France: Day 8 - Skate sprints

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 2 - Settling in

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!

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!