OUA Preview - and we all made it!

This weekend (January 25-26, 2012) Ontario university skiers are converging from around the province in Sudbury at Laurentien University for the OUA Nordic Championships. Most of the Waterloo team has spent the last week skiing on snow (a luxury in Waterloo) and resting and refuelling in the comforts of their parent's homes. This hopefully has prepared the Waterloo athletes well for successful races this weekend.

Friday morning the snow started falling across Ontario and UW Nordic skiers crawled out bed in Ottawa, Parry Sound, Timmins, Huntsville, and Waterloo. I grew up in Ottawa and spent the past week there visiting with my family and catching up on school work. I was lucky to be able to travel with the Carleton team to OUAs (as I have for the past 2 years). The bus was scheduled to be loaded at 6:00 am and leave at 6:20am. OK, that's not too early. I set an alarm for 5:40am (or so I thought so). I packed my bags the night before and left them at the back door ready to be loaded into the car first thing the next morning. Fast forward to this morning... My Dad got up and left the hallway light on so I knew it was about time to get up but I also knew he was planning on getting up before me. I am kinda awake but don't fell like getting out of bed and will just wait for my alarm to go off before I get up. I roll over to check my clock. 5:57am. Not the time I expected! I flew out of bed and got dressed in the clothes I left out and ran downstairs. The 6 o'clock news was starting on the radio. I rushed my Dad out the door to load the car and leave. 6:07, pulling out of the driveway. 6:10, arriving at Carleton. Well that was I close call I don't plan on repeating.

I made it and that's all that counts. Looking forward to the weekend races. Saturday will be two races: a short distance classic race in the morning and a skate team relay in the afternoon. Sunday will be a mass start distance skate race.

Let the races begin.

Warriors head East: Eastern Canadian Championships 2012

Alison during the 10km. skate

          After yet another two weeks of dry-land training the UW Nordic Ski Team decided to head on over to the east for the Eastern Canadian Championships 2012.  We left the PAC with the sparsest team to date-  Coach Colin and Coach Derek, and athletes Tim, Ryan and Katie.  Two more joined the team in Ottawa though, Glenn, who's there on co-op and Alison who had arrived the day prior.  The even took place over three days, but us Waterloo gang opted out for the first day of sprints to minimize missing school and because, well, let's just say it was a big field.

          The team arrived just in time to catch the end of semi-final and final sprint races, the finals for each being between some of the country's fastest skiers- which if not awesome to spectate got us in the mood for a race, and at the least got rid of the post-bus blues. Only one Waterloo athlete competed in the sprints:

Place	Name	Time for  1.4km Free
88	Glenn Hartman	3:34

          

Waxing in no joke to Coach Colin

          The race course for the the rest of the weekend was to be the same 5km loop that was used for the distance races in previous years, and laps of that would be done for each of the various distances.  The terrain itself was somewhat of a challenge though.  Off the start was a short loop of gradual ups and downs, which worked as a good section for the pack to thin out off the start, as a place to establish your pace and to work out those start line jitters.  Following was a streak through the stadium,  a gradual climb up power line, and a grueling climb up Montee McCarthy- arguably the hardest part of the course.  It was down Dirk's dive after this, up Chute Charon, down and back into the stadium for the final turn to the finish.  Saturday's freestyle race was 10km for the women and 15km for the men, so two and three laps of said course respectively.

The UW teams results are as follows:

Women:

Place	Name	1st 5km lap time	2nd 5km lap time	Total time for 10km
73	Katie Madden	17:26	17:26	34:52
76	Alison Stephenson	17:42	17:59	35:42

Men:

Place	Name	1st 5km lap time	2nd 5km lap time	3rd 5km lap time	Total time for 15km (skate)
76	Glenn Hartman	13:25	14:11	13:54	41:32
126	Tim Hughes	14:54	15:56	16:22	47:12
136	Ryan McNamara	15:44	16:39	16:15	48:38

          So the team finished up strong (always) and made their way back to the hotel.  It was still quite early in the day and so the opportunity was had to enjoy the beautiful winter weather and the start of Winterlude, delve into some much need studying or-the popular choice- nap time.   All was well with the usual UW hotel happenings, and lots of food, water  and sleep were to be had in preparation for the next day's long distance races.

          Sunday's races were 15 and 30km classic for the women and men, respectively.  The course remained the same as the day before which meant 3 laps for the women and an astonishing 6 for the men.  Unfortunately though we were one athlete short as Glenn was not well enough to race that day. Another look at UW's impressive results...

Women:

Place	Name	1st  5km lap time	2nd 5km lap time	3rd 5km lap time	Total time for 15km (classic)
72	Alison Stephenson	20:32	21:21	21:21	1:03:15
78	Katie Madden	22:34	22:52	23:52	1:09:20

Men:

Place	Name	1st 5km lap time	2nd 5km lap time	3rd 5km lap time	4th 5km lap time	5th 5km lap time	6th 5km lap time	Total time for 30km
111	Ryan McNamara	16:28	17:48	18:11	18:48	19:13	19:16	1:49:46
127	Tim Hughes	16:34	17:42	19:30	20:31	22:15	22:28	1:59:02

Ryan, although I think this is during the skate race...

          Everybody managed to keep it together enough maintain a consistent and strong race.  The most impressive result coming from the second day of racing though was Ryan's time of 1:49:46, in comparison to last year's time of 2:12:45, a whopping  23 min faster on the exact same course. Wow!

The bus was boarded quickly as we still had a 7ish hour drive ahead of us, making for one long day.  For myself, and I think I speak for many others, the return back to reality/school was dreaded.  It's that time of year when those awful things called midterms start happening to you  and so one must often face the choice of sleep/recovery vs. studying vs. training.  The team does have this coming weekend off from racing though, which will be a welcome break to catch up on this whole school thing, and possibly get some easier training in.  The next voyage for the Warriors will be to Sudbury, Feb. 24-26 for the OUA Nordic Skiing Championships.  In farewell, I unfortunately will not be saying 'happy skiing', or 'happy trails' because I have wholeheartedly given up on skiing in Waterloo. If you are fortunate to have snow wherever you are do enjoy it, but please, try not to make the rest of us too envious. 

Alison during the 15km classic