To do well at a downhill race, it requires a lot of things. The one I have been thinking about and one I think I really improved upon recently is the strategy in which I approach practice.

I realized in Sun Peaks, the longest track of the year, that I needed to do something different from most other tracks. Usually I broke the tracks down into 2 or 3 different sections and worked on them all on the same run, stopping and pushing back up on bits that I was struggling with. In Sun Peaks, because of the length and roughness of the course, I broke it down into more smaller sections, and only focused on 1 or 2 each run and just cruised through the ones I wasn’t focusing on that particular lap. On the way up the chairlift, I planned out which sections I would focus on and either talk to myself like a crazy person on what I would do, or make my brother listen to my rambling when he rode up the chair with me.

The result was I took much fewer laps that I usually would have, which saved energy, and was still able to put everything together into one run. The whole weekend I was riding I did only 3 full laps without stopping. One practice lap, one seeding run, and obviously my race run. This was extremely helpful especially on such a long course because I actually had a lot of energy on race day and was able to sprint where others were sitting down and resting their legs.

In the end, unfortunately I had a crash in my race run. My front wheel went over a blown out berm and I had to get myself back up to speed on one of the only flat/uphill sections of the course. I did loose a bit of time, but still managed to get 10th, beating a few people who usually are more than 5 seconds faster than me.

Even though I crashed, I still consider it my best race weekend yet. I look forward to using this strategy on the rest of the races this year!