Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Surf Comp off the port bow !

photo by : http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100003357534909
    Weekend surf contests are always packed - with people, fun, and emotion.  So much Emotion.  Excitement, anxiety, joy, fear, happiness, and sadness.  About every fifteen minutes someone wins and some one loses.  It can get hard to watch, let alone enter.  Surfing is such a pure thing, but when you start to put numbers and time frames on it, there can be a serious loss of plot.  It's supposed to be fun.
      Instead of putting a focus on scores, timetables, and winning,  I just watched the heats before mine and thought, "gosh those waves look pretty fun and im about to go get me some."
Sadly, for my heats the tide bottomed out and the wind picked up a bit.  Pretty much all of the heats I surfed were challenging and definitely not the kind of stuff you dream about when thinking 'mmm costa rica'   Try 'ummm windy shifty closeout' and you'll be a little more on point.
    Without focusing on 'winning' or 'losing' I didn't feel the normal amount of fear that goes hand in hand with competing. That is, until I found out I won.  Then the fear washed over me like a tidal wave.   Without a moment to collect my thoughts I was being asked questions by a man wielding the biggest video camera I've ever seen.  Next thing I know I'm being paraded onto a podium with the other girls from the final, and asked to say something in front of a bunch of people.  Wow. at this point I can't even remember my own name, let alone gather a few words.  My mom used to say that I was "painfully shy" and for the first time in my life I actually felt  that pain.
    I regurgitated something or other that hopefully went like this: 
"I just want to say thanks to all of the sponsors of this event in playa hermosa and all of the people who came, it was fun.  I also want to thank my family, friends, and sponsors - calavera swimwear, nexo surfboards, the point surf shop, and kulcha shok music"   and surely there I mumbled a little more and scurried off stage. 
    On the plus side, the my first win is over with and taught me a valuable lesson - always be prepared for the best.

heres a lil video of two training sessions last week. if only the waves were this good in my heats!