It appears that blogging while competing at the Paralympics is harder than I thought it would be. I haven’t posted in a couple of days, so there is some catching up to do.
Opening Ceremonies were on the 12th, and I’m sure some of you caught them on TV or online. What an amazing show VANOC put on for us! We were waiting under the stands for at least an hour, and it was so worth it! The crowd totally exploded when we walked in! And it was a full house. I’ve never seen, heard or been a part of anything like it! We walked through to our seats to thunderous applause and cheers. It sure felt great to be part of Team Canada!
The show itself was amazing as well. We especially enjoyed the Rick Hansen and Terri Fox bits. What an inspirig performance by everyone! The kids were especially great. After the flame was lit and the Ceremonies were over, the kids on the stage and in the choir stayed behind and cheered like mad! I went and high-fived as many of them as I could.
We didn't get home until midnight, and we had our first race yeterday. It was a biathlon pursuit, which consisted of 3 1 km loop with two shooting. There is a prologue in the morning and then those that qualify go on to a final in the afternoon. My prologue race didn't go according to plan. I didn't shoot well: 4 misses out of 10. And I didn't really do any of the downhill corners well. My legs didn't feel very good on the uphills either. So in general, not a great race. I was last in my category, and of course, didn't advance to the finals. But it's ok: biathlon is really not my best event - I"m still pretty new at it, and the first race is always the one to get the kinks and the jitters out. Most importantly, my races can only get better from here. So I'm feeling positive before the 15 km free race tomorrow.
My parents are here in Whislter for the first wave of the Petro-Canada Athletes' Family Program. They've been put up at the brand new Aava Hotel in Whistler all expenses paid, and they get tickets to all my events. I saw them after my biathlon race, and watched the rest of the races with them. They get pretty nice duds too: jackets, backpacks, touques, scarves, mits etc. I also visited them in their hotel last night, and went to the sauna and the hot tub with them. It was pretty funny: I told some women in the sauna that I was here for the Paralympics, and they had their kids bring down notebooks for autographs! I think that was the weirdest place to sign autographs ever! They said they wished they had a camera, and I was thinking "Oh thank God they don't!" Last thing I want is strangers taking pictures of me in my bathingsuit!
Today I took a day off from training. just to recover a bit. I've been training ever since we got here and recovering from that cold. I'm all good now, thank goodness, but some rest was definitely in order. So I just relaxed, got a massage at the polyclinic, caught up on e-mails a bit, had free McDonald's just because I could and had a nap. Then, our coach Tom had us a do a "team-buiding exercise," consisting of playing video games at the Vitamine Water lounge downstairs. They've got everything down there! Courtney and I tried our hand at some Mario cart driving on the Wii. It was really fun even thnough we both really sucked at it, being blind and all!
I'm so glad that you're still optimistic after having some issues in your race. Like you said, the first race is for getting the kinks out...and you were still getting over your cold.
ReplyDeleteI'm so jealous of you...free McDonald's, video games, awesome clothes and Laura Vandervoort...:-)