Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Sweet As!

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It’s been go go go since my last update which was when we went up to Castle Mtn Hut.  Since then I’ve developed a very close relationship with our new treadmill, been up to Whitehorse to celebrate the wedding of some good friends, had a visit from my parents and some great friends from Almonte, and been once again back at the SnowFarm in New Zealand where I put in some seriously awesome days of skiing in the Southern Hemisphere. 

Fred, Cendrine, me and AnneMarie out for an awesome ski!
  The most recent part first- the New Zealand part! Dasha and I were joined by three members of the CHEPH training center- Cendrine, Frederique, and Anne-Marie. It was so exciting to have these girls to ski with. Before this camp, I knew of all of them, but had never really spent any time getting to know them. The New Zealand Camp changed that, we spent a good three hours or so a day getting to know each other and the trails at the SnowFarm as we skied loop after loop after loop...

A photo of the five of us ladies courtesy of Fred.
In short they are an impressive group of focused young skiers.  They ski technically incredibly soundly, when I think about my knock kneed 17 year old self bobbing around on the ski trails compared to these ladies, it’s slightly embarrassing to picture how different we would look if I were to pull up an old video. It was fun to share skis and ideas with one another, and have some female company! I learned a few things, and I hope so did they. A few things are for sure they will be forces on the ski trails, and I’m getting old!

Chasing Anne-Marie around at the Snow Farm- all day every day.  It's hard keeping up to the young bucks!
 Our trip to Whitehorse was amazing for a number of reasons, obviously the Nish wedding was the reason for our trip up there and was the main attraction, but we also had a number of Northern experiences that won’t be soon forgotten. Alain Masson the king of kick, and all around amazing wax man and leader of the most impressive JR program in the country lives in Whitehorse and invited us to stay with them while we were in town. Alain, his wife Lucy, and their two kids Sascha and Felix were the best hosts ever. Sascha and Felix kept Joel entertained, while Lucy made sure we were taken care of on every other front imaginable, and Alain guided a group of us on a bike/run excursion to a lake where we caught a bunch of arctic char which we shared with the other out of town guests at a BBQ later in the day! Of course the well documented JP Classic ski race was another Yukon experience that I'm so grateful we were able to attend.
A big thank you and congratulations goes out to our friends Graham and Madeleine for getting Married, and introducing Joel to the Yukon. I have now taken a back seat to his new love named Whitehorse.

Just some of the crew enjoying our first ever July ski race!
 Sascha was pretty impressive on his Unicycle- Joel needed a few more days in Whitehorse to get up to speed, but not to worry we will be back!

Sascha- this photo says it all, unicyclist, ski fan, rad dude.
Joel was lucky Brian was there to help!
 On the training front I’ve been putting in lots of hard work on our new rollerski treadmill, which normally wouldn’t be that fun and I would rather do just about anything else- but when it’s raining out, and I’m on my own anyway the treadmill is actually ok. I’ve been developing a new appreciation for it. I get lots of feedback, and support because the coaches can easily take in my entire workout by sitting beside the mill as I work my tail off until I literally can’t go another step!

Now that I’m back in Canmore, and I’ve got jet lag somewhat under control I took some must needed rest time and am ready to get back at it! Rest days always open up some time for fun stuff, these past few presented me with a new opportunity, and a new hobby!

Even I was surprised at how much fun shooting arrows at a target can be!
Until next time, may the odds be ever in your favour!
Perianne