How a Dumb Mistake Helped Me Become a Faster Snowboarder
By: João R.G. Sampaio
Tags: Winter Sports, Snowboarding, Speed, Snowboard, Snow

I always struggled with speed in the past. On my previous years snowboarding, maintaining balance over the board when going over 45km/h, 50km/h was unthinkable. I never had the guts or the control to keep the board moving when going over these speeds for more than just quick short bursts. It looked way too scary. And that had a really bad effect on my riding: I usually got stuck on flat areas for not getting enough speed on the downhill sections, having to unstrap my back feet and do the “skate of shame” through the planes while everyone whizzed by. Of all of my friends, I was undoubtedly the slowest one on the snow, which left them quite annoyed most of the time for having to wait for me to arrive while we were riding together.

Last season, when I moved to live in the middle of the resort of Åre, one of my main goals was to improve my speed. I was determined to, for once and for all, not be the slowest one in the pack anymore. So, with the slopes on my backyard and all the season ahead of me, I started practicing… and failing miserably. Well, first of all: how do you even overcome the fear of high speed riding, specially when getting to know a new resort?

This is how a regular riding day used to look like.

My first attempts to start learning how to ride faster was to watch other snowboarders riding and check the paths they took across the slopes. This was quite a tricky task because most of the people snowboarding like to go through paths that leads them to hit features and perform tricks, but at least it was a start. I could start improving daily, little by little, getting a bit more comfortable at speeds that before were too much for me to handle.

The end of the year came, and with that, my friends came for a winter trip up here at my place. The training I did prior to these days showed some results. I was finally able to follow my friends closely, which in turn pushed my friends to ride faster because they didn’t have to wait for me for so long anymore. And this created a side-effect of this pursuit for speed riding: competition!

Oh yeah! My friends were not having this thing about the slowest guy in the pack being as fast as them, so it all began to look like a contest to check “who could ride the fastest”. At this point I was somewhat comfortably reaching speeds of 50km/h and my friends were not too far ahead. The days went by and the speed records went higher and higher. 55km/h… 58km/h… 59.5km/h… can I break the 60km/h barrier? Yes! 64.4km/h! That was my fastest speed of all time! I was finally able to match my friends kind of speed records on the mountains. But this didn’t last long, because soon one of my friends reached a new record for our group: a peak of 71.9km/h. That was super ultra fast in my mind. But now it was time for my friends to leave, and they soon would return for another trip in a few weeks time.

Without my friends around to keep the competition pace going, it was hard for me to keep the speed levels increasing. I had no one to follow to match so I had to find other ways to practice my high-speed riding. Following the other snowboarders on their tracks wasn’t cutting it anymore since I was already almost as fast as I could go while avoiding hitting the features. That’s when, one day, while riding down the slopes near my home here in Duved, I got passed by a group of skiers going down pretty fast, as every skier usually does. And that gave me the idea: why don’t I follow these guys? And, like that, I decided to point my board in their direction and started trying to follow their pace. 66km/h… 67km/h… 68.9km/h… 69.7km/h… can I break past 70km/h? Yes! 72.3km/h! That was a number I was impressed about for quite a long time! Finally I was the fastest of all of my friends. But that just heated things up, and there would be “revenge” when they come back up here so I wouldn’t hold that title of “fastest of us all” for too long. Specially not without practicing. And, during the time they were away, that’s what I did every single day. I used my lunch breaks from work to get to the slopes near my home and try to improve my speed riding, which is quite a good time of the day to do this sort of thing since most of the people are having lunch and the slopes are basically empty. Every day getting more and more comfortable in high speeds, and also trying to beat my own speed record in vain.

The weeks passed by and my friends returned for another visit. And, as soon as they came, I definitely didn’t hold that record for any time at all. My friend who previously held the fastest speed record managed to set a new one of 82km/h on day ONE and that shattered my score! Man… 82km/h??? That’s another 10km/h higher than my previously successful attempt! That was tough! In the back of my head, I couldn’t stop thinking that I should be a little bit better than this. Ok, my friends have been on the snow since childhood and I’ve been doing this for just five years but, come on, these days my friends ride it just for a few weeks per winter and I’m literally living in the resort. I should be able to beat this speed record with enough practice. And that’s what I set my mind to do now. It was time to break this barrier once again.

Each run, I was getting faster and faster… 72.5km/h… 74.8km/h… 74.9km/h… can I break the 75km/h? It took quite a while and a lot of effort, but, yes! A beautiful and round 75km/h score. But, I still wasn’t fast enough. So I kept pushing. 77km/h… 78.4km/h… Come on, let me break the 80km/h barrier! 79.8km/h… Come on!! 80.8km/h! YES! Let’s keep pushing, I’m almost there… but, before I could even beat 82km/h, my friend pushed the number forward once again: 84.5km/h!

My legs were dead at home when he showed me this result. To me it felt that, the harder I pushed, the further the barrier moved. After all, maybe we were all pushing each other harder. But, 84.5km/h? How? Where? I was flying past all of them that day. When did that happen? I had to ask him:

— Man… 84.5! F**king hell! Which slope was that?

— Hummm… Good question. I think it was at the end of that one we took when we were coming back from Björnen.

— Oh wow! Can we see it in the app?

— Nah… I need a premium pass on the Slopes app to see the full day stats. With the free version I can only see the daily bests.

— Ah, I can give you one of my Premium Daily passes that I have on my account so we can check it out!

— Cool! I’m curious too. Let’s do it!

As we added the Premium Daily pass to his account, we pressed the button that shows “which part of which slope was the place where the top speed has been reached” and the results of this investigation were… well… You see, during these days with my friends here, we tried to take advantage of the whole day of snowboarding the most we could, so we would ride until the lifts are closed and then, from the top of the mountain, ride down and rush to the bus station almost on the last minute to take the ski bus home. While my friends are packing their snowboards and skis at the back of the bus, I’m closing my snowboard tracking activities in the app. My friend, on the other hand, always left it to be done while sitting on the bus, relaxing after a tiring day. The issue is that, sometimes he took a bit too long to close the activity tracking and THE BEGINNING OF THE SKI-BUS ROUTE WAS BEING TRACKED AS A RUN! 🤦‍♂️

Well, now with the Premium Pass it was possible to edit the days and delete runs that are invalid (like, the ones taken inside a bus or driving or whatever other issue you had during the day). We deleted the 84.5km/h and his new speed record went back to be the 82km/h one. Just out of curiosity, we decided to check where that one was achieved as well.

And, guess what? SKI-BUS! 🤦‍♀️

The previous one from the end of the last trip: 71.9km/h? SKI-BUS! 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♀️

After we deleted all of the Ski-Bus related “speed records”, his top speed record fell all the way down to around 65km/h. This means that, for the past month, I’ve been trying to ride faster than a diesel engine powered bus running on a highway that takes us to and from the lifts in Åre! I was in total disbelief. So much focus and intense training for this sort of revelation. Oh well… 😅

During the next days, while we were snowboarding, his speed records were still on the middle to high 60s while I kept riding comfortably on the upper 70s. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t reach my numbers anymore. So when they left this second time, I still was the leader on the top speed category of our group. There was no more contest to have at this moment. But, well, since I was already hitting in the 80km/h range, why to stop there now? So, I kept pushing during my next days here in the mountain… 82.3km/h… 85.1km/h… 92.1km/h… 95km/h… until:

100km/h!

Now THAT was a number to be proud of! At that point, any quick run from point A to point B could reach around 80km/h with little effort. A casual ride from a lift to another on an empty day was averaging 70km/h easily. This Ski-Bus situation increased my levels of confidence quite a lot! I’m definitely a way better snowboarder than I was before thanks to this ludicrous contest. I’m not much into bombing down the mountain every day because I don’t want to become a hazard to other people trying to have fun in the resort but I’m happy that, if needed, I can ride as fast as a rocket with full board control. And I usually use this here and there to pump up the blood before practicing other stuff like hitting jumps and performing tricks.

Oh yeah!!!

About my friend? Ah, he came again for a third trip but now I was the one setting the pace and pushing the group forward. His speed record? At the moment of writing this article, 78.2km/h, with no buses involved this time, I hope! 😅

Do you have any weird story like that? A story about an event that made you push your limits harder and harder by accident? Share your thoughts below.

And, by the way, if you haven’t yet, go to https://getslopes.com and get your copy of the Slopes App today! It is available for both iPhone and Android devices and it is honestly one of my favourite apps. And, best of all: it is free!

Cheers and have a good ride!