This weekend we went up to Castleford for their Who’s Afraid of the Park? session. It was great fun and it gave me a chance to catch up with some great friends who I hadn’t seen in ages.
The WAOTP? session was really well organised with an abundance of qualified coaches and sponsored riders/skiers in attendance. With each attendee choosing a coloured band when they registered they sorted themselves into groups according to their experience levels, or if they wanted to rode in the girls only group. Each sponsored rider had a leopard print band so that riders could grab us when they wanted extra advice or had any questions.
I started off in the girls group, coached by Ketia and with myself and Katie Ormerod as the sponsored riders. Once we’d done a few runs and started on the freestyle side of things I took one of the girls off on my own as she wasn’t really feeling the freestyle love. Booked on by her boyfriend, who was also on the session, she was a bit nervous about trying rails with her wedding only 8 weeks away (she wasn’t convinced a pink plaster cast would go with her wedding dress). So Sarah and I went off and worked on her general riding skills, getting her used to going at speed and doing some short bursts of straightlining down the fall-line. By working on the basics it built up her confidence and means that when she is ready to try freestyle she knows that she can point straight down the slope on the run in to a kicker or rail without feeling out of control.
It was a really fun session, and I can’t wait to get involved in any similar sessions they run over the Summer.