My Weekend at the Arnold Festival

For this weeks post i decided to write about my weekend at the Arnold Sports Festival. I decided to enter the Cowtown Showdown, which was the skateboarding competition that took place. I haven't skated much throughout the winter, so  after skating all day for three days straight I'm pretty exhausted.

On Friday I skated the new Skate-Naked park, where the Blueprint team and professional skater,Fred Gall were going to be skating. As we were skating the park, it was weird how friendly the pro's were. Sometimes when i  meet pro's, they don't really talk to the fans much. The Blueprint team spent time getting to know everyone and i was very surprised when the asked me if i was in school, and how I'm doing in my classes.

Cowtown Showdown Park

Saturday at the Arnold Classic was the open skate for the competitors, this was the opportunity for people to skate and become familiar with the park. The park was not what I expected, it was a lot smaller than i thought it was going to be. My friends and i spent the whole day skating the park, and we decided to leave early to view some of the other events taking place. When we arrived to the other building, we were disappointed to see many of the event were just ending. Although we didn't see many of the other events, we were able to attend the bikini contest and fitness modeling.

Sunday was the day of the competition. I arrived early in the morning to watch the beginners competition. An hour after the beginners was the Advanced(Intermediate) Competition,which was the competition I was competing in. I was told the advanced riders only had one run for a minutes and thirty second. This is when my nerves started to kick in, because you only have one chance to prove yourself. We were allowed thirty minutes to warm up, and as we skated, more viewers were coming to the event. The combination of the fact that we had one chance, and the many viewers was very nerve-wracking.

I was the second person to compete ,and when it was my turn, I had a terrible run. I only landed a few decent tricks, but I was glad I didn't fall. I knew I had blew my one chance and watched as the other competitors skated.. I was very surprised to see that not many people did very good in the advanced section, but I had not placed in the top five.

I ended up in thirteenth out of a little over thirty people,which is not bad. My two friends that i entered with placed sixth and tenth. I was a little disappointed with my performance, but besides the competition, I had a really good time at the event. There were product tosses and several mini competitions, which were very fun. I ended up skating the park after the competition with my friends, and I even got to see the man himself,Arnold Schwarzenegger. Overall i have to say it was a very good experience.