Tuesday March 18th: Classic Technique, Short Distance, Interval Start

Today was a very challenging day for all teams, with respect to grip waxing. The day brought an assortment of ever changing conditions. It repeatedly snowed on and off making the grip wax selection challenging. It was also around zero degrees. In the morning, “hairies” worked. This is when a grip zone is roughed up with sand paper and no grip wax is used. By the end of the day, our racers were skiing on klister made for icy conditions topped up with VR75 to prevent icing.

Here are a couple of quotes I took from Jack Sasseville from a neighbouring trailer: “It’s days like today that skate skiing was invented.” and “We’re all on the same ship, and it’s sinking!”.

Friday March 21st: Free Technique Sprints

Leah was our only skier to advance beyond the qualification round into the heats, placing 8th in the qualifiers. Amie had a fall during her qualification ski, which cost her a bit of time and put her in 39th place. The top 30 in each category advanced to the heats. Leah came in third in her quarter-final heat and was the “lucky loser”, so that meant she could advance to the semi-finals. The “lucky losers” are the two fastest third place finishers in the quarter finals who get to advance to the semis. The only problem with this was she had to race immediately following her quarter-final, which meant she had no time to recover before her next race. It showed as she placed last in her semi which put her into the B side final. Leah ended up coming in third in the B-side final, not far from first and second, which gave her a final placing of 9th overall in the Junior Girls category.

We had a great day of watching very high caliber sprint skiing, with the Swedes leading the Open Men category. These guys were amazingly fast and strong up the hills. They could one-skate entire uphills, and they also incorporated a bit of a hop in their push off.

It was unfortunate that Chandra Crawford had a fall in her final, as she was in a good position to win the race. However, the American, Kikkan Randell, took the win, and Sara Renner was second.

We skied the race course today (Saturday) and it was a beautiful clear day (our first day with no snow). Tonight’s forecast is calling for 15 to 20 cm of snow overnight with snow expected throughout the races tomorrow. Murray goes at 9:00 AM, and the Junior Boys and Junior Girls going at around 11:30 and 12:00. The expected temperature is around 0º C.

Tyler fell during his training run today and sprained his wrist, so he won't be racing tomorrow. His wrist is currently in a splint after a visit to a walk-in
clinic.

   This page was last updated on March 23, 2008