Dec 18, 2003

Need Exercise

Soreness from snowboarding last Sunday is pretty much all gone now. It was a pretty good day at Squaw, where they had a $29 lift ticket deal. Early season tickets are normally $44, and regular tickets are rather insane at $59, so I think we got a pretty good deal, especially since they got 18" of snow on Saturday night. The drive up was pretty smooth to begin with. We made pretty good time for the first 2.5 hours, until we had to put chains on the wheels. Shortly after I chained up, maybe 20 miles from the resort, my chains broke.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of using chains, when unwrapped, they look like a ladder. Curl it up around your wheel and connect the two ends, and you've got the idea. So while driving, one of the "rungs" snapped on one end, and ended up whipping around in my wheel well. We had to get off the highway a few times to tie up the flailing rung (we couldn't remove it entirely), dodging snowplows on the way. Added at least a half hour to the trip, probably more.

In the meantime, the clouds cleared up and it was pretty sunny. I got a Fire lens for my goggles that's quite a bit darker than the previous lens I had, which was perfect. Unfortunately, the rest of my gear didn't work out quite as well.

I got new boots and bindings last spring, when the prices of most snowboard gear are significantly slashed. I've used the Clicker system in the past, so I stuck with it. I got the Clicker Transformer BOA boots and the now discontinued Magma HB bindings.

The impetus on new gear was that I was sick of tieing and retieing the laces on my old K2 Sherpas. The laces would stretch and I'd never have a nice tight fit for good control. The ankle strap that boot didn't work well either. I'd have it as tight as it would go and it still wouldn't be tight enough. The Transformer is definitely an improvement. The BOA system works pretty well. I do have to retighten it every so often, but it's much easier than tying laces. I'd buy these boots for the BOA alone. The ratcheted ankle strap is much more secure than the velcro strap on my old boots. On the minus, these things hurt my feet. After the first hour the soles of my feet were in pain. I'm not sure why. The top of my right foot was also in pain from a pressure point. I think I'll need some kinda athletic boot liner for these things, and I'll have to figure out what's killing the top of my foot, since I didn't have the same problem with the left boot.

The bindings were generally improved over the last set of Klicker's I had. They click in with a lot less pressure which is a plus, but the highback made it a bit more of a hassle to get into these things. My old bindings were just flat on the board, you could step into them any which way. Because of the highback, I now have to put my foot in from the front. Furthermore, since it occasionally swings down, I often have to reach down and flip up the highback. I am thinking of just getting rid of it, but I'll give it a few more tries.

The biggest lesson though, was that my stance was completely screwed up. I had put them in with 0°/0°, they were too far forward, and the forward lean on the bindings was too far.

The angles indicate the angles of your feet with respect to the board. The axis perpendicular to the board is the measurement, so at 0°/0°, both my feet were perfectly perpendicular to the board. I had wanted to try riding fakey (which means backwards), so I tried not to angle my feet in either direction. This was a bad idea, it didn't work. There was a lot of strain on my legs as they were constrained in what's really a very unnatural position. The muscle on the right side of my right leg is in fact still a little sore. It also made it hard to turn. I've reset them to 21°/-3°, we'll see how much that improves.

Second thing that was wrong was that I was too far forward on the board. I'm not sure what kinda problems this actually causes, but it doesn't seem to be recommended. Most often the rider is centered on the board, or setback a little. Overall I suspect the difficulty in turning was partially due to the setforward.

The forward lean is determined by how the highback is set. Since my old bindings were flats, I didn't worry about it much. It seemed like the advantage of the HB was for better control, so I set the lean pretty aggressively forward. Bad move, my legs ended up tiring out way too easily and cramping up. With the Klickers, it also made it harder to step in and engage the lock on the heel. Slid it back, it should be a lot more relaxed and comfortable now.

The snow was not bad, but wasn't groomed. There were a lot of bumps by the end of the day, but given there was some fresh powder, the ticket was cheap, and there were no lines practically all day, it was a pretty good trip. My legs were killing me a the end of the day, but learned a good deal about setting up the gear. Can't wait for Whistler!

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