I took a two-days of rest this weekend. After a hard surfing at the Francis beach on Saturday, my arms muscles got fairly sore, so I wanted them to rest a bit. Yesterday, we drove to Bolinas and saw the spot for the first time, but even then I did not surf. It was a nice spot though and I am sure I will be making a surf trip there. If I am going to go there again, I will drive up to Petaluma on 101 then get in from Pt.Reyes Station side. My past Motorcycle trips have really helped me to become familiar with this area... Speaking of that, we saw relatively major MC crash accident on the Hwy 1 after we left Bolinas. The chopper guy's leg was all broody and skin turned out. Not a nice scene, but glad that I quit riding and switched to surfing. MC accident is inevitable if you ride and when you go down, you just hope that you will live.
Getting up at 5:30 in the morning is, no matter how stoked I am, still difficult. I just lay in bed for 30 minutes and get out, check the wave condition and see if anyone posted more messages on StokeMasters as I wake up. Then I actually take a shower to fully wake up. Strange this ritual may be, as I am going to get wet again in just 30 minutes or so, I just don't feel clean without shampooing and washing down with good amount of soap. If I do not take a shower now, I will not be taking it for the rest of the day.
I like surfing after a big holiday or even a weekend. No matter how good the condition is, there just isn't anybody out there. Today, the total head count was no more than 5 from my vantage point. But it is definitely summer surfing with 9 second swells and also the water has actually gotten to 59 degrees! There was even one surfer with just a board shorts and a rash guard! I think I am going to try that outfit on a hot day this year, probably in Santa Cruz at Cowells or some place like that.
The remainder of this month, I have determined to surf accurately. What I mean by this is that I do not necessarily do it more aggressively, but focus on taking off when I commit to take off and keep longer rides each time and no matter what type of the waves I am surfing on.
Lesson learned today is that I still am not good at looking at the direction I am going to. It is actually a difficult posture to hold, as I would not normally stand side ways and look to the left or right. If I was trained as a dancer, that might have helped more. I guess this is why Yoga is also important part of balanced surfing diet.
I still catch myself, looking at the board, looking towards one side of the board or the other, and actually this looking forward thing has a profound effect in surfing performance. Looking up and looking forward seems to cause better upright posture in surfing, which is needed for better weight control. It even seems to help catch faster breaks... in fact by looking forward, what I thought of faster non-makable waves were actually fairly mellow and took a couple of nice rides.
More to come...
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