Racing in college

tomPietrowskiDo it. It's great fun racing at uni. Do they not have a freesryle team too? I was my unis freestyle captain but I always raced as well as it's fun. It also helps you get the competative mentality which will defiantly help if you get into slope. Any way to get extra time on snow is good regardless of what type if skiing your doing.

Sh4dowI raced for a few years. It doesn't compare to big mountain but it's still fun. If you've never skied gates before it's worth doing for a year to experience it. Get race skis. The courses get rutted out and icy, not something you'll want to ski on park skis. Get a pair of slalom skis, they work for slalom and GS. You'll also need hand guards on your poles and shin guards, but other stuff (suit, race poles, etc) is optional, don't bother with that right away. If you have good poles you may not want to use them for GS because you could brake the tips and pole baskets if they aren't race poles, I broke a pole that way, but you don't need high end race poles, just get a cheap pair of poles and put hand guards on them.

tomPietrowskiThat's not the sprit of uni racing man. Do it on park skis or borrow some race skis If you are a bit slower. Aa for armour I used to tape a magazine to my forearms and that was enough for beating gates out the way. That is the way to race in uni. Do it that way and it really pisses off the true racers when you beat them.

milk_manDo it. But use your park skis and race doing the switch

milk_manDo it. But use your park skis and race doing the switch

MinggThat's what I was thinking haha we have a general ski club too with a bunch of freeskiers. I would do both haha

Dr._Alan_GrantFun fact: J-Lev went to UB and was in schussmeisters.

MinggFreeracing? Hahaha

danbrowngetting wasted is for losers dude

Crystal.CarvCan I suggest you check out this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ga-6wy0Nboo

If you don't see yourself ski with a laid-over Ligety-type style then don't expect much winnage. Although Ted Ligety is a top skier, I think his style looks retarded by being over-exaggerated (and I suspect wouldn't feel too good either). It includes scraping the snow with his hips. However, this might be in order to over-compensate for the under-exaggerated design of race skis. In his view (and mine), they've become too long and narrow.

Well, at least he's smart enough to develop his own style and has reaped the rewards in order to adapt to them, including gold in GS in Sochi and 46 podiums in World Cup so far.

"I am able to make the new skis that don't turn as easily, look like they turn easilier." (from the video)

Crystal.CarvYeah I have raced before. Quite a bit, and I'm better (and prefer) slalom over GS. But for slalom you really need protection and I've never had that so I haven't done much of it. Maybe in the race club they'll offer OP protection for slalom, or will she need to buy it? That's worth thinking about.

I'm not one to blame others for anything, but now that I think back, I've found instructors lame generally at not offering any protection to students and forcing them into GS until they earn their way to slalom. Is that how it goes? Talk about missed opportunities.

I don't think OP cares about winnage. Well that sort of goes against what racing is about. At least I'd go in just wanting to go as fast as possible. But to me that's very limiting if all you care about is speed.

Personally, if I wanted to become a better skier, I'd go straight to the skier-x course and be very wary of avoiding a gnarly stack.


- Don't take seriously:

For race training in summer I personally do yoga poses in a straight jacket. Sometimes on a merry-go-round, often at night time, drunk and always on a full moon with my crystals.

Sometimes I just skip it and go straight to boozing on the park bench, with the bottle concealed so it's not confiscated.


Personally, I'd take racing more seriously if the gates looked like snowboard gates and I could have any ski design rather than be restricted by the rules.

Ligety said he started to invent his own technique in 2006 for the skis that were forced on him, which in the video he said he protested about. I invented my own technique for me and by me, but then went out and designed my own skis because there was nothing out there that fitted optimally with that technique. I suppose Ligety could have just quit too. I wonder what his ideal ski would look like if he quit racing.

.MASSHOLE.I am going to go out on a limb and say you did not do very competitive racing. Any ski design? How the hell would someone set a course? There have to be standards to even the playing field. And snowboard gates? Why? Just why? They are the same as stubbies used in a SL course for little kids, you just add panels.

Crystal.CarvActually, ideally Carving Cup cushions. It's about leaning over and not worrying about hitting anything.

Anyhow, there's a lot of standing around with racing, right? In the cold? And the other thing that irritates me about racing is that any serious course is always locked out to the public. Why is it so hard just to do laps of a race course without getting told off or worse? It's always such a big deal with getting permissions, timetables and being in some group. I want to headbutt a chairlift pylon just thinking about it.

.MASSHOLE.Leaning over =/= fast or proper style depending on who you are. Some skiers have more upright stances and use primarily lower body. Not everyone skis like Ted Ligety.

Depends. Race day? Sure, sometimes. You can always free ski and just wait until your run. Training, no. Training is usually rapid fire almost hot-lapping courses. But aren't you waiting sometimes in lift lines, at the top of jumps, and for friends?

Because of safety and insurance reasons. You do not want some experienced racer hauling down a course and having a member of the general public in that course who may get hurt due to their inexperience. It is really not that complicated.

Crystal.CarvPublic courses typically get big ruts and scissor-tracks fast: quick way to a faceplant. And they require an adaptation of technique. Perhaps that's why race course people are so strict about letting outsiders onto courses: it's about stopping the ruts. Also maintaining a good course is labor-intensive (including removing gates to groom) and requires experience, so there are financial considerations here.

Proper or correct style is subjective. You can also gauge a technique by how good you feel, how much pain you are in and where the pressure points are in one's body. And importantly, how fatigued one gets. Also, how difficult it is to learn, and how natural it feels.

What have you done with your race suit as a former racer? Would you wear it rollerblading? Some gay charity or pawn shop might accept as a potential mardi-gras costume.

The other thing about racing that's a pain is having to learn a separate techniques for different disciplines. So yeah, you might become a better skier... at one turn radius.

.MASSHOLE.The same thing happens in real race courses even faster. Different lines yield different ruts. Ruts can come from a few different things, be it skidded turns, edge pressure at certain points of the turn (namely the above or at the apex), shitty snow conditions, or just poor skiers. Maintaining a course is not hard if it is a group effort, hence why it is usually teams who set and pull courses. Allowing general public is a free-rider problem along with the insurance reasons I have stated above.

Proper style is not subjective. Proper style and technique is what is ever fastest. Every coach will tell you that Bode Miller has horrible form, but manages to get down quickly if he finishes. The closest skier to having perfect technique is Mikaela Shiffrin in SL. Always balanced, always centered, etc. Other than that, everyone else has their own style and some are fasters than others.

I should have known I was talking to Adria/HeartCarve. You are quite the troll

Crystal.Carv"Every coach will tell you that Bode Miller has horrible form, but manages to get down quickly if he finishes."

- I'd rather take lessons from Bode or Ted or someone who has come up with a winning technique than someone who has gotten it second hand, but originally from a winner and then whitewashed away so the instructor can take credit.

Not sure if we've met on TGR, but interestingly Dan Brown's on this thread. He's been critical of me, yet is now recovering from a kneecap injury. Will he change his technique, approach or attitude as a result?

I looked at OP's twitter. Tons of negativity. Not surprised she wants to get wasted. But it's healthy I think to want to be a winner and feel good about yourself. But you've got to choose your sport or discipline where you can win. It's hard to be positive in today's toxic environment I think, especially with EMF pollution affecting brain waves. Even many beers are full of crap. Just being happy and healthy is being a winner.

An alternative is she just takes a few group lessons and also hangs out with some of the people from her lesson, then drinks at some mountain bar after skiing. Next day rinse and repeat. Then if you want to race, go in to win and push away all the losers and/or people who aren't serious about it.

Crystal.CarvI think that it's not that only losers get wasted on a regular basis, or only losers are critical of HeartCarve, it's that doing those things makes you become a loser, or keeps you there. Who wins anything wasted? Dan, imagine if you were driving to that concert wasted, you could have taken out other people.

Crystal.CarvI think that it's not that only losers get wasted on a regular basis, or only losers are critical of HeartCarve, it's that doing those things makes you become a loser, or keeps you there. Who wins anything wasted? Dan, imagine if you were driving to that concert wasted, you could have taken out other people.

Crystal.Carv"getting wasted is for losers dude"

- speaking of which, Dan, you said that two weeks after breaking your kneecap while riding a bike drunk. I'm guessing you were pretty wasted to think you could've ridden that bike safely and then go on and have what I presume to be a pretty gnarly fall.

Sheesh. I think that statement was more a message than a joke.

Calling chicks dudes.. now that is funny. I thought you broke your kneecap skiing in the southern hemisphere. Interesting tangent here.

Vonn sprained her knee in 2007, and then tore it in 2013 just after starting to publically date Tiger Woods. I thought he only liked blondes, not fake ones (ex-wife is also fake.) So there could've been an unconscious stress there on Vonn in terms of fear-of-rejection, which affected her skiing. Call it Tiger's own "Winners curse." I wonder how that relationship is going now (actually I don't.)

The thing is, if you can't come up with your own style, there's no shortage of people who can tell you what the right way should be. And if you can come up with your own style, there's also a bunch of people trying to rip you off and a few more who will put you on a pedestal if it is working for you. But Bode Miller has said when he skis, he feels drunk and everything goes into slow-motion and he's calculating the 1000 things that can go wrong, and he avoids those. No one will be able to copy that.

Crystal.Carv"getting wasted is for losers dude"

- speaking of which, Dan, you said that two weeks after breaking your kneecap while riding a bike drunk. I'm guessing you were pretty wasted to think you could've ridden that bike safely and then go on and have what I presume to be a pretty gnarly fall.

Sheesh. I think that statement was more a message than a joke.

Calling chicks dudes.. now that is funny. I thought you broke your kneecap skiing in the southern hemisphere. Interesting tangent here.

Vonn sprained her knee in 2007, and then tore it in 2013 just after starting to publically date Tiger Woods. I thought he only liked blondes, not fake ones (ex-wife is also fake.) So there could've been an unconscious stress there on Vonn in terms of fear-of-rejection, which affected her skiing. Call it Tiger's own "Winners curse." I wonder how that relationship is going now (actually I don't.)

The thing is, if you can't come up with your own style, there's no shortage of people who can tell you what the right way should be. And if you can come up with your own style, there's also a bunch of people trying to rip you off and a few more who will put you on a pedestal if it is working for you. But Bode Miller has said when he skis, he feels drunk and everything goes into slow-motion and he's calculating the 1000 things that can go wrong, and he avoids those. No one will be able to copy that.

pussyfooterlol who are you

pussyfooterlol who are you

Crystal.Carvwho am I? who are you?

"never underestimate the power of a pawn"

.. seek to be not somebody but yourself.

.MASSHOLE.I don't even know where to start and hence I figure I should just ignore your ramblings from here on out.