Tweet
A little over a year ago I was listening to an interview with Tony Klarich on Dave Briscoe's Outside Edge Podcast. On his 50th birthday he rode 50 different things on the water all in 1 day. He rode skis, wakeboard, a bunch of different foil setups, a cooler, a picnic table and a bunch of other crazy stuff.
It inspired me to come up with my own 50 @ 50 challenge where I would ride 50 miles on the water doing a combination of slalom, wakeboard, and wakesurf all on my 50th birthday. My initial plan was to Slalom Ski 20 miles total, Wakeboard 20 miles total, and Waksurf 10 miles.
I'm happy to say I completed it Sept 16 which was a day early because of a band performance my son had on the 17th, my actual birthday. I ended up breaking up the miles different than my original plan. I did 15 miles slalom and 5 miles wakeboarding in the morning. Since slalom is more tiring for me I bailed on doing any more slalom. The morning weather was perfect.
We went back out in the afternoon for more wakeboard but the wind had picked up. We had a half hour boat ride to get to calm water. I got in another 18 miles there. At this point I was worried about finishing by the 7:30 sunset. We had to head back to our dock to change out crew. The other issue was the wind direction was going to force us to surf in a shallower area (8 to 10'). It's a little more work to stay with the wave in the 8' sections. I decided to wakeboard another 10 miles and just surf 3 miles at the end. I finished just before sunset.
My wife was there the whole time and drove for most of it. We had different crews for the various sessions. My wife said her hand was sore for 4 days because of all the shifting in and out of gear.
I slept like a rock. I was sore the next day but still went our for a wakefoil run on a friends boat around noon. I just recently figured how to get up on the wakefoil so I didn't include it in the adventure. Day two I could barely walk up steps. Day 3 my lower back was crazy sore. I was not back to normal until about day 6.
Did it all on our XT22 and in about 1 tank of gas. That 5.3 GDI is pretty awesome. I'll try to post some pics.
It inspired me to come up with my own 50 @ 50 challenge where I would ride 50 miles on the water doing a combination of slalom, wakeboard, and wakesurf all on my 50th birthday. My initial plan was to Slalom Ski 20 miles total, Wakeboard 20 miles total, and Waksurf 10 miles.
I'm happy to say I completed it Sept 16 which was a day early because of a band performance my son had on the 17th, my actual birthday. I ended up breaking up the miles different than my original plan. I did 15 miles slalom and 5 miles wakeboarding in the morning. Since slalom is more tiring for me I bailed on doing any more slalom. The morning weather was perfect.
We went back out in the afternoon for more wakeboard but the wind had picked up. We had a half hour boat ride to get to calm water. I got in another 18 miles there. At this point I was worried about finishing by the 7:30 sunset. We had to head back to our dock to change out crew. The other issue was the wind direction was going to force us to surf in a shallower area (8 to 10'). It's a little more work to stay with the wave in the 8' sections. I decided to wakeboard another 10 miles and just surf 3 miles at the end. I finished just before sunset.
My wife was there the whole time and drove for most of it. We had different crews for the various sessions. My wife said her hand was sore for 4 days because of all the shifting in and out of gear.
I slept like a rock. I was sore the next day but still went our for a wakefoil run on a friends boat around noon. I just recently figured how to get up on the wakefoil so I didn't include it in the adventure. Day two I could barely walk up steps. Day 3 my lower back was crazy sore. I was not back to normal until about day 6.
Did it all on our XT22 and in about 1 tank of gas. That 5.3 GDI is pretty awesome. I'll try to post some pics.
Comment