Saturday, September 08, 2007

Sesssion 7122, How Local Female and Male Surfers Do Sessions

This morning I have finally figured out the long unsolved mystery.

The mystery is about local women surfers. When it comes to seeing them, it is often feast or famine. There are lots of them in a line up or none of them.

I did figure this out though.

I was the first to arrive at the beach, suiting up and this local female surfer showed up. We then went in . But after that one by one over the course of the session more and more local women surfers showed up and that ended up to be about 6. That's usually a lot in local standards.

I now know that women surfers have a strong network. They call each other and they also call others. They are organized and mobilized so when they come to surf, they are going to be all there.

They are having a lot of fun talking on the water, in and out of the beach. It just brighten up this local beach, which is usually barren, drab, foggy and often intimidating with big close out waves. (This morning was sunny.)

In a nutshell, our local female surfers are like me dropping a piece of chocloate on the ground. Before you know there are lots of them.

Then I thought about local male surfers.

Male surfers have networks too, but it tends to be smaller. It is more like a small pack of wolves or something. In some ways, these packs move from one place to another in hunt of waves, and if we run into other packs in the process, we'd make sure that we allow enough room so that we don't be on the same territory. Male surfers tend to be more friendly out of the water, but once in the water it can get tense and territorial to some extent.

Surf Progress Report

It was mostly closed out this morning with occasional ridable shoulder, very very typical of our local beach break situation.

Lately my area of focus are the following;
  • Work on finding out the ridable spot(s), lining up properly, and if necessary paddle there as the set comes in. This is a very important competition skill set. It requires keen eyes, sense, and observing the previous break pattern during the session.
  • Continue to work on take-offs. I am continuing to get incremental improvement in this area into more steeper, faster, and into hollower situations. This requires a lot of commitment, overcoming the fears, and a lot more paddling spurt power.
  • Speed = Longer Ride at All Conditions! More aggressive board interactions for speed; applying more body weight effectively through turns, and working on improved line selection and composition for more consistent power.

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