Breaking Trail

First race - 15 km classic

2012-01-27T10:15:00.001-05:00

Yesterday was our first race. It was a long one and quite tough. We did 3 laps of 5 km each. In my category, there were only 5 people: 4 Russians and me. I wasn't feeling focused before the race, and so just basically went out and skied as apposed to really racing. My skis were also much slower than Brian's, so that didn't help on the downhills. Brian and I decided to take the first lap really easy in order to save up energy for the last two. The second lap was the hardest for me. By the third lap, I finally started racing as I could hear the last Russian girl coming up behind me the whole way and was trying to get away. Even though I did get away from her, she still beat me by something like 6 minutes, being a B1 (totally blind) and having a big time recalculation as a result. My final race time was 1:07, a whole 12 minutes behind first. I was really upset after the race, as I'm still not any closer to the Russians even though I feel that I'm in much better shape overall. I realize now that it was likely because my head wasn't in the game, and I wasn't ready mentally. So today I'm putting that race behind me and focusing on the races to come. After all, I tend to not do well in the first race anyway.

Today, we're practising shooting and skating tomorrow's race course. Tomorrow is the first biathlon race. It will be a short one: 6 km. I practised a little shooting yesterday afternoon, and it went reasonably well. I shot a lot of 4 out of 5's and even a few 5 out of 5's. Today we'll practise with a higher heart rate, which always makes staying on target more difficult, as you tend to move the rifle when your chest moves with heavy breathing.

Well, I'd better go get ready for my ski. Good morning from Wisconsin. It looks sunny and beautiful out. Who could stay in a bad mood on a day like today?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Telemark Rd,,United States

Arrived in Wisconsin

2012-01-24T23:03:00.000-05:00

We are here in Cable, Wisconsin, for the first leg of the IPC World Cups in the U.S. Team Canada made up of the National World Cup Team, Development Team and the National Group (which I am a part of) arrived at the Telemark Resort last night after a day-long journey from various parts of the country. Caroline and I flew from Ottawa at 11 a.m. and met most of the team in Toronto. We made our connection even though we were late coming in. Our skis weren't as lucky. We think they were offloaded in Toronto because there wasn't enough space on the plane. Thankfully, the USOC volunteers got them to the hotel safely late last night.

Today was an absolutely gorgeous day: sunny and somewhat mild. The trails here at Telemark start right outside our door, which is really awesome. We took the morning to get organized and some people had classification. Since I wasn't one of those people, having been classified twice already, I helped our coaches scrape some skis in the wax room.

After lunch, most of us went out skiing. We skied the 5 km loop that will be used for the 15 km race on Thursday. My guide, Brian, isn't here yet, as there was a bad storm in Thunder Bay and he is somewhere on the way. So I asked Mary,, one of our coaches, to guide me today. The course is nice and mostly rolling, but there are some bigger downhills and longer climbs. The only downhill that might present a problem is somewhere in the middle of the course. It's got lots of turns through which you keep picking up speed. Mary and I went down it not realizing what it was like. I was holding on for dear life until the very last left-hand turn, where I got carried out to the outside and wiped out followed closely by Erica, who had to fall to avoid running over me, and Caroline, who fell to avoid running over Erica's pole. Then there was Mary, who looked back at me to see what happened and almost ran into a bush and wiped out to avoid that collision. So I caused a four-girl pile-up!

It's now evening and Brian has finally arrived. Yay! So tomorrow we'll be skiing at 10 a.m. and also possibly practicing some shooting. And I'm off to bed. Still need more rest after yesterday.

Good night from Cable.

O-Cup #1 in review

2012-01-15T23:03:00.001-05:00

I've been back from Thunder Bay for almost a week, and finally found some time to write about it.

The weekend's races went really well overall. It was great to have a chance to compete and get the first-race nerves out of the way before the World Cups coming up in a week. The nerves definitely got the better of me in the first race: a 3 km classic. I had skied the course quite a few times the day before and thought I had it down. Out of the three races, I'd say the first one had the most challenging course, both in terms of climbing and in terms of downhills. I was really nervous on the day of the race, it being the first race of the season. It also didn't help that I hadn't thought of arranging a meeting time and place with Brian, my guide. So in between doing our warm-up and testing wax to make sure we had grip, Caroline and I kept looking for Brian in and around the chalet. It later turned out that Brian was also forerunning (pre-skiing) the course every day, so that might have had something to do with why we couldn't find him. Needless to say that by the time my start time rolled around, I was really frazzled. I was almost relieved to start the race. Everything went more or less smoothly until we got to Lena's Leap: I jumped out of the tracks to go down the drop, but didn't quite make the right-hand turn at the bottom and tumbled into the snowbank. When I tried to get up, the tail of my ski kept digging into the snow. It wasn't until I stopped to analyze the situation and realized that I needed to turn onto my side and then put my skis down that I was able to get up and get going. Of course, by that time, I could hear Christine and her guide coming up behind me and thought, "Crap! She started 30 seconds after me, she shouldn't be catching up!" So I started skiing up the hill like mad. It didn't help that I had lost my toque and got snow in my ears when I fell. With about a kilometre to go, they were still close behind us, but we finally got away on the last hilly section of the race. This was a race when I actually found myself thinking "why am I doing this to myself?", as the last kilometre was super tough. It was not a great race, but definitely good practice for mental toughness!

The other two races went much more smoothly. I stopped worrying about finding Brian as we agreed just to meet at the stadium close to start time. I was able to do my warm-up with Caroline and then with Christine and her guide. It was very nice of both of them to let me tag along.

The second day's race was a 1 km classic sprint, which meant that we had to do a qualifier in the morning at around 10 and, as there were only three of us, a final at around 2 p.m. I had a really good warm-up and awesome grip for the qualifier (thank you, Harris). It was a really good race. I caught Christine on the uphill even though she started 30 seconds ahead of me this time. Then, we had quite a few hours to kill so a whole delegation of us went to scout out the next day's 5 km skate racecourse. We were able to ski only part of it though, as the rest was blocked off for the races. Caroline and I then had time to have some lunch and even a little nap on the floor! I was a little worried about the sprint final, as I tend to have trouble with racing more than once in one day, but I was able to warm up well once again and to finish the race without incident and well ahead of my competitors. This gives me confidence for the sprint races in the U.S. as sprints tend to be my worst event.

Sunday's race was a 5 km skate race, as I mentioned, and Robbi Weldon, the fastest female para-nordic racer in Canada, took part in the race. Robbi tried competing in tandem cycling last year and turned out to be amazing at it. So she will be competing in London 2012. But, as Thunder Bay is her hometown, she wanted to race with us. This was very good for us all, as competing against the fastest in your class is always a great way to measure your own performance. The 5 km race was a mass start and Robbi started to pull away right away. But, according to Brian, she was only 10 to 15 seconds ahead of us all through the first downhill and then uphill sections of the race. In the end, she beat me by a little less than a minute, which is really good if you compare it to last year's nationals. She must have gotten away on the last portion of the course, which was very twisty and curvy. Downhill corners are definitely an area I really need to work on. But I had a personal best in this race with a time of 17:03. I do acknowldge that it was a really easy course, but a PB is a PB and another confidence booster.

I stayed in Thunder Bay for another day when the races were done to work on skiing with Brian in preparation for the World Cups. We skied for two hours on Monday, and Brian took me up the two biggest hills at Lappe. He said he couldn't let me go home without going up them. I was completely exhausted by the end of that ski! So, this week, I've been taking it easy and recovering. Though on Wendesday, Patti had me do as many 30-second sprints as I could handle before getting light-headed. I ended up doing 25 of them and I never got light-headed! That was something.

So now there is only one week left before I go to the U.S. for the IPC World Cups. I hope they have wi-fi over there so I can actually post regularly.

For now, good night from Ottawa.

Pre-race update

2012-01-05T14:25:00.001-05:00

So Brian and I went around tomorrow's course 3 more times, the last time with a bit more speed. We worked on some strategies for taking some of the sharper corners and Lena's Leap, which is similar to Dirk's Dive at Nakkertok. It's a very sharp drop on one of the downhills here. It's so steep that on our first go-round yesterday I actually caught a few inches of air! It was kind of fun and scary. Skiing with Brian is really cool: he says there is no point in him telling me how to take downhill corners, it's whatever I'm comfortable with and his job is just to help me make up as much time on them as possible. So the last time we went around the coourse, we went a little faster and I thought that all the downhills and corners went actually really well. So let's hope things go as well tomorrow. It's a nice fun course, which has only one long climb, so I'm confident that tomorrow will go well. It's funny considering that the last time I skied on this course was in 2006 and I thought these were the scariest steepest hills ever! I've to a few places since then! The only problem tomorrow might be with wax as it's going to be really warm tomorrow. But we'll see if the snow actually warms up. It apparently stays colder here than other places around.

Anyway, that's my update for now. I'm feeling quite positive for tomorrow's race and am looking forward to racing with Brian.

Good afternoon from Lappe!

In Thunder Bay for O-Cup #1

2012-01-05T10:19:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year! I know I'm a bit late, but that's a recurring theme in this blog, so oh well.

I'm in Thunder Bay this weekend for the first Ontario Cup of the year and, incidentally, my first race of this season. I'm excited! We finally got snow in Ottawa on Christmas Day, and it was the best present Santa could have brought us skiers. I had all of last week off work so I skied up in the Gatineaus to my heart's content and we even held a short time trial at Mooney's Bay, which we needed to do in order to qualify for the Ontario ParaSport Games to be held in Huntsville in February.

But back to this O-Cup. Harris and I flew in yesterday, and we are staying at Patti's sister's house. Caroline will also be coming to stay with us today. She was supposed to arrive late last night but missed her connection and was stuck in Toronto overnight. We came out to ski at Lappe Nordic Centre yesterday afternoon, and it was a gorgeous day. They have a bit more snow here than we do and it's surprisingly warmer here than in Ottawa. I skied with Brian Berry, who has agreed to guide me in the World Cups this year. Brian is Robbi Weldon's guide of several years, but Robbi is tandem cycling this year in preparation for the London Paralympics, so I'm borrowing her guide in the meantime. Skiing with Brian was awesome. We skied the 3 km race course a couple of times and he launched into race strategy right away talking about where we can save time on corners and downhills, etc. I think I'll be able to learn a lot from him.

Our races are a 3 km classic prologue on Friday, classic sprints on Saturday and a 5 km skate race on Sunday. I will try to write updates throughout the weekend but Maureen, our host, doesn't have wi-fi, so it might be tough. I'm writing at Lappe right now.

Well, I'd better go and see if I can find Brian and get ready for a ski. Good morning from Lappe!

December update

2011-12-19T22:11:00.000-05:00

It's so hard to keep up with the blog, but I really really want to! I'll keep just have to keep trying.

So Christmas is just around the corner, and it probably won't be as merry as we'd like this year. For one thing, there's been absolutely no skiable snow since that one day in November, and this is weighing me down horribly. I'm still doing dryland training! It's December 19, and it's raining - it's a skier's nightmare! I have a race in Thunder Bay in 2 weeks and I have hardly been on snow yet! I've taken time off for the Holidays so that I can ski in daylight and...I'll be doing more ski striding, strength training, running and possibly rollerskiing (if it ever stops raining) instead! ARGH!

Second, this year will be the first year that Cliff and I are not going down to visit his parents for Christmas. He just got a new job at the airport and he has to work on both Christmas and Boxing Day. How's that for making merry? Not great, I'll say. We'll just have to make do on our own. Thankfully, my parents (though they are Russian Orthodox and don't celebrate Christmas until January 7) live in Ottawa and will be coming for dinner on Christmas Eve, and we're invited to a friend's house for dinner to celebrate with her family. So it won't be that bad. It's just sad when traditions get laid by the wayside...

Anyway, that's my short and rather bitter update for today. I will write more soon. I still have to tell you about the camp in Mont Ste-Anne and to post pictures. But I will have to save this for another day.

Good night from gross rainy Ottawa.

A lesson in training

2011-11-27T21:18:00.001-05:00

This morning, Harris, my parents and I went back to Gatineau Park, our National Capital natural treasure. This time we were there to rollerski. The forecast was calling for rain but not until this afternoon. So we were very hopeful it would stay dry, which it did, for the most part. Luckily, it only really started pouring when we were on our way home.

When I got up this morning, I felt so tired from yesterday's long hike that I was sure today's session was not going to go well. To my surprise, however, as soon as I got on my skis, I felt my energy coming back. And as we continued skiing along and I got over the initial bit of pain in my ankles from the heavy rollerskis (they are metal and so weigh much more than skis do), I started feeling even better. Today may possibly have been the first skate rollerski session that my technique (especially one-skate) actually felt super right. I was getting nice long glide on each ski and planting my poles more softly just as Patti Kitler (my provincial coach) taught me. I wish you could've been there Patti, it was a real Eureka moment! Just goes to show that you don't have to feel great when you get up to have a great race or workout session!

Sorry about the picture quality. It was taken with Harris's Blackberry,whereas yesterday's photos were courtesy of my awesome iPhone :)

That's all I wanted to share today. I'll have to write an explanation about rollerskiing at some point. For now, I'd better go to bed as tomorrow's Monday again. Sigh. Good night from the capital once more.

Snow was here...for a second

2011-11-26T22:31:00.001-05:00

We finally had our first snowfall this week! Sadly, after messing with traffic and flipping a bus, it all melted away in two days. But Harris, Lindsey and I got a good ski in on Wednesday night before it all disappeared. There were a good 5 cm on the ground at Mooney's Bay and a few people had already skied before us, so we were able to follow their tracks all around the park. We even ventured over to Vincent Massey Park for a spell. All in all, we got a good hour and 15 minutes of solid (well, not that solid actually, it being the first ski) skiing in.

But now the snow is all gone, so we're busting out the rollerskis and hiking poles again. Today, Kanata Nordic racers had a training session in the Gatineau Park. We all hiked from the Old Chelsea Picnic Ground, up Penguin hill and then my parents and I continued on Trail 1, while the racers did Skyline Trail, which is very rocky and ragged, so not so great for the vision impaired. It was an overcast and gloomy sort of day, but not much beats being in the forest, smelling the fall smells and breathing the fresh air while going up and down windy forest trails. It's one of my favourite types of training. There were lots of people out on the trails today, some walking with dogs, some nordic walking with big backpacks, lots running with ski hiking poles like ourselves. My parents and I did about 2.5 hours of ski hiking, consisting of ski striding with our poles up the hills (as I'm doing in the photo), jogging down the hills and jogging or ski walking on flats.

After training, we stopped off at Fresh Air Experience to pick out some skis for me. I've decided that it's time for me to act like a real racer and acquire more than just two pairs of good racing skis. I brought my two pairs of skis (classic and skate) with me to the store, and Duncan tested them for me to figure out what kind of conditions they are best for, so that I can buy two more pairs that will be good for different conditions. It turns out my two pairs are best for powder or hard-packed conditions, which I apparently knew without realizing it, because when Duncan asked me what I found the skis were good for I told him that the skate skis were horrible in that crazy 15 km race in Vancouver with the wet soppy snow. Duncan said his testing confirmed that those skis would be better for powder or hard-packed snow. So my new pair of skate skis is going to be better for wet conditions. For my classic skis, I said that they are really good for everything, but then amended that maybe they were not so good for Klister skiing (Klister is a horribly sticky grip wax that is used for hard-packed icy conditions in classic skiing). I was pleased to find out that I was right - based on the testing Duncan did with Fresh Air's very cool ski testing machine, my classic skis had no Klister pocket, so they would be no good on Klister days. So I will be getting a new pair of Klister skis. Unfortunately, they didn't have these two types of skis for my height and weight, so I've been put on the list of racers waiting for new skis and they will keep an eye on their new arrivals for skis that will fit what I'm looking for. I was super impressed with the way I was treated at Fresh Air today. I've always been treated super nice by Chris and everyone else there, but I've never had such special racer treatment before. If ever, anyone is looking for cross country ski equipment or bicycles in the Ottawa area and beyond, I highly recommend Fresh Air Experience. They have the best prices, very knowledgeable staff, and you can shop online. And as you can see, they really get to know their customers. And that's my positive rant for the day.

We were supposed to have a development training camp for the Eastern half of the country next weekend, but as there is no snow in Mont Ste-Anne, QC, it probably won't happen. The coaches are making the call on Monday. Either option is fine by me, since going to this camp meant that I couldn't attend my friend's wedding. I guess we'll have to wait and see what happens.

I'm going rollerskiing in the Gatineau Park tomorrow morning, and I really hope it doesn't rain as much as they're calling for! If anyone is readying this, please think of snow for me. I'd like to try out my new skis when I get them and to actually get off the pavement before races start!

And that's the end of this lengthy update. Good night from Ottawa!

Group training begins!

2011-11-16T23:02:00.001-05:00

Today was Kanata Nordic's first official Para-Nordic practice of the season. Caroline, Harris and I met at Mooney's Bay Park to do some rollerskiing in the dark. I think everyone was just trying to give me an advantage. We were joined by my potential new guide, Lindsey.

As I've mentioned before, finding and keeping a guide or guides is the biggest challenge for a vision impaired skier. This year, I'm trying a new approach: I'm posting an ad on as many ski- and sprots-related websites as I can. You can see it here. I am also looking for several racing guides or training partners this time in order to lessen the load that usually falls on one person. So far my ad has attracted one potential guide and I tried skiing with her today. It went really well. We did some intervals on the hill at Vincent Massey Park and also skied up and down the trail along Mooney's Bay. Although it was almost pitch black out, I felt really comfortable following Lindsey. I think this will work out well. I will also be rollerskiing with Lindsey in Gatineau Park on the weekend. We will try to use the radios that we usually use during races to communicate.

Well, it is very late and 6 o'clock is going to come very early tomorrow. So off to bed I go. Good night from Ottawa.

Attempt gazillion-and-one at blog resurrection

2011-11-06T22:48:00.000-05:00

Sooooo....this is awkward. I've been so bad at keeping up with this blog, no amount of updating will make up for it. So I think I will just start fresh right now.

It is November already and the ski season is just around the corner. Most of the trees have lost their leaves and I'm sure snow won't keep us waiting long, though it has been rather warm as of late.

This 2011-12 race season promises to be an exciting one! In addition to the usual local races, O-Cups and Nationals, I will be able to go to some International Paralympic Committee World Cups in the United States! There will also be some training camps and the Ontario ParaSport Winter Games. All of this will definitely keep me busy this winter. Can't wait for snow!

I went for an awesome warm and sunny rollerski with Harris Kirby this morning. We worked on lots of legs-only skiing and some tight turns on a downhill. We also threw in a few intervals just to keep things interesting. All in all, a great workout.

I can't write too much today as it's getting pretty late, but I just wanted to kick things off here a little and to say that I intend to maintain this blog much better this season. Though I know, I may have said this before...

Well, good night from Ottawa. And see you soon! Promise.

Mid-season update

2011-02-06T22:16:00.000-05:00

Well, I guess I'm being a slacker blogger again. I really wish I could stick to this better. Oh well, I'm here now, so here's a mid-season update.

This winter's been a bit of a challenge ski-wise. First we had no snow, then we got a bit and it all melted around New Year's. It was really scarse after that until last Wednesday, when we finally got that big dumping we'd all been hoping and praying for. So now the conditions are finally great and the weather has finally gotten nice and warm so we can really enjoy being outside.

I've had great coaching and teammate support this season, even if the weather has not been cooperating. I've been skiing with our Kanata Nordic group and my new part-time guide, Vesta, so almost every day of the week I have someone to ski with. And that's a huge help for getting out there on those dark, cold winter evenings when you'd rather just curl up with a book or watch a movie. Patti Kitler has also been coaching me long-distance by writing programs for me to follow, and I think that's going well so far.

I've also done a few more races since the last update, including the Nakkertok Invitational, Tay Valley Loppet and the Kanata Pretzel Sprints. Nakkertok's race was a bit difficult due to very light snow coverage resulting in a very bumpy course. But it gave me good experience in rinding over those bumps and not letting them throw me off. The Tay Valley Loppet was a really relaxed and fun 18 km race. The course was gently rolling - super enjoyable - and the weather was just perfect for a race: sunny and about -8. I came in second overall for women but it was just a small local race.

Today I participated in the Kanata Pretzel Sprints. Our new Para recruit Caroline and I got to race againt the sure-footed Juvenile girls' category (13-14 year-olds). There were 12 of us on the start list, which made for some interesting races. We got to do 4 sprint races each (prologue, heats, semis and finals). This was the first time I got to do that many races in one day, and though I'm now dead tired and don't know how I'm going to work tomorrow, it was a great experience. I got to practice passing, jockeying for position and trying to not let someone get away. All very valuable experience.

So that's all for the small local races this year. Now is the time more serious competition starts. Next weekend is Eastern Canadians and the weekend after that I leave for Halifax and Canada Games. Then in March, I've got Nationals, which will be my only (very slim) chance of qualifying for the IPC World Championships in Russia in April. For that, I would have to be the fastest B female in Canada, which is not likely with Robbi Weldon around. But I can always stay positive and do my best!

The other very exciting news is that Cliff and I are taking possession of our new house next Friday! We get to be homeowners and finally get out of this annoying apartment. This, of course, means that the next couple of weeks are going to be super busy, what with Easterns, getting the house ready, moving and then my departure for Halifax. But that's life. As Patti said today, it's always busy! At least my life is, anyway. And I wouldn't want it any other way!

That's all for now. Good night from Ottawa!

Hello, 2011!

2011-01-14T22:28:00.001-05:00

Yes, I know, I'm a little late on this, but hey, at least I haven't disappeared this time!

So 2010, "the year of so many hopes and dreams," as I believe I dubbed it last year, is over. And what a year it was! Europe, the Paralympics, a wedding - it's like I wanted to do it all in one year...and did! 2010 was a blast and a whirlwind, but 2011 brings with it new hopes, new dreams and new opportunities. The future is always more interesting than the past, just because it hasn't happened yet. I can't wait to see what's around the corner!

Undoubtedly, this season can't be as exciting as the last one, but there are still interesting events to look forward to. In February, I will be participating in my first ever Canada Winter Games. These Games are modelled on the Olympic Games and are designed to give younger development athletes (and artists) an opportunity to compete in an environment similar to the Olympic Games, only instead of competing for their country, they compete for their province or territory. The Games will be held in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and promise a fair share of their own fun and excitement. This year's Games will be the first to feature Para-Nordic and Para-Alpine events. I will get to ski with my Paralympic teammates, Courtney Knight and Mary Benson again, as well as to meet new promising young skiers. Check out the Games' website for more details.

Before the Games, I will be competing in a few local races and at Eastern Canadian Championships (which are, of course, always local). And after the Games, there will be Nationals in good old Canmore again. This time, they'll be integrated with the able-bodied Nationals as usual. And that's the plan for this season.

The season, so far, has been off to a very slow start: Ottawa, which never really had a lot of snow to begin with this year, lost all of it on New Year's Day. We got some of it back late last week, but conditions are far from ideal. This weekend, I'm racing the Nakkertok Invitational at the Nakkertok Ski Club. We went there on Wednesday night to check out the trails, and we could literally check them out - that is, there was not enough snow to really cover them up. So it was a very bumpy ski to say the least! We really really need some more snow...so please, everyone, send us your snowiest thoughts tonight!

Okay, I've rambled on for quite a while now. I'd better get some sleep before tomorrow's ski. Good night from the Nation's Capital.

TIme to play catch-up!

2010-12-24T15:14:00.001-05:00

Well, I'm sure everyone thought this blog was a goner, and, really, even I had my doubts, but here it is: my valiant effort at resurrecting it!

So...Where do I start on this catching up business? The new ski season has begun, and there's a good amount of white stuff on the ground although it favoured Ottawa with its presence a title late this winter. Last weekend was the first Ontario Cup of the season at Duntroon Highlands. The Kanata Nordic para team had a good showing. We got 2 complete sets of medals on both days: gold for Alex, silver for me and bronze for our new recruit Caroline. The Para-Nordic movement in Ontario has come a long way since even a couple of years ago. Last weekend saw 14 Para skiers out on the race course. Two years ago there were only 5 (and I was the only girl!).

In other news, I got married last summer, and my wedding was absolutely amazing. Everything went exactly according to plan, and even the weather co-operated. It was a perfect day that no one will soon forget.

Well, It is Christmas Eve, which means I can't stay long. I've got a train to Kingston to catch in a couple of hours. I know my newly resurrected blog is off to a bit of a shaky start, but I promise, it will get better.

For now, good afternoon from Ottawa and MERRY CHRISTMAS!

It's a multi-task life

2010-05-09T12:16:00.000-04:00

It's not quite the week of the 26th, but at least it's only the next week. This is going to be harder than I thought. There is just too much to do and too little time. I'm still multi-tasking like crazy with work, wedding planning, training for the 10k and all the other little things that come up along the way.

Last Tuesday I participated in filming a documentary to promote hiring people with disabilities. It was a really interesting experience. The film crew came to my office, and they were there from 9 to 1:30 filming me work; doing an interview with me and my reviser, Monica; and shooting a messaging session with a white background. They aslo came to Mooney's Bay Park after work to shoot me training. We were not finished until 8 p.m.! Who knew filming a short took so long! I was exhausted the next day. I think the film will be a really powerful advocacy tool for people with disabilities, and I am proud to have been a part of it. The finished product will be ready at the end of this month and will be available online. I will provide a link to it as soon as I have it.

I have also been asked to do two speeches in June, one for Relay for Life, apparently in front of 700 people (Agh!) and one for a women's leadership group that is part of Bank of America. I am honoured to have been asked but totally terrified as well. However, doing this can only make me stronger as an athlete and a person and teach me valuable public-speaking skills. I did my first speech at the CNIB a few weeks ago, and it wasn't all that scary, but it was only a small, very friendly audience - actually it was a great place to start my "public-speaking career." Haha!

The wedding planning is going well too. We have booked our honeymoon: we're going to Hawaii! We're so excited about it! Can't wait! The wedding is only 2.5 months away: wow, I didn't even realize till now how close it was! It'll all be good though, I'm sure.

My 10k training is going well too, though sometimes it gets pushed to the back burner with all the other things going on. I have done a couple of 6 km tempo runs (sustained-pace faster runs) that were under 30 minutes (under a 5 min/km pace). Today I am doing a 7 km tempo: since the race is only a few weeks away, I need to start getting closer to the race distance.

Well, it's just after noon and I have my horseback riding lesson at 4, so I'd better get going for my run. Happy Mother's Day from Ottawa!

I'm still alive!

2010-04-13T23:24:00.001-04:00

No, I have not fallen off the face of the Earth, though it may seem that way. I've just been settling in to what passes for "normal life" around here. Well, I'm still as busy as ever, what with the wedding planning, work, catching up with my oh-so-neglected friends, and suddenly being wanted by everyone for speeches and documentaries! No wonder I haven't updated my blog in a while. But I wanted to assure you and myself that this blog is not a thing of the past - I love it too much to let it pass into obscurity like that. After all, it's the only chance I get to practise the creative side of my writing, considering that all I translate at work is legal stuff.

So I have come up with a proposal (with the help of someone from the Kanata Nordic Ski Club). I will ensure that I do at least a bi-weekly update of this blog, unless something big and blog-worthy comes along, such as the Ottawa Race Weekend. So my next update will have to take place the week of April 26. I hope this works!

Now for a little update. April is the month that skiers normally have off training. That doesn't mean that we do absolutely nothing; it just means that there are no formal group workouts and everyone just does what they like to stay in some type of shape.

However, I'm training for the 10 km run in the Ottawa Race Weekend, so I'm in full running mode. I'm starting off slow though, since I haven't run all winter. I was running every other day and now have started doing two running workouts in a row before taking a day off. All in all, it's still a much more relaxed schedule than usual. And I'm enjoying it. :)

I've also started horseback riding again. Last Saturday was my first lesson after the winter, and it was a lot of fun! I got to do lots of cantering in the hope of getting the body position right, but I still haven't got it. Oh well, more practice works for me! Also last weekend, Cliff, Jon and I went to the Nickelback concert at Scotia Bank Place. And it was great as usual. Pictures to follow (I hope).

Well, that's all for now. I have to go to bed - I've got work training tomorrow in Gatineau. Good night from Ottawa.

Tonight's gonna be a good night!

2010-03-23T17:31:00.001-04:00

This post was written yesterday during my travels...

So it’s all over and now I’m sitting in my room waiting for the 11:30 bus to YVR (Vancouver Airport). The last few days have been even busier than before if that’s possible. We have had a lot of fun here in Whistler and it’s really sad to say goodbye and go back to reality. Reality is kind of a scary concept right at the moment. I have to go back to work the day after tomorrow!

Last night was unbelievable! First we watched the Closing Ceremonies at the Whistler Medals Plaza. It rained on us a bit while we were waiting to march in, but stayed dry for the show. We marched into the plaza through the streets of Whistler to lots of cheering and applause. It was awesome to see all the people come out. The show itself was great too. Chantal Creviazuk sang to us and there were some wheelchair dancers, a champion hoop dancer, figure skaters from Russia, as well as the usual ceremonial parts. The show culminated with an impressive fireworks display. Best of all, I could see some of it on one of the giant screens they have set up in the plaza. And it was broadcast live everywhere this time!

I’m now continuing my blog post at the Maple Leaf Lounge in YVR. The Internet doesn’t really seem to be working though, so I will have to post this when I get home.

So continuing on. Apparently, Canada has a tradition of throwing a huge party after Closing Ceremonies at Paralympic Games. But we also had to pack up all of our stuff and check our bags in to Air Canada before midnight. I got stuck in Whistler Village for a while after the ceremonies, even though I kind of wanted to go back, pack up and party. First, our development group went over to the Delta Hotel to present Jeff Whiting with a print we all pitched in for in recognition of all he’s done for us. He’s retiring after these Games. Of course, I wanted to do that before going back to the Village - Jeff has been an awesome force in the development of Para-Nordic skiing in Canada. Thank you so much for your hard work and dedication over all of these years!

Then we ended up going over to Canada House where they had some speeches and general boring stuff. But people wanted a chance to hang out with their family and friends who weren’t allowed in the Athletes’ Village. So we ended up getting back to the village only around 11:30. I scrambled to get everything packed and checked in. My bags were stuffed almost to bursting! Then I ran over to the Vitamin Water Lounge. The party was definitely in full swing there. I looked for people I might know, but it was really dark and crazy in there, so I went outside to figure out what to do next. I met a Belorussian guy outside and hung out with him. He got me beer, so that was a good start. Then Jay and Stu showed up and saved me from an increasingly awkward conversation. Apparently, those two had been busting moves on the dance floor this whole time. So I went in with them and we danced, drank and partied until the party was over around 4 a.m. The place went bonkers when "I Got a Feeling" came on, and with good reason, it was most definitely "a good night!" Every once in a while I went over to the video game part of the lounge where the less-party-oriented part of our team was hanging out. I also managed to trade some team Canada stuff for Slovakia and Switzerland hats and to dance with a few random strangers. I went to bed for a three-hour nap at around 4:30 and got up at 7:30 only to find out that we were taking the 11:30 and not the 9 o’clock bus to Vancouver! I don’t feel all that bad though, I’m still pretty lively and it looks like I can spell so we’re doing good!

Andrea and I sporting our newly traded Slovakia gear

Jordan from CPC, Jason and me wearing my new Swiss hat!

Oh and as for my race yesterday, it was pretty nearly perfect. It went about as well as it could have gone. It was 1,200 metre classic sprint, and I had awesome grip and good glide. The snow had softened up quite a bit because it was raining. As a result, the crazy 180-degree top corner was a lot better than it had been the day before. Robert and I were able to do a quick snowplow around it. And the so-called “Canada Corner” into the stadium was just fine as well. Courtney still beat me by one place, but she’s a great double-poler, and my double-pole could definitely use some more work. I ended up 9th after somebody ahead of me got DQ’ed. My goal was top 10 for that race and I definitely achieved it! What a great way to end these awesome Paralympic Games! And what an amazing experience! All my hard work had definitely paid off and was absolutely worth it.

Now I can take a little rest before planning my next big adventure. It's not quitting time yet though. The best is yet to come, I just need some time to rest and think now. Good afternoon from Ottawa.

P.S. The Vancouver Sun article that Robert and I were interviewed for came out a couple of days ago. So take a look if you like. It's got a few inaccuracies, but that's ok. :)

Almost at fever pitch

2010-03-19T16:09:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was another crazy crazy day! It started out with our 5 km classic race. The conditions were super hard and fast in the morning. The corners were pretty sketchy, so our policy was "fast up the hills and cautious on the downhills." That was what we did, except we missed the wax a little and our grip was not as good as we'd hoped. I had a really good race though, and was happy at the finish line. I didn't fall on any of the downhills, even though I did trip on an uphill bump because my wax wasn't working. My teammate Courtney Knight beat me by 4 seconds, which was a bit of a bummer, but that is sports. And at least I wasn't last this time!

Courtney and I are always very close and we take turns beating each other in our friendly competitions.

Cliff, Kathleen and my parents were there to cheer me on, which was really great. I watched the rest of the races with them afterwards. It was a beautiful sunny day, and it warmed up quite a bit throughout it. I went into Whistler with them just so we could spend a bit more time together. Then they headed off to Vancouver to watch the sledge hockey semi-final game.

Our afternoon was also very busy. Courtney, Andrea, Tom, Robert and I headed to Saskatchewan House around 5 to visit some people from Andrea's home province. Everyone was really nice and friendly over there, and we really got a warm reception. They had live music, some snacks and drinks, and we got to talk to a few reporters and some Paralympic fans.

Afterwards, we went to watch the Medal Ceremonies at the Medals Plaza in Whistler Village. Canada got three gold and a bronze yesterday. What a great day for us! The Ceremonies were very upbeat and fun. I took a ton of pictures.

To top the evening off, we showed up at Canada House, where there was a party in full swing. I met quite a few people over there too. Collette came to celebrate her bronze medal with teammates and friends. She graciously took pictures with everyone all evening. She is such an inspiration to all of us and an awesome human being.

We got home around 11 o'clock totally exhausted. I think everyone is keeping going on sheer adrenaline these whole Games. There's just so much to do and so much to take in!

Thankfully, today is a day off before the relay race tomorrow. Our women's relay team is made up of Mary, Jody and Robbi. The rest of us will definitely be there to cheer them on tomorrow morning! Go girls go!

We've got a few things planned for today as well. Tom's got us doing a scavanger hunt in Whislter Village at 1:30 as another team-building exercise. Not sure how that's going to work for us blind people, but we'll try our best. Then, we've got team photos at 4. After that, we're hoping to get a group together for a dinner out with family and friends. So another busy day coming up.

Well, I'm off to my massage before I head out to Whistler. Good morning to you for a change!

Finally some down time

2010-03-19T13:49:00.001-04:00

This is a post from March 17 that I wrote but was not able to post due to Internet problems.

Today was finally a low-key day. We went for a short classic ski on the five-km loop that we will be racing on tomorrow. It was in great shape, and both the zero skis and klister skis worked well today. It was really nice to finally be able to go for a classic ski. I’ve been skating for too long! Tomorrow’s race should be fun! Cliff and Kathleen will also be there to watch, so it’ll be great to see them afterwards.

I went out to Whistler and walked around with my parents for a couple of hours. I saw all the different plazas and hotels. It was St. Patty’s Day, so the Village was really festive. They also have a lot of Paralympics-related stuff set up, such as a little pavilion explaining the sports etc. They were broadcasting some of the events of the day at one of the plazas.

In other news, I got a certificate signed by John Furlong, CEO of VANOC, and Philip Craven, President of the IPC, for being 7th in the 15 km today. It appears that you get one if you’re in the top 7. Pretty awesome, eh?

Well, big race tomorrow, so I need to go to bed. The Internet is not working here right now, so I’ll have to post this tomorrow. Good night from the Athletes’ Village.

2010-03-16T22:59:00.002-04:00

The Paralympic Games are at about the half-way point, and we're busier than ever. Yesterday was the 15 km free-style race. Only 8 girls started in my category, one of them didn't finish, and so I was 7th. The conditions were really tough: it was +6 and sunny, so the snow was very wet and mushy. All the uphills were really hard work, not that they usually aren't, but with the slush it was even worse. I don't usually ski in this type of conditions, so it took me the first two five-km loops to figure out how to ski in them. I fell a couple of times because I got stuck in the mush and then had an asthma attack from working so hard on one of the bigger hills. The last lap actually went pretty well, but it was too late to catch up to anyone by then. But I'm still happy with my seventh place because that's seventh at the Paralympic Games! It's not my fault that other peple were to chicken to even start! Some volunteers had my camera, but I guess they couldn't figure out how to work the zoom either, so Robert and I turned out pretty tiny, but here is an article from the Ottawa Citizen that's got a pretty good shot of us!

Then, just after I finished, guess what? Doping control got me again! They must really like me over there! And if I said it was hard to pee before, it was extremely difficult after a 15 km race when I was all dehydrated from sweating so much! I didn't get out of there until almost 5 o'clock! It was brutal!

At 7 o'clock, we went over to the Medals Plaza in Whistler for the Victory Ceremonies. Canada got 2 gold and a bronze. How about that! The McKeever brothers and two alpine skiers did us proud. Go Canada go!

Afterwards, we all went to the Whistler Canada Paralympic House for the family and friends reception. It was a great time! I got to hang out with my parents, teammates and some friends that are here volunteering. Jerry King and Melanie Ross, our fellow Para-Nordic skiers who didn't make this year's team are here as forerunners: they ski the race course just before competition begins in order to ski in the snow and "warm up" the trails for us. Jeff Whiting, the Para-Nordic Development Co-ordinator for Western Canada and one of my personal coaches, is here working for TV. There were also other old teammates and teammates' family members that I got to catch up with. It was great to see everyone and to share this amazing experience with them. Thanks for coming guys!

Top photo: My dad, Mikhail; my mom, Olga; Jason Dunkerley, our Athlete Services Officer; Courtney Knight, my teammate; Stewart McGregor, our other ASO; and me

Bottom photo: me and Jeff Whiting

This morning started off just as crazy as yesterday. I thought I would just take today easy and get a few things done, like my blog and laundry. So I got up at 9 and was getting my things together for the laundry, when I heard Courtney and Andrea running around in their room. I went to ask what all the commotion was about, and they said, "We're going up to Callaghan 'cause Rick Mercer will be there with the McKeevers and we want to say hi!" and then, "you should come with us!" At first, I said no, I hand't had breakfast yet and all that, but then they twisted my rubber arm by suggesting that I just get a coffee and muffin from McDonald's and come along. So of course I did. I ran to the Food Tent like mad, scaring Mary in the process, and was on the bus in no time.

It was pouring rain out there, but we got our gear and went looking for Rick. We found out that he was at a certain spot on the rec trails, so we scooted over there and sure enough, there they were. So we stood there, realizing belatedly that we hadn't really come up with a plan of how we were going to approach them. Then someone spotted us and said "Hey Canada!" which was all the promting we needed. We skied over to them, said hi and introduced ourselves. And that was about all we did, but then that was really all we wanted! We had fun paparazzi'ing it up!

When we got back to the Village, Rob (who also came along) and I had an interview with a reporter from the Vancouver Sun. It took us almost an hour: it was quite a bit more in-depth than I'd expected. It's so much fun being a celebrity for a week!

By the time we came back to our building, Rick Mercer was already here, and he actually came over to our athletes' lounge and interviewed a few of us (not me, I'm not interesting enough). He did a big interview with Collette, our silver medalist, which was awesome, and of course, we got to take pictures with him. So watch for an RMR with our team on it in the coming weeks!

Left to right: Andrea, Mary, Rick, Courtney, Margarita

And that's all the news from here for now. It's a crazy life we lead for another week or so, and I just can't get enough of the excitement! Tomorrow is the long biathlon race, but I'm not racing it. I'm trying to rest up (as much as can be done in the circumstances) for the 5 km classic, which should be my best event, or at least the one I'm looking forward to the most! I'm going to go see my poor parents now, I've been so busy today, I haven't been able to go visit them. Some family time is definitely in order. Good night from Whister!

Time to catch up!

2010-03-15T00:41:00.002-04:00

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!

Well, that's the gist of my news for now. Sorry about it all having to be so copressed, but we're just too busy up here! There's the racing and recovering and then there's all the other cool stuff to do! Tomorrow night, there's the Friends and Family reception, so I'll be pretty busy all day again. Will try to post the day after tomorrow! Good night from Whistler.

Just another day In the Athletes' Village...

2010-03-12T01:19:00.000-05:00

Today has been a good day characterized by intense pin trading and the realization that WE are very special around here. This experience is going to spoil everyday life forever! How will we ever recover?!

We started the day off with some skiing. It was snowing really hard out there, but the snow was more soft and fluffy than yesterday, so the turns were really easy to do today. Tom Siletta, the coach designated to the development group, was helping Andrea, Courtney, Robert and me with step-turns. By the end of it all, I was able to do two perfect step-turns around that difficult right-hand corner into the stadium. That was an amazing feeling. Now I just have to remember that moment when I race. We had some trouble with the classic skiing though. My zero skis (skis with chemical bases used for days like today) were really catching the snow on the downhills and making them difficult to negociate. We will have to figure something else out if the classic race conditions are like today's.

After the ski, I went for a massage at the polyclinic. I got an ART provider and my back now feels so much better! Then I had some volunteers do my laundry for me. I met a Japanese coach who spoke very little English in the laundry trailer. He managed to intimate that he wanted to trade pins. So I showed him that I would be back in five mintues and brought down some Canada pins and tatoos. He gave me a Japan pin, and I went for my massage. When I came back to pick up the laundry, the volunteers told me that the Japanese man was looking for me because he wanted to give me a present and take a picture. And just on cue, he shows up with a "Hello Kitty" toy and his camera. We took a picture with each other's hats on and said "see you at the Opening Ceremonies." And that's how I made a Japanese friend!

The pin trading continued at supper, where my guide, Robert, got all excited and ran around the dining hall trading with everyone in sight! It was intense and pretty hilarious. Then, we met my old Russian friends that go way back with my parents and traded some more pins. Canada pins are a hot commodity around here!

I've still got a lot of pins left to trade, and I hear Kathleen is bringing me some City of Ottawa ones. That'll be exciting. If only all the other countries' pins were as nice as ours!

So tomorrow's the Opening Ceremonies, and most of us are going. It'll be a long afternoon. We're leaving at 2:30, the Ceremonies start at 6, and then we have the option of leaving right after we march in or staying untill the end. If we stay till the end, we won't get back until midnight. It's a pretty tough call considering most of us race first thing Saturday morning, but it would be so cool to be part of the excitement at BC Place! If you're interested in watching live, go to http://www.paralympicsport.tv/. Otherwise, CTV will air something or other that they taped at 11 a.m. on Saturday.

Well, it's a big day tomorrow. Good night!

Go Team Canada!

2010-03-11T01:47:00.000-05:00

Today was a really exciting day! We had our official Village Welcome ceremony this afternoon. It was great! They had representatives from the four host nations welcome us and sing to us, about a hundred super pumped volunteers cheer for us and take tons of pictures as well as insprational videos including one from Rick Mercer. Laura Vandervoort was tere (somehow I seem to be the only one who knows who she is!). She did a great speech welcoming us and wishing us all the best. There was, of course, all the official stuff, such as the flag-raising ceremonies and some officials talking, but the mood was really festive and everyone was really excited. At the end, the Host Nations led everyone in a dance, and then we took lots of photos. Here's a sampling.

I did get a picture with Laura, but unfortunately it's on Robert's camera. I will get it from him tomorrow and post it espcially for Cliff! :) Everyone went for supper right after the team picture, but Robert, Jamie, Alexei and I stayed behind and took all of these pictures as well as a whole bunch with different volunteers. My doping control officer from yesterday happened on the scene around that time and was swiftly recruited as our photographer. When we walked back to the Dining Hall for supper, some of the volunteers asked us if we wanted to go for beers! We asked if we could take a rain check untill the last night of the Games: we are after all in training!

This was by far the most exciting part of my day, but the rest of the day was pretty good also. I was pretty busy all day. We went skiing at 9 o'clock this morning again. The trails have softened up quite a bit since yesterday as it appears Callaghan got a good dumping of snow last night. The conditions were a lot slower, which was fine with me, but not with most other people. The corners have become a lot more challenging to navigate becauce of all the loose snow. It's easy to catch a clump and go down. Robert and I worked on some of the more difficult turns today and are happy to report that we were able to find a way to negociate all of them safely (after a few falls and some advice from coaches and teammates). Tomorrow we will go do some classic so that we can report back to our wax techs about what wax works for us and what doesn't.

Oh, and I think I'm feeling a bit better today. I still had trouble breathing and my muslces felt weak, but I think I am regaining my health. Well, I need to go to bed as sleep is one of the best things for you when recovering from an illness. Good night from the Athletes Lounge!

Settling in and fighting off colds

2010-03-10T00:59:00.000-05:00

We went for our first ski up at Callaghan Valley today. Well, not actually our first ski, but our first of the Games. The conditions were lightning-fast up there. We flew around the 2.5 km course, even though I was still not feeling great. I found all the uphills super difficult today even though I was trying to go up them really slowly. This cold just keeps on hanging around. I can't shake it! I talked to the team doctor today, and he said it's nothing more serious than a cold (thank God!), but he thinks it's this virus that's been going around that produces a really long-lasting cold with a cough and congestion. Sounds about right, and I've had this cold for about two weeks. So here's hoping that it's almost gone. All I can do right now is just get lots of rest and ski as well as I can. So that's the plan! And I know I really have to get some new pictures for the blog, but it's been pretty hectic and I've been pretty tired. I will definitely try to get some sightseeing around the village in tomorrow!

In other news, I got picked for doping control...again! But thanks to having done it just last week, I found this one to be a breeze. My first pee attempt was successful and the team doctor and I were out of there in no time. So hopefully this means that I'm done with testing for the Games, but you never know, it is after all random.

We also got our HBC clothing back that we wanted exchanged. Amazingly, they were able to get me all the sizes I asked for, and now all of my clothes fit! I'm so happy! The uniforms we got are so nice. I would definitely wear most of the stuff after the Games.

We had a little CPC orientation meeting tonight as well. They introduced all of the mission staff and described their roles to us. So now we know everyone and are all set for the Games to begin. We just have to get over our colds (we have a new casualty in Mary). Pray for us and send positive vibes our way everybody!

Good night from Whistler.

We're in the Village!

2010-03-09T02:07:00.000-05:00

We are finally here, as unbelievable as it is! We arrived in the Whistler Paralympic Village this afternoon after travelling pretty much all day. We drove out of Canmore around 8 this morning with our van packed to the rafters with suitcases and ski bags. Poor Andrea could not see anything to the right of her because of all the stuff, and Robert had to tell her when it was safe to change lanes! But we got there in one piece and flew out to Vancouver. Andrea and I were at the very back of the plane. As we walked onto the plane, we saw Jamie sitting in first class. He says to us, all sad-and-lonely-like, "aren't you guys in first class?" Apparently, somehow he was the only one on the team who got bumped to first class! We still haven't figured that one out.

When we got to Vancouver, we were greeted by lots of volunteers, who helped us get our accreditations validated, got all of our luggage for us and loaded it all on the bus. They also took lots of pictures of us and gave us pins and lolipops that turned our teeth blue. Celebrity treatment or what? Then we drove to Whislter on the very scenic Sea-to-Sky Highway. When we go to the village, there were some super strict security measures to go through, which included checking underneath our vehicle with mirrors and an airport-style screening. But before it, we got free Coke out of a free Coke machine, which made our day.

We got lots of gifts and our HBC clothes when we got to our rooms. The rest of the afternoon was spent in a frenzy of trying things on, exchanging what we could with teammates and filling out official exchange forms for CPC. Most of the sizes didn't seem to match what we requested last year somehow, but according to Jason, our Athletes Services Officer, that's pretty normal for the Paralympics.

Then, we went to supper, and boy is the food tent amazing! It's got all these different stations: Italian, Asian, continental, cold-cut, soup - you name it! And of course, the usual free full-service McDonald's. We had an Asian stir-fry that they made right in front of us after we picked our ingridients and pizza and ice cream. Can't wait to try something else tomorrow!

Alright, it's quite late and I'd better go to bed. We're going skiing at 9 tomorrow. Good night from the Whistler Paralympic Village!

Last day in Canmore

2010-03-07T23:37:00.000-05:00

Our last day in Canmore was pretty uneventful, which is okay: we might as well save all the excitement for tomorrow! We went for a short ski this morning, which, by the way, I found really difficult today - I guess I'm not as recovered as I thought I was. What's worse, it seems everyone staying at the house is sniffling and not feeling 100%. I'm sure I am, if not fully, then at least partially to blame for that, though Jamie also brought something back from Vancouver with him. No matter whose fault it is, we're officially the "sicky house" now, so much so that the "A" team declined our dinner invitation today, for which we don't blame them in the least. We wouldn't want to be around us either if we were healthy!

The rest of our day was spent packing, cleaning and resting. We also had an amazing dinner tonight: steaks and saussages on the BBQ, sweet potato fries, salad and steamed kale with lemon. It was delicious! And pretty mcuh everyone had a hand in making it (not literally, that's not why we're all sick).

So tomorrow morning we're off to the Calgary Airport, from whence we fly to Vancouver, where VANOC will pick us up and take us to the Athletes' Village near Whislter via the new Sea to Sky highway. We get to have our first taste of Paralympic surrooundings. We also get out sizable clothing package and other "swag." All in all, quite an exciting day ahead. Better get a good night's sleep. Good night from the Sicky House!

Gorgeous day at Lake Louise

2010-03-06T22:48:00.003-05:00

I was finally feeling well enough today to go for a bit of a ski. I can't remember the last time that I took three days off in a row, so I really needed to shake the cobwebs out and get some movement in. Andrea took us up to Lake Louise today, and what a day it was to be up there! The sun was so bright and warm that our new warm-up suits were definitely too hot to wear, and the scenery was so beautiful that I had to keep stopping for pictures.

That being said, I got a solid 1.5 hours of skiing in with a few short sprints to shake myself up and get my muscles to remember speed. It was really hard to get myself going at first, but after about 40 minutes it got easier: I could breathe better and my muscles felt more inclined to do their job. I think in a couple more days, I'll be good as new. Now, if only the rest of my teammates can stay healthy!

It being as warm as it was, we of course had to use klister for grip today. For those of you not familiar with this ski-specific stuff, klister is what nordic skiers use when the conditions are warm and icy. It's a really sticky liquid grip wax that is a huge pain to deal with. We Ottawa skiers are a little spoiled when it comes to ski conditions: our snow can most often be counted on to be cold and wet - very easy to wax for. As a result, I don't even own any klister, much less know how to apply it! Well, I got a lesson today from the non-spoiled west-coast skiers! If you're interested (and I'm sure most of you are not), Klister comes in a tube like toothpaste, and you have to put little dabs of it all along your grip zone and then use a cork - or apparently your thumb (no, thank you!) - to spread it very evenly. But the really fun part is of course cleaning it off your skis after you're done skiing! It's a sticky mess. Yuck!

Anyway, after we'd finished our ski, Andrea took us "to say a quick hi to the lake." So today I actually saw Lake Louise for the first time in my life. Granted it was covered in ice, but it was still breathtaking. See for yourselves!

The Lake Louise Ice Festival is on there now. They've got a skating rink set up on the lake, an ice castle bult and some Olympic-themed ice sculptures including giant Olympic rings. Of course, we had to take a picture with those. Don't we look sharp in our new team outfits? Apparently, Andrea missed that memo :).

And that's our day! Two more sleeps till Wistler! Good night from Canmore for now.

Of colds and Paralympic dreams

2010-03-05T16:35:00.001-05:00

I'm sitting on Andrea's parents' back deck revelling in the spring sunshine. I'm wearing my new red Canada warm-up jacket - hard proof that I did make the PARALYMPIC TEAM! The "press conference" finally took place yesterday and the long awaited team announcement was finally published on Cross Country Canada's Web site.

I've still got a cold, which is part of the reason I haven't been blogging in the last couple of days. My cold took a turn for the worse after our Mount Shark adventure, and I've been resting for the last three days as a result. I'm trying really hard to get better before our trip to Whistler because, as my dad said, it's better to come to the Games undertrained but healthy than overtrained and sick.

It's not uncommon for athletes to get sick as they start peaking for a major sporting event because they push their bodies to the limit, and as a result, their immune systems become more fragile. It is definitely better that I have this cold now than a week from now, on the day of my first race. I just have to make sure I do everything in my power to get better. I'm already much better today, but I must ensure that my body is strong enough to resist other infection before starting serious training again. I will probably be going for an easy ski tomorrow and maybe just a walk this afternoon. It's no fun to be sick at a Paralympic training camp, but it would be so much worse to be sick during the Games!

Yesterday, we finally got all of our team clothing from CCC including a warm-up suit and parka (which we will have to return or buy out after the Games), a racing suit, a cool sweater with First-Nations designs, touques and gloves. There was also some kind of press conference, which generated pretty much zero actual media attention, just as could be expected for a Paralympic press conference. We took our team picture with our CPC media jackets, and that was about it. Then I went home and veged, while the rest of them went to a yoga class. I would have loved to go, but thought I'd do myself more good by staying home.

Today's been another quiet day for me. I slept in till 11, while everyone else went skiing, and then have been checking my e-mails and cleaning up. Sorry this blog entry is so boring, but there's not much to say when all you're doing is nursing a cold. Things will pick up soon, I promise!

Good afternoon from Canmore.

Canmore: Day 4 - Skiing in K Country

2010-03-02T20:04:00.000-05:00

As you have probably gathered from the title, we went for a ski in Kananaskis Country today, more specifically, at Mount Shark. The ski area is at 1750 metres of altitude and has got some amazing, perfectly groomed trails. It was sunny and beautiful all morning, and the air smelled wonderfully of pine. Courtney and I went for a two-hour relaxed ski. I'm still not back to 100% and don't want to overdo it. Most of the others skied for 3 hours.

That is Mount Shark in the background of this picture, which Courtney and I took hurriedly before our guides started complaining about our dallying. It's supposed to look like a shark's fin. The scenery around here is absolutely breathtaking. Here is another shot of the mountains around Mount Shark.

And guess who we met on our way back from Mount Shark? This cute gentleman right here.

It was pretty funny too because Andrea, who acts as our local guide to the area, was just saying that sometimes you have to stop for mountain goats when you're driving up here, and the next thing we know there's this mountain goat right in front of us! And then he ran up the cliff face like it was nothing!

Well, we're now about to eat our shrimp and pasta supper prepared by Courtney and Robert (who is a self-proclaimed professional vegetable chopper). So talk to you tomorrow.

Canmore: Day 3: Just taking it easy

2010-03-01T18:44:00.000-05:00

Canmore gets a perfect 10 for weather and snow conditions today! It is so beautiful and sunny here that everyone can't help but think of spring. Yet the artificial snow is holding up well to the warm weather: the conditions were just as hard and fast this morning as they have been. Somebody said that it got up to 10 degrees here yesterday!

Today most of us just went for an easy ski. I've still got a pretty bad cough, so I'm just trying to work on getting better. Patti did a bit of coaching with me today though, helping me to figure out how to stay balanced on the downhills (which are my major weakness), and how to use my arms to help me go faster. It was a very productive little session, now I just have to remember what she said and use it in my races.

Everyone who is not going to the Paralympics went home today, but we got a team picture before they all left.

After that, the rest of us Development kids, namely, Alexei, Robert and I, moved to Andrea's parents' gorgeous house. This place is like a dream house: it's huge, all wood inside with wall-size windows. And it overlooks the golf course! I get a bedroom all to myself because I'm sick. Andrea graciously offered me her own room, so that I wouldn't get Courtney sick. They have a 50-inch TV over the fireplace downstairs and a steam room in their shower. I just took advantage of the latter, and think that is the only way to shower. The house is also built into a hillside, so the whole front of it sort of overlooks a cliff. Here's a view from the patio

and a view of the house, though that is only part of it.

So tonight Andrea is taking us to a yoga class and we're having supper made up of whatever leftovers we can find. We want to finish everything before we go and get groceries for the week.

Nationals in Canmore: 5 km classic

2010-03-01T01:06:00.001-05:00

Today's race was a 5 km classic on the same tough course as yesterday. Even though I'm still feeling under the weather, I had a great race today. I was second after Robbi again, but my time was much closer to hers this time. You can see all the results on the Zone4 Web site. My time was 20:24, which is not bad for such a hilly course. I didn't get the cash today though, because Mary snuck right in and beat me to the third place in the combined category by 3 seconds! On another note, we were talking today about how the Para-Nordic program has grown over the last few years. In 2003, there was only 1 athlete (namely, my mother) at the National Championships, and this year, there were 22 not counting the Russians who came for some friendly racing before the Paralympics. That's pretty amazing!

After my race today, I had the honour of being approached by a CCES (Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sports) representative, who gaily informed me that I'd been selected for doping control. So I'm now officially in the Big Leagues! I get to pee in a cup while someone's watching. And it was a lot harder than I had thought: it took me two attempts and a couple of bottles of water before I was able to provide a satisfactory sample. But now I know how it works and what to do for next time, which the lady said was one of the reasons we are being tested this week, so we know what to do at the Paralympics.

So Nationals are now officially over, and pre-Paralympic training camp begins tomorrow. We've not been told anything about the "A" team's plan for this week or whether we're part of their plan or not. So we're kind of assuming we're on our own. Patti and the Ontario group are here for one more day, so we will ski with them tomorrow. As to what happens after that, I guess we'll wait and see. Tomorrow, Alexei, Robert and I are also moving to Andrea's parents' house, thanks to Andrea's generous offer, and Jamie arrives in Canmore. So another busy day awaits. Good night!

Nationals in Canmore: 10 km free

2010-02-28T01:23:00.001-05:00

We arrived in Canmore safe and more or less sound last night (I'm still a bit sick). Our travels were pretty uneventful and very smooth, thankfully. We settled in at the Rocky Mountain Ski Lodge as usual, where Patti and the team had supper ready for us. It's nice to be taken care of! Alexei, Robert and I also have a pretty spacious two-bedroom apartment suite all to ourselves. We really can't complain!

This morning we had our first of two races here in Canmore, a 10 km free technique. The course was a 2.5 km loop that we did 4 times. Last night, the national team coach, Kaspar, had told me to take the first two laps pretty easy and then pick it up on the last two, seeing as I've got a cold and the Paralympics are just around the corner. So that was what Robert and I did this morning. The race went very well. It was a pretty tough hilly course, and I'm glad we went slow on the first two laps. I think I might have died on the last two otherwise! As it was, I came in second after Robbi in my category, and third in the combined Blind and Limb Weakness category. I got $100 for being third, and I think this is the first ski race I ever won money in! Pretty cool!

We also had a little athletes and coaches' Meet and Greet and banquet, which were both pretty low key, but pleasant.

On a less pleasant note, we found out today that Brian McKeever won't get to race in the 50 km race at the Olympics tomorrow, because of a coach's decision to put in racers who are more likely to medal. We were all very upset by this decision, knowing that it has been Brian's dream for so long and how disappointed he must be. He was such an inspiration to so many across Canada and even beyond. We all thought it was horrible that someone would take that dream and that inspiration away. There is so much more to say, but it's not really my place to say it and I should really go to bed. I've got a 5 km classic race tomorrow on the same tough course, and my throat is still sore. Here's hoping I feel better in the morning.

Good night from Canmore.

Last day at home

2010-02-25T22:23:00.000-05:00

My brief sojourn at home is coming to an end, and I'm off to Canmore, Alberta, for Para-Nordic Nationals tomorrow. I seem to have developed a bit of a cold in the last couple of days, which really sucks, but at least I have a chance to fight it off before the Games. I think it's already getting better. We have only two races at Nationals this year: a 10 km free on Saturday and a 5 km classic on Sunday. Those races are also not the most important of the season, so if I don't do the greatest due to being under the weather, it's not the end of the world. After Nationals, we get to hang out in Canmore for about a week and train, and from there the ones that make the Paralympic team are off to Whistler. The official team announcement has been put off until March 2nd, so I can't yet say for sure whether I get to go or not, but I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed. I hope you are too. For now, you can see my Paralympic hopeful bio on this page. The CPC site seems to be very slow, so be patient.

This week, my friend Leona organized a send-off party for my guide, Robert, and me. It was held at the Blue Cactus restaurant in the Market, and quite a few of my friends came out to visit with us and wish us good luck. It was really great to see everyone. Thank you all so much for coming, and thank you Leona for organizing and hosting. Leona also made an amazing cake. It was a snowy mountain with hills, ski tracks, Canadian flags and banners on it. It was also very tasty (I was very happy that it was chocolate inside; Leona knows me well!). All in all, a great night out with friends. Well, I'm off to finish packing and watch some figure skating. Good night!

Gatineau Loppet: 10 km free

2010-02-21T23:48:00.000-05:00

Today's race went really great. I posted a time of 36:24, which is definitely a personal best, and this time I'm on the results list, which can be found here. I made sure to not forget a single thing today, including first and foremost my transponder as well as my heartrate watch and sunglasses. Our radios only worked one way for some reason, but thankfully I could hear Robert and he couln't hear me, not the other way around. We also got a little boxed in at the beginning of the race and had to pass people really aggressively to get out of there. This all happened on Pink's Lake hill, incidentally the biggest hill in the race, so we really had to push it up that hill to free ourselves from the crowd. Thanks to Robert's superb passing techniques and great guiding, we finally got out of there and could race our own race at our own pace. We worked on pushing over the tops of the hills instead of just cruising over and losing all our speed. It's really hard to do, but it's a necessary component of a good race. My pushing-over still needs work, but it's getting better. We also worked on a consistently fast pace, as it was an easy course and 10 km is not such a long distance that you can really pace yourself too much. We went down Pink's Lake hill in the tracks because they were faster than the middle of the trail, but I still get scared of the speed I pick up in the tracks and tend to slow myself down. That still needs work as well.

After the race was done, a few people came to talk to me and wish me good luck at the Paralympics. I thought that was really nice, and I really appreciate everyone's support. Robin McKeever was in town for the Gatineau Loppet: he won the 49 km loppet both days. He also came over to say hi and to congratulate me on my progress in the World Cups. That was awesome as well. I also got to meet a little girl, the daughter of a teacher from Robert's school. She was very impressed once her dad told her that I was the girl from the Cheerios box that was going to the Paralympics. She said "I thought you were much older, like 40 or something!" I thought that was pretty funny.

My fiancé, Cliff, completed his first ever ski race today. He was not sure about it, thinking that he was not a good enough skier, but he said that the race was surprisingly easy and that he really enjoyed it. His time was just over 50 minutes for a 10 km, which is a great time for a first race! He says he might do a few more races next season.

So it was a very successful weekend overall. Everyone had a good time and we had great races. I was first in my age category both days (I looked at the results to see where I would fit in for the first day), and in the top 10 for women overall. That's great for a blind skier racing in an able-bodied race, even if it is a more recreational type of race. And on this happy note, I bid you good night from Ottawa.

Gatineau Loppet: 16 km classic

2010-02-21T00:18:00.000-05:00

Today I took part in the 32nd edition of the Gatineau Loppet in the Gatineau Park. My pre-race prep was a bit of a disaster as I seem to have suffered an episode of amnesia. Well, not really, but I managed to somehow forget to put on my timing transponder along with my heartrate watch. The heartrate watch I could easily do without, but the transponder anklet was the only way to get an official time for the race. But I forgot it and remembered about it with only 5 minutes left before the start. My dad wasn't able to bring it for me in time, though he ran as fast as he could. I did the race without it and I'm not on the results list, but I had a great race in my own humble opinion. My guide, Robert, thought that my diagonal stride was very good, but my double-poling was not as strong. I agree with him: there is definitely work to be done on my upper-body strength in order to improve my double-poling. I think that I can do the technique, I just lack the strength to make it work well for me. Here's a picture of me double-poling with only a kilometre or so left to go.

In other respects, despite pretty poor snow conditions on the trails (the Parkway portion was great), I thought the race went very well. We paced ourselves through the whole thing, I went strong up all the hills, and we were able to communicate the whole time, thanks to Jamie's leaving his club's radios for us to practise with after Germany.

We also ran into a little glitch with the radios this morning. Alexei must have had the same amnesia bug as I, as he forgot to bring us the pouches for the radios that go around your waist. But thanks to someone's brilliant idea and Chris from Fresh Air being the awesome helpful guy that he is, we were able to borrow a waterbottle holder from Fresh Air Experience for the race. It doubled just fine as a radio holder. Thanks Chris and Fresh Air!

It would have been nice to have an official time, but I'm not too upset about this. As Harris said when we ran into him after he had finished his 49 km loppet (great job, Harris!), thank God this happened here and not at the Paralympics. After all, this was just a training race, and one to help us get all the kinks out. And now I will always remember to put my transponder anklet on as soon as I get it, even before the bib number!

Tomorrow is the 10 km free, and I am certain things will go better for us. Cliff gets to do his first ski race tomorrow too, so that'll be exciting for him and everyone else. Go Cliff! Alright, it's bed time for us now. Good night!

Back in Canada

2010-02-16T10:46:00.001-05:00

Judging by my lack of writing, you have probably already figured out that I'm back in Ottawa. It's funny how much busier one is when they're at home. I've been back for a week, and I have a couple more weeks at home before I head back out. I'm leaving for Canmore, this time for Para-Nordic Nationals, on February 26, and from there, if all goes according to plan, we head to Vancouver/Whistler on March 8. For now, I'm just taking a little break from hard-core racing, seeing some of my friends, hanging out with my fiancé, watching the Olympics, and of course, getting the last bit of training in before the Games.

Cliff, Jenna and I checking out the ice sculptures at Winterlude (Jesse F. was there too: he took the picture :))

Last weekend, we got lots of skiing in in the Gatineau Park. We did another biathlon simulation on Sunday, focusing on faster shooting. I shot 22 out of 25 with range times of around 1 minute to 1:10. Those are much faster range times than I had in my World Cup races, where I usually took over 2 minutes to shoot. If I can emmulate this at the Paralympics, it would help me a lot. I also worked on some high-speed downhill corners last weekend because we figure that is where I can gain some speed in my races in the short time we have left. Step-turning around difficult corners has always been really difficult for me, but snowplowing around them makes me lose most of my speed. This means I have to start climbing the next hill almost from a dead stop, while my competitors' speed carries them up part of the hill. In Whistler, the most important thing for me will be to get really familiar with all of the downhills, so that I can go down them confidently and let my momentum carry me up as far as possible.

Next weekend is the Gatineau Loppet in the Gatineau Park, and I'm taking part in its shorter distances this year: the 16 km classic and 10 km free. It'll be good to do another couple of races before Nationals the weekend after and the Paralympic Games in March. The Gatineau Loppet is especially valuable experience because it is a mass start and it will allow me to practise racing in a crowd, passing people and being passed.

Well, it's time to do some shooting practice. It's my day off but it's always good to practice shooting whenever possible. After all, there are only a few weeks left! Good morning from Ottawa.

Germany: Day 7: Biathlon short and a night out

2010-02-07T17:27:00.001-05:00

Today the Notschrei Nordic Centre was a total twilight zone. It was so foggy you could hardly see in front of you. And that went for the guides as well as the blind skiers. The guns were acting very strangely too: most of them were faulty for some reason, and they had to change the start times and the length of the intervals between skiers in order for everyone to be able to have a gun when they got to the range. Only about half of them were operational!

Overall, I was happy with my race today, even though I hit a few snags on the way. My shooting was not too good: only 6 out of 10, so I had to ski 4 penalty loops, and on the second lap, I caught a rut or something on the biggest downhill and went for quite a tumble. I actually went head over heels once after I fell! I'm sure the volunteers that were standing right at that spot got a good show. I wish I could've seen it myself! It took me a while to recover after that fall, but I really gave'er once I got up. It was only after the race, when the adrenaline rush had passed, that I realized I hurt my ankle. I'm sure it's notthing serious, just a minor sprain, but I'm glad this happened in the last race, not the first.

After the races were done and we packed up our skis, we went to Freibourg for a bit of sightseeing and to celebrate the end of the World Cups. It's a really nice small city with cobble-stone streets, colourful old buildings, a huge cathedral and dozens of small shops. Unfortunately, they were all closed today becasue it's Sunday, but here is a picture of one of the streets. Note all the bicycles.

After we'd walked around the old town for a bit, we decided that we must do as the Germans do and sample some German beer. Now I don't normally drink beer, but I had to this time - I was in Germany for crying out loud! So we found a little pub and had a beer and a pretzel each. And then Jamie decided that we should order one of these samplers in order to taste a variety of beers from the area. Now I don't know much about beer or if it's good or not, but tasting all those different beers sure was fun.

Alright, it's definitely past the time I should be in bed. Breakfast is at 6 tomorrow and then we're off to Canada. It'll be a very long day, so I'd better try to get a little sleep. Good night for the last time from Oberried.

Germany: Day 6: 15 km skate

2010-02-06T17:43:00.000-05:00

Today was a very pretty and warm day here in the Black Forest. We had our long-distance skate race. I finally had a great race today. After the short sauna and some rest yesterday, my muscles felt like new instead of feeling tired and being full of lactic acid like before. We did 4 laps 3.75 km each. It was a tough course with a very long gradual climb, some wicked downhill corners and a very steep coulple of uphills just before the stadium. But this is a World Cup race after all! I actually didn't find the long gradual hill to be such a big nuisance - I train on those all the time up in the Gatineaus - it was the shorter steep ones that got me every time. And I've realized that I really need to work on those hairpin corners, because I'm too chicken to step-turn them, even though I know that in therory I can do it. I have exactly 18 days in Ottawa before I have to head out again for Nationals and the Paralympics (assuing I get to go) to work on some of that stuff.

Robert and I tried using the two-way radio headsets that the Vancouvver gang has been racing with in the last few years. We really liked them for a race like today's. They allow me to communicate with Robert if I need to tell him to slow down or to let me know about something, and they allow Robert to not have to yell over all the noise of the race and the distance between us. I can hear every word he says through the earpiece.

As for my result, even though I came in 9th and second last and was just 1.1 seconds out of the World Cup points, I'm still happy with it. I have never been anywhere near points in a long race before. And had I been my old classification, a B2, (they've just reclassified me as a B3 God knows why), I actually would have gotten quite a few points. I know this is too technical for you non-paranordic skier readers, but just know this: today was the best long-distance race I've ever skied!

Oh, official results can be found here.

Well, it's getting pretty late and I'm really sleepy, so I'd better go to bed. Tomorrow's the last World Cup race of the season, and it's a short bithlon, just like the first race we had in France. If I shoot clean and ski fast, maybe I'll get some points tomorrow. I certainly hope so. I also hope to go into Frieburg tomorrow after the race, since I still haven't done any sightseeing in Germany. We start late again tomorrow, so who knows. Then we get outta here early on Monday morning. So if I don't get a chance to update this tomorrow. I will see y'all in Canada and hopefully write from there. For now though, good night again from Oberried deep in the Balck Forest of Germany.

Germany: Day 5 - Biathlon Pursuit

2010-02-05T16:21:00.001-05:00

Today was kind of a weird day. I've been totally stressed out and on edge all day. My race went alright I guess. I was 8th out of 11, which is not too bad for me. No points though. I didn't shoot well, only got 5 out of 10, but it was snowing all day and the guns tend to flake out a bit when the snowflakes get between them and the targets. Also, the biathlon range is just at the top of a small hill, which means that your heart rate tends to be higher when you come in, which in turn, makes it harder to hold the gun steady. Neither Courtney or I advanced to the pursuit finals, even though we thought we would. We were told last night that the top 10 would advance, but it appears that it was only whoever got World Cup points. So only 6 advanced. Robbi was one of them, but she ended up quitting the race for some reason.

Tomorrow is the long skate race (15 km), and I'm not looking forward to it, to be honest. I'm tired and it's a long way to ski. I didn't see the course, but I was told it was very hilly, so it'll be really hard. Oh well, I'll just ski it and not worry about anything else tomorrow. Yeah, at least that's what I'm saying right now.

Our Vancouver contingent is leaving us tomorrow, so for the last two races it'll just be Harris, Alexei, Jamie, Robert and me. I'm just about ready to go home myself. It's been a really long trip, but there's only two more days and races left. Ok, the girls are packing up their things and getting ready for their morning flight, but I gotta go to bed to get some much needed shut-eye before my long race tomorrow. Good night from Oberried.

Germany: Day 4: Classic sprints and other things

2010-02-04T16:29:00.000-05:00

So I haven't written in a couple of days and a lot has happened since then. We had our classic sprint races today. Everyone on the "B" team did really well today - got lots of points and big percentages. I was sort of having an off day myself though. I didn't really do as well as I think I could've, but everyone has those kind of days once in a while. I was 12th and advanced to the quarter-finals and was 4th and last in my heat...again. I should've been able to do better than that in a classic sprint. But oh well. The weather was very nice and sunny today, and it was warm.

The flag carrying experience was a lot of fun. They had one person from each team get a flag and carry it through the crowd and get up on the stage with it. Robert and I followed Belarus to lots of cheers and applause from the crowd. Andrea got it on video for me, but here's a picture of us on the stage after all the other countries had joined us.

We aslo got a good team photo today in between the races.

Left to right: back row: Jamie, Robert, me, George, Alexei, Courtney, Andrea

front row: Lou, Sebastian, Charles

Alright, biathlon persuit tomorrow. Gonna be another long day. Better go to bed. Good night from the Black Forest.

Germany: Day 2 - Let's train in the rain

2010-02-03T03:35:00.000-05:00

Yes, it is raining outside and very windy. And yes, we're going skiing in just over an hour. Today is the official training for the classic sprints tomorrow - might be an opportunity for us to use our "Zero" skis (skis that have a special chemical base that does not require waxing and will provide grip in very warm fresh snow). In the last couple of years they have become a must in Europe and Whistler. Of course, we don't get too many chances to practise on them in Ottawa, considering as how we usually have perfect cold snow conditions (except right now I hear).

So we went up to our race site yesterday, and it actually literally was "up" that we had to go. The Nordic Centre is located at about 1200 metres, even if the town is at 450. So we'll still be racing at altitude, even though it si considerably lower than in France. We weren't able to try out the race trails yesterday because they had just had a U23/World Juniors Championships here and had to regroom and prepare everything for our World Cup. We ended up skiing on some very nice recreational trails though. They were wooded and very soft. It snowed the whole time we were out.

In the afternoon, I went and relaxed in the sauna that our landlady has in her basement. It was very nice once we actually figured out how to work it. A bunch of the others went into Freiburg. I wanted to go too, but I guess I took too long in the sauna. I hope we can go again sometime. Apparently, there is a really cool cathedral.

Tonight we have the Opening Ceremonies for this World Cup, and I was told last night that Kaspar and company had nominated ME to carry the flag, because I'm "the most improved athlete at these World Cups." That was a nice surprise! I'll let you know how that goes tomorrow. Better go get ready for skiing now. Good morning from the rainy Black Forest!

Germany: Day 1 - We ARE here

2010-02-02T03:23:00.000-05:00

Well, after I had posted that entry yesterday, we were still stuck in Bessans for a number of hours. Eurocar, the company that we rented our vehicles from, apparently sent out a mechanic at 2 in the morning the day before to fix our van, which had frozen. That smart guy promptly punctured our fuel line, rendering the booster cables that we got from Patrice's father-in-law pretty useless. So eventually, after we'd had lunch at the Fringale across the street, we took a $650 cab ride to the Geneva Airport, which we were able to charge to Eurocar thankfully, and rented another van, also at Eurocar's expense. That was after Harris had spent the entire mornng and half of the afternoon on the phone with some guy called Mustafa from Eurocar. Thank God for Harris!

Anyway, we finally got to Oberried deep in the Black Forest of Germany just after 10 o'clock last night. What's a World Cup trip without an adventure, right Patti? We, the four girls, are staying in a nice little apartment full of cute little knick-knacks and equipped with a washer and a nice big kitchen. We're going to be eating most of our meals at the restaurant across the street, but it's still nice to have a kitchen.

Wer just had a nice big German breakfast, complete with bread, ham, cheese and very good coffee. We'll be going skiing in a bit. It's a little further of a drive to the trails than in Bessans, but it's still pretty close to here. I hope we can go do some exploring around town this afternoon as well. I'll be on the lookout for Black Forest cake. Oh, and it IS much warmer here and much lower. We're at 450 metres of altitude and it's something like -2 outside.

Good morning from Oberried.

Travel day...maybe?

2010-02-01T04:13:00.000-05:00

I know I haven't posted in a while, but things have been pretty hectic around here. The last two days we've had races, then I had to pack and clean up last night.

We were supposed to have been on our merry way to Germany by now, but our diesel van is frozen solid and so is the "A" team's Hertz van. It went down to -22 last night, so no wonder. Good news though, I just heard that Kaspar got the Hertz running, and he's about to show Harris what to do to get ours running. So we might be outta here sooner than I'd thought.

Quick update. Yesterday was the 5 km classic race, and it went great. I reallhy enjoyed finally doing some classic technique. I was 9th, just behind Robbi, and I got World Cup points, so I'm quite happy with my race. It went really well, except that I took a quick fall on the big left-turn downhill because the tracks started a little bit too soon after the turn and I caught them and went down. I got up really quickly and got right back into the race, so it hardly slowed me down.

Saturday's biathlon race was not bad either. I shot well agian: 17 out of 20 even though it was a windy day. I was 1 minute and 1 second out of the points though and finished just behind Robbi as well. I took a pretty good tumble though on the very last downhill before entering the stadium on the last lap. I caught a rut in the snow, did the splits and went down hard. Somehow in the process of falling I got a cramp in my calf and had lots of trouble getting up. Once I got up though, I couldn't move for a little while because, apparently, the fall sort of knocked my breath out. Harris was standing right at that spot on the course, and he kept telling me to get going because I apparently had started sliding backwards. I never noticed though! Anyway, stuff like that happens in races, so it's alright. Kind of funny actually.

Yesterday, after Courtney and I packed our skis in the wax room, we went and took a bunch of pictures with the Beamer's cup that I brought from Canmore. If you've been reading my blog all along, you might recall that Andrea, Courtney and I had planned to take one of those coffee cups with us to Europe and bring some pictures with it back to Beamer's when we go to Canmore for Nationals next month. They have a digital picture frame with all kinds of pictures of people with their cups from all over the world. Here are a few that Courtney and I took yesterday.

I think they turned out pretty good, thanks to my super awesome new camera.

Last night we had our last supper here at Patrice's restaurant. He said that for our last day he would treat us to wine and cheese "du pays" (from this region). So we got to try some superb red and white wine from around here and some Beaufort, Tomne and Bleu de Bonne Val cheeses. It was all so good and so French.

Ok, that's all for now. I have to go help the girls clean the other people's dirty appartments, and then we can hopefully be on our merry way fianlly. Let's hope it's a little warmer in Germany too, but not too warm! We do need snow.

Good morning from Bessnas for the last time (I hope).

France: Day something or other: Day off

2010-01-30T04:33:00.000-05:00

This is the morning before our long biathlon race. This is what I wrote last night but was unable to publish.

It’s a snowy evening in Bessans. The snow has been falling softly all day. This should make for very different conditions for our long biathlon race tomorrow. The snow should be faster because it’s most likely warmer than what’s on the ground, but, if there is an abundance of it on the trail tomorrow, it might actually slow things down further.

Today was a day off or a training day. We did some shooting in the morning and just a bit of skiing. Tomorrow’s race is a shooter’s race, so I’m hoping to do alright as long as I can keep my shooting good like in the last biathlon race. The blind categories start late tomorrow – my start time is 1:00:30, which is going to pose a bit of a problem with eating. It’s a long race, so we need to make sure we don’t get hungry in the middle of it, but having this late start means we have to figure out when to have breakfast and when to have some snacks and WHAT to have as snacks, as we won’t be able to eat lunch until after the race.

Well, the internet is not working here today for some reason, so I guess I can’t post this tonight. I will try again in the morning since I will have so much time to waste.

So the internet is working now. I slept for like 9 hours last night, but am still feeling tired for some reason. Regardless, I'll just go out and ski as hard as I can. After all, that's all I can really do.

Yesterday, a group of us wanted to go on a little road trip to Turin, Italy, but we found out that it's too far of a drive from here in the winter to do in an afternoon. So we just went exploring in this region of France. We drove over to the bigger town of Modane and got a "sablé" (kind of like a butter cookie). Then we went to what seems to be the only attraction in the area, a place called "la maison penchée" (the leaning house). Apparently it was some guardhouse that got thrown a few dozen metres from where it stood during WWII. It didn't look like much from the outside, and we were totally unimpressed, but it turned out to be a lot of fun once we went inside. It totally threw your balance and made you all dizzy.

Then, on our way back to our little village, we stopped to look at an awesome castle or fortress thing. They seem to have one of those on every hill around here. We weren't able to go inside, but it was really cool just to see it anyway since I'd never seen one in real life before. It had a moat and a drawbridge and the whole bit. They also had some crazy rope courses and ziplines going across the canyon. Looked pretty scary.

Well, it's just after 10:30, so I'd better go get ready for my race. Hopefully, I'll post again tonight, but no promises. Good morning from snowy Bessans.

France: Day 8 - Skate sprints

2010-01-28T14:39:00.001-05:00

Today we had skate sprint races. I was really nervous in the morning. There was a lot riding on this race. Without getting into too many details, there are 12 spots on the Paralympic team, there are 13 of us competing for those 12 spots at these World Cups. And the way we secure our spot is by being close to the winner's time in any race. By virtue of being very short, sprints are usually the easiest type of race to get closer to the winner's time. So that's why today's race was very important to everyone.

In the prologue, I started just behind Anna-Mette, a B-1 (totally blind) skier, and just ahead of my teammate Courtney, who is also competing for one of those 12 spots. I caught Anna-Mette on the second uphill just as it was curving left and levelling out. My guide, Robert, told me to scoot by her on the right, but at that moment she also decided to move over to the right and blocked Robert, who was ahead of me. I saw the opening on the left and just went for it. As a result, I ended up going down the hill in front of Robert untill he caught up to me. He was very happy that I took initiative there though. We ended up 12th out of 17 and advanced to the quarter-finals. I was last in my quarter-final though, and ended up being 13th overall. I got World Cup points though, and according to my dad, I should be about 80% of the winner's time. I'm happy with that. Colette and Mark got bronze today, Everyone got points except Mary and Charles.

If you're interested, results as well as more information about this World Cup can be found here.

Tomorrow is a day off and biathlon training for the long biathlon race the day after. So we're all going to take it easy. Beacuse it's a day off, the organizers were throwing some kind of a "soiree" and "rock concert." We were going to go to it, that is, untill the guys somehow misunderstood our plan and drove off without us. So now, all us girls are stuck here, and that's why I have time to update my blog. We even had a free drink ticket each! That's ok, we figure tomorrow the guys are going to get the silent treatment in the morning. We won't talk to them at breakfast, though something tells me they probably won't notice.

Well, that's probably enough for today's entry. Here's a little photo of the day for you before I go. I took it just after the race this afternoon. You can see the clouds right over the valley.

France: Day 7 - Biathlon Sprint

2010-01-27T16:09:00.001-05:00

Today was our first race of the series. It was a 7.5-km biathlon sprint (don't ask me about that logic). This consists of 3 laps of 2.5 km with two shootings.

The good news is I shot clean - not a single miss - today. The not-so-good news is I got pretty darn close to having an asthma attack on pretty much every hill. The race course looked deceptively easy, but actually wasn't. Those longish gradual hills got me every time. So I had to pace myself over the whole race in order not to get over that fine asthma attack line. Everyone seemed happy with my race though. Even if I did come in 11th and second last. I guess I was expecting better, but they weren't. I didn't get any world cup points, but I was only about 40 seconds behind Robbi, our best Canadian. She didn't shoot very well today and had a bad race.

Tomorrow is a skate sprint race, which means we have a prologue or qualifier in the morning with an interval start. And then depending on the size of the field (number of competitors), we might have heats and then semis and finals.

I just found out that for tomorrow's race, it's whoever gets world cup points in the qualifier advances to quarter finals as long as there is a field of more than 12 competitiors. So keeping my fingers crossed and thnking fast thoughts. But before then, it's bedtime for me. I'm pretty tired. Oh, here's a pretty Bessans sunset for you before I go. Courtney took it out our window with my awesome camera.

Good night from Bessans!

France: Day 6 - Official biathlon training and opening ceremonies

2010-01-26T15:08:00.000-05:00

Today was official traiining for the biathlon race tomorrow. Robert and I skied the course in the morning and tried out as many of the rifles as we could. There are 10 Eko rifles in all set up at the range. Rifles 1 and 2 weren't working I guess, but they are supposed to be tomorrow. On official training days, we're supposed to try all the guns to find out if there are any quirks to certain ones that we should know about. On race day, the official fills the lanes starting with 1, so we don't get the choiice, but it's still good to know what kind of gun you're shooting.

It was cold in Bessans this morning, -18, but I thught that, compared to the Ottawa -18, this was a walk in the park. The only thing was that the snow was really slow, so even going easy meant you were working hard. The course seems really nice though, mostly all gentle or short uphills and no crazy downhills. Tomorrow the B-category athletes (blind) start at noon, so by that time, the snow should warm up a bit, and it's been snowing all evening, so that should speed things up as well.

This evening was the Opening Ceremonies. Only two people from the "A" team showed up, but most of our crew was there. It was really neat and fun. First they had a parade, in which only Andrea, me, Robbi and Brian participated from our team we're not really sure why. Mary would have none of this monkey business and so she joined us as we were walking by. Everyone was led in by children from the area dressed in traditional costume. This is us after we walked in.

That was followed by some welcoming speeches. Then, after the World Cup was declared open, they said they were going to light the flame. This was done by having a whole bunch of alpine skiers come down the mountain with torches. It was really cool even though all I could see were some lights moving down the mountain. Here they are standing in the street afterwards. They skied right into the street!

Then, they announced that they had "une autre surpris" for us, and next thing we knew, there were fireworks lighting up the night sky! It was like Canada Day in the winter. What an effort for such a small place! At the end they had some traditional dances of the region performed by some adults and some little kids. Of course, our Mary went out to dance along with them! They ended up sweeping Andrea along as well, and there she is wearing my new media jacket. Haha try and find her!

It was a fun evening, and I was very glad I went even though I've got a bit of a sore throat today and am trying everything to make sure it doesn't develop into a cold. This is Andrea, Mary and me on our way back from the festivities. My camera battery was just about dead, so I think that's why things are a little blurry.

Oh don't worry, I will charge it tonight. I know how much everyone loves my pictures :).

Good night from Bessans.

France: Day 5 – Taking it easy

2010-01-25T15:31:00.000-05:00

I’m feeling really tired again today even though I slept a bit better finally. I think it only took me till 11 o’clock last night to fall asleep, which means I got about 8 hours of sleep. A couple more nights like that, and I’ll be good as new. My first race, a 7.5 km biathlon, is on Wednesday (day after tomorrow), so I should be fine by then, I hope.

Yesterday, it started getting a little warmer up here, and the snow in the afternoon was much faster. I love skate-skiing on fast (but not icy) snow. It’s such a great feeling when you’re flying down the hill, and you’re able to do little step turns and all those technical things that make you feel like you got some “serious skills.” Harris and I skied around what we thought might be the race course for Wednesday. It was about a 2.5 km loop with pretty gentle uphills and downhills. There was only one corner where you get some good speed going into a wide 180-degree left turn, where I had some trouble stepping around it, but I’m sure now that Robert’s here, we can practise it a few times and get it to where I’m comfortable. We also met up with Jamie and Alex on the biggest uphill and did a bit of technique work with a video camera. We analyzed the video last night, and now both Alex and I know what we need to work on for our offset (skate technique used on uphills).

As I mentioned earlier, my guide, Robert, our biathlon coach, Dave, and our two skiers from Quebec arrived yesterday with the “A” team. Robert’s gone out for a ski to scope out the trails. He and I are going for a walk this afternoon so that he can see the town and I can keep moving.

Well, it’s just about lunchtime so I’d better go. I will post this as soon as I’m able to connect to the Internet. In this town, the only place that has Wi-Fi is the restaurant we eat at. I guess, we lucked out in that regard!

So it's now just after 9 p.m. and I'm about to get off the net and go to bed, but before I do I thought I'd post a couple of the pictures we took on our walk with Robert and Andrea this afternoon. It was a gorgeous afternoon in Bessans, very warm and sunny. We walked through the town, then on a trail out by the river and then Robert and I climbed up to see the church. It was a very nice walk.

Story of the week

2010-01-25T15:04:00.000-05:00

So I thought of a new category of blog posts to add to my little collection. Once every week, while I’m away anyway, I will try to post a “story of the week.”

This week’s story has been repeated a few times by everyone and we’ve found it pretty entertaining, but you can decide if it’s one of those “you had to be there” kind of things. I was sort of there, even though I missed the first part of the action. Anyway, here’s the story.

So on the day that we organized the skis and poles in our wax hut, Courtney decided that before going skiing she would put her post-workout snack and her sunglasses into her overboot that she wears to walk back to our hotel. It seemed like as good a storage spot as any I guess. Of course, by the time she got back from her ski and we organized our wax room, she had completely forgotten that she did this. So she puts on her boot and goes “oh why doesn’t it fit! What’s wrong with it?” while she’s trying to jam her foot further into it. I was just coming back from putting something in the van, and here comes Courtney running out, saying “oh this is so gross!” and all I can smell is banana, so I very innocently ask why it smells like banana in here, and they tell me that Courtney put her banana in her boot, “so that she wouldn’t step on it!” Of course, now everyone is always offering Courtney over-ripe bananas and I was tempted to stick the one I have laying around on my nightstand into her boot when I brought them back from the wax hut for her yesterday. In case you’re wondering, her sunglasses were fine, just a little banana-y.

And that’s this week’s story. It still cracks me up even writing it!

Time to say a few thank you's

2010-01-24T14:55:00.000-05:00

I was going to post this on the side of my blog, but I can't seem to find a way to do this, so I will put it in as a post and hope that some of these people get to see it.

There are a number of people I would like to thank for helping me get to this point in my ski career.

THANK YOU TO

My mom for being my inspiration for starting to ski and my chief motivator for continuing to train and race my best;

My dad for seeing me through almost every workout, giving guidance throughout my entire life and pushing my limits by doing the workouts with me;

My fiancé, Cliff, for believing in me no matter what and supporting me in everything I do;

My national coach, Jeff Whiting, for introducing me to competitive skiing in Canada, supporting all of us through countless competitions and keeping the whole Para-Nordic development movement in Canada going;

My Ontario coach, Patti Kittler, for working tirelessly on developing Para-Nordic skiing in Ontario, providing invaluable technique help to me and having an immeasurable amount of faith in me;

My club coach, Harris Kirby, for volunteering to help Para-Nordic racers and welcoming them into Kanata Nordic when he had no idea what Para-Nordic skiing was about and for always being ready to help with whatever is needed for our training and racing, including coming to the World Cups in Europe to wax for the team;

To my current guide, Robert d’Arras, for taking my family skiing from the very start and sticking by us this whole time and for volunteering to be my guide this season even though it required arranging time off work, which was not only difficult to do but also put him at a financial disadvantage;

My first guide, Sarah Mamen, for breaking trail as my first-ever full-time guide, while still attending university and having to write essays on all of our trips and for learning so much that she became an awesome guide;

And last but not least, my second guide, Linnaea Kershaw, for being ready for anything and jumping in to fill Sarah’s shoes at the last minute without the slightest hesitation.

France: Day 3 - Shaking it up

2010-01-23T15:16:00.000-05:00

Today is Day 3 of our stay in Bessans. It is usually the hardest day at altitude. Most of us are feeling a bit better today, however, despite still having trouble sleeping at night. This morning, France had one of its Nationals races. It was a biathlon, and Alex took part in it. The rest of us just took the opportunity to practise shooting, since all of the Eko rifles had been set up for the race.

In the afternoon, I skied with Harris and did a few short classic intervals to get my muscles to remember speed. I thought it would be really hard, but it was actually just the ticket. I felt so much better afterwards, like I’d finally woken up from a coma or something. I think my body needed a bit of a shake-up. If I’m still feeling alright tomorrow, I will do a few short skate intervals as our first race is a biathlon, and skating is the only technique used in those.

When Harris and I came back to our wax room, Courtney and Andrea were just finishing up waxing their skis, and Andrea was heading out for a ski. Once she left, the three of us started thinking about how we should organize our skis to make it easy for the wax techs to find the ones we wanted for our races and to reclaim some working space in our tiny wax hut. We didn’t have much to work with in terms of tools, but thanks to Courtney’s brilliant organizational ideas and our splendid team work, our wax room now looks like this:

Rather than this

Oh yeah, Jamie and Alexei later showed up and helped too. :)

Alright, I've got to go: there is a line up to use my computer for Skype, so good night from Bessans.

France: Day 2 - Settling in

2010-01-22T15:49:00.000-05:00

My time adjustment is not going very smoothly. I couldn't get to sleep for about two and a half hours last night, so today I'm going on about 5.5 hours of sleep, off of 6 hours the night before and off of maybe 3 the night before that. So, of course, I'm very tired, so I apologize in advance for the quality of this post. As a result, I continued to take it easy today.

In the morning, Mary and I went for a nice walk around town and went into all the stores. I got to pracitse my French some more, and it was really fun. We would come in to one of the thousand sports stores in this town, and Mary would say to the owner "Bonjour!" then whisper to me "How do you say 'I am'?", I'd tell her and she'll go "Je suis canadienne." and the store owner would get all excited and start talking to us, and then I would take over and ask them all kinds of questions about the region, etc. Among other things, I learne today that Bessans is where Beaufort cheese is made, and that only about 350 people live in the village. I also fulfilled all my souvenir requirements on this little shopping trip.

In the afternoon, we got assigned our wax hut at the race site and got it organized. Then Harris and I went for a nice slow skate ski. The snow here is very cold, so it's pretty slow and it makes you work. Still, we had a fun ski, even though we were both pretty tired. No sleep and altitude are not the best combo. Harris took this picture of me when we found a nice view and took a little breather.

All right, I'm off to bed to try and find some sleep tonight. Good night from the French Alps!

France - Day 1: We've arrived!

2010-01-21T16:36:00.001-05:00

So we're in France. And it's beautiful here! We're staying in a little village called Bessans. It's in a valley framed by spectacular mountains. The skiing is really fantastic: there are tons of snow and it's groomed almost to perfection with deep straight tracks. It's not as warm as you'd expect it to be in Europe and the snow is pretty cold, but that's just how we Ottawa skiers like it.

We arrived at around 2 in the morning and slept in till around 10, so that we can adjust to the time change quicker. The time difference with Ottawa is 6 hours. Amazingly, we took no wrong turns on our way to this tiny little hamlet lost in the French Alps, and the only thing that slowed us down was the weather. It snowed in Switzerland, rained at the border and then was dry for the rest of the way until we got here, where it was also snowing.

So today we just took it easy: went for a nice slow exploratory ski in the afternoon, settled some admin questions about our stay here while practising our French, and had supper.

Now's it's just about time for bed, so that we can get up at 7 and get started on anothe day of adjusting to the time change and altitude. We're at almost 2000 metres here. For now, this is our only goal: take it easy and acclimatize.

Good night from Bessans!

Travelling in style

2010-01-20T07:31:00.000-05:00

I'm in the Star Alliance Lounge at London Heathrow Airport. It's just after 11 o'clock here in London town, and my flight to Zurich is in a couple of hours.

So far this has been quite the trip thatnks to Air Canada's Elite Podium program! First, I was able to use one of my top-tier upgrade certificates to travel in Air Canada's Executive First. It was like nothing I've ever seen or experienced before! The seat was almost like a fully functional little room. It had a foot rest that later joined the chair to become a completely flat bed. There was a TV screen that opened out of a wall. The tray table was huge, and they gave you all kinds of stuff, such as a make-up bag with socks and an eye mask, toothbrush and toothpaste, lotion, lip balm, etc.! And, of course, I had brought all that stuff! I would have taken a picture if I hadn't felt so silly doing it. The dinner they served was a three-course meal with four choices of main course and three choices of dessert. And it was really delicious. Not to mention the things we all know such as free alcohol and nice pillows and blankets. So I have got to say my flight to London was amazing! Thank you, Air Canada.

My Elite Podium card apparently also gets me into this very nice lounge, where they actually serve hot food unlike the Maple Leaf Lounges back in Canada. So I have had a very nice, but very early for Ottawa time, brunch consisiting of two different kinds of quiche, some salad, orange juice, coffee and cookies. I've been waited on hand and foot this whole trip, first by Air Canada staff and by London Heathrow staff, who helped me find my way to Terminal 1 (this airport is massive!) and then by the nice ladies at the lounge. I don't think I've ever had a trip quite like this before. Let's hope things keep going as smoothly and positively as they have been.

I still have two more legs of travel left. First, the flight to Zurich after I meet up with the Vancouver crowd somewhere around here and then the drive to Bessans, France, once we meet up with Alexei and Harris in Zurich.

With that, I bid you good morning from London, England.

Blind biathlon: what in the world?

2010-01-18T00:07:00.000-05:00

I know that at least some of you must have asked that question when you first saw me mention "blind biathlon." Your first reaction was probably horror! Well, here is how it actually works.

First, to put your mind at ease, blind biathletes don't shoot with bullets, pallets or anything else tangible for that matter. We use an Eko rifle, which shoots with an invisible lazer beam. It's really a computer system. Second, we don't use our eyes to aim, we use our ears. The rifle comes with headphones, which emit a beeping sound when the rifle is not aimed at the target. The closer you get to the target, the faster the beeping. Once the sound becomes constant, you're on target. To find the bull's eye, you have to find the highest-pitched tone. And then you pull the trigger. Depending on whether your shot is a hit or a miss, you hear a certain sound, and a green or red light shows up on the target.

Training at the 2009 World Cup in Mt. Washington, photo courtesy of Tim Penney

Obviously, we don't carry the guns on our back as they are connected with lots of wires to the target, the headphones, the screen, etc. We also only shoot prone (lying on our stomach), probably because it would be too hard to find the target if we stand up with the gun. When we get to the shooting range, the gun is pointing roughly in the direction of the target, so we don't have to start searching for it "from scratch."

In most other respects, blind biathlon is quite similar to able-bodied.

And that is basically how it works. This time, good night from Ottawa for real.

A busy couple of days

2010-01-17T23:31:00.000-05:00

This weekend we had time trials up in the Gatineaus to get our heads and bodies back into racing mode before Europe. Saturday's time trial was a 6 km classic, and we had a great turn-out of young and less young Kanata Nordic racers. It was awesome to see all the kids participating. My time trail was a little too relaxed, as I later realized. I started out too conservatively, even though the distance was very short, and I should have gone all out right from the start. But that's why we do these race simulations, so that come race time, we'll know exactly what to do. So my Saturday's time was a little slower than I would have liked.

Today's time trial was for biathlon, and only Alexei and I participated. The total distance ended up being almost 15 km, and we shot 4 times. Both Alexei and I shot reasonably well: 80% for and slightly higher for Alexei. But I was very happy with my race and my result today, as I was only about 4 minutes behind Alexei even though I had to do an extra small loop while he was shooting. So our times were very similar all things considered. That's a super positive experience to take with me to the World Cups!

On Friday my parents, Robert and I got to meet CTV's Carolyn Waldo, a local sports reporter and Olympic champion. She interviewed us at Mooney's Bay Park and took footage of us skiing. She was especially interested in the "whole family" aspect of our training and of how we all support and motivate each other. Meeting Carolyn was really special. She conducted the interviews with great professionalism and enthusiasm. The story will run sometime before the Paralympics. I will post when I know more. This is my parents, Carolyn and I after the interviews.

Alright, I'm off to bed. Have to get an early start on packing for Europe tomorrow morning. Good night!

A little training update

2010-01-14T11:48:00.001-05:00

Our European tour is fast approaching, and as a result, my coaches, my guide and I have stepped up our training. Since recovering from my Holiday-time cold, I've been doing lots of volume (longer skis) and more intensity (harder skis). This increase has been taking a bit of a toll on my body though: I was really tired all of last weekend and Monday.

I had an amazing training session yesterday though thanks largely to having a back and leg massage a few hours before my workout. My quad muscles had been getting tired and stiff really easily during workouts lately, so my massage therapist performed Active Release Techniques (ART) on them yesterday. He explained that, from constant use and rubbing together, the muscles making up the quad group can get stuck together and not work properly. Using ART can help separate the muscles thus making them slide across each other and perfom their functions as they should. And what a difference that massage session made! I was able to go up the Pink Lake hill in the Gatineau Park, about a 7-minute uphill interval, five times without my quad muscles giving out on me as they had been. I encourage all athletes reading this to use the services of an ART-certified massage therapist. If you don't know one in the Ottawa area, ask me for a recommendation.

This weekend we have a couple of time trials planned with our Kanata Nordic coach, Harris, in the Gatineau Park to test ourselves before we head out for the World Cups. We were considering going to a race a few hours away, but thought better of it, what with the risk of getting sick and over-tired from travelling right before our big trip. I've got two more workouts planned for today as well, and I should be heading out for one of them as I write. So, I shall bid you good afternoon from Ottawa and head out to Mooney's Bay!

Blind skiing: a team sport

2010-01-13T12:19:00.005-05:00

This is not "later that day," but life and training sometimes get in the way of blog-writing. That's ok though. Here's my first "explanatory" post.

I say blind skiing is a team sport because blind athletes ski with a guide who normally skies a little in front of them (no further than 3 to 5 metres ideally). The best guide-athlete teams are completely in sync with each other, that is, the athlete follows the guide's technique and movement exactly. This is very difficult to acheive and is only learned through countless hours of practice together. The McKeever brothers are the best example I've seen of guide-athelte sync.

Photo courtesy of George Tuira, posted with the permission of Brian and Robin McKeever

The guide's job is to act as the athlete's eyes. He or she calls out terrain changes, turns and any other useful information that the athlete would need to make it around the course quickly yet safely. This of course means that trust is the main component in the success of a guide-athlete team.

In blind skiing and biathlon, the guide receives the same recognition as the athlete, that is to say, if the athlete wins a medal at the Paralympic Games, so does the guide. This is the ultimate reason that blind skiing and bithlon are team sports.

I hope that was a helpful explanation of how guiding works. Until next time, good afternoon from Ottawa!

Introducing a new mini-series of posts...

2010-01-08T11:39:00.000-05:00

So I'm off work now until after the Paralympics. Thanks to the Canadian government's International Sporting Event Leave policy, I can be off work in order to train and compete in international competitions for three months with pay. Pretty awesome deal!

So now I'm able to get my 8 hours of sleep and put in extra hours of training. I'm able to go outside in the daylight and keep my house clean and my fridge stocked with real food (those are the things that get put on the back burner when you have to work full time and train). I feel so much less tired and actually have energy when I hit the trails, even if I still have to do a lot of my training at night because my guide still works full time.

So I thought that while I'm in Ottawa and there's not much to report on, I would do a few posts explaining how things in my sport work. I could also answer questions about things in my blog or in my sport if anyone has any. Ask away!

I hope to post my first "how it works" entry later today.

Good morining from Ottawa for now!

A snowy blowy day

2010-01-03T18:45:00.001-05:00

It was really windy and snowy in the Gatineau Park today. There was lots of snow coming down and blowing around. All the icicled tree branches from the Boxing Day ice storm kept hitting each other and making a weird glass-like sound overhead. I kept thinking they were going to fall and hit me in the head. They did fall onto the trail, and it felt like we were skiing over little shards of glass. One actually hit my hand, but it didn't hurt or anything. This almost blizzard with falling ice didn't scare away the skiers though. There were swarms of them on the trails, many with little kids in tow.

Robert and I skied mostly up and down Trail 5 today. There are some nice downhills with corners on there. We practised a few of them several times, trying to stay as close together as we could and step-turn rather than snowplow. It wasn't all that hard to do today considering the amount of fresh snow on the trail. We could be perfectly in control since there was no ice to slip on. The only obstacles we had to negociate were other skiers. It still made for good practice though. I'm slowly regaining my health and strength. It really sucks to be sick right in the middle of on-snow season when every practice counts. But things like this happen to everyone, and there is not much that can be done about it now.

Tomorrow there is no one to take me up to the Gatineaus, so I will have to ski at Mooney's Bay. I really hope they have been grooming! It's also my two weeks to have the biathlon rifle so I will have to go over to my parents' place (my dad is one of my coaches) to practise shooting tomorrow.

Good night from Ottawa.

2010 is finally here!

2010-01-01T20:38:00.003-05:00

Today, just as a day, deserves a post. It is the first day of the year 2010, the year all Canadian winter athletes have been waiting for and dreaming of. It's hard to believe that it's actually here and the wait is almost over!

I haven't actually mentioned this yet, but I'm one of the athletes long-listed for the 2010 Paralympic Games, and this is going to be my year to shine. No matter how I do in the Games, I will cherish every moment of this unique experience that comes along only once in a lifetime for a select few. And of course you are all welcome to come along for this unbelievable ride!

I have actually been sick with some annoying clingy cold for the last few days. But I'm much better today, and I hope to have left all sickness in 2009. Now the final stages of training begin.

I went for a nice long ski in the Gatineau Park today, and here's what it looked like

a veritable winter wonderland.

Lots and lots of snow has been falling slowly over Ottawa, and it's expected to continue doing so for the next little while. This means lots and lots of good skiing for a healthy me.

I leave for Europe on January 19. Until then, Robert and I have our work cut out for us. Lots of technical trails in the Gatinea Park to improve our guide-athlete sync, and lots of good intervals to get ourselves ready for whatever Europe will throw at us.

When the time comes, we will be ready.

For now though, Happy New Year and good night from the snowy nation's capital.

O-Cup #1: All's well that ends well

2010-01-01T20:11:00.001-05:00

I realize that this is a little late, but here's a post I started on the Sunday after that disasterous race in Thunder Bay and didn't get a chance to finish:

I'm sitting in the Maple Leaf Lounge at Pearson Airport, trying to do a blong entry between bites.

After yesterday's pessimistic entry, things started looking up. My coach Harris, my guide Robert and I had a very productive discussion late last night about guiding. We analyzed yesterday's race from a guiding perspective and came up with a strategy to learn from every race. So in that sense, yesterday's crappy race was actually very useful. We learned from it what we needed to work on in terms of guiding, and as a resutl, today's race went so much better. Robert stayed much closer to me because we were able to decide on a comfortable distance between us. And he gave me a lot more specific and precise verbal cues that we had agreed on last night. ...

So, as you can see, that race was actually not a total waste or a disaster. We learned a lot from it and were able to apply that knowledge in the next race.

Here are also a few pictures from after the Dec. 20 race in Thunder Bay.

This is most of the Para-Nordic group.
left to right: Harris Kirby, Kanata Nordic coach; Alex Novikov, blind skier; Frank, blind skier; Nathan Kirby, Alex's guide; Margarita Gorbounova, blind skier; Mike Scholte, amputee skier; Jerry King, blind skier; and Robert D'Arras, my guide.

And just the Kanata Nordic group. I think you can figure out who's who.

It was a cold day for a race, but the sun was out and everyone had a good race! And we all had a chance to show off our new awesome Kanata gear!

O-Cup #1: The Thunder Bay Fiasco

2009-12-19T19:02:00.000-05:00

Well, today's race was a complete disaster no matter how you look at it. It was not enough that the conditions were "marginal" at best, as Alex very aptly put it, and that the Para-Nordic category was last out at nearly 3 p.m. in the afternoon, but I was also misinformed about the distance I was supposed to ski. So not only was I dead last out of the gate, I was also dead last to cross the finish line! I was told that I was only doing one 3.4 km lap, but actually I was supposed to do two for a total distance of 8.8 km. You can imagine I was not a very happy camper as I ended up finishing my one lap and going over the finish line only to be told that I was supposed to go through the lap lane and do a second lap. So I did after a few choice remarks. I went for a leisurely second lap, and was the last person across the finish line for the day. And there are no words to describe how upset I was. I apologiize to anyone I may have been rude to.

This trip is turning out to be a very expensive nightmare. To add to all of this, I also forgot to pack a whole lot of stuff, such as pajamas and toothpaste. I'm the only girl on the Kanata Nordic team so I get to pay for an entire hotel room by myself. We have had to eat all of our meals at the restaurant downstrairs, which is not exactly ideal pre-race food nor is it cheap or quick. Well, I think I will stop there. You get the picture.

I was trying to find something positive in this situation. And the only thing I thought of was that at least this was not an important race in the scheme of things. You can let me know if you think of anything else.

Now I'm sitting in my huge hotel room and waiting for the rest of my teammates to come back from their very long trip to Fresh Air Experience. They've been there since 4 o'clock! We're supposed to go to some FInnish restaurant for supper, and I'm starving.

I shall still wish YOU a good evening from Thunder Bay thourgh. Have a good one for me.

December training update

2009-12-16T23:06:00.000-05:00

We've now got lots of snow here in Ottawa, and the skiing up in the Gatineau Park has been awesome. I just went for a nice classic ski tonight. It was a little chilly out there, but the park's got lots of trees to protect us from the wind, which is the worst part of the Ottawa winter. Classic-ing felt weird after all that time spent on skate rollerskis this summer and fall. I couldn't really engage my grip zone on the uphills because either (a) I didn't have enough grip wax or the right kind of grip wax or (b) I've got to get my classic technique back! Either way, it was good to do some classic hills in anticipation of some classic racing this weekend.

I'm off to Thunder Bay on Friday. It's kind of ironic that we're going there considering that they hardly have any snow and we've got lots of great snow. Oh well, as my coach Patti says, it'll be good experience in preparation for our trip to Europe this year. With Europe, you never know what kind of snow you're gonna get! Could be white and fluffy, could be icy, could be brown and puddly. So you've got to be prepared for the worst.

On a training note, I'm still having some trouble getting out for a ski. Mooney's Bay hadn't been groomed yet on Monday, so I ended up just having to do some shooting at home. Yesterday, my dad and I did get out for a ski at Mooney's Bay, but it was kind of similar to doing moguls. Very bumpy! But I must admit, it's better than nothing. Thankfully, we were able to get out to the Gatineaus with my guide, Robert, today, but tomorrow it's back to Mooney's Bay. Though we'll have to wait and see: so far the forecast is for -15 with a wind chill of -22 tomorrow afternoon. And who knows what it'll be like in the evening!

That being said, I'm almost done working for the winter. I go on International Sporting Event Leave starting Dec. 24, and then I'll be able to ski during the day, granted only at Mooney's Bay, but hey, I'll be out in daylight!

Alright, this entry is getting a little long, and I'd better go to bed. So good night from Ottawa!

Snow is finally here!

2009-12-09T22:38:00.001-05:00

I haven't updated this in a while, but I'm so much busier when I am at home. Between work, training and all the "paperwork" involved in skiing (I know it sounds weird), I have no time to write anything down. I kind of miss it though, even though I just started!

Today was Ottawa's first snowstorm of the season. It was something: the snow was coming down hard and blowing everywhere. We were scared to go out at lunch, so we all hung around the office all day. I wasn't able to go skiing just yet, but I'm hoping I can tomorrow.

Last weekend was our last time rollerskiing for the year. We're all happy about that! No more wheels, and NO MORE PAVEMENT! Only soft fluffy snow to cushion our falls. Now all we need is some grooming up in the Gatineaus and at Mooney's Bay and we'll be hitting the trails in no time.

Yeah, I really don't have much to say today, other than that I'm so looking forward to "real skiing" again. I have some Ontario Cup races coming up in Thunder Bay on Dec. 19 and 20, so that should be more exciting.

And on that positive note, good night from Ottawa.

Biathlon Camp: Day 4 - Pursuit Race

2009-11-30T23:27:00.000-05:00

I'm back in Ottawa, and the race was yesterday of course, but I guess it's better late than never!

The race was a 10 km pursuit, which means everyone started in the same order they had finished the day before with 5-second intervals between each skier. These very short starting intervals made for some crazy traffic on the course. I was bib number 71 and was supposed to start just ahead of Courtney. Courtney was feeling sick from her flu shots though and therefore did not start.

My race went well I think. The S-turn was much less icy during this race, but I still held on for dear life every time I went down it. It was very hard to see where the turn was starting and finishing as everything went so quickly. I did fall on the last lap, but I didn't get turned around, so got up very quickly.

There were lots of skiers passing me on the left and right, some I even stuck with for a while going uphill, and then they got away on the downhills. I shot better too: got 12/20, which equals 60%. A 10% improvement overnight is a good start!

The results have finally been posted. Check them out here if you're interested.

Kaspar, the National Team head coach, said that I had had lots of progress since he saw me in July. I'm very happy with that. Now I just have to keep training hard, keep working on my technique and do lots of intensity with shooting to simulate a high-HR race situation.

After the races, Jamie, Alexei and I headed for the airport. Alexei and I finally got to use some of our Elite Podium privileges: checked in at the executive class counter, hung out in the Maple Leaf Lounge and ate all of their free food, and pre-boarded the plane. Jamie, unfortunately, was not allowed in the Maple Leaf Lounge because he was flying WestJet!

Well, I have to go to work tomorrow.

So good night this time from the nation's capital!

Biathlon Camp: Day 3 - Sprint Race

2009-11-29T00:30:00.001-05:00

I haven't posted an update yet, because I've been waiting to find out our results from this morning and the details for tomorros's race. Sadly, I haven't really got either.

We don't have a start list, but we know the races start at 10:00 a.m., and it's a persuit race, so racers will start in the order that they finished today. This means that the Paras will be somewhere at the back of the pack. But things will go fairly quickly, as the intervals between skiers will be 5 seconds. I'm guessing we should be out there by 10:30. As far as we know, the girls are skiing 10 km tomorrow, and the boys 12.5. We're all shooting 4 times, so shooting will determine how well your race goes.

Oh I guess I should tell you how my race went today. It was a 7.5 km race with 2 shootings and penalty laps if you miss. I shot pretty bad: 50%, which means I missed 5 out of 10 and skied 5 penalty laps altogether. Hoping for better shooting tomorrow. It's really different in a race, when your heart rate is through the roof and the gun is shaking like crazy. I will really try to calm my HR down tomorrow before I shoot. It sucks that my Garmin heart-rate monitor has met its maker, so I have no idea what my HR is when I get into the range.

As for the skiing today, the course did change, and the first loop was now a long climb and then a steep down with an S-shaped turn, which became pure ice during the race. A lot of biathletes bit it on that hill today! I stayed up the first 2 times around by sticking to the inside of the turn, but got carried onto the ice on the outside of the turn on the last lap and wiped out. I just scrambled out of another girl's way; I think I gave her a pretty good scare! I got up pretty quickly though and kept going, so it was alright. The turn will be in tomorrow's race as well, but they were making snow out there today, so maybe some of that white stuff will end up on that killer corner.

The race course and range were actually not as busy as I'd anticipated, and John and I had no trouble manoeuvring around everyone. Either that, or John is so good a guide that I didn't notice all the other people! That is entirely possible.

We were also noticing that, in comparison with the cross-country crowd at NorAms (North America Cups), the biathletes seem much more polite and understanding. They tell you where they're passing and don't yell "track" at the top of their lungs. We were very impressed. Way to go, biathlon crowd!

We're leaving Canmore at 2 p.m. tomorrow, so if I have a bit of time and an Internet connection at the Airport, I will tell you of my last day of racing in Canmore.

And with that, I bid you good night from Canmore.

Quick update

2009-11-28T00:44:00.001-05:00

Following the team captains' meeting, we have learned that the races start at 11:00 tomorrow. I'm bib number 60, starting at 11:20 sharp. Twenty-second interval starts. Altogether, during our part of the race, there will be 154 biathletes on course! It'll be a zoo, but definitely good practice for passing, yiedling, etc. The course has changed again too. No more crazy sharp corner around the cross-country stradium, but there'll still be a good corner for us that I have not yet tried. Fun fun fun!

Come out and cheer us on if you're in the area!

Good night from Canmore.

Biathlon Camp: Day 2

2009-11-27T19:37:00.001-05:00

So the bad news is it didn't snow in Canmore last ngiht, but the good news is it didn't get cold either. However, today was a nice contrast to yesterday's dreary and drizzly weather. The sun was high and bright overhead, the snow was clean and fast, and the trails were teeming with biathletes from all over the country as well as the States. The smell of gun powder was everywhere and shots rang in the air. All in all, a great pre-race atmosphere!

I had an awesome ski with my guide for this weekend, John from Canmore. His wife is a Paralympic champion from 1988, and so he knows his way around guiding a B2. My first-time-on-skis feeling was pretty much gone, and I followed him up and down the hills without a problem. Tomorrow's course, or what we know of it, has got a number of different loops, as snow is still very limited. At the end of the green loop, there's quite a wicked corner on a downhill, where you just have to hang on for dear life untill it's over. John and I skied it a couple of times without any wipe-outs, so I think it'll be fine tomorrow, that is, if it's still in the race. The final details will be announced tonight after the team captains' meeting. Then, we'll find out our start order and what the course will really look like.

I got another opportunity to practise my shooting as well as taking my new Leki pole straps on and off. As we approach the mat, we have to take off our pole straps as quickly as we can and put them back on as we leave the range. In order to do so efficiently, we must have simple straps (ones that you can just stick your hand through) or a type that we can unclip and clip back on easily. The able-bodied biathlon team has been using poles made by a European company called Leki. The strap goes on tight around your hand, and to take it off, all you do is press a button and unhook the whole strap, which stays on your hand while you shoot. To put it back on, you just slide you hand down the pole handle and hook the little loop back on. It's much easier and quicker to use than the simple straps once you get the hang of it, pardon the pun. Sorry, I know this is very technical, but maybe someone will find this interesting.

So Alexei and I bought these poles just a couple of weeks ago at Fresh Air Experience in Ottawa (thank you so much for the awesome discount!). And this is our first time using them. I'm getting better at hooking them back on, as that's the hard part. But I'll need lots of practise to get it perfect.

Our meetings this afternoon were cancelled for some reason, so we had a lot of time to kill (here's a novel idea!). Courtney, Andrea and I went to town for a bit after we were done our practice. We went to this awesome coffee shop called Beamer's. They have the best muffins ever! Try it if you're ever in Canmore. They also have this digital picture frame with pictures of all these people who took the Beamer's coffee cup to all these different places. So we decided that we should take their cup to Europe this January when we go for the World Cups and take a bunch of pictures and bring them back for Nationals, which will be here in Canmore for the Para-Nordic group. We also went into some stores, and I bought an awesome down-filled jacket and a wool toque. After some of last year's races, where the temperature was barely under -20 (race cut-off temp), I'm winterizing early this year!

And that has been my day so far. Yes, I can get pretty wordy, and I'm loving this blogging thing now even if no one is reading it! Everyone knows how much I can talk. Well, the same goes for writing, so be prepared! :)

Good evening from Canmore!

Biathlon Camp: Day 1

2009-11-27T01:16:00.000-05:00

Today was my first day on snow this season, and boy did it feel weird! I felt a little like Bambi when he was on the ice; my feet just kept on slipping out! All the beginner technical mistakes were back, and there was not a thing I could do about it! I sure hope tomorrow feels more normal.

We got some range time with Celine, the World Cup Team's biathlon coach. She was very happy with all of our progress. We were all shooting faster and missing fewer shots than this summer. The practice definitely paid off! We will see how we perform under pressure in the races this weekend though.

After about three hours on skis and some lunch, we had headshots with Robyn Gear and flu shots with the Paralympic doctor. Apparently, he's got both the H1N1 and the seasonal flu vaccine on hand for us here. Some of us will have sore arms tomorrow. Thankfully, it won't be me as I've already got the H1N1 shot.

We finished off the day with dinner at Andrea's parents' house. Good food and interesting conversation was had by all.

Tomorrow, I finally get to meet my guide for this weekend and ski around the actual course. Canmore is supposed to get snow tonight, and it's supposed to get much cooler, so I think tomorrow we might be getting our first taste of winter.

Good night from Canmore!

Arrived at destination

2009-11-26T01:55:00.000-05:00

After a bit of a series of unfortunate events involving Alexei and I trying - very unsuccessfully - to use our Elite Podium privileges with Air Canada and WestJet losing Jamie's bag on a flight from Vancouver of all places, Alexei, Jamie and I finally arrived in Canmore.

The weather at the Calgary Airport was balmy to say the least: 14 degrees Celsius! Canmore is only slightly cooler, and there's not a trace of snow on the ground. The locals tell me that there is snow up at the Nordic Centre, but it's pretty hard and icy...typical early-season Canmore.

So we've got a packed schedule tomorrow: skiing and shooting in the morning; meetings with Cross Country Canada people after lunch; hopefully a bit of a ski with my guide, whom I have not yet met, in the late afternoon; and dinner at Andrea's in the evening!

I guess I'd better do like the rest of them and get some shut-eye. We haven't even seen our coach yet to really find out what's going on. I could have it completely wrong!

If you read this and find tons of mistakes, do take into account that it is very late: almost 2 a.m. Ontario time. I will fix everything later.

Good night!

Joining the world of blogging

2009-11-24T19:49:00.001-05:00

This is my first ever experience writing a blog. I'm so new to this, I don't quite know where to begin. I guess I can say that I thought that this blogging thing might be a good idea as it would allow my family, friends and co-workers to follow me through my training and competition season in this important year.

The ski season is just around the corner, and even though there is not a snowflake in the air here in Ottawa, my first races are actually this weekend. I'm off to snowy Canmore, Alberta, tomorrow for a biathlon training camp and races. It promises to be a busy few days with skiing and shooting practices in the mornings and pictures and meetings in the afternoons. Still, it'll be so nice to finally get off the pavement and onto snow. Here's hoping that tonight was the last I saw of rollerskis until next summer!

Well, I guess I should end my first entry here and go pack my skis, boots and racing gear. Tomorrow will be a long day of airports and airplanes. I hope Air Canada has good movies playing!