I went up to RYW yesterday with some customers. Choppy surf with strong side to onshore winds. I took a 9’0 out and had a blast. 昨天我和一些朋友去了日月湾。浪有些乱，逆风。我用的一块9英尺长的板，划水出去的时候阻力很大。
One thing I love with the longboard is the ability to get a ride all the way into the beach. One of my favorite surfing manouveres is the Longboard Sand Dismount. The LSD (I honestly didn’t notice that until right now) evolved out of necesity, and is used when you are riding a wave which is quickly arriving at the beach, with just one foot or so of water depth. When the large fin of a longboard hits the sand, and you are still standing on the board, it can easily snap off, or worse, bust out the board’s fin box. But no damage is done if the fin strikes the sand sans-rider – there isn’t enough weight to force a break.
So when you don’t have much water left between the board and the sand, you flick the board out in front of you and on to the beach, while you step off the side of the board and land – ina few inches of water, or better, on dry sand. It’s not really possible to stick a dismount, as you will have jumped off with a fair amount of speed. So you run it out, and often times take a nice fall. It usually looks quite awkward, but feels rather good to perform, as you are also celebrating catching a wave all the way from the outside to the utmost inside. Getting a wave all the way to the beach is like getting a touchdown in American football. And flicking the board on to the sand while you dismount is the celebratory spike.
Got two sessions in yesterday, and a forty minute run on the beach. I’m taking today off to rest, then tomorrow will start Brick Monday. A ‘brick’, in triathlon speak, is training two of the disciplines during the same workout. I’m using it to mean a paddle followed by a run, and will start to do one every Monday. I’m thinking a 4.8km paddle and 10km run. In the last week, I’ve spoken to a few friends about it doing a SUP/Run endurance race. Early stages yet, but I’m keen to organize it because it gives me something to train towards. It was too easy to fall off in to the third month last year.
More information about the race in future entries. See my previous entries here.