It’s been a busy couple of weeks since i last posted anything on here. Two weeks ago G-Kill (otherwise known as Greame Killick) and I piled into my Honda Fit with all of our bags, some food, a few bags of yarn and Michaela G-Kills girlfriend. It’s not called a Fit for nothing!
At this juncture I must extend a huge shout out to Chris Manhard, Graham MacLean, and the athletes on the CVTC. They graciously took G-kill and I under their wing for the weekend in Silverstar. They are an impressive group of up and coming athletes and it was great fun to be able to spend a few days getting to know them a little better. One day we watched Harry Potter, played bananagrams, crocheted tuques, and went to the greatest coffee shop on Silverstar Mountain to eat baked goods- all of which are amongst some of my favourite pastimes!
All photos are thanks to Jesse Winter, there are lots more at: www.jessewinterphotography.com
We also raced, and I came away with the win in the sprint which was encouraging and necessary as i was the lone canadian on the start line in the final.
The 10 km skate the next day was uber hard, historically distance skate races are not my forte, and throwing a bit of fresh snow in there just makes it gritty, and although the Americans totally dominated I was happy with my effort. Thank goodness Brooke Gosling laid down a fast time and stepped on to the podium to break up the total American dominance.
From there we moved on to Rossland for the Mini-Tour, and World Championship sprint trials.
The sprint race was up first, and I was pretty anxious to get this day over with, it’s been on my radar since the training season started. This was my chance, so in the final I let’er rip out of the start gate and didn’t look back. I may have let’er rip a little too aggressively as Sadie Bjorenson of APU came past me in the finishing stretch, and Holly Brooks and I ended up in a tie for second. I also can’t report on this day without mentioning the young Heidi Widmer who skied impressively strongly all day.
I also noticed she has a new blog, so check that out here!:
www.heidiwidmer.blogspot.com
Stef- after punching his ticket to world championships in the skate sprint needed a little help getting his poles off...
With the major excitement over we still had two more days of racing, a super short 5km skate, and a super snowy 10km classic race.
I didn’t manage to break onto the podium in the overall mini tour, I ended up with the wooden medal and the Americans took home the hardware.
It would appear that we Canadian women need to step it up with the distance racing!
Now it’s time to head back to Canmore for Christmas! I’m bummed that I will miss the hotly contested, and legendary Boxing Day Burn off at Nakkertok, but it will be nice to get some good training in in Canmore.
Merry Christmas!
