EUGENIZATION.

I think, at long last, I am over it - the demise of the 2004-2005 snowboarding season. We all had an extremely productive season this year: Our friends Ronen, Dr. Warden, and Nikita improved their abilities tremendously, my wife and brother-in-law learned some new tricks, and I even learned a thing or two.

Perhaps the most striking thing regarding this season (aside from my successful completion of a 360 degree spin) was the importance of proper conditioning. In all prior seasons, we had neither the volume of trips nor the intensity of runs that we experienced this year. It was a true test, not only of our skill, but of our strength and endurance (I remember us all being particularly breathless following one run on Killington).

While we all possess differing degrees of strength and conditioning, everyone in our party eventually ran into “the momentary limitations imposed on our skill improvement by our level of physical preparedness.”

Allow me to share some problems we ended up running into:

1. My wife had some IT band trouble on Haystack following a fast but easy run down a green trail (our usual warm-up run). This was past mid-season, however, and Dr. Warden and I surmised that it was due to muscular weakness in her quads and hams; she simply didn’t have the strength to follow the pace we were going at the entire season. It ended being only a mild problem - she seemed to improve after some IT band stretching and massage.

2. Early season, Nikita continuously complained that his “quads are shot down,” no doubt in part to his relentless heelside sideslipping - Dr. Warden likened it to “performing an isometeric squat all the way down the mountain.” Due to his quad fatigue, Nikita was relegated to the green slopes early on, until both his conditioning and skill acquisition caught up.

3. Roald, my brother-in-law, suffered a partial tear in his PCL during a football game last year, so he is rightfully wary of his knee. Although he rehabbed it to full recovery, knowing he has something going on makes him slightly more tentative for trying outrageous stunts. Additionally, he suffered an ankle sprain during our snowboarding season (again, playing football) that prevented him from absorbing shock on that ankle. This also held him back.

4. My own left knee has been slightly wonky post-season - I’d been feeling tenderness in my patellar tendon as of the last two trips. I suspect it is due to the tremendous volume of impromptu plyometrics(jumping and landing) I’d accumulated over the course of the season.

Looking forward, I know that I will implement a snowboarding-specific strength and conditioning program for Sairalyn and myself during our pre-season, so our next season will be less “eventful.”

If interested, my wife has pictures of our trips for this and prior seasons up on her website. The URL is: http://www.sairalyn.com/scrapbook/trips.html

Use the left frame for navigation between the various trips.