British Snowboard Speed Record 151.72kph

So when I am not doing design work, I like to film extreme sports, however sometimes it's good to be the one in front of the camera as take part yourself.
Three years ago I decided that I wanted to break the British Snowboard Speed record, this was currently held by Jamie Barrow, one of the British boardercross racers.

I managed to get sponsorship from Ruroc helmets and Windlip Snowboards, we did some testing of their current boards and developed one specifically for the attempt, it has almost zero side cut, raised rails and carbon fibre topsheet to keep it rigid. Cork was also added around the nose to help dampen any vibrations that might be caused if it was not a perfectly smooth surface.

Although that seemed simple, that was the easy part, the hard part was getting permission to use the slope. With only 3 slopes fast enough in the world to use it quickly narrows down options of where to go, fortunately all of these were in the alps, unfortunately 2 of these were closed. Verbier glacier slipped meaning the slope no longer existed and Les Arcs, famously the fastest and longest of the speed runs was closed by the lift operating company as they did not feel the risk it brought to the slope equaled the monetary gains of those who came to the slope for speed events.
Leaving Vars the only slope still fast enough to reach the speeds needed, being run not by the main lift company or town but by an individual who was very anti snowboard means that it is almost impossible to find out when the slope is open. Two unsuccessful trips last season made me tentative about going all the way again only to be disappointed, however sometime you just have to go for it and hope that things will eventually work out...and they did.
The weather was clear and training was on for the skiers, not all the slope was bashed so we only had some to practice with, I did a few runs getting into it, hitting around 100kph, then 130 kph on the first day. With the slope pisted higher the next day it was great conditions snow wise, however there was an extremely strong cross wind, this didn't cause huge problems for me, just made it harder to keep straight and tucked up.

On my second run I managed to equal the British speed record reaching 151.72kph:





I did one more run, although reaching a higher top speed I had to put in a heavy turn to keep stable, only averaging 138kph average over the 100m measued distance.

Until next year!

Freeze Frame Filming and editing #Ridebarinvalthorens

#Ridebarinvalthorens

With this as the name of the short video I was making it roughly gives away what it's all about.
I joined a group of bar staff on their yearly trip to the alps to film and edit their trip together as part of Freeze Frame a company based around extreme sports filming, they can either rent the cameras out to you or if you are feeling lazy or want something slightly more professional they can film, edit and do it all for you.

It was perfect weather for filming in the days:


With all the footage collected and some tricks with the panoramic shots it was time for some editing.

I use the adobe suite to do my editing however I am still on CS4, with a little research into making a good intro in after effects and a voted choice over which song to build it to by the bar it there was only one thing left to do, cut it all together. Here is the end result, they had a great time but many are learning so it's no Art of Flight