Hard to believe that we're already
past mid-February. Somehow the season
that you spend the rest of the year training for and daydreaming about the day when there will be snow seems
to pass in an instant filled with a flurry of weekends with long car rides,
hotel rooms, warm ups and start lines, and weeks with exhaustion, midterms, and
skiing at Bechtel in between.
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| Who says we have to ski on snow? |
Skiing at Bechtel?! Yes, we've been
doing lots of skiing at Bechtel, and the skiing has been good. The racing has
also been quite good. So good, in fact,
that I can say that it's been the most successful season, results-wise, that
the UW Nordic ski team (UWNST) has seen in a few years. Since the past update we have been in
attendance at the third stop of the Haywood NorAM race series in Duntroon, Ont.
and more locally, Mono Nordic invitational in Orangeville, with some
nothing-short-of-epic training weekends in between.
The weather in Southern Ontario this season has been a
tad bit moody. Our first
supposed-to-be-race weekend of the year turned into more of a water ski show
than anything. And although the official
Snow Dog race was cancelled, we still managed to squeeze a race in at good ol'
Highlands, which had a surprisingly high attendance. Only two UWNST member's were keen enough to
suit up, so Coach Colin and Katie took on the entire field consisting of
Guelph, U of T, and various members of Highlands.
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| Oliver and Glenn take on the quarter finals |
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| Ryan powers up yet another climb |
The next event was Walden (see
previous post), and somehow within those two weeks Highlands was able to
accumulate enough snow to host a great NorAM event. The first day of racing was a classic sprint
day, and the course couldn't have been better.
Backwards up the stadium and racer out, around the haripin , lots of
double poling and back down. The second
race day was a 10km for the women and 15km. for the men. The course was just as epic- but in a much
different way. To directly quote Coach
Colin, "the course will be good for those who like to suffer"... It was a 5km loop- but in the course of one
loop was two trips from the very lowest point of Highlands to the very
top. So that's 4x up for the ladies, and
6x for the men. Yup, it was a lot of
climbing, my quads thought so too. For a
full race report of both days check out
the official Warriors website http://www.varsity.uwaterloo.ca/news/2013/1/28/NORDIC_0128135545.aspx.
The UWNST was not in attendance at
the Easter Canadian Championships, as it would have been the third consecutive
weekend in a row of racing. Although
most other universities did choose to go, the UWNST is bound to see some direct
benefit from this by being more fully prepared for the OUA championships this
upcoming weekend. Instead, the trip was
made to Hardwood Hills for a fantastic training weekend. Mother nature decided to turn itself against
Highlands once again, as they were still closed from lack of snow from the
second meltdown of the season.
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| Skiing and Studying- easily done when you can ski to school. |
To continue with the moodiness,
Southern Ontario got the biggest dump of snow it's seen in a while. Really though. UW was even closed for the first time since
2008. This of course led directly to
members of the UWNST suiting up and hitting the streets, libraries, Laurier,
Waterloo park- anywhere and everywhere that was skiable- and that was everywhere.
The amount of snow that we got also
meant that the Mono Nordic Invitational was a go, so the next day 5 athletes
travelled to Orangeville: Alison, Katie,
Glenn, Ryan F. and Colin P. The snow
was soft and the course tough. It was
the same as the invitational trail run that Mono hosted in the fall- 5km of
seemingly unending hills. But it was a
gorgeous sunny day and a real treat to have a race that close to home, which
made for a positive attitude all around and a great race day.
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| Lots of sunshine and snow at Mono Nordic |
The OUA championships are now in the
line of sight, and they will be hosted by Lakehead University at Lappe Nordic
in Thunder Bay, Ont. Eight Waterloo
athletes and two coaches will make the trip and be competing at their very
finest in a deep field of Ontario's best university skiers.
