He is about to start ski training 3 times a week now, including the Kokanee races at Whistler on most Thursdays. He continues to bowl twice a week, a bit of basketball once a week, with some weekly weight training too.
Yesterday was the second Kokanee race of the season, a Giant Slalom on the Ptarmigan run on Whistler Mountain. Even the "lifers" admitted that yesterday's race was a very challenging one with lots of fresh soft snow (racers prefer harder surfaces....not just for speed but for safety, soft snow makes it easier to catch a ski edge and crash) and a couple of gates on a very steep part of the hill that had plenty of offset (horizontal space between the gates...the more offset the greater a turn is required in order to get through the gates).
Cory has usually finished last in his age group in the Kokanee races, so we laugh about his goal - to not finish last. Unfortunately, on this day, he did finish last. But it's a series of races and since Cory completed his race he did earn 43 points and now, after 2 races, he is in 5th place out of 13 racers.
Whistler Adaptive Sports Programs Coach Sammy worked with Cory and noticed that Cory usually improves significantly on his second run through a course in comparison to his first run. It's quite likely a matter of Cory gaining confidence after his first run so we'll have to work on Cory's race preparation. We also discussed the fact that there's now only 8 weeks to go until the Qualifying races, so it's time to move from technical skill development more towards mental preparation. Cory has improved his technical skills and we believe he is capable of improving his racing speed, but so far his confidence hasn't kept pace. He needs to develop more trust in his skills in order to increase his speed.
On this day, he once again improved his time by 2 seconds in his second run versus his first, so it's certainly something we'll have to work on.
Here's Cory with Coach Sammy talking things over at the start of the race course:
Then it's time for a course inspection prior to the first run with Coach Sammy and VASS Coach Rob:
And Cory's first run, negotiating that challenging gate on the steepest part of the race course, and then does pick up quite a bit of speed through the delay gate as the course flattens out (a delay gate is an additional gate added to the course that does not require the racer to actually make a turn around it, but changes the rhythm of the racer's turns...it's the blue gate right after the red gate situated directly in front of the camera position)
And his second run...while he is quite far from the camera at the beginning of this video, it still shows his speed coming off that steep pitch at the top. Coach Sammy wants him to start his turns earlier - another indication that Cory hasn't quite grasped the improvement in his skills...he's still turning at the same speed he used to do, yet he is racing faster, so his turns are now delayed. This results in a need for him to turn his skis sideways to slow down in order to get around a get and completely eliminates his speed improvements. But his turns through the gates in this section of the course at least are quite good and he maintains most of his speed as he tucks through a flat portion of the course.
This coming week is the start of Cory's training with his Vancouver Adaptive Snow Sports Blue Streaks Race Team on Grouse Mountain, then training with Special Olympics British Columbia Delta on Cypress, and then Kokanee Race #3 at Whistler. So we'll be updating soon.
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1 comment:
Cory I hope you had ton"s of fun when you went to National"s in July.Will you be going to the Worlds in June?if you are Good luck and show of your"e colour"s for Canada.
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