Team Jackson Kayak heads to Inner City Strife for final days of World’s Training

Photos

We have had several days of Big Smoothy training and are ready for the possibility that the worlds will be on that wave. I have a good routine for that wave and can bust out 45 seconds of my best moves on it. Buseater is quite a bit different and we haven’t had any good training on waves that are anything like it. The Buseater Wave is huge compared to what we have surfed on and it will most likely be very foamy and pushy. The closest thing to it in the vicinity is Inner City Strife from 11 to 15 feet on the gauge. Luckily for us, that wave is in perfect form right now. We drove to Watertown, New York last night and got in two sessions. I took photos after my first session so you could see the team training in action. Dane has good video too, but we’ll have to wait for him to capture some of it and put it into a form that I can load on the website. He is getting quite good at making videos. It seems that the computer and video camera he got for his birthday last year and Christmas was a good investment!

Our training last night included some “World Championships” practice rides and my average score was over 100 points. Emily had a sick ride last night with tons of great moves, but we didn’t score it. It got dark and we got hungry. Cracker Barrel’s Momma Pancake Breakfast did the trick! Kristine met us here last night after completing some of her obligations with the event. We all fell asleep trying to watch the video from our practice sessions and bailed after watching ½ of a tape. That was 10:30pm.

This morning we woke at 6am and I did a bagel run at Panera Bread. A cup of coffee and a bagel before putting on wet gear is always a step more comfortable than getting out of a warm bed and jumping straight into cold wet gear. I just have to try to forget that it is shorty weather in Tennessee and people are running their air conditioners. Here in Upstate (as far north as you can get and still be in the USA) New York and in Ontario we are just happy that it isn’t snowing and the frost clears quickly in the morning. Last night was a frost free night and the gear was not an issue to put on.

This morning could well have been the World Championships and I would have been very happy. I did two competition rides first off, with Nick Timing and Scoring, and I did the same for him. My first ride was a 140 and my second ride was a 170 where I got 10 moves in 45 seconds (the most I have ever done on a big wave). My score would have been 178 or 181 if I didn’t goof up and do my lefty Clean Pan Am twice but switched to my righty. Still I got this routine without ever setting up once. I got a move on each pass from the position I was at after my last move without ever surfing to the top. Most of my moves were done from the top but only because the move before carried me up there and I was able to keep my eyes clear enough to go right into my next move and nail it, sweet! The moves were: Pan Am Left, Back Pan Am Right, Pan Am right, Back Pan Am left, Back Blunt left, Helix Right, Helix Left, blunt left/McNasty left, clean Pan Am left (going for an Air Screw), Clean Pan Am Left (going for an air screw again) The points are: 16, 20, 16, 20, 22,22, 8, 22, 19, 4(blunt left is what I would get scored for my final clean pan am left since I did it already)= 170 That is also without getting any “Big or Huge” bonus points. I go for the bonus points but don’t count on them in the competition, but treat them as gravy points. My guess is that I would have gotten “Big” on 2 moves and “huge” on 1 of them for a total of 12 points or 182. This is the highest score I have had in practice or competition on a big wave where we actually timed it at 45 seconds. If that were my World’s finals ride, I would be the World Champion again most likely. I think the top score on Buseater will be between 60-100 points for the finals. The foam pile tries to throw you into the pit where it tries to destroy you and spit you out, while here at Inner City there is not pit and each landed move puts you in good position for another move. The potential for Big and Huge bonuses is very high on Buseater.

We watched the video from this morning and finished off last night’s video. I am sore from two hard sessions last night. The Back Pan am and Clean Backstab is perhaps the most high impact on your torso of any move if you are really going for it. Nick and I wind our body up as far as it will go and throw our body to the front deck and then to the back and then twist harder and pull our knees over our head with full power, each time. This is like hanging from gravity boots and pulling yourself up with a single hard as you can jerk using your torso and abs and doing that 50 times or more. Our ribs and abs get stretched out and worn out quickly. After my rodeo rides I stopped doing those moves for the day. Moves like clean blunts, pan ams, airscrews, and blunts are much lower impact but they still require that you twist and throw your boat using your obliques and abs. Training in Africa got our muscles in good shape for big waves, but just the 4 weeks at home paddling at Rock Island and then on the Ottawa on smaller waves allows your muscles to tighten up a little and not be quite ready for a barrage of back pan ams and clean backstabs like we are doing them.

Jay did a bunch of huge back Pan Ams, Air Screws, etc. last night throwing around the 4 Fun like a rag doll. At 200 pounds and all muscle, Jay is our tough guy on the water. He does two Jujitsu workouts a day in Reno on top of his paddling and decided to allow his body weight to hit over 200 pounds and just come in strong. Last year he tried to make himself lighter but it is against his nature. I prefer to watch the 200 pound guy with arms bigger than my legs put full force into his moves and snap his boat around like the champ he is. He won the 2003 World Championships and was 3rd at the 2005 World Championships. By the way he is paddling, look for another medal from him this year!

This afternoon and tomorrow we will be doing more short sessions. Likely a “World Championships” with a 4 ride prelims, a 3 ride quarter finals this afternoon and then a 2 ride semi-finals, and a 3 ride finals tomorrow. It looks like the Finals AND Semi-Finals will be on Friday! This may not seem like a big deal to you, but normally you make the Finals for the World Championships, get a day to recover and prepare and then come out fighting on Finals day. Since the competition has been shortened by two days due to only having 4 days of water, we are switching things up. Luckily for me, I can go directly from a Semi-finals, take a short break, regroup, and I will be ready to go for Finals and not be too scared or tired. It is easier to say than do, both making the finals (top 5!), and then winning finals with each athlete getting three rides. There is such a void between reality and how you feel when are you about to go on the wave. It is easy to have a runaway brain that you can’t control, or just try to quiet it and have it not be responsive to the incredible amount of sensory input you are getting from a triple overhead breaking wave with a small workable window and a boat that bounces around like crazy, sometimes over backwards or into a flurry of ends. That type of paddling requires your brain to respond without thinking but then think quickly to take your position and the status of the wave at that brief moment (flatter, steeper, pushing into the pit, corner is good, corner is not good, etc.) and then throw the appropriate move for that moment,oops, that moment has changed, rethink and go again, oops, too late already, stop, oops, too far on the corner you flushed. Bad things happen quickly on Buseater, but good things can happen quickly too. This unknown, or “adventure”, is what makes it both a game of chance and skill at the same time. Knowing that you may be dealt a bad hand, but also knowing that it should never be bad enough to prevent the best person from pulling off the biggest ride, given a three ride final. The trick is that if on the first ride, you goof up and flush, you don’t get stressed and lose your edge for the next ride. If you have two bad rides (like I did for USA team trials) and you have only one ride left and are not winning (but want to), then you have a serious strain on your mental skills. Final ride, no more chances, and coming off of two rides that just didn’t do it for you. The temptation is always to change your ride. Of course you want to change the performance of your ride, but not necessarily the ride plan itself. That creates a tough mental fine line to walk. “I just had two bad rides trying to do my plan, I have one ride left. Is this a fool me once, fool me twice deal? Or is my plan good but I just have to do a better execution of it?” That is something each athlete has to deal with either in practice or in the competition and it is something I don’t truly know the answer to every time, so I just go with the concept that a reasonable plan that ends in poor performance just needs to be done right the next time and I rarely switch gears. This is the type of thing that I don’t even discuss with Emily, Dane, or anybody else because it is too much to be thinking about during the competition. It is easier for most people to just go out there and do another ride and try to do a better one.

Jay just arrived for training after spending the night at his soon to be “mother-in-law’s” house in Gananoque Canada (45 minutes from here). His finance’ Lisa Beckstead just arrived from Reno for the competition.

David Knight arrived at the Ottawa yesterday in his new RV and is writing the program for scoring (did already). He will be helping the organizers set it up today.

Opening ceremonies are tomorrow night! I have my bib and Kristine requested a bib number from the organizers (a perk of being the current World Champion). It is bib number 186. That is the number that Peirpolo Ferazzi wore when he won the Olympics for slalom in 1992. It is the number I wore when I won the 1993 World Freestyle Championships, the 2001 World Championships, and I believe the 2005 World Championships.- it is possible that I wore 180 in Australia but I need to look at a photo to see for sure. How cool is that. Kristine is good at organizing that kind of thing. Is 186 my lucky number for 2007?

🙂 EJ