queen of Underground Bloggers - click here for her blog on this).....all I can say is oooops, maybe not the best location for this poster!

The hunt for new kit...

2008-09-23T21:03:00.002+01:00

While I'm not desperately in need of new kit I find it always pays to be aware of what's available and what suits your needs way ahead of you actually being desperate for it. There's nothing worse than killing a snowboard and not being able to find a new one in the size you want or that meets your requirements, and to this end I started a spreadsheet a few weeks ago. Yes I'm managing to bring geekiness to the world of snowboarding and have compiled a spreadsheet of boards that I think I could ride.

My key things this year (excluding ace graphics 'cos we all know that that'll be the deciding factor of any shortlist) are as follows:

waist width - must be under 25cm as I have midget feet and anything wider than that will mean I can't get on my toe edge to turn the board
centred, true twin - I'm really trying to progress my switch riding & trick list at the moment so would much rather be on a board that rides the same both ways
stance width - must go wide! I currently ride a Nitro T2 on a maxed out stance of 24 inches, so anything with a max of 21 inches will be crossed off straight away

So I've rejected a number of boards for not meeting these requirements, and excluded a few brands because I don't like the people promoting them and come up with a few that I'd like to look at in more detail. I'm not telling you which they are in case you poach the last one in the country before I get the chance to measure the relevant dimensions & check them out for graphic sickness but I promise to share when I actually make a purchase .

If you're looking for somewhere to buy snowboarding kit this season then check out Sputnik in Marlow if you're in the South (they've just taken delivery of a bunch of the exclusive Burton Private Stock) or AKA Snowskate if you're in the North (they've started stocking Salomon this year, so you too can be like local Salomon sponsored rider Jamie Nicholls)

Jamie Nicholls by Jools Smith

Just like old times

2008-09-22T20:24:00.007+01:00

So this weekend was the Animal British Slopestyle Championships at Castlefor d. Jools & I headed up on Friday when he finished work and I spent the evening getting used to the comp set up while he took some pictures. It was an awesome evening and not only did I have loads of fun with my friends but I started to get some good tricks laid down ready for the comp (building on the switch work I'd done the week before).

Saturday started with a 9am call for registration, this suited me just fine as I'm a morning person and would much rather be first on the course that ride in the afternoon when it's been mashed by the skiers (like I've had to do for the last 5 years!). Of course everyone else was whinging about it, it was too early, they weren't awake enough and the course was too hard! Of course I almost didn't make it out on time for the warm up because despite the fact that we were supposed to pre-register online and pay our license fee and bib deposit before the competition it seemed that I was the only person to have done so, so rather than it taking each person 30 seconds to collect their bib and hit the snow I was 8 back in the queue and starting to get stressed 30 minutes later. Jools was dispatched to get me breakfast from Subway while I waited, finally grabbed my bib and headed out for warm up.

Warm up started well and after a run through the course to get my eyes and contact lenses used to the cold air I started working on my runs for the comp, it was all going well and I was about to hit the big kicker-gap box when I hurt my foot. I hit the kink box with a switch 50:50 to front side boardslide but didn't make it fully round as I rode out, my board stuck in the snow and my foot bent, not at the toes but at the arch, I (apparently) shouted OUCH! and in a great deal of pain slide down the slope to check out what I'd done.

So Jools comes out on the slope to find me in tears at the bottom, with my foot in the air, too scared to take my boot off in case my foot instantly swelled and feeling rather sick. So we ummed and aahed about things and in the end he persuaded me to come off the slope so he cold take a look at it, he then proceeded to rub all round the affected area and press a few pressure points to try and numb things. I was crying in pain and totally convinced I would have to pull out of the comp but I decided to head up to the top to see how many people I was up against and make a decision on whether I could ride. It turned out that there were just 3 of us in my age group so I figured that I'd just ride down the slope and claim 3rd. Then I decided I'd hit the top rail and if it hurt too much I'd ride down......by the time the comp kicked off I did 2 full runs hitting the raised 3m rail, the kink box and kicker. I even rode some of the tricks switch because it hurt less! The main problem I had was that not being able to put any weight on my right (rear) foot I couldn't steer or break, not good when you land off a kicker, avoid screaming in pain and can't take off enough speed to hit the wall ride.

All of this reminded me of the days when I used to compete in gymnastics and would be sure to twist my ankle before a competition and have to compete strapped up and buzzed on pain killers, I should have known the moment I hurt myself that I'd still give it a go but I don't think I realised that the competitive edge in me was still so strong. I also had too much pride to just ride down and claim a prize for doing nothing, I wanted to earn it even if it did hurt me so much that I thought I wouldn't stop crying. Some people might think I'm stupid but there's something about competitive sport that hooks you in and keeps you trying until you can't try anymore (although I was exceptionally glad that I didn't qualify for the overall final!).

So here I am at home, my foot bandaged and raised, dosed up on pain killers, arnica and covered in magnetic plasters working at home for the week because I can't walk well enough to get down to Southampton and what am I thinking about? This weekend's British Big Air Championships at Milton Keynes and whether I'll be fit to ride! Thursday's my cut off, so until then RICE will continue and I will keep planning what tricks I should try in the 2 runs I get on the main kicker with the 9m table!

Wish me luck!

And in the absence of any decent pictures of me this weekend here's one of my friend Jamie Nicholls who placed first in his age group and 2nd overall! This was taken on Friday night when we were all practicing and also has Tom Hunt in shot after he's just crashed after hitting the barrel.

Westbeach Snowflex Series - Halifax Leg

2008-09-16T19:11:00.005+01:00

Photo: Jools Smith

So last Thursday we drove up to Castleford to get some practice in for this weekend's slopestyle Snow Tour comp and for me to enter the 2nd leg of the Westbeach Snowflex Series and it has to be said we had a blinding time. The set up at Cas had a good mix of toys including some ride on boxes and rails which gave me the opportunity to work on some switch tricks (basically riding into the trick the wrong way round - in my case right leg first). You can see how I did in the video I posted in the last post.

Saturday was the day of the comp and we drove over to Halifax to find the temperature slightly chilly but with no real wind, this is always a bonus where Halifax is concerned as the slope is quite exposed and on top of a hill (surrounded by fields full of sheep!). It was also dry, which was a bonus for Jools as it meant he could get his camera out and not worry about it getting soaked in a Yorkshire down-pour.

Like last month's event in Bearsden this was a fun jam session with plenty of time to practice and try out new tricks, and for me it was an opportunity once again to practice my spins and get used the slope. Unfortunately wasn't quite getting my head turns right so didn't nail any 180s, although on the plus side I didn't nail myself either. I did however do some lovely floaty FS90s, so it's only a matter of time before my coordination catches up with my intent and the concept of spinning on a snowboard finally clicks. In a way I find it quite pathetic that someone who could once do 2 rotations on a set of ice skates and land on a thin strip of metal can't manage half a turn on a snowboard but I'm convinced I'll get there eventually, all it takes is for my brain to catch up with itself and we'll be good!

In the end I came 2nd in the over 16's category (although technically it was an over 30s since there was no one aged 16-30 that bothered to turn up! Slackers! No doubt they'll all turn up at Castleford and Milton Keynes for the Snow Tour comps because it's snow and they won't get covered in green slime, but for me dry slope wins every time, the fun that I have at the dry slope comps combined with the supportive atmosphere and the chance to ride with the friends I've made along the way more than makes up for the fact that I'm riding on plastic and not real snow. I honestly love Snowflex because of the consistency it gives, the kicker is always shaped the same and although the speed may differ depending on the weather at least I know I can turn up at the slope and there'll be a jump for me to hit.

The progression on kickers that I've made over the last couple of months has really been down to the Snowflex slopes that I've been riding and I can't wait to spend 4 days in France next month getting more of the same...who knows maybe I'll even pluck up the courage to hit the 2.5m high kicker while I'm there! I promise if I do that I'll get Jools to catch it on camera just in case my first attempt goes a little bit skewy.

So much thanks to all at Briton Engineering for developing Snowflex, Wayne & Dee at AKA Snow Skate for starting the Snowflex Series and Westbeach and all the other sponsors for supporting the comp and the dry slope scene......we, the riders, appreciate it!

In case you missed it yesterday, here's Jools' gallery from Saturday.

Photo: snowinfo.co.uk

A couple of mini-vids to tide you over!

2008-09-15T20:36:00.002+01:00

Well it's been a pretty hectic weekend of snowboarding (I came 2nd in the Westbeach Snowflex Series ) but we had a great time, I'll do a proper blog tomorrow when I've got a bit more time but until then you can check out what Jools & I got up to at Cas the other night! Or take a look at the Westbeach Gallery that Jools has put together

From Switch Ass-Plant to Double Switch Frontside Boardslide from plasticsnow on Vimeo.

Back on the Jib from plasticsnow on Vimeo.

Jools hasn't done any jibbing for about two years, so it's great to see him getting back into it.

Testing, testing, one, two, three

2008-09-04T20:41:00.004+01:00

Well thanks to WOM World, I have in my slightly sweaty mitts a Nokia N82 and I am indeed testing out Nokia viNe, I've had a quick play with it and it's very simple to use, press start button, go for a walk, take pictures and listen to music as normal and then press stop when you're done!

I'm not on the official website yet so I've yet to see my media in the form it'll eventually be post-upload but it think it's going to be a fun way of capturing my snowboarding trips, especially if I put my snowboarding tunes on the phone so I can listen to that rather than my iPod when I'm riding.

I'm off to MK tomorrow so will give it a test run there, and then it's Halifax for the Westbeach Tour & CasVegas for FBBB next weekend!

Expect more frequent blogging!

2008-08-29T21:12:00.003+01:00

So as you know I was up in Glasgow a couple of weekends back for the Westbeach Snowflex Tour, and as is normal I refuse to be parted from the Internet so I was checking my emails, Flickr and all the other sites I check on a regular basis, when I was stoked to receive a Flickr mail from the people at WOM World/Nokia asking me if I'd be interested in participating in a trial of a new Nokia mobile phone application. Basically they'd give me a mobile phone with this app on it and I get to play with it for a while in exchange for giving them feedback.

Hmm let me think, free (on loan) gadgetry and new stuff to play with......of course I'm interested! So I promptly pinged back a message and waited to hear back, 2 weeks passed and I heard nothing so I contacted them again. It wasn't that I wanted to be pushy, I was more concerned that Flickr mail had failed me and they hadn't got my first message, I mean you don't want people like WOM to think you're rude, do you?

So when I got back from Southampton last night there was an email waiting for me complete with trial sign up form and a plea for my address so they can send out the N82 I'll be testing the app on. This was returned promptly this morning and by the end of the day I'd had an email back confirming the phone is on it's way out to me.

Based on some wording on the dispatch notice and some Googling I have a feeling the app I'll be playing with for the next 2 months is Nokia viNe, this is based on the Nokia Sports Tracker which I've played with before and really liked so it'll be interesting so how this handles. Of course I could be completely wrong and it could be something else but I do know that whatever it is it's location based. So expect more on this on Monday when the phone gets to me and I find out exactly what I get to play with!

How true!

2008-08-29T11:53:00.002+01:00

IMG00345.jpg
Originally uploaded by Mistress Matisse

This is probably something I should remind myself of from time to time....sometimes I really should keep my mouth shut rather than blagging knowledge!

Snowboarding playlist

2008-08-23T11:37:00.002+01:00

Snowboarding playlist
Originally uploaded by plasticsnow aka Kat

I like to listen to music when I snowboard, it helps to relax me and to spur me on. I find that the music that's playing can really affect the way I ride, if I don't like ith then I ride really badly, if it's good I try things I wouldn't normally.......so I always take my iPod with me just in case the music played where I'm riding isn't to my taste, that way I can be sure that it won't spoil my evening,

These are the main tunes I'll be sessioning to this evening!

Me

2008-08-20T23:07:00.002+01:00

Jools has a new camera lens and took this picture of me while he was testing it out. I'm not normally keen on how I look in portrait shots but this one I really like!

Blogged with the Flock Browser

The Westbeach Snowflex Series, Bearsden – A Rider's Review

2008-08-18T09:19:00.005+01:00

Saturday August 16^th saw the first leg of the 2008 Westbeach Snowflex Series roll into Bearsden slope in Glasgow, technically speaking it half rolled into Bellahouston on the Friday night for a jam session and party but I didn't make it due to an inability to move following one too many slams at CasVegas the night before.

This was the first event of the season to have both skiers & snowboarders competing on the same day so it was a good opportunity for old friends to catch up on what's been happening since last season.

The Westbeach Snowflex Series is the brain-child of Wayne Taylor, shop owner (AKA Snow Skate) instructor & mentor to local riders at Halifax and is in it's 2^nd year having expanded from the annual Cock of The North competition and is set up to run as a fun jam session comp, with a jam session final for the top 5 in each category culminating in the 2 run final final for the top 3 rider's/skiers in each group. What this translates to in reality is loads of riding for everyone with a nice show-down at the end of it to see who can squeeze that last bit of energy out of their legs and nail the trick of the day to take the title. I'm not kidding when I say it's loads of riding, practice started about 10am giving everyone 3 hours to get used to the kicker and start throwing some stuff down. There were then two 45 minute jam sessions for the Over 16s and then Under 16s and women, these saw the competitors really getting into it, working through their arsenal of tricks, in some cases (mine!) starting small with some straight airs and grabs moving onto basic spins, in others, well they started big and got bigger! It has to be said that the standard was amazing with 7s all over the place from the guys (skiers & snowboarders) with 3's & 5's being the order of the day from the girls.

One of the nice things about this series is that although it's a competition the atmosphere is great, people chatting on the lift's and at the top, supporting each other as they drop in and lots of cheers when good tricks are nailed. Without too much pressure everyone really gives it their best shot, because of the jam format no one's put off from trying something new because they know that they can keep trying until it's nailed and then move on to the next trick. I must admit that I only landed a few tricks in the whole competition, I could have stuck to doing my safe tricks and just spent the day working through a range of grabbed straight airs, but where's the fun in that? So I tried to step it up and started spinning, OK so the landings weren't great, but we've all got to start somewhere and I was getting pretty close to nailing an elusive backside 360 by the end of it. If it had been a simple 2 run format then I wouldn't have bothered trying and certainly wouldn't have got as much out of the 840 mile round trip as I did.

Once the jam qualifications were out of the way we moved on to the jam finals, the top 5 in each group went through and we started again, MC Sketch (of Syndicate Clothing) was a tad quiet on the mic as I think some locals weren't enjoying his cutting edge vocalisation & joke stream but he was supporting the rider's providing encouragement & letting us know when the judges were finding it hard to split riders to go through for the 2 run final, with only 3 going through everyone was really pushing themselves and the lads started to move on from 7s to 9s! It was almost hard to ride because you wanted to watch everyone else (luckily I didn't make the final so got a chance to do just that for the final 2 runs)

Before the final final we had the fun & games of the Team comp, in this everyone gets together in teams and rides for fun & glory, dropping in one after another we saw trains, stiffies, stunts and quarter pipe action.....organised chaos doesn't come close, in fact organised & precise chaos may be closer as when you have 5 people hitting a kicker in close succession it can be a bit nerve wracking if one of them falls!

The day finished with the 2 run final around 5pm, 7 hours after the first practice kicked off and I'm sure that people must have been getting a bit tired (I certainly was) but still we saw some amazing riding, no one held back and I'm certainly glad that I wasn't called on to judge things!

This weekend's comp had the best atmosphere of the season so far and I can't wait until the next leg at Halifax on 13^th September, get it in your diary now and come along.....whether it's to compete or just to watch some amazing riding it'll be well worth the trip! Check out some photos from the weekend to whet your appetite.

Thanks must go to Wayne & Debs for organising it and all the sponsors for providing support & prizes!

Results

Women's Snowboard

Lynsey Ashdown
Rhianna Nuttall
Kara Anderson

Under 16s Skier Boys

Murray Buchan
Chris Wadsworth
Chris McCormick

Under 16s Snowboarder Boys

Pete Meadows
Danny McCormick
Will Smith (The English One)

Men's Ski

Andrew Matthew
Andrew Wilson
Charlie Richardson

Men's Snowboard

Will Smith (The Scottish One)
Andy Nudds
Zach Culshaw

Best Unsponsored Skier – Andrew Matthews

Best Unsponsored Snowboarder – Rhianna Nuttall

Endeavour Trip to Tignes – Rhianna Nuttall

Technine Unsponsored – Marc McClement

Team Event – Team Big Nose

Stephen Fry Uses Spinvox!

2008-08-16T08:41:00.002+01:00

So you remember I said in the last blog post that Spinvox also have a voicemail to text service that I'd yet to try? Well it appears that Stephen Fry uses it! (Thanks to James Whatley for Jaikuing this) So it seems that I am in good company using Spinvox, you can read all about it on his blog!

I should stop blogging now and get ready for today's Westbeach Snowflex Series in Bearsden....expect plenty of Spinvox Tweets over the course of today

Hands-free Tweetage!

2008-08-13T20:13:00.003+01:00

So I was walking in to work yesterday after the early storm and passed a patch of cut grass, it had that lovely wet, soily, grassy smell to it, slightly summery, partly autumnal and I wanted to share it with people. Being on my own (stranded in Southampton) I reached for my phone and dialed the contact labelled Spinvox Social Network (I also have Spinvox Blog & Spinvox Memo - more on those in a mo!) and shared this with the world......

"I love the smell of fresh mowed rained on grass, it's brilliant and under the sun, it's even better"

Yes my speech was converted to text and posted to two of the social tools I use, Twitter & Jaiku. To be honest there's been a glitch recently so I was only expecting the words to end up in Jaiku so I was very pleasantly surprised to find that I'd Tweeted as well, yes the brilliant team at Spinvox have got things sorted and I can now use my phone to update my status on Jaiku and Twitter, it would even do Facebook as well but I tend to limit what I update on there.

So thanks to James Whatley aka whatleydude who first turned me on to Spinvox (he works for them as their social media dude) I will be able to spend this weekend's road trip (3 days, 3 slopes, 1 snowboarding competition) speaking to Tweet rather than texting. Which of course will be much easier as it means I don't have to keep taking my gloves off to text as I go up the drag lift!

I'll also be able to use those other contacts I mentioned to blog slightly longer ponderances to my Vox blog and also email myself memos to things I need to do when I get home.....you know how it is, random important stuff always pops into your head when you have no way of writing it down and then it vanishes by the time you get home. Even better all of this is completely free! Yes no cost at all (apart from the phone call but as I get loads of minutes free on my mobile it's free!)

I'll do another post about their Voicemail to Text service at some point, this is chargeable but I'm thinking that it'll be very handy when I'm in Switzerland later in the year!

So for those of you that have an interest in my snowboarding and want to follow what I get up to over the weekend then keep your eyes peeled on the following locations Twitter (short snippets), Moblog (photos), Vox (longer ponderances) & Qik (live streamed video)!

Not a good start....

2008-08-11T21:27:00.004+01:00

Ride on gas pipe

So we headed up to MK SNO!zone on Friday night, mostly because the slope plan showed a kicker on it, and seeing as how I have a Big Air competition in Glasgow on Saturday and need the practice we thought it'd be worth the trip up there.

As you can see from this Tweet, there was no kicker and I wasn't too chuffed. Things got even worse for a moment when Emily, one of the regulars, mentioned that they weren't going to be grooming the slope because the Cat (slope groomer) was broken. Luckily before I got changed and went to get my money back the Cat made an appearance and started to groom the slope.

So we were left with a rail session for the evening, not what I'd hoped for but when you're travelled 75 miles and it's taken over 2 hours you tend to make the best of things (or in previous instances head home for Chinese takeaway!).

I decided to continue building on the previous week's progression and got straight on to the side on gas pipe. I didn't have much choice if I'm honest as it was either side on or ride on gas pipes or a side on kink bench rail. Not much for beginners, but for someone looking to step things up a bit it was something to work on. I wanted to get as much out of the session as I could so once I'd warmed up on the side on gas pipe I gave the side on bench rail a try, now this is more tricky, although it's flat in the top providing a better slide, it has space underneath meaning that if you don't jump enough and your board gets trapped underneath it's going to sting a bit!

Determination combined with the presence of some of the girls I regularly compete against meant I pushed myself more than I normally do and this resulted in probably the best trick run I've ever done....lip-slide tail press to switch on the bench to boardslide revert on the side on gas pipe followed by 50:50 to boardslide to switch on the ride on gas pipe! All pretty smooth and all ridden out cleanly.

Considering a week ago I wouldn't touch a gas pipe through choice and could do side on rails in my head but not in practice I certainly feel that the practice and my new PMA are paying off, lets hope it continues that way because I'm convinced that with hard work and a touch of confidence I can keep things moving in a positive direction. We'll see how things go on the kicker front this weekend when I head to Bearsden for the 1st leg of the Westbeach Snowflex Series!

Side on kink

MK Ahoy!

2008-08-07T20:51:00.003+01:00

We decided earlier this week that we wouldn't go to MK this Friday. We've got a busy weekend next week what with a stop at Cas/Halifax and then the Westbeach events in Glasgow but it's been a hectic week at work for us both and the slope plan's looking good.....so we're going to head up for some more practice.

The question now is what to work on, I'm thinking kicker first while my legs are feeling strong and the run in & out isn't too rutted and then move on to the rails and see if I can build on last week's jump on gas pipe break through. Either way I'm hoping it'll be a fun night with some achievements at the end of it!

White girls can jump....

2008-08-04T20:37:00.003+01:00

DSC_7225_filtered
Originally uploaded by Jools Smith

...and here's the proof! Yes, it appears that I CAN jump on to rails (or in this case an evil ribbed gas pipe) from side on, low height kickers!

I have to admit that I was disappointed when we arrived at MK on Friday night to find that the kicker that was shown on the slope plan had been squashed and removed ("because we couldn't remember if the airbag was tonight or tomorrow" - it was tomorrow obviously as the airbag has been there on the 1st Saturday of the month for at least 18 months). The whole reason for us driving there for the session was for me to do some kicker work, not only for that tiny International comp I'm hoping to enter in January but also because next week sees me in Scotland for a jam session & a big air comp as part of the Westbeach Snowflex Tour and I need to keep working on "the fear". Still we were there, 75 miles away from home and I'd already paid so I figured that if nothing else I could work on my switch riding (riding with my wrong leg going downhill first) and just have a mess around for an hour or so while Jools took some pictures of our friends. Seeing as how he'd jumped through numerous corporate hoops to get permission to take pictures there (must have public liability insurance, must ask permission in advance, must bring email of permission) and because some of our mates had also made a special trip up we couldn't do our normal trick of not riding, getting our money back and driving home for Chinese takeaway instead!

So after a few runs of hitting the kink box rail I moved up to hitting it switch. It was a ride on rail (no gap between the jump on and the rail itself) so I felt fairly confident in giving it a go. All was well but if I'm honest I was getting a bit bored. Hitting 1 toy in a run of 130m gets dull fast.....and to be honest the whole reason I started freestyling in the first place is because i got bored just riding down the slope....so I had a ponder on the lift ride up and decided enough was enough it was time to face another of my fears (I'm allowed more than one, right?) and try the toy at the top. A ribbed gas pipe, with a low side on kicker! Now I HATE gas pipes and I just can't get my head round side on kickers onto rails. Well I can get my head round them, in my head I can do them just fine, it's actually convincing my body to do what my head tells it to. Still we were only 45 minutes into a 4 hour session so I decided to give it a shot. My first try I made contact with it, not on the top of the gas pipe were I should have, but on the side, round about 2 o'clock in the grand scheme of things, still it was contact made and it was enough to give me the confidence to keep trying.

Two hours later, after continuous laps and a slightly stressed encounter with someone who was trying to help but who completely put my back up (I really need to write a post on "girly supportiveness and the need for hugs in snowboarding" - and my views on the subject) I not only managed to do a jump on 50:50, so riding with my board along the top of the gas pipe pointing down the slope, but also a jump on boardslide, facing down the slope with the board at right angles to the gas pipe. So not only did I prove I could do it, was dropping in from the right place and wasn't too tired after a handful of attempts but I took a step towards beating another of my fears (next stop side on rails....proper ones!)

It wasn't until I got home and Jools showed me the picture above that I actually realised that I was really jumping onto the pipe! In my head I was just scraping on to it and my technique felt all over the place, but looking at the picture I can see I don't actually look too bad. It's also given me real confidence in trying this on something a bit more meaty, in fact I'm hoping Castleford have their side on street rail out next week when we're up there because I'm starting to believe that I really can do it

So thanks Jools for capturing that shot, and in a way I have to say thanks MK SNO!zone for forcing me to try side on gas pipes by removing the kicker (just don't do it every week!)

More pics of me from Friday night can be found here

Am I insane?

2008-07-28T21:55:00.003+01:00

We were driving back from a session at SNO!zone Milton Keynes on Friday night and Jools and I were talking about how much we were looking forward to heading to the mountains again next year, and planning where we should go. We were almost ready to head home and book up the Eurostar to head to Tignes for 2 weeks, when we got to chatting about competitions and Jools said I should give the Burton European Open (BEO) a go. I think he was half kidding but it's something that over the last few years I've always had in the back of my mind as a "want to do". Now don't get me wrong this is a HUGE competition in comparison to all the others I've done. Even the British Snowboard Championships that are based on the same course in the same resort are rated as a 3 Star Ticket to Ride Event in comparison to the BEOs 6 Star rating. They are however, an Open competition, which basically means you register and if you make the draw then you're in.

So in a moment of madness we decided to go for it. I'm going to try and enter and if we can sort Jools out with a press pass then he's going to take pictures....well he's actually planning on taking pictures of the good riders, but he might take a couple of me too if I'm lucky.

So step one in the fulfillment of this madness was getting the time off work, because let's face it, it's going to be pointless me rocking up on the first day of the comp and hoping to do anything other than make a complete idiot of myself, so we both went in this morning and asked to book a month off! Well Jools did, I used smoke and mirrors and requested it off in three blocks (not taking into account the Bank Holidays for Christmas & New Year!) and we both got the OK.

So there you have it, the leave is booked and even if I don't manage to get an official qualification slot I shall be in Laax for 4 weeks and will at the very least be watching the Burton European Open as it happens!

In the meantime I need to get fit and learn how to snowboard a lot better than I do now, wish me luck because I have a feeling I'm going to need it!

Kat Miller

2008-07-10T11:21:00.001+01:00

Kat Miller
Originally uploaded by Jools Smith

Here's shot that Jools took of me when we were riding at Castleford SNO!storm last Friday night. It was a fun night, even if the table on the kicker felt a little short. It was certainly a nice, chilled session to have the night before the SnowTour comp with plenty of toys for me to play on without trying to kill myself!

Pick me!

2008-06-30T09:03:00.004+01:00

Last week I spotted what I think could be the perfect job for me, titled Content Partnerships Executive, Communities it requires the post holder to manage & build relationships with the users of the BBC Worldwide Ltd’s channels on MySpace & YouTube and with the teams at those companies. So how could I turn down the opportunity of a) working for part of the BBC again and b) having the opportunity to legitimately be on MySpace & YouTube during work hours? I couldn’t, so instead I sat down and completed the application form, and an even bigger step, submitted it!

So now the waiting period commences, for anyone who has ever applied for a job at the BBC or one of it’s limited companies you’ll know that the waiting can be anything from a week to 8 weeks before the short listing is completed and applicants are called for interview. So rather than sitting back twiddling my thumbs and constantly checking my email inbox for a rejection email I thought I’d do something productive in the hope that I will be called to interview. Step one is this blog post, if nothing else I hope it demonstrates my ability to write for the web (one of the requirements for the post), the second thing I’m going to do is conduct a survey. Once I’ve decided on the questions I’ll post a link and hope that you’ll all help me out by completing it.

What I’m hoping is that if I get the opportunity to interview for this job that I can go into the interview backed by some personal research that will help demonstrate my awareness of the communities & channels that I’d be involved with, and maybe help with the inevitable interview question “What do you think BBC Worldwide Ltd needs to do to engage better with the channel end users?”

So here’s to crossed fingers & opportunities!

Update:
OK so I've made a quick survey with www.surveymonkey.com and it would be great if you could take a few minutes to complete it and help me get the role should I be lucky enough to get an interview.

Click Here to take survey

Many thanks!

Two in a row!

2008-06-29T19:41:00.002+01:00

Yes MK SNO!zone has been pretty much spot on two, yes TWO sessions in a row! Although there're still too many gas pipes for my liking, they had another excellent kicker which I managed to session for a good 2 hours before my legs couldn't take it anymore.
Even more impressive was the fact the the run-in and landing were still in excellent condition after those 2 hours! I'm not sure who MK have building their park at the moment but it looks as though they're able to build the park well in advance of the session so that the kickers are nicely iced in.

I was quite surprised that a Thursday night was as busy as it was but I do wonder if that's because they had girly coaching on the nursery slope so that there were a lot of boyfriends who'd been dragged along, or if there were just loads of blokes around hoping to hook up with a girly rider. Unfortunately due to work issues for the other half we didn't make it up as planned on Friday night so I can't compare it to a normal Friday. Thursday was definitely busier than the Pink Session we went to last week.

I don't want to get my hopes up too much that MK is going to become a regular haunt but I do think that if the set-up includes a kicker and they keep building them to a similar spec of the last 2 weeks that I'll try and head up a bit more regularly than once every 18 months!

Getting ready to wax

2008-06-26T11:10:00.002+01:00

Getting ready to wax
Originally uploaded by plasticsnow

As I'm planning on snowboarding at Milton Keynes tonight I want to make sure my board is ready to go. It's a bit dry after last week (indoor, man-made snow strips wax quicker than mountain snow), so I've given it a good coating of Zardoz topped off with One Ball Jay hot wax.

I'll scrape it all off before I head off but for now the wax is soaking into the pores in the base ready to give a super speedy session tonight!

MK SNO!zone, you surprised me!

2008-06-21T21:02:00.004+01:00

Well having just done a quick search I can't find a post for when I last properly visited MK SNO!zone (or Xscape as it used to be known), but apart from the SnowTour Boardercross comp there in September last year I remember driving up there on 12th May 2007 and leaving after 1 run (due to a rubbish ungroomed park slope & poor staff manners)! So it's been a while!

We decided to give it another go because this year's SnowTour comp series kicks off in 2 weeks at Halifax and Jools wanted to give me the chance to get some practice in before hand so that I don't repeat my amazing superman off the kicker there!

I have to say that I was actually impressed! I commented to a couple of friends while I was there that it almost felt that I wasn't at MK but at another slope instead. My first shock of the night occurred because they were actually pre-grooming the park slope before the session started. I'm not sure if this is because last night was supposed to be the Pink Sessions event or if it's now a regular thing that they are doing there but it did mean that when the session started at 7pm the park slope was perfectly groomed (and the non-park slope was in really good nick too).

The lay out was a good mix of toys including ride on box type rails, 2 of the latest craze (corrugated gas pipes!) & a nice kicker with 2 take offs, with the bigger being about a 15 foot table.

My main reason for going was to work on my jumps and keep the momentum of beating my kicker fear prior to Halifax's Big Air comp on 5th July. I managed to get a really good session on it working some straight airs & grabs and even managed to stick some frontside 180s (not very pretty to look at because I need to suck my knees up more) but they're a start.

The one downside to it all would be that the run-ins to the toys didn't hold up that well. One thing that I really like about Tamworth is that they close half way through the freestyle session to re-groom. Now I know that people might not like that at MK but I really think that it would be good if they had a staff member working all through the night to ensure that run-ins & outs are kept perfect through the full 4 hour session and not just the first hour or so. I personally wouldn't mind at all if the kicker got closed for 15 minutes or so to un-rut it, as that way I'd get to ride it all night rather than leaving at 10pm because it's starting to get too dicey to ride safely.

Anyone that's spun off a snow kicker will know that trying to spin when there's a giant groove in the snow is asking for an edge catch, you don't mean to do it, it just happens and for someone like myself who's just building jumping confidence it's not worth persevering with because one good slam is all it takes to knock you back a few weeks in your progression at the very least and at worst injures you and puts you out for a while.

Back to the positives though, I really enjoyed myself, I feel like a achieved a lot and am actually planning on heading back there next week for more practice.

So well done MK, you've convinced me that you can put on a good park night and that I should spend some more money by coming back again....please don't let me down on Thursday!

While I was there I also tried to stream live from the slope, unfortunately the signal wasn't that great so I only shot the one vid....maybe I'll try again next week to at least get a shot of the set-up and a run down!

Back-story

2008-06-20T14:18:00.002+01:00

If you're interested in the back-story to the post below then check out this interview that Documentally does with Kosso of Phreadz

Interesting discussion...

2008-06-20T11:53:00.003+01:00

....so there's a bit of a "conversation" going on at the moment, Seesmic has an embeddable video player which if I've embedded it right will thread the entire conversation not just my post.
The question is do I have the right to embed it here. or in other conversational locations or should it only stay in Seesmic in which case.....what's the point of having it?

and here's the thread that started it all!

Proof reading

2008-06-19T08:50:00.001+01:00

Why is it that I feel the urge to correct people's spelling & grammar when they ask me to check out their website or a document? I always try and be polite about it when I add comments/corrections to the Word document or drop them an email with the details, but I suppose I'm wondering if this is an OK thing to do.

In my work environment I'm much more comfortable about doing this, I think that's because it's a professional document that I'll be reviewing and so it's important that everything is as correct as possible (especially when it might be sent/reviewed by a client).

So I suppose what I'm really questioning is whether it's OK to contact individuals about their personal sites and point out an error that I've spotted, or should I learn to sit on my hands and let it wash over me?

This post can also be found on my Vox blog which I'll be using for shorter, slightly more random brain dumps than this blog

Shots of Jamie Nicholls

2008-05-29T18:42:00.004+01:00

While we were in Laax for the British Snowboard Championships, Jools spent some time following Jamie Nicholls around the slopes with his new camera. He got some nice shots and let Jamie have them so that he had a pile of pics he could use for media stuff if he ever had the need.

As you can imagine Jools (& I) are pretty stoked that some of the shots have now been used to accompany two interviews (Season Roundup & Chattin with...) on the Onboard magazine website (and on SCUK too). His are the ones labelled Jools Smith.

I hope you like them!

New toys!

2008-05-21T19:12:00.009+01:00

There's a plethora of shiny new toys in my possession right now, but I'm sorry to disappoint you, none of them are snowboarding related.

I've been frustrated recently that I've not been able to connect with as many of the social networking sites as I would like to on a mobile basis. The sites I'm talking about deserve a post in their own right and that will be along shortly, but in the meantime I've upgraded my mobile to a Nokia N82 in black! It's very stealth looking and to be honest would be the perfect phone for the ninja about town......in the meantime however it's mine!

Not only am I back on mobile internet bit this phone also has the abilty to connect to available wifi connections meaning that I don't have to use up my data allocation when I'm at home or in a wifi area (which is nice!). I'm still getting to grips with it and a few things aren't quite working as I'd like but I'm sure I'll get the glitches ironed out shortly. It also has a few downloadable applications which fit nicely into my geek fitness routine. Sports Tracker logs your steps, calories and route (using the built in GPS) & Step Counter logs your steps and calories burnt over the course of the day. In addition to this Location Tagger will and geotag info to your photos and they can be uploaded to your Sports Tracker route (or uploaded to Flickr and automatically added to your map). I've also been playing with ShoZu & ZoneTag for tagging and uploading photos.

The other shiny toys are from the Southampton Megastore of Forbidden Planet and I bought them for my other half. I was passing the store on my lunchtime stroll in the sun and popped in to see what they had in that might make a nice cheer up gift (every so often I feel guilty about working away 3 days a week). So fingers crossed he'll like what I chose. It has to be said that Forbidden Planet caters for all your geeky toy needs, if you don't believe me check out their online store!

They also have regular events and signings which certainly look like fun, unfortunately we didn't make it to the London store when the 501st UK Garrison were out to play but you can see & read about the fun they got up to on Musings and Marketeerings.

Giggity!

Indiana Jones Lego!

Links to the N82 applications will follow when I have 'net access other than my work 3G card which blocks certain sites :o(

This is why I always wear a helmet when I ride!

2008-05-12T16:54:00.002+01:00

Brian Clark found out the hard way that it's better to wear a helmet when you're snowboarding, than not.

His blog post explains why he's very lucky to be alive!

Tech (& fitness) related excitement!

2008-04-23T21:42:00.002+01:00

I'm more than slightly excited because the Wii Fit and Wii Balance Board that I pre-ordered back in February is in the post and on it's way to me. I've got my fingers firmly crossed that it arrives on Friday when I'll be working at home and able to take delivery of it....and of course so that it arrives before the weekend so I can play on it loads!

Back on a health-kick

2008-04-23T20:37:00.004+01:00

Working away plays havoc with your health, especially if you're lazy like me! I'm currently working away 3 days a week which means 2 overnight hotel stays but I'm determined to start using both the hotel gym and the gym I'm paying for at home. Why? Well I want to improve my snowboarding, and it's my belief that as it's a sport (not a hobby or something I just do on holiday) that I should train for it and ensure my body's in a fit enough state to handle what I put it through.

So on Sunday I started back at the gym, it was just a gentle ease back into things with a 30 minute session on the cross-trainer (this was made easier by watching Family Guy on my new iPod Classic) but I burnt around 400 calories! Even better, I weighed myself while I was there and I'm currently 11 stone - this means that my diet and the snowboarding I've done since 13th January this year has enabled me to lose half a stone! So who knows, maybe with exercise I'll tone up and lose a bit more and be even fitter than I'm feeling now.

I continued the exercise theme on Monday and was at the gym for 6am and at 6:15 I was in a V-core class. This involves all sorts of evil stomach and back focussed exercises, then you throw in a BOSU or a PowerPlate machine and it becomes doubly evil, so much so that yesterday it hurt to twist, sneeze and lug my suitcase across London on the tube as I made my way down to Southampton. I have to admit that I wasn't that keen on the PowerPlate part of the class, the vibrations made me feel a bit itchy, but I'm going to persevere and give a full class a try on Friday. I think I may be OK doing exercises where I'm standing on it rather than leaning on the plate with my elbows....we shall see.

So Tuesday was exercise free, I decided that as I was up at 5:30am and had to drag myself, a suitcase and laptop bag down to Southampton (including the walk up the hill from the station with all my bags) that I'd done enough for one day.

Tonight though was yoga night, there's currently a class that runs in our office after work on a Wednesday night, I'm not officially on this course as it started while I was away at the Brits but as my colleague's on leave I'm taking her slot. It was quite a gentle class as it has to cater for all levels of experience but it was a nice way to ease myself back in to yoga and it's left me feeling nicely relaxed, which is always good.

So that leaves me with a few ponderences, do I get up and go to the hotel gym tomorrow morning? Theoretically I could get up and be in the gym for 6am, do 30 mins on the cross trainer, and head back to my room for breakfast and a shower before packing, checking out and going to the office.....or I could stay in bed! Well we shall see how the mood takes me.

I'm also unsure of whether to give a V-Cycle class a go (the Virgin Active equivalent of spinning!), I have a feeling I may be too lazy for this kind of class, although it does say it's for all levels of fitness. So come on readers, feel free to bully me into it if you think spinning is the way forward!

It's all a bit busy & hectic

2008-04-17T14:26:00.002+01:00

Well it's all been a bit mad for the last month, I'm still working 3 days a week in Southampton and trying to fit in as much riding as I can. So here's a quick summary for you, with a fuller blog posts to follow this weekend.

I had 2 weeks annual leave which I spent in Laax, 1 week was spent practicing and the 2nd competing in the British Snowboard Champtionships
I won 3 gold medals and 1 silver in the Masters Category. The golds were for Boardercross, Big Air & Slopestyle, the silver was in the Halfpipe
I've improved my TTR World Tour Ranking and at the time of posting I'm 153rd in the World!
I went to Castleford for SNO!Storm and had a great time, and rode Halifax for about 15 minutes but it was too windy to hit the kicker
I've been playing quite a lot with Twitter and making (and meeting) some new friends
I'm looking forward to getting back on to Seesmic and seeing how it's changed in the last month
My weekend is going to be spent drooling over a MacBook Pro in the Apple Store and eating sushi

So there you have it, a whistlestop tour of my last few weeks!

You know you've been working away too long....

2008-03-12T19:33:00.004Z

.....when you get excited that the menu in your regular hotel has changed!
I have to say that even though I've been staying in this hotel since mid-August last year for at least 2 nights a week I've been very impressed with their menu. It last changed in about October/November time and is extremely varied, not only does it have a large number of dishes on it, it also offers a third of the menu in 3 different sizes. Which is great if you fancy mixing and matching lots of nibbly sized plates, or if you're watching your weight (which after 18 months of hotel eating you need to do!).

The problem I know have is getting to know this menu, gone are my old favourites of Halloumi cheese and asparagus and winter berries with a Cointreau Sabayonne but in is a greater variety of salads and scallops with cauliflower puree rather than sitting on black pudding (which always put me off ordering them). At least they still have my preferred glass of wine!

So dinner tonight will take a bit longer than usual because I actually have to read the menu first, still they do say a change is as good as a rest, and after today's meeting I think it'll be a while before I get any rest! Well excluding the fact that I'm off to Laax for two weeks from next Friday that is ;o)

Update:
So here's what I had tonight.

Seared Scallops with cauliflower puree and a citrus and chive emulsion
This is not going to be a favourite, the scallops were tough and the cauliflower emulsion (!) wasn't that tasty!

Followed by Crispy Duck Salad

This wasn't too bad, although the duck was more dried that crispy. The poached duck egg was tasty though. This probably falls into the would eat again bracket but I'll wait until I've tried some of the other salads before it becomes a regular choice.

Finally I had the Rhubarb Brulee with pina colada ice cream and a natural yogurt shot!

This was actually very tasty indeed, the ice cream was nice and you could taste the coconut and pineapple and the rhubarb brulee was really nice with decent chunks of rhubarb and wonderful crispy sugar on the top. The only down-side was the yogurt shot, my spoon was too big to fit in the shot glass and it was too thick to pour (or shake) out. Still who needs yogurt when you have ice cream?

Thank goodness for new kit!

2008-02-01T16:28:00.001Z

Goggle cleaning
Originally uploaded by plasticsnow

Boy am I glad we went shopping yesterday! Thanks to the helpful staff at Bazoom in Val Claret I was definitely visible in today's poor conditions!

As you can see the light was rather flat, and it was pretty sleety so even if you managed to clean you goggles at the top of the run they were caked with ice within about 20m. Still it meant we were able to practice riding with "Jedi Legs".

It also helped that we were both wearing suitable goggle lenses for the conditions, all around us you could see people hadn't bothered to switch from bright weather lenses and were either struggling to see the terrain or had given up completely and were riding down with their goggles on top of their heads.

This was the first time that I've really felt comfortable riding in flat light, I know it was helped by the fact that we knew the run really well so were prepared for the random curves and gradient changes but I really do feel that my riding's progressed this week.

Tomorrow's our last day and apparently it's due to dump 30cm tonight so maybe we'll get some powder before we head off to Bourg to catch the train home.

J getting ready to ride

Can you spot me? (you may have to view the large image on Flickr)

View Across Le Lac

2008-01-30T16:19:00.001Z

View Across Le Lac
Originally uploaded by plasticsnow

It was a flat light day today so we finished early and took a walk down to Le Lac. It's starting to snow a bit as well, not sure how much is going to fall tonight but we may be lucky to get a touch of powder and some blue sky tomorrow.

Val Claret Park

2008-01-29T18:26:00.003Z

Val Claret Park
Originally uploaded by plasticsnow

As it was another bluebird day today we spent the morning in the Val Claret park. If you've been looking for the park on the Tignes.net website ignore the park-cam they have there, it's not pointing to the right place!

The Val Claret park can now be reached by heading up the Tichot lift, breaking left and then taking the Col Palet drag lift. If we hadn't taken the Grattalu lift the other day we'd never have spotted it.

It's perfectly placed to be in the sun from 9am when the lifts open so we headed straight up there this morning. After 3 days bombing round the piste I had decided that I need to get in the park and pipe before I got tired rather than leaving it to the afternoon when I have "girly legs" before I even start.

The park is well laid out giving you the chance to hit 6 kickers in a row or mix and match with some rails and boxes as well. As I'm riding a board with edges for a change (so I'm less sketchy in the pipe) I decided to give the boxes and rails a miss. Oh and I skipped the monster hip as well because it's just an accident waiting to happen.

So after 6 runs through the park in a couple of hours (that's probably 20 kicker hits more than I'd get in a dry slope session at home) we took a quick lunch break before heading to the pipe to ride it while it was in the sun.
I'm starting to get my pipe legs back a bit, and although I'm not getting out of the pipe yet I'm gaining in confidence with each run.

It looks like the weather may be closing in tomorrow with a cloudy/sunny morning forecast followed by snow overnight, so we're just going to take the day as it comes and make the most of being on the mountain and not in the office!

Pipe Progression.

Val Claret

2008-01-28T19:00:00.001Z

Val Claret
Originally uploaded by plasticsnow

As you can see it was bluebird today! Lovely weather, good visibility and lots of fun!

My muscles hate me though, they're still in shock at all the exercise I'm giving them, hopefully they'll get over it before the end of the week.

Two years is too long

2008-01-28T18:58:00.000Z

Well we made it to Tignes yesterday morning after travelling on the Eurostar overnight. The train was delayed in arrival by about 2 hours but we still managed to be on the piste riding before lunch.

Of course Saturday was a glorious day, bright sunshine and quite warm. So typically we were riding in our down-filled jackets rather than something lighter, I think I'll pack hot weather clothes closer to the top of the bags next trip.

Today has been brilliant, we rode from 9am to 4pm and as you can imagine it's been a bit of a shock to the system having not ridden further than about 200m at anyone time for the last 2 years. In fact I think the first run we had down from the Grand Motte to Val Claret is probably further than the total of all my runs in the last year. I have a feeling I'm going to ache tomorrow!

The light's been flat today and the wind picked up after lunch so it's been a bit of a struggle to comfortably see where I'm going all of the time. My new contact lenses have definitely helped and made things easier though. I actually feel much more confident that I'll be able to see slope variations before I hit them in future. I also managed to get a shiny new pair of Electric goggles, the flat light lenses that came with them have worked a treat, and hopefully tomorrow I'll get the chance to try the bright weather lenses as sun-shine is apparently the order of the day. With a bit of luck I may get to work on my goggle tan as well.

So here's a picture of me on the chairlift,

I'm also building up a set on Flickr so keep an eye on that for new additions as the week progresses.

Welcome to 2008

2008-01-01T18:58:00.001Z

Fire
Originally uploaded by plasticsnow

You can also see a live action version of the fire here on Vimeo

Well it's here, 2008, and I have my fingers crossed that I get to see more snow than I did in 2007. I don't really get caught up in making "resolutions" for New Year because I tend to make them as time passes and ideas crop up but in order to be a bit tradtional today then I resolve to do the following in 2008:

Snowboard on a mountain on real snow
Clear the knuckle of the medium sized kicker at the British Snowboarding Championships (and not land on my back a la Brits 2006)
Land at least one jump in the Slope Style Contest at the Brits
Get air out of the Laax Superpipe (1cm above the lip will do)
Continue to enjoy work and progress in my career
Have fun!

So there we have it.......Happy New Year to you all!

Chicken korma-tastic!

2007-12-30T21:58:00.000Z

So today I tried cooking chicken korma from scratch for the first time. It actually came out pretty well, although the recipe does need a bit of tweaking, no doubt it'll be an ongoing process for a while until I get it just right. So for those of you who have an interest in food here are a couple of shots, the full set can be found on Flickr

If anyone has a korma recipe they can recommend then let me know as I'd like to try a few options

New Camera

2007-12-29T14:07:00.001Z

Winter pond
Originally uploaded by plasticsnow

I've been pondering getting a camera for a while, just something small that I can carry with me to get snap shots. So today I bought a Nikon Coolpix S200 (in shiny red!). Small enough to fit in my bag or pocket but clever enough to take some good shots....assuming I frame them right and don't mess with the settings too much.

So after charging it we went for a quick walk round the village green to the duck pond (it's too chilly for much more than a quick walk at the moment), and I took a few test shots. I'm really pleased with it, these were taken on normal rather than high resolution and everything seems to have come out OK!

So now I'll be able to do a few more photo blog posts as and when I spot anything interesting rather than being miffed I didn't have a camera on me.

Tracking Santa

2007-12-24T16:23:00.000Z

I love this time of year, if only for the annual Track Santa with NORAD tradition we have in our household. Of course this is much better this year as we have broadband & my laptop has a decent graphics card. In addition this year there is the added excitement of being able to follow Santa in Google Earth, with the Santa Tracker.

So if you're bored of the television already then why not amuse yourself (or the kids) with this for a while.

Berry Hunter

2007-12-23T23:26:00.001Z

Berry Hunter
Originally uploaded by Rivertay

J found this while browsing Flickr. I love watching squirrels, there's something about they move that grabs my attention.

While walking back from buying fresh local free range eggs this morning we came across a family of 6 or so squirrels playing in the trees and running around chasing each other. Unfortunately we didn't have the camera on this occasion, so until we catch some of our own I hope you enjoy this shot taken by Rivertay.

Shaun White to appear in court

2007-12-18T22:52:00.001Z

Well it looks like the "Flying Tomato" has been a naughty boy according to the Denver Channel.

I wonder what his sponsor's will say! Will this be a case of boys will be boys or could this mark a downturn in his popularity.

Maybe it'll be the launch of Gangsta Shaun and he'll team up with MFM and switch to a more ghetto brand than the Big B.

I feel a storm brewing!

2007-12-17T18:44:00.000Z

So Loic Le Meur tweeted this video "Girls of LeWeb3" with this comment "Girls of LeWeb3 video very cool " and it's attracted a flurry of negativity in the comments.

So the question is, is it good or bad?

To me it looks like this is one of those “Catch 22″ situations. It’s always possible that a video like this may encourage more girls to go to conferences like LeWeb3 as they can see that there is a female presence (and one that doesn’t conform to the view that all geek girls are mingers). Then again there’ll be those that are put off as it could be seen to portray women as objects.

Personally I’m not offended, I suppose the final thought would be whether all participants were aware they were being filmed.

Edit: For those looking for a boarding spin on this.....all-girls (boarding) movies, good or bad? Are they a good thing that showcases female talent when it might otherwise be over looked? Or should female riders be looking to push themselves into main stream mixed/male dominated films/filming crews?

Further edit: Livia Iacolore (one of the featured women) gives her views here

Flickr does stats!

2007-12-13T18:10:00.001Z

Well thanks to the power of Twitter & mattb (King of dopplr) I have discovered that you can now get detailed visitor stats on your flickr account.

It looks like it takes a few hours to pull them all together once you've activated it but it'll be interesting to see them once it's all done.

Blogged with Flock

While the Kat's away.....

2007-12-11T21:39:00.001Z

....the boyf will play!

So here I am working my way through the evening in my hotel room, trying to make some headway on my current project and he's out snowboarding!

Yes it's that time of year when we all love to ride dry slope. The frost in the air and the cool temperatures mean that moisture settles on the plastic and it's super speedy to ride.....almost like the real thing (well as long as you don't fall over anyway)

So here's the picture he sent me to rub in the fact that he's out having fun with the boys this evening.

Yes he's been playing on the 40ft by 50ft airbag, getting his kicker legs just in case we get to see real snow this season.

Snowpark Guide

2007-12-05T21:27:00.001Z

Just come across this cool little site Snowpark Guide. As yet it doesn't cover any of the resorts I'm planning on heading to this season but it'll be good to see what else is out there for future trips. It's also got a list of lots of European comps just in case you fancy trying to win some stuff while you're away.

Blogged with Flock

Times flies.....

2007-11-27T21:15:00.001Z

.....when you're working too hard!

Apologies for the lack of posts but I've been spending my weekends relaxing and my weeks working away, and unfortunately it seems my 3G card has an aversion to allowing me to blog. So I'm finally thinking outside the box and emailing this in!

To be honest it's been pretty quiet on the boarding front, we took the airbag up to Tamworth for the Morrow Jam on 10th November and I have to say that fun though it was, it wasn't quite the Morrow Jam for me. To me the Morrow Jam is all about madness, hardcore & crazy set-ups on the gnarliest surface known to man (dendix). Memories of 6 or so barrels piled high loosely held together by rope at the now fire destroyed Wycombe dry slope are still fresh in my mind so it was a shame that the health & safety restrictions of indoor snow meant 3 barrels stacked 2 high (on their sides) were the toughest toy out. We were also prevented from driving a truck between the kicker and the airbag for people to jump over and the "product toss" at the end was curtailed for saefty reasons - we laugh in the face of safety......60 people fighting for a sticked on dendix is hardcore, a minor scuffle on snow isn't going to trouble anyone, but unfortunately it wasn't to be!

That said, I had fun, learnt some new tricks on the boxes and quarter pipe and walked away with first prize......can't complain I suppose!

Jools put together a video of the comp http://vimeo.com/383369 . We're back up at Tam with the airbag this Saturday (1st Dec) so if you fancy a bounce on it then check out www.snowdome.co.uk for details

Fingers crossed this post will work ok, I hope so as I believe a certain sea creature (http://www.bluesloth.net/) is looking forward to something to read

Yay! more Whitelines coverage

2007-10-26T13:48:00.000+01:00

Just a quicky to say I'm stoked that the Whitelines website is using a comp review by me and J's photos to cover the Westbeach Snowflex comp from last weekend. You can read it here if you like!

It's so true

2007-10-23T08:48:00.000+01:00

Well today's Dilbert gets it so right once again!

I wouldn't say I'm a 'net addict but I'm sitting here with a laptop/3G card, Blackberry and WAP ready mobile phone, and it only took me an hour on my return from France to be back online catching up with everything!

Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle Championship - The Final!

2007-10-22T20:10:00.000+01:00

Having had to decide between two snowboarding competitions this weekend (Burton Scrap Metal at Castleford & the Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle Championship in Noeux Les Mines, France) I knew I’d made the right decision the moment we arrived in France! Not only was the slope closer than Cas but 3 times as long. It wasn’t my first visit, but viewing the slope in the distance as we drove through the town reminded me of it’s greatness, and made me feel the pain that there’s nothing to rival it in the UK.

Another added bonus was the fact that I could ride for 4 days for £20 as opposed to 4 hours for £30! Even with the hotel and tunnel ticket it worked out to be a cheap trip away.

The riders (& skiers) started to arrive from lunchtime on Thursday and we all hit the slope for a practice. There are 3 sizes of kicker at NLM, small ( a mere roller/bump in the slope), medium (apx 5ft high) and then way too big for me to hit (2.5m high). My mission for the trip was to work on my spinning and although the kicker was the biggest I’ve hit yet I’m pleased to say that I managed a few FS180’s and nearly a FS360.

Little Will Smith

The comp itself was on the Saturday and there were entrants from Scotland, England, France, Spain, Holland & Japan! I think there may have been a few other nations represented as well but I can’t be sure, there were plenty of people there and it was hard to keep track of them all. It would have been even busier if some other sporting event meant that all the ferries & trains to France weren’t booked up as I know a few people who’d left booking until the last minute couldn’t get over the channel.

With the slope running well there were competitors flying off all 3 kickers, including in the team event 2 riders from “Team True” holding hands as they went off the mid-kicker at the same time! It was probably the best display of riding I’ve seen with spins, flips and the odd slam covering all axes of rotation, a round of applause has to go to Terri Spencer for hardest slam of the day, I missed the trick (it was possibly a misty flip) as I was on the lift at the time but she fell onto her side from at least 12 feet in the air only to get up and keep on skiing, winning the women’s ski prize with ease.

I do have to say thank you to the inventors of Snowflex (Briton Engineering), because believe me if I’d slammed like I did on the Dendix diamonds of death my elbow would have been twice the size and possibly even broken, as it was the graze is from the inside of my elbow pad and the foam springiness of Snowflex has meant that I survived to ride another day.....and to claim 3rd place in the over 16's Women's category. It was a fun day, 7 hours riding meant I'm still feeling the aches and pains now but it was well worth it to see everyone riding so well, supporting each other and fighting it out for top spot on the podium.

Thanks also go out to Wayne, Gary, Dee, Ann and everyone else involved in making this series of comps the most fun I’ve had in ages! Bring on next year!

More shots from the day can be found on Flickr!

Souvenir from France

2007-10-22T11:47:00.000+01:00

Well I had a great time at the Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle Championship in Noeux Les Mines at the weekend. I came 3rd in the over 16 Women's group and survived with a grazed and bruised elbow. The bruising is only just starting to come out but I'll post a technicolour update in a few days once it looks even more impressive.

Full weekend review to follow this evening

Cold stops play!

2007-10-16T09:21:00.000+01:00

Well I had a big weekend of competitions planned but on Thursday I started to feel full of cold, by Friday I'd decided that driving over 100 miles to Tamworth and then arriving home at 5am wasn't going to be a good idea so I put the Burton Scrap Metal on ice and decided just to hit the British Snowboard Tour at Milton Keynes.

Saturday morning dawned and I was up and scraping wax from my board at 6am, a quick energy breakfast of porridge and we were on the road. For once the journey to Milton Keynes went without a hitch and we arrived there just after 8:30, in time for me to hunt down some caffeine for Jools and pick up my bib. The new pre-pay of bib deposits online (for the indoor comps) is definitely making a difference this year and the queues were moving swiftly or a change.

So it was out on to the slope for the boardercross warm-up, nose and eyes streaming from the cold and my cold I battled my way to the top of the slope on the world's slowest poma (Yay for skier lessons!) and took a practice run through the course, it was a nice set up, although the stepup kicker was claiming quite a few riders as the caught their noses and crashed out.

I managed to get plenty of runs in and had managed to find a line that I thought would keep me upright, so it was time to get racing. With 3 in the heat it was pretty crowded and Jules Chappell got away first at the start, goofy rider Charlotte Kierly and I were back to back (I'm regular) and actually pressing up against each other right through the 2nd bend and into the step down kicker, this is where it all went wrong for me and spinning on landing I ended up heading towards the step-up switch, Charlotte went by me and took 2nd and I took a close third. On the bright side, she's senior and Jules and I are Masters so I actually finished 2nd in my age group!

By now the lurgy was really kicking in, after a quick chat with the other half we decided to call it a day. Although the slope style looked quite good it was going to be pretty icy by the time all the skiers had finished on it and with the big comp in France on the horizon I decided I needed rest and my bed more.

I'm still feeling a bit snotty now but reckon I'll be fully fit for the final of the Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle Campionships. I've prequalified for this but am heading out for 2 days practice to make sure I ride as well as possible and don't get beaten by too many international or UK riders. Mind you as a 32 year old riding in the over 16's category I won't feel too bad if they kick my ass..........just so long as I land a couple of good tricks! Plus there's a pipe competition as well (check out the comp format) and as I haven't ridden pipe since the 2006 Brits I think I need to work on that a bit too.

Update: it appears that I'm actually the Master's Indoor Snowboardercross Champion! I think this is because Jules winning overall meant she was only counted in the overall rankings.....so yay me!

British Snowboard Tour Movie by Jools Smith

2007-10-10T23:30:00.000+01:00

Well Jools has been busy over the last few days and has finally condensed 3 hours of footage to a movie of just under 3 minutes! So here's the movie of the Friday pre-comp practice and some of the comp as well. Enjoy!

Two weekends, two competitions

2007-10-10T11:07:00.000+01:00

Well the UK's snowboarding competition season is well underway and in
the last two weeks I've competed in 2 comps.

The first was on 29th September at Warmwell, this was to be the National
Artificial Big Air Championships combined with an informal Quarter Pipe
jam session. Unfortunately it became apparent that the slope was to
slow to get anywhere near enough speed to hit the quarter to a couple of
rails were dragged out and a rail jam commenced the proceedings.

The surface for this comp was SnowFlex, unfortunately despite the
weather being quite cool the slope was running sloooooowly, this was ok
for the rail jam as not much speed was needed to hit the 2 jibs but for
Big Air it looked like it might be a problem. Warm-up came and I
dropped in for the kicker, hit the wrinkled SnowFlex speed bump and lost
all the speed I'd gathered, landed on the knuckle, board stopped and I
kept going......straight into the algae swamp at the bottom of the
landing!

Yes, this was to be the day of the swamp woman, white shirt covered in
slime I made my way back to the top of the slope and resorted to the old
dry slope favourite, half a can of furniture polish on the base of my
board! Dropped in, kept more of my speed and landed a clean frontside
shifty, 2nd run I managed a frontside 180 and was almost clean on the
run out, until I hit the swamp riding switch....and fell over again!

Thinking that was it I was already to get changed when they announced
I'd made the final, well that was a surprise to say the least, the day
ended with me winning the Masters and placing 4th overall (beaten by 2
16 year olds and a 10 year old!). Still I was more than stoked because
I managed two more FS180's this time with a grab! Who knows, maybe I'm
finally starting to beat the fear, only time will tell though.

Saturday 6th October saw the National Indoor Slope Style Championships
at Castleford, another great set up by Cas's Damian Doyle (indoor
slopestyle designing guru), unfortunately I didn't ride as well in the
comp as I had done the night before or the warm-up so no final for me
this time. I did place 3rd in the Masters though so I can't complain.
Considering I managed to hit both c-boxes and frontside the slide box
without giving myself concussion (as has happened in my last 2 National
comps at Cas) I'm satisfied that I'm improving!

So what's next? Well this Saturday is going to be a long one with the
National Indoor Boardercross and slopestyle jam at MK followed by the
Burton Scrap Metal at Tamworth, I'm going to be up for approximately 24
hours and will drive around 300 miles! Bring it on!

Think you've stopped cold callers?

2007-10-04T12:53:00.000+01:00

Apparently even if you've signed up to one of the services that means it's illegal for marketers to cold call you, "Research" companies are legally allowed to do so......Tom Coates over at plasticbag.org explains everything you need to know on the subject in his post On Labour, Ipsos MORI and the TPS...

After a false-start he's now managed to get a petition on the Downing Street website to stop people calling you in the name of research rather than sales. So have a read of his post and then sign the petition here!

Hopefully the day will come when no one will ever bother you while you're watching Hollyoaks ever again.

Where does the time go?

2007-09-25T08:12:00.001+01:00

Well it's been a manic month since I last posted, so much has gone on and so many plans have fallen on the way side!

I've been working on a new project down in Southampton, which is a 3 hour (each way) commute from where I live, so I've been sampling various Southampton hotels 2 or 3 nights a week. So far it's been the Novotel, the De Vere and the Eastleigh Holiday Inn. Now I hate Holiday Inns at the best of times but having to stay 2 train stops away from Southampton last week (because all the local hotels were full of Boat Show visitors) was just a bit too much. So to counteract that I've booked up hotels for the next 2 months so that it doesn't happen again!

I also spent a week on a PRINCE2 project management course. This was my first official course (with exams) that I've attended in 9 years since I escaped uni so to say I was a touch nervous about it would be an understatement! That said I managed to pass the Foundation exam half way through the week, so I'm already doing better than uni.....maybe it's because the subject matter actually made sense (or maybe it's because I paid attention, was in the lecture rather than the bar and revised for the exam!). The final exam is sent away to be marked so no news on that yet, fingers crossed I managed to get the pass mark though.

I'd also planned to do lots of snowboarding at the weekends, mainly to get ready for the upcoming competitions but unfortunately the time I've been spending in Southampton has left me exhausted and so my weekends have been spent sleeping and playing Scrabulous rather than riding. Ah well at least I can use it as an excuse when I get my ass kicked by a 10 year old at the Warmwell SnowTour this Saturday!

.......Written on a train from London Waterloo to Southampton Central!

CasVegas rocks!

2007-08-24T21:08:00.000+01:00

I have to say that CasVegas is currently my favourite riding location, we managed to get up there a few weeks ago for a session and the park was perfectly laid out giving me plenty of toys to get my riding legs back on and even better it's been allowed to set long enough that the kickers on to the toys didn't collapse within the first half an hour of the session.

From a training point of view it was a great night for me and I've started to get my confidence back and hopefully will be able to build on this ready for the SnowTour comp season that is kicking off next month (I was too chicken to hit the monster gap kicker though)

So here's proof that I can actually boardslide rather than nose press

Still manage to slam on demand (or when there's a camera present)

I even managed the entire S-box..... complete with flying chicken arms!

I'm actually pondering keeping up the momentum and riding some dendix this Sunday, weather dependent of course.....I think I'm the only person hoping for a cool and drizzley Bank Holiday Sunday!

Changes are afoot

2007-08-24T20:49:00.000+01:00

Well I'm in a transitional situation at the moment at work, having survived the role of project manager for the annual pay review (involving a lot of people rather than project management and rather too closely involved in the production of 22,000 mail merged letters), had a week off to recover and baby sat another project while everyone else disappeared on leave, I am starting work on a new project for a shiny new client!

This means no more Belfast for a while (apart from a potential 1 day trip for meetings) and soon no more BBC. I'm slightly sad to be moving on as it's the workplace I've survived at longest since I left uni but I'm also really excited. In a way I think it proves to me that being outsourced from the BBC 18 months ago has been the best thing to happen to me for a long time, not only has it given me better career progression it's enabled me to develop into a role that I'm enjoying and am not too bad at. Plus my managers are great and really supportive, even when things don't work out quite as well as we've all hoped and planned.

I'm really looking forward to working on new things as well, one of the things that has caused me problems over the last few months is the knowledge that I have about HR processes at the BBC, it's meant that I've been relied on to provide answers and training to people even though that's no longer my role and I'm actually looking forward to being able to answer questions with "I don't know" and make people use other avenues to find out the answer to their questions......or even better, "I'm really sorry but I'm not on that project anymore, you'll need to speak to X"

It's going to be tough as well though, when the Capita team first moved into my office they were viewed with suspiscion and fear by most of the staff and now I'm going to be suspected and feared myself...hopefully I'll be able to win people over though (the team ceratinly managed to do that with me).

In addition to all of this I'm going to be doing my Prince2 course to (hopefully) enable me to become a fully qualifed project manager, this does of course entail 2 exams....1 multi choice (guess) and 1 written paper. To say I'm a little bit worried would be an understatement, I hate exams and so I'm hoping that these go better than my last attempt at uni. On the plus side though they happen during the week long course and apparently the written paper is open book so fingers crossed my memory will hold the info long enough to get enough right answers to pass! Wish me luck eh

It's nearly over....

2007-07-26T11:26:00.000+01:00

For the last few months I have been project managing the annual pay review for our client, today I finished the majority of the 20,000 letters and will soon be able to return to my proper day job as a Business Analyst rather than a operational HR dogsbody. It seems fitting that this is the view I had from my hotel window last night when I was finally starting to shed the stress I've been under!

I want to be an incident controller

2007-07-25T09:08:00.001+01:00

Well, we're 93% of the way through doing 19,000 pay review letters and I'm resisting the urge to see what happens if I press the yellow button on the wall of the office!

I mean seriously, don't they realisse that putting "DO NOT TOUCH! Only to be operated by Incident Control Managers" on something is bound to cause trouble?

Peer group pressure leads to pain!

2007-06-19T08:30:00.000+01:00

Well it does when the members of your peer group are 15 and they have no fear! Yes on Saturday I let myself get bullied into spinning off the big kicker at Warmwell, and for someone with a kicker fear that's no mean feat.

Having survived the Halifax leg of the Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle Championship in one piece (and first place) despite this minor hiccup

I arrived in Dorset raring to go. Well when I say raring that may be a slight exaggeration as I'd had to get up at 5am to get there, I was still pretty enthusiastic though.

Having a catch up with Sam Rogers before warm-up we spotted Rebecca Cullum and started debating who would be against her that day, we soon realised that it would be me and considering Becca rode with the UK Junior Squad this season I jokingly said I'd give spinning a go in an attempt to beat her.

So the session kicked off and everything was going well, I was going pretty big off the kicker (for me) with a range of grabs and shifties when they announced that the jam session would be ending shortly........so up pipes Sam (all 15 years of her) "You said you'd spin! You've only got one run left to do it in", so after a cheeky "I'm saving myself for the final" I dropped in. I have to admit that as I dropped in for the kicker I was planning on just doing a melon grab but all I could hear was Sam chanting "Spin, spin, spin"....well what else could I do, I got to the kicker and thought "DO IT" so with a turn of my head and shoulders I span a backside 180. I have a feeling my eyes were closed but I landed in one piece and although I scuffed out I'd managed to do it.
Speaking to Sam after her run I was still shaking with adrenalin and she was in shock having not really meant for me to give it a go. Still I was one step closer to eating the fear.

The girls final didn't start well for me....my 32 year old legs were suffering from girlyness and I sat down on my first 3 runs, the fear was back and although I wanted to spin I wasn't going to do it until I nailed a basic straight air...finally I got my legs back and stuck a few (thanks to Charlie Clark for the encouragement). So here I was, nearing the end of the session, I tried a BS180.....landed but not clean, I went up for a second attempt, dropped in and thought I'd give a FS180 a go instead, I span, landed and rode out, then it happened.....the dreaded heel edge catch! OUCH! So I'm typing this with minor whiplash but a satisfied feeling that although I was beaten in to 2nd place by a sponsored rider who stuck some 3's and tried a 5 I managed to come one step closer to being able to spin off a kicker properly!

Well done as well to Sam who nearly stuck 5 and learnt how it feels to be beaten by someone half your age (as I feel when I get beaten by her) and she was shunted into second place in the under 16's by Katie Ormerod, who at all of 3 foot high landed some clean 5's and generally went huge for her diminutive size!

I have to say I'm glad I'm in the over 16's otherwise I'd have no chance of placing anywhere

Sam gets kinky

Me, with a courage building indy

Katie Ormerod goes way to big for her size!

Bank Holiday Plans

2007-05-25T21:14:00.000+01:00

Well, it's comp time......tomorrow will see me heading up to Halifax for my first proper snowboarding comp since I was there for Cock of the North this time last year.

Work's been so busy that I've pretty much missed the entire season of boardin, I didn't do the AIM series or go to the Brits and haven't ridden on a mountain since Brits '06.

This weekend however sees me planning to ride in two comps, the newly expanded and rebranded series from Wayne Taylor, the Westbeach Snowflex Freestyle Series on Saturday and then on Sunday I'm heading to Swadlingcote for my mate Matt's comp the Wham Bam Jam. I'm mostly looking forward to riding for the whole weekend and catching up with people I haven't seen for a year.

No doubt I'll post here on Sunday evening lamenting the fact that I got beaten by 2 under 12's and an under 16 but hey at 32 I guess I'm lucky just to be able to do freestyle riding!

Polar Heart Rate Monitor, Gadgets for fitness - Part 3

2007-04-01T18:59:00.000+01:00

My other essential gadget of the moment is my Polar F11 Heart Rate Monitor. I decided to splash out on one of these as it works out much cheaper than a personal trainer (£140 a month is a bit beyond my budget, although I suppose giving up food to pay for it would help with the weight loss!). I've mostly been using the cross trainer at the gym but decided to start using the jogging machine to raise the stakes a bit and get ready for maybe running outside. Unfortunately the hand held heart rate monitors they have on the machines at the gym never work that well and I'd found myself getting a bit worried about how fast my heart was seeming to beat.

Searching the web and reading up on the monitors on the Polar site I also came across their personal training site which gives you a range of programmes to follow (it's free and you don't have to have a Polar monitor to use it) and then allows you to automatically upload your heart data (if you have an infra red link) or manually type it in (if you're a cheap-skate like me).

The other bonus is that you can put the same fitness programme on the watch as you have on the site and this then makes you work out in the designated heart rate zones by bleeping at you when your heart rate goes too high or too low. This has been quite handy as it's stopped me getting over enthusiastic and over doing it too soon.

What I have found since using it and following their, "improve my fitness" programme is that I was working out too hard. I now do a range of exercise sessions at different heart rate levels so apparently I'm now burning fat and exercising my heart on different occasions without over straining myself.

This has also meant that I've been able to run on the jogging machine for longer as I haven't been running too fast and tiring myself out before I've got into it. So much so that I managed to run 5km on Friday night and Saturday night without feeling the need to give up due to impending heart failure!

As it also shows you the calories you've burnt and the percentage of fat it's been quite interesting to see how much I burn on other activities:

Snowboarding - 1185 calories and 40% fat in 2 hours 16 mins
Sleeping - 108 calories and 60% fat in 1 hour
Shopping - 536 calories and 60% fat in 2.5 hours

So it seems that sleeping and shopping can now be counted as fat burning work outs and snowboarding for a few hours can most definitely by rewarded with a Krispy Kreme!

Nike Plus, Gadgets for fitness - Part 2

2007-04-01T18:35:00.000+01:00

One of the gadgets I'm using as part of my get back to fitness mission is the Nike + iPod Sport Kit, this plugs into your iPod Nano (which the boyf bought me for Christmas) and logs how far you run and for how long. When you've finished running you plug your iPod into iTunes which then syncs your workouts with the Nike + website and shows you pretty graphs of your run. Not bad for £19! Of course if you're not a cheapskate like me then you'll feel the need to buy the proper Nike + trainers with a hole under the insole for the sensor to sit, however, yourself cash by fashioning a nice little duct tape holder and taping it to your laces instead.

It gets even better though (if you're even slightly competitive like I am). As well as it just logging your runs you can set yourself goals to encourage you to keep training (I'm currently trying to run 50km in 4 weeks) and you can find other people to race against via the Nike + forums. There seem to be all sorts of running gadgeters out there at all levels from novice like me to serious runners doing serious mileage.

One of the challenges I've signed up for is a beginners most mileage in April, and by some freak occurrence I actually happen to be in the lead! Check out the current standings!

No doubt I'll be overtaken once everyone else logs their weekend runs but hey I shall revel in my current placing for now.

It's quite surprised me how much a simple little foot sensor and iPod linkage sensor can keep me so amused and take away the pain of running....combine it with my other toy (a Polar heart rate sensor) and I'm actually looking forward to going to the gym.

So if there are any other bloggers out there with one of these who fancy a "bloggers challenge" then let me know!