Session 5062

For those WavLOG fans, thank you for continuing to read my surfing adventure. I am feeling lately as if I got a bit of writer's block. On the one side, I am committed to write something about each of my session, but on the other hands, if you are reading this, it might get quite boring as I start to make less and less discoveries. I will go on, but I thought that I'd let you all know that I am aware of this boredom and trying to do something about it, short of paddling out to Mavericks or flying to Tahiti to report on more surfing adventures.

As for keeping a log, I really do feel that I have benefited from it, as I give some thought about what has happened on each session, and if you are a surfer, or for that matter, doing some other stokey activity, you may want to write a journal. It really helps me organize my thoughts and provide a basis for planning what I would do next.

Back to Surfing?

Last several months, I have been working on becoming able to take off on a more wider variety of waves, and especially right now, taking off on faster and steeper waves on my short board rides. This past week, there has been a significant progress in this area, and I am happy to say that there are still more progresses being noticed on my part.

The first noticeable point of this is that now I am riding a lot more waves than before, and now I try to catch anything catchable from the outside first break to the inside reform breaks. I find, for me, that riding is one of the main goals, so I don't really care whether it is a reform wave or the "first" wave. I know that's not necessarily the way with other surfers as many of them try to catch the "first" wave and they'd wait as long as needed outside. For me, I set a session time, which is usually 90 minutes, and within that time I try to catch as many waves as I can, and so I paddle in all 4 directions. I guess I am doing this because when I first tried out for a competition, I was told to "catch as many waves as you can, since they count the top 3 rides."

The second noticeable point is that I am now wiping out at different part of a ride. To recap a brief history of taking off:

? In the very beginning, pearling and being toppled was the number one cause.
? After a while I learned not to pearl. Then generally the theme of not taking off was being "Left Behind."
? Then I try to take off on steeper situations and the theme become more like "Thrown over the falls" type situation with frequent hold-downs.
? The latest, I now can get up on the board, but then I get knocked over from behind by the closing waves + I know when to go for the wave, or not.

I am personally considering that the latest occurrence is a good sign because I am actually getting up on the board without pearling or being thrown over the falls (I am not saying that they never happen, but they happen less often.) I am deducing that the reason why I get knocked from the behind is that I just don't have the enough speed after taking off. But along this line, I am even seeing some sign of avoiding this. One of the techniques is that I can actually take off diagonally even at a sharper angle and I can descend away from the closing wave, and that provides me with a time to pick the line.

It will still take quite a bit of practice to make this part consistent, but if I do and build up the courage to take a bit bigger waves, I am finally be able to look forward to really take time and start to work on more advanced turning techniques.