UW Nordic News

Snow? and Racing? North Bay OUA Invitational 2012

2012-01-23T11:58:00.002-05:00

Scheduled this weekend of January 21-23 was the North Bay Nordic/Nipissing Invitational Race. Although there had been previous scheduled races this season and a couple of time trials, this was the first major race for the Waterloo Nordic Ski Team. It was similar to last year's race in that format was the same- skate races on the Saturday and classic races on Sunday but it differed in that both the Men and Women were to ski the same distances and the forecasted temperatures weren't an unbearable -30 degrees.

From Waterloo left coaches Colin and Derek, and athletes Martha, Lucy, Tim, Ryan, Alison and Katie. We were joined in North Bay by Glenn who travelled from Ottawa. Friday met us with some chillier temperatures but the skate race course was skied by the team- two laps around the red trail for both men and women. For those unfamiliar with North Bay Nordic trails the red course is essentially a long gradual uphill, a series of rolling ups and downs, a climb up the "wall", yet more gain in elevation, about 1km of downhill back to the stadium and, for this race, a lap around the stadium, a repeat of previous said course and back down to the finish. To finish off the first day of the weekend the coaches stuck around to do some wax testing in preparation for Saturday's race and the athletes returned to the hotel for a room-cooked meal and an early bedtime.

Saturday's race had quite a later start than usual- the race didn't start until 12pm. For most athletes it was a nice relief to have such a long time to wake up, prepare for the day, and then extra time at the race site to warm up and make it to the much-anticipated start line on time. The men were scheduled to race first and the results are as follows:

Place	Name	1st 5km Lap Time	Second 5km Lap Time	Total Time for 10km
18	Glenn Hartman	16:06	16:57	33:04
33	Tim Hughes	17:50	19:00	36:51
38	Ryan McNamara	18:44	19:47	38:31

And for the Women:

Place	Name	1st 5km Lap Time	Second 5km Lap Time	Total Time for 10km
25	Alison Stephenson	20:12	20:54	41:06
27	Katie Madden	20:44	21:03	41:47
42	Lucy Yao	28:30	31:04	59:35

It was somewhat challenging for us Southern Ontario-ers as we've had significantly less time on skis than some of the northern schools. Regardless, everyone put forth their best effort and some decent results were found, with Glenn having the best placing within the team. Saturday night was the usual post-race/pre-race happenings and all was prepared for the following day's race.

The forecast for Sunday was supposed to be a step warmer than Saturday, but as we arrived to the race site we found that it felt significantly colder than Saturday. The start was more of a usual 10am time- the men's race starting the clock and the women's starting 25 minutes after. The race course was North Bay's blue extension trail instead of the red. This was beneficial for a classic race because there weren't nearly as many steep climbs to herringbone up, but rather more gradual hills which were easily stride-able. The disadvantage to this course was that many athletes had not skied the course in the past and there was very little time and/or energy to ski the course after Saturday's race. As a result a number of athletes saw the course for the first time during their race. Even so, most athletes were quite pleased with their results.

Men's:

Place	Name	Total Time for 10km
13	Glenn Hartman	28:57
21	Tim Hughes	32:25
33	Ryan McNamara	34:10

Women's:

Place	Name	Total Time for 10km
19	Alison Stephenson	38:25
29	Martha Sutton	42:24
31	Katie Madden	43:53
36	Lucy Yao	1:00.0

Once again, Glenn was the best ranked on the team, with an excellent placing of 13th. For most, Sundays results were welcomed with much more pleasure for the team.

The race weekend finished up quite early and we were able to depart by about 12:30 to embark on the trek to the land-of-no-snow. To our surprise there was snow on the ground upon arrival, even enough for skiing! However, our hopes were once again crushed with a morning of rain. Oh well, to Mono Nordic next weekend it is for the Mono Nordic Ski Race, as it is officially called on Zone4. Until then, happy skiing, slush-skiing or whatever the heck it is we're supposed to be doing until then.

Glenn

Lucy

Alison

Back to Highlands/Time Trial #2

2012-01-21T19:46:00.000-05:00

This past weekend it was our earnest intention to race at the Wasaga Loppet. There was, however, not enough snow on the ground to have that fulfilled. But good old Highlands had more then enough snow for a weekend of skiing, and so trips were planned for both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday's schedule was a day of nice easy skiing, with some technique work, and for Sunday there was a time trial planned, in which we would be joined by Guelph.

On Saturday Derek, Ryan and Katie made the trek, enjoyed some beautiful sunshine (although it was still quite chilly) and both Katie and Ryan got some classic technique expertise from Derek.

Sunday came around and a few more Waterloo athletes came along, this time it was Colin, Alison, Lucy, Katie and Ryan. The time trial was to be 5km classic for the women and 10km classic for the men. After the appropriate wax was chosen for the day, everyone waxed up and made their way up the glacier to the start line. The results are as follows:

Men's:

Place	Name	5km Split Time	2nd 5km Split Time	Total Time
1	Matti*	15:42	16:18	32:00
2	Erin P.*	15:55	16:23	32:18
3	Graham*	16:52	17:00	33:52

6	Tim H	17:14	18:16	35:30
7	Colin	18:06	18:42	32:56
11	Ryan	19:35	20:24	39:59

Women's

Place	Name	5km total
1	Laura*	19:46

4	Alison	21:25
5	Katie	25:07
6	Lucy	33:00

*denotes a Guelph skier

It was a great race experience to get out onto some real snow, as neither Waterloo or Guelph has ski-able snow. Next weekend both teams will travel to North Bay to participate in the North Bay/Nipissing OUA invitational.

Time Trial # 1

2012-01-16T21:41:00.000-05:00

Early Sunday, January 8, 2012 the UW Nordicski team rolled out of bed and started the drive from Waterloo to HighlandsNordic for a 10km skate time trial with Queens University and The University ofToronto. In Waterloo, the snow was just dusting the grass blades, but as thecars drove north the snow began to accumulate and at Highlands the snow wasperfect for the upcoming time trial; a hard base from a thaw earlier in theweek covered in a few centimeters of fresh snow.

The morning at Highlands began with theconfirmation of the time trial course. The primary concern in choosing thecourse was the likelihood other recreational skiers would also be using thosetrials. In the end it was determined the course would consist of two 5km lapsstarting and finishing at Larry’s glacier following a mix of the red and yellowtrail markers.

Shortly after 10:00am, Seven Waterlooskiers lined up to start, two men and four women (finally the ladies areoutnumbering the men). Ryan, Tim H., and Colin lead the charge for the Waterloomen. After the first few climbs Colin dropped out still suffering from alingering cold but Ryan and Tim pulled through finishing with times of 38:34.0and 34:33.0 respectively.

The women started a few minutes behind themen. Emily, Alison, Martha, and Lucy lined up amongst the UofT and Queensskiers. Emily and Alison went off with a strong start as the field spread out,sitting in fourth and sixth through most of the first lap. Emily stopped duringthe first 5km choosing to take it easy after racing the previous week at USnationals and racing next weekend at World Junior Trials. Alison skied the full10km looking much better than earlier in the fall season. She skied slightlyfaster the second lap finishing in a final time of 39:52. Before the start ofthe time trial, both Martha and Lucy with the support of coach Colin Rhodesdecided to only race 5km. Martha chose the shorter distance because of apersistent but recovering injury and Lucy chose that distance because she wasvery new to skiing. Martha finished in a time of 21:40.0,while Lucy finished in 28:58.0.

After the time trial and some techniquework on the groomed trails at Highlands, the UW Nordic ski team pack up thecars and drove back to the green grass waiting in Waterloo.

Men’s 10km Skate

Place	Name	School	Time
1	Patrick	U of Toronto	29:27.0
2	Aaron	U of Toronto	29:32.0
3	Ian Weir	U of Toronto	30:13.0

7	Tim H.	Waterloo	34:33.0
12	Ryan M.	Waterloo	38:34.0

Women’s 10km Skate

Place	Name	School	Time
1	Julie McVicar	Queens	36:14.0
2	Jessica Metuzals	Queens	36:33.0
3	Katie Prufer	Queens	36:54.0
5	Alison Stephenson	Waterloo	39:52.0

Article written by: Alison Stephenson

Twas the Night before Ski Camp not a Snow Flake was in the Air

2011-12-21T17:45:00.002-05:00

Beware the writing contained beyond this point is not very good and may not be suitable for all to read. PS this is why I’m an engineer.

Twas the night before ski camp not a snow flake was in the air

The forecast was warm which caused us skiers to say our goodnight prayers

Excitement was rising since all exams were nearly written

Even though it was warm Coach Colin said “Don’t forget your mittens”

The day had now come when some athletes planned on arriving

It started with three men, Derek, Oliver and Glenn driving

The car was very packed, due to the amount of equipment

Many pairs of skies and clothes this was a large shipment

Normally at the corner of Singhampton snow can be seen

But not this December 15 nothing but the hideous sight of green

To the farm house we entered, unpacked and started to relax

Today sure wasn’t the day to be thinking about ski wax

There were two more skiers on their way

Both Colin and his friend Ursula were the only others for the day

The five got dressed and laced up their shoes

To the bush they disappeared ......(couldn’t think of word to rhyme, therefore you come up with one)

After dinner the schedule read a strength circuit

Everyone complained but that courageous Glenn R. Workit

When it came to push ups he did well over a hundred

Some say Chuck Norris got scared and wondered

The strength circuit pretty well summed up the night

Everyone soon was off to bed to rise early in the morning sun light

In hopes that snow would have scattered that ground

That way they could ski and not run around

Well rhyming takes a lot of time and so the remaining of the ski camp adventures will not be shared in such a way as the first day.

So day two of the camp soon arrived with a few centimetres of snow on the ground. The four guys unpacked their rock skies and set out for a morning adventure out on the white stuff. A few laps began around the lower field but soon their interest grew short and they began to trek through the ponds and mud puddles formed through-out the various trails leading up to Larry Glaciers. The snow was little nicer up top, or maybe it was the fact that the ground was not a marsh that melted the snow the instant it hit the ground. As you can imagine there was not a heavy amount of snow but we made the best of it by putting a few hours of striding in, with a hint of mud running and rock climbing. Yes that is right ladies and gentlemen some rock climbing was done while we were out for our morning ski. It may be a little painful to take in the fact that skies were being used for the pleasure of climbing over trees across beds of rocks and through patches of raspberry plants, but coming from the not so snowy city of Waterloo the conditions were not all that big of a surprise for any of us. A good few hours went by from the fun filled morning which made it lunch time and gave us some time to realize how much we all wished there was snow on the ground so there was no repeat of the morning. But lunch was finished up and the scheduled nap was disrupted to yes you guessed it go for another ski hike with skies on. This time around things were not near as fun since we came to realize this wasn’t the smartest and nicest way to treat ones skies. So the afternoon ski came to a close with the remaining afternoon work out to be done by playing some ultimate Frisbee. Due to the short turn out so far to the camp teams were broken down into the young bucks, strong accurate thrower rookie Oliver Conway-White and superior quick hands second year Glenn Hartman. These two men took on the old folks, butter hands Colin Rhodes, talented but short Ursula and lastly Sir falls a lot Derek Hartman. As you can imagine it was a blow out game with the young guns making some unbelievable plays leaving the old farts left behind not knowing what hit them. Day two soon came to an end which included the arrival of two more fellow athletes, Tim Hughes and newly comer Lucy.

Saturday morning came with a great surprise, nearly a foot of powder. Breakfast was quickly eaten since everyone was so excited to get out and experience the winter wonderland. Everyone strapped on their skies and set out for a morning of technique on the classic skies. The day consisted of skiing and lots of it. Most people remained with the classic since the snowmobiles had not yet had time to proper pack the trails and make the conditions suitable for skating. There wasn’t even time for a nap this afternoon because of the fear that the snow would soon disappear. So after long kilometres on out in the bush dinner was greatly appreciated by all. Joining us for dinner were a few extra Hartman boys Ian and Karl as well as some Guelph athletes Shaun, Laura and Mary. After dinner was complete the Waterloo team did the tradition gift exchange which resulted in a few laughs from some ridiculous gifts, may just have to come out next year to see what the gifts were since that sometimes becomes a routine of re gifting. Most hit the hay around 8:00 in order to be rested up for another great day of skiing and/or potentially racing in the Yuntide Blast.

Sunday came quick with only getting an 11 hour sleep, breakfast was eaten with hardly a word spoken (general case for tired, hungry skiers). The race today was going to consist of a 3 km loop from the lodge, out the green loop taking the short cut up to the first finger were the climb continued. Once the top of the climb was reached the remaining part of the race proceeded to be downhill, backwards on blue to Larry’s Glacier and a sprint down to the finish. For the men this was repeated 3 times and with the women doing 3 as well. Not too many Waterloo members participated in the race due to the fact of working extremely hard over the previous few days. Results available on Zone4.ca.

Over all the camp ended fairly well, plus I am getting really bored writing this blog so that’s all I’m writing. If you want more, it will be nice to see you all out next year that way you can experience in the excitement.

Merry Christmas Everyone,

Happy skiing over the break and I will see you out at the future races.

December's Daily Dilemmas

2011-12-11T23:22:00.001-05:00

Yesterday morning I woke up to 35 centimeters of snow. The excitement was unbearable, I immediately went to scrounge up whatever ski gear I could find in the basement (I was visiting home and, without anticipating snow, left all of my ski gear in Waterloo) and was planning on getting to our local ski club as soon as I could to indulge in all of the snow we'd gotten. I was then faced with a decision. With upcoming exams and all, I really should have been spending the day studying, with upcoming ski season though, I really should have been spending the day skiing...

The conclusion I drew was that being a university skier in December is hard! For any student, December is a month full of final projects and exams, not a lot of sleep and stressing about whether the work you have or haven't done will be good enough for whatever your standards are. Generally speaking, not a fun time- at least in my experience. Being a skier though, December is a very exciting time of year- after 8 months or so of dry-land, the snow finally comes and you get to try out all of those fancy new tricks (or was it technique?) you've learnt over the fall. But not only is it an exciting time of year, it is also a time crucial in your training plan. If dry-land, you're trying to get in as much volume as possible, and if on snow, as much time on snow as possible. So the study vs. ski dilemma isn't purely desire over discipline, but two competing needs both with considerable consequences.

In the end, I ended up going for the ski, and it was well worth it. The snow was beautiful and I even got some studying in too. The message here isn't to skip out on studying the day before that exam you have to pass to go for a ski, but to know that as university skiers we're all in the same boat right now. Study hard for those exams, and get out there in the snow as much as you can manage. Christmas is right around the corner, where we will be able to ski until we can ski no more.

No time like snow time!

2011-11-19T22:38:00.001-05:00

At approximately 5:55 p.m. on Thursday, November 10 Coach Colin notified us that there was potential for some of that white stuff to be on the ground by the morning, and that it was "time to revive the 'first on snow' competition". The criteria was that there had to be a picture taken of them skiing on the 'snow' and that it had to be legit flakes of snow-not just a thick frost covering the ground. And though I am not sure as to how many competitors showed to the start line for this one, there was a definite winner. Tim Hughes was able to both ski on acceptable 'snow' and snap a shot of himself doing so. Although the prize was not publicly awarded, or even seen for that matter, it was said to be an eloquent snowflake crafted from corrugated material and wrapped in silver lining. Though I do have a hunch it was a cardboard snowflake wrapped in tin foil, just a guess though.

Going with the 'first on snow' theme was the potential to head up to Highlands for some better quality powder. Unfortunately though, the weather was a tad warm and so rollerskiing was once again the way to go for the weekend.

A little bit of a makeover?

2011-11-03T23:45:00.001-04:00

If you've started reading this, I'm sure you've seen that there have been some aesthetic changes to UW Nordic News. The previous format, although visually pleasing, was a little out of date and starting to feel like our bulletin board inside the PAC (I think it's advertising OU's for either 2008 or 2009?). The goal is to make the blog somewhat similar to the previous- having pictures of team members (past and present?), updates as to what the team has been up to, all the usual stuff, just newer format. As you can see the format that you are currently seeing is the 'dynamic format' to which you change your view of it to mosaic, snapshot, etc (you should be able to do this in the top left corner), but there are many formats to choose from. That being said and done, feedback from regulars (of course I can assume we have many, many regular readers) as to reading format, etc. would be fab. It is nowhere near being done, or started really, but here's to some fresh ideas.
Over and out.

September, according to us.

2011-09-25T20:48:00.006-04:00

September, for university students, is a time of change. For first years, it involves many new starts, like moving towns, a new school, new friends and so forth. And for the rest of us it usually involves new living accommodations, new courses and a fresh start to the school year. For us members of the UW Nordic Ski team it means the beginning of team practices - after possibly training alone all summer- new team members and, of course, the Fall training camp.
And there are a few new faces for the team. Joining us on the men's side are Oliver Conway-White and Curtis Mosier and on the women's (woot! more girls!) are Emily Yungblut and Leah Krustafer.

And so comes fall camp.

It began on a rainy Friday afternoon when vehicles packed with rollerskis, poles, lots of food, and skiers with their accompanying gear set off to Highlands Nordic Ski Club for a stay at the farmhouse and lots of training. Those who were first arrived (Martha, Glenn and Katie) decided that to suit the rainy day some napping and other subdued activities would be appropriate. Upon the arrival of a few more team members (Tim H., Nolan, Oliver and Allison) a delicious dinner was prepared and, as per usual, the Friday evening strength work out was laid out. It consisted of various indoor activities such as dips in the kitchen, jumping to the top of the stairs, fireplace leg dips and much, much more.

As Saturday morning's breakfast arrived a pack of skiers headed downstairs, ate and prepared for a morning of rollerskiing. There was much rollerskiing to be done and throughout those hours we bettered our technique with various drills, some video analysis and lots of easy skiing through the sunlit back roads of Highlands. Back at the farmhouse lunch was prepared and the team continued with the next scheduled training session: team nap. After some decent R&R though, the trails beckoned and soon enough we were to be seen ski bounding through the Highlands ski trails. And after this , since we hadn't quite had enough physical activity yet, a game of Ultimate Frisbee was enjoyed by nearly all team members. Dinner, a team meeting and bed followed one another to lead to the end of the first half of the training camp.

But Sunday morning's activities comprised of a different sort of challenge than the previous: Mountain Mania.
For those not familiar, Mountain Mania is a five kilometre race from the bottom of Duntroon all the way to the top, literally. The keeners in this race (which is usually most of the guy's) chose to double pole the whole way, while the rest of us varied between skating, classic, running and biking. The fastest time of the day was Martha who, biking, had a time of 22:45. For the double- polers, Glenn lead in 23:54 and Ryan followed in 36:06 - but it must be noted that Ryan's pole tip decided to jump ship and so a pole swap was needed. Skating, were Katie and Alison in 28:35 and 28:45 respectively, and Tim H., doing classic, came in at 31:14. Mountain Mania proved as much a challenge as it ever was and, without a doubt, every athlete was thrilled to not only be done the race, but to be standing on top of Mt. Mania.

The last planned event for the training camp was a nice ski hike on the Bruce trail. It was a beautiful, sunny day and those who remained gathered what energy was left to hike, cave explore and even do some running. And as the end of the run drew near, so did the end of the training camp and all athletes were content to enjoy a nice quiet car ride back to Waterloo. Overall, a beautiful, warm, sunny weekend of training was enjoyed by many and Fall Training Camp 2011 was a huge success.

Email Subscription

2011-05-03T13:23:00.002-04:00

For those of you who don't have UWNN as your homepage (and UWNN sees no plausible explanation as to why this would occur) there is a new feature, email subscription. Whenever UWNN makes a post, you will get an email telling you that there is a new post and you can go and read it.

All you have to do is click on the "Subscribe to UW Nordic News by Email" link near the bottom of the sidebar on the right of the blog. Then enter your email and do all of the verification things and voila, you will get notification when UWNN has a new post.

Trust us, its worth it.

Season Wrap-up

2011-05-03T12:48:00.004-04:00

Seeing as there is no longer any snow on the ground and your skis have been stored away for the summer (if not, you should probably get on that...), we here at UWNN thought it would be appropriate to give you a brief wrap-up on the year. Now we are not going to summarize all of the results and what happened on the year, as you can go back and read the previously posts for that info.

FUNFtathlon
The tradition of late season racing continued this year with the annual FUNFtathlon world championships. For those of you unaware of this event, it consists of 5 events: swimming ~1000 yards, running ~7.5 km, classic skiing/rollerskiing 5 km, biking ~15 km and skate skiing/rollerskiing 7.5 km. With all of these events done triathlon style.

This year, there was snow on the ground for the event, however this snow was fresh snow that had fallen on top of ground that had been saturated with rain. Therefore skiing was out of the question and rollerskiing was the choice. However, the ground was still white making the rollerskiing itself kind of depressing. Additionally, it was fairly cold, with the possibility of more snow in the air on the day of the event, resulting in less than ideal conditions.

There was low turnout for the event due to the combination of injuries, the conditions and athletes being out of town. This meant that there were only 3 contenders for the title of "FUNFtathlon World Champion". Tim R, Justin and a team of Alison and Katie took to the startline.

Tim, being in triathlon shape, was the first out the water, followed closely by Justin and Alison. From there Tim tried to maintain and grow his lead, while Justin tried to play catch up, and Alison was looking to the use the benefits of being in a team to go hard and get the extra rest while Katie worked some of the events.

Coming in off of the run, Tim had increased his lead slightly as they switched to classic rollerskiing. This is where the trouble began for Justin. Part way through his first lap he managed to lose his pole tip. After finding it and managing to get it back on his pole, he lost it again and proceeded without one tip. The tip was located and a new pole was given to Justin by the support staff, but the damage had already been done. Katie took over from Alison at this stage for the classic and bike portions of the event.

On to the bike Justin experienced more problems with a flat tire. From here Tim cruised to the victory, despised miserable conditions that evolved during the bike with wet snow falling directly into the athletes and coating them is snow.

Overall, this meant that Tim managed to maintain his title from the previous year and became a two-time "FUNFtathlon World Champion".

Athletic Banquet
The athletic banquet was the time to hand out some of the awards on the season and see the end of the careers for a few of the athletes on the team.

Most Valuable Skier(MVS): Alison and Nolan

The graduating athletes this year were Jess Stevenson and Derek Hartman.

Jess completes 3 seasons with the team and is graduating from Chemical Engineering. Her career will take her home to Calgary, where a full-time job awaits her.

Derek completes 5 seasons with the team and is graduating from Mechanical Engineering. He will be back at Waterloo next year for a Masters in Mechanical Engineering and will be helping out as an assistant coach with the ski team.

Eastern Canadian Championships

2011-02-14T11:09:00.001-05:00

This past weekend the University of Waterloo ski team headed to Ottawa/Gatineau for the Eastern Canadian Championships, which was also a part of the NORAM race series, held at the Nakkertok ski club. Among the competitors, were numerous world class athletes with World Cup starts, including two Waterloo alumni Andrea Dupont and Harry Seaton. The format for the weekend was a mini-tour setup where there are three individual races and the times from each of the events, along with some bonus seconds awarded for placement in the sprint are added together to determine the winner. The three events were: a 3 km skate prologue, a 1.4 km skate sprint and a 15 km and 30 km classic race for the women and men respectively.

The members of the Waterloo team currently based in Waterloo decided to forego the prologue event in order to allow the team to leave for the race site on Friday instead of Thursday, in order to be able to engage in the studious side of being a student-athlete. However, three members of the team, Alison Stephenson, Nolan Beanlands and Ryan McNamara, are currently living in Ottawa and working their coop jobs and therefore decided to race the prologue event. A prologue is an individual start, short distance race, with it being a difficult race to pace for as it is between a sprint and a medium distance event. The course chosen for the prologue was particular tough, as the organizers managed to arrange the course so that all of the major climbs at the race site were included. As a result of the race format being different than what is commonly raced by the Waterloo athletes, both Ryan and Nolan had fairly tough races and were looking forward to the next day’s event for redemption. Alison had a decent result and ended up finishing 40th in a fairly deep field of skiers in the Open Women’s race. In the same race, Andrea Dupont was 6th, while in the Open Men’s field Harry Seaton was 9th. Additionally, local Waterloo Region product Andy Shields had a very good race, placing 7th. Full results for all of the weekend races can be found at www.zone4.ca.

While all of these athletes were busy racing, the rest of Waterloo team was sitting on a bus on their way to Ottawa. The athletes heading up to meet the other three athletes already there were: Derek Hartman, Glenn Hartman and Katie Madden, along with coaches Colin Rhodes and Justin Faulkner. A few other athletes were unable to make the trip due to academic commitments and sickness, leaving a slightly smaller crew. As is usually the case, the Waterloo team picked up the University of Guelph team and headed on the way.

Upon getting to the race site, the team headed out to preview the course and get a feel for what to expect on the Saturday and Sunday. The Nakkertok trails present a fairly tough set of courses, so getting a picture of the trails in one’s heads so that it is possible to mentally prepare for the following races is quite important.

Saturday morning dawned and the Waterloo skiers boarded the bus a little after 7:00 am to head to the race site. The schedule for the day was a qualifier race in the morning at 9:00 and 9:40 for the men and the women respectively, followed by heats from noon and on for those that qualified. The way that a sprint race works in that in the qualifier, every skier races the course individually, with 15 sec starts, and records a time for the course. Based on this time, the skiers are seeded, with the best time getting the first seed. The top 30 skiers in each of the Junior and Senior, Women and Men categories then proceed to race heats. In the heats, 5 skiers at a time race against each other in a quarterfinal. The top 2 in each quarterfinal, plus the 2 other fastest times from all of the quarterfinals move on to the semi-final. Again, the top 2 in each semi-final plus the next 2 fastest times move onto the A-Final and the others move on to the B-Final. From these finals, the final results for the day are determined.

All of the Waterloo skiers, except Derek, who is on the IR with an inability to skate ski pain free, took to the startline. The final results were that Nolan placed 37th in Senior Men, Glenn placed 32rd in the Junior Men field and narrowly missed out on the heats, while Ryan was 37th in Junior Men field. On the women’s side, Alison was 13th and Katie 14th in the Junior Women field and therefore both qualified for the heats in the afternoon. Dupont won the Open Women qualifier, while Seaton was 4th and Shields 3rd in Open Men.

The afternoon brought the heats for those who qualified. The Senior Men heats got going first and both Shields and Seaton skied through to the semi-final. In the semi-finals, Seaton was narrowly edge out at the line for 3rd place in his heat and therefore did not advance to the A-Final. Shields on the other hand secured a spot in the A-Final with his skiing performance. In the A-Final, Shields ended up in 4th place. Seaton won the B-Final to place 7th overall. In the Senior Women heats, Dupont skied her way into the A-Final and ultimately placed 6th overall.

Katie and Alison both skied well in their quarterfinals and Alison managed to secure a spot in the semi-final with her performance, while Katie was unable to advance. In Alison’s semi-final, she was unable to secure a spot in the A-Final, thus sending her to the B-Final, where she skied well and ended up in 10th place for the day.

The weather on the day was very temperamental, with it being sunny and as a result feeling very warm one minute and then the sun would disappear making it feel much colder. Additionally, at a few times through the day it snow heavily for 10 min here or 30 min there. As a result, the weather kept everyone on their toes as they raced or watched.

After these performances, the Waterloo skiers headed back to the hotel to rest up for the long race scheduled for the next day. Additionally, since Ottawa is a bit of a mecca for skiing and ski equipment in Eastern Canada, some of the team headed to a ski shop to stock up on ski clothing and equipment, which is not readily available in the Waterloo region.

Sunday brought the 15 km and 30 km classic races for the women and men respectively. This is a longer distance than most of the team had skied in classic and so the day was going to be a good racing experience regardless of the results. As a result of the fact that the weekend was a mini tour, the start was handicapped. That is the starting sequence was based on times from the two previous races. So the fastest, world class skiers started up to 6 min before the main pack of skiers, who had not done the previous two races. Based on the fact that Alison, Ryan and Nolan had raced the previous two races they had starts in front of the main pack which consisted of the rest of the Waterloo racers in Derek, Glenn and Katie. The women went out first for their 15 km and both Katie and Alison turned in solid results, with Alison placing 52nd, which left her 37th in the overall mini-tour and Katie finished 60th in the classic race. To entice Katie to ski a little faster, a certain delicious piece of food may have been waved in front of her during the race by a member of the coaching staff as incentive. It remains to be seen whether the coaching staff may have opened up a can of worms with this, as all the skiers may need to be enticed with this delicious food item at future races.

The men’s race consisted of 6 x 5km loops to make the 30km distance and so this made the race spectator friendly. The race ended up being a bit of a war of attrition for the Waterloo team, as Derek was out of the race after 15km and back on the IR after re-aggravating a previous injury, thus bringing a likely close to his university racing career. Additional, Nolan was also unable to finish the race after ‘hitting the wall’ or ‘bonking’ at about 23km. Unfortunately, his body was not quite up to the challenge of the day after the weekend of racing, and a solid performance up to that point was put to waste. As a result, the top Waterloo finisher was Glenn in 73rd, which is a solid performance considering it is his first year classic skiing and his first foray into a 30 km race. Ryan fought his way to the finish of the race, gutting it out over the final few laps to finish 98th.

Dupont was 8th in the classic race, and ended up placing 6th in the overall mini-tour while Shields was 7th in the classic race and finished 8th overall, and Seaton was 10th in the classic race to place 9th overall.

With these performances, the Waterloo team headed back home to get ready for a tough week of school as there is a significant amount of assignments and midterms to be done in the next week by the team members before getting to reading week.

OUs 2011

2011-02-10T08:18:00.001-05:00

This year, the 2011 OUA Nordic Championship’s were held at Laurentian Nordic. Friday morning arrived and us Waterloo skiers were greeted by a purple bus sporting some –friendly, as Tim noted- killer whales. The Orca (as the bus will be further named) was loaded and boarded and off we were to pick up Guelph and commence the trek to Sudbury. The team started off with a 1:1 coach-athlete ratio, as there was only Katie and Glenn from Waterloo, Tim joining us from Highlands and our three coaches/ race support: Colin, Justin and Glen. Alison, Nolan and Ryan were to be travelling from Ottawa with Carleton to meet us in Sudbury, however upon arrival Ryan was missing as he took the weekend off due to sickness. Also, Derek and Jess were back in Waterloo for the IRC and surrounding events.
The format for this year’s OU’s were somewhat different (or so I was informed) from previous years. Originally it was to be composed of a continuous pursuit on Saturday, 7.5 x 2 for the Men and 5 x 2 for the Women, and the team sprint event on the Sunday. However, after two weeks of skating in classic boots or classic-ing in skate boots in preparation for the pursuit we were informed that it would in fact be changed to a non-continuous pursuit. This meant that there would be the classic races in the morning and the skate races in the afternoon- a challenging day for both wax crews and athletes. Friday night’s team meeting came around and Waterloo coaches were not to be found, either still diligently waxing or at the coaches meeting we were unsure. And as it neared our 8:30 bedtime we figured we should at least know logistics for the morning, so Richard was kind enough to give us a run-through of the next day’s proceedings.
Waterloo went into Saturday with neither a full Men’s or Women’s team, yet all athletes had strong individual results. The day started with the men’s classic race and the Waterloo Men’s results are as follows: Tim, placing the highest of Waterloo in 21st with a time of 31:01, Nolan in 22nd with a time of 31:25 and Glenn with an impressive first-ever-classic-race-result of 24th in 31:43. This proved a solid morning on the Men’s side. The Waterloo Women’s classic results were Alison with a solid 26th in 25:48 and Katie, 36th in 28:19.
The afternoon skate race was also a good result for Waterloo, although the Men were down a skier as Tim’s stomach took the better of him. The start order for both the skate and classic was the same and so skiers had a better idea of the athlete field, which generated fairly consistent results. In the Men’s field Nolan was again 22nd in 27:44, being the highest placing for Waterloo, and Glenn was 25th in 28:04. Both Nolan and Glenn showed consistency for solid finishes in both races. On the Women’s side Katie jumped into 24th with a time of 22:19 and Alison maintained a solid 26th in 23:11, despite having some knee pain. Altogether Waterloo skiers had a great day and all were ready to board the Orca and head back to the Holiday Inn for some naps and/or ice baths and a delicious pasta dinner.
Now for some team sprint…
Contrary to Saturday’s events the Women were scheduled to race first for Sunday. Waterloo, in seat 8 was scheduled to start in the first heat of the day at 9 a.m. We, along with two other Guelph skiers, headed to the race site by van ahead of the rest of the teams in order to make the start on time. The first heat of the day went off and Waterloo, up against Guelph B, Laurentian C, Carleton A and Lakehead C sprinted 3 x 1km x 2 skiers to the finish. Lakehead took a quick and solid lead with Carleton in second and Guelph bringing in third. This left Waterloo battling it out with Laurentian for the next top spot. After a few close laps Waterloo skiers were able to gain a decent lead, thus placing fourth in the heat with a time of 17:35. Unfortunately though this would not be a fast enough time to qualify for finals as qualifications were based on time and not placing. What was not known later on though was that Queens would ditch finals so that Waterloo missed a chance to race the B finals. Queen’s gets the lame points here in that three teams that could have gone into the finals missed their chance.
By this point the men’s heats were well on their way and Waterloo having an excellent (more like the best) seat from the year prior’s results were hoping for a solid race to qualify for finals. And a solid race they did have, placing third in their heats with a time of 14:32 to qualify for the B finals. In no time the B finals were on their way and Waterloo was up against Lakehead B, Carleton D, Guelph B and U of T A. Lakehead and Carleton took the lead, Guelph took third thus leaving Waterloo and U of T to fight for fourth. Waterloo ended up in fifth with a time of 14:09, a significantly faster time than the heats.
After an exhausting day of team sprinting we stuck around to watch the Men’s A final which featured the most of the weekend’s top athletes and so made for a very exciting event. Awards proceeded; Lakehead and Laurentian dominating the Women’s field and Lakehead and Carleton the Men’s. The Orca waited faithfully in the parking lot and all gear and athletes (hopefully) were loaded onto the bus to commence the journey home. All in all it was a successful OU’s and all will look forward to a week to recover and get caught up in school (?) before next week’s Eastern’s.

North Bay– Welcome to the Chill Zone

2011-01-23T20:58:00.000-05:00

The first OUA race of the season was hosted by Nippissing in North Bay this past weekend. The original schedule for the weekend was a 10 and 15km freestyle race for the Saturday and a 6 and 9 km classic race for the Sunday for the women and the men respectively. However, the schedule for the weekend was in constant flux from the middle of the week due to the temperature forecast. From the middle of the week before, the temperature forecast for the weekend was calling for temperatures in the -20 to -25C for highs and lows in the -30C. As result, before even departing for the weekend, the races were pushed back to a noon start as opposed to the traditional 9 am start in hopes that the temperatures would be above the racing limit of -20C at start time.
The Waterloo team departed on the bus on Friday morning and then headed to Guelph to pick up their team and from there all headed towards North Bay. The bus continued the tradition of having some sweet artwork on the side, with the pattern this time being a Tiger. This was a close rival to the purple Gorilla that was the bus for a trip to Easterns last year. The drive up was a little interesting as there were multiple accidents on Highway 11, with lots of vehicles in the ditches and some fender benders slowing the drive. However, the bus driver did a masterful job of manoeuvring the Tiger and the arrival in North Bay was only slightly delayed over the original schedule.
Everyone on the bus proceeded to bundle up to prepare for the pre-ski. With everyone having looked at the forecast earlier in the week and the temperatures were forecasted to plummet from about -10C to -20C in the afternoon on Friday. Assuming that this plummeted was going to coincide with the arrival in North Bay, significant amounts of clothing was put on by most people. However, as everyone headed out, it was a balmy -12C and as such most were overdressed for the occasion.
After this, it was time to head back to the hotel for the typical pre race activities, like a delicious dinner, team meetings, and ski prep as required. Additionally, based on the forecast of a high of -19C for the next day, everyone had to mentally prepare to be racing in these conditions, along with preparing for dealing with keeping their extremities warm to avoid the potential for frostbite.
Saturday dawned with the meteorologists being correct with their forecast. It was approximately -24C when everyone arrived a little before 11am and proceeded to head out on course. Based on the forecasted temperature, the night before the organizers had decided to change the course to keeping the health of the racers in mind. The course was changed to a 3km, loop since these loop had smaller climbs and descents. With smaller climbs, the racers are less likely to burn their lungs breathing heavily than the larger climbs on the red loop. Additionally, the smaller descents mean less cold wind on the face and the potential for frostbite. With a change in the loop there was also a little change in the race distance. The men were doing 4 loops for a total of 12 km and the women 3 loops for 9km.
On the pre-ski of this new loop, all the skiers were getting their bodies and lungs adjusted to the temperature and deciding the best ways to protect their faces from the cold. This included various forms of hats, balaclavas, buffs and of course Vaseline on the exposed portions of the face.
While the race was originally scheduled to start at noon, this was pushed back to 1pm when it was determined that the temperature was not quite going to be warm enough to start at noon. This of course caused everyone to adjust their schedules and as a result, a game of ‘Janitor’ broke out on the bus.
By the time 1 pm rolled around, the temperature was officially -20C and as a result the race was a go. On the startline for Waterloo were: Nolan, Glenn, Tim R, Ryan and Derek, who despite still being on the IR, decided to start the race but classic ski instead. This was based on the facts that the organizers had guaranteed a track would be set on the entire course and the fact that the forecast for Sunday did not look promising, meaning that Saturday might be the only opportunity to race on the weekend. Additionally, Tim H was also on the startline in the Open men category. On the women’s side, Jess, Katie and Martha, who was also classic skiing for the same reasons, took to the startline.
The men got out first and proceeded to ski hard through the pain associated with racing and the temperatures. Once decent results were turned in with Nolan placing 18th, Glenn in 20th, Tim R in 26th, Ryan in 29th and Derek managing to beat some other skiers who skated and come in 31st. For the women, Katie had a very solid race and an excellent placing 14th for the best result among Waterloo skiers, Jess in 23rd, and Martha in 27th, also managing to beat some skate skiers. Full results on Zone4 (zone4.ca).
Everyone had different degrees of how the temperatures affected them, with the area around the mouth and nose obviously being cold from where the cold air was breathed in, to some having cold fingers or toes, but overall everyone came out fairly well. Additionally, everyone’s lung also felt it, but hopefully no major problems there.
After the racing and associated awards etc, it was time to head back to the hotel again to dry out, warm up and rest after a tiring day of racing.
The forecast for Sunday was much worse than for Saturday, as it was calling for a high of -26C and a low of -30C, therefore making it look like it was going to be difficult to get the race off. With this is mind, the Waterloo and Guelph team started to make some contingency plans for the next day. The decision was made to have alternative plans that, if the temperature was going to be too cold to race, then they would head down to Hardwood Hills to get some skiing in where it was forecasted to be a tropic -22C as opposed to -26C.
When Sunday morning dawned, it was -33C and the forecast was for a high of -26C around 3pm in the afternoon. With this as the temperature for the day, there was no chance that the race was going to happen and so everyone bored the bus to head south for some warmer skiing.

Qualifier Season

2011-01-23T19:59:00.003-05:00

In the interest of getting some racing experience in to prep for the upcoming racing season, the Waterloo team participated in some time trials recently.
The first two time trials were held in conjunction with the Guelph team on January 8th and 9th. Guelph was having their winter camp at this point at Highlands, so the Waterloo team joined in for their trial trials, in order to give some more competition for both teams. Taking part from the Waterloo side were: Katie, Tim R and Colin, with Derek riding the IR and doubling as the videographer for the event.
The first of these time trials was a freestyle team sprint, to prepare for the team sprint that will happen at OU championships. The race was kept pretty short, about an 800 m loop, but it meant that everyone got some experience in this incredibly difficult style of event.
In order to allow for some good competition, the structure for the team sprint was to have a one lap qualification to seed the racers. From this the pairs for the team sprint were matched up to try and even out the speeds overall as 1st and last paired together, 2nd and 2nd last etc.
With this as the structure, it made for a lot of movement in the sprint its self as the faster skiers would attempt to build a lead and the team would try to hold this as they passed off to their potentially slower team mate.
Final results are unavailable as it was an informally time trial, but there is some solid video that can be seen below. Check out the second video, a solid crash caught on film.

The next day, the Waterloo skiers were back up to Highlands for a classic individual start time. It was 5km for the women and 10km for the men. Waterloo skiers involved included: Colin, Derek, Glenn, Jess and Katie.
It had snowed approximately 10 or 15 cm the night before at Highlands and so it meant that some of the trails were soft. Additionally, the time trial was started in the stadium and the Racer Out hill all the way up to the run-up to the glacier was ungroomed. Therefore, on the pre-ski, all involved tried to get the trail semi-groomed through self grooming. However, come race time, the climb up Racer Out involved taking it easy up the climb as it was herringbone in soft snow in order to not tire yourself out for the rest of the race.
Overall, it was a good racing experience for all involved to get some classic skiing experience in. Full results are unavailable, however the order of Waterloo skiers was: Derek, Colin, Glenn in the men’s race and Jess, Katie in the women’s race.

The final time trial was held on Sat Jan 15th and was held just with the Waterloo skiers. On the startlist were Colin, Glenn, Jess, Katie, Ryan. The format was left open, however all of the skiers decided to do the race classic. It was a mass start, with the men doing 10km and the women 5km. Overall the conditions were nice and the race was held on a 5km loop up at the glacier. The end results for the time trial were: Colin, Glenn, Ryan on the men’s side and Katie, Jess on the womens.

Colin leading the way up the first climb, followed by Glenn and Ryan.

Katie working her way up the climb.

Jess pushing her way through some striding.

Winter Camp - The Summary

2011-01-21T21:34:00.000-05:00

With the OCUP#1 being held at the same time as this year’s winter camp, it created a slightly different atmosphere to the camp and its activities. Most years, as is typical with ski camps in general, the camp is about getting in volume and working on technique. However, since there were two races going on for the weekend, it meant that the volume training needed to be more or less cut out so that the races could at least be a useful experience. However, other than this change from volume to racing and a slight decrease in the amount of time spent skiing, this was a typical ski camp.
The camp got going on Friday, (December 17th) with people showing up at various times throughout the day. The first crew up was Colin and Alison who were bringing all of the food with them. Since there is a copious amount of food consumed at a ski camp, this resulted in a significant amount of food to pack into a not so significantly large car, along with skiing gear and waxing gear. As a result, there was a good game of Tetris that got to be played by Colin and Alison in order to fit all of the food. However, unlike Tetris they had the distinct advantage of being able to resize the pieces to make things work. This included going to the extreme of packing groceries items inside of the wax bench, under seats and wherever else they could find to fit the food in. They were successful in managing to fit all of the food in the car without having to resort to packing food in the engine compartment; however if this had been the case, time could have been saved on the cooking of some of the food ala Red Green style of cooking in his van engine compartment.
While those two managed to get up to Highlands earlier in the day and as a result get some skiing in and some wax testing, most of the rest of the crew strangled in at various points throughout the afternoon and evening. The cast of characters that arrived included: Derek, Glenn, Katie, Nathaniel, Ryan, Tim Rhodes and Nolan, who was down from Ottawa for the occasion. Also, there were a few none ski team guest with Heather (Ryan’s gf), Chrissy (Tim R’s gf) and Ian (Derek/Glenn’s brother) also making an appearance to have some time away and enjoy a bit of skiing on the weekend.
With the various arrival times for all of the skiers, the Friday night did not entail too much in the way of activities with waxing skis for the next day being the only defined task. The decks of cards got brought out and the game of Euchre was attempted to be taught to some of the members of the team. Nolan appeared to be over thinking the game, perhaps trying to determine the race results for each of the cards in his hand, which lead to a few mentions that he should hurry up and play.
The Saturday morning dawned as usually at 7am, with some oatmeal to line the stomachs of all and fuel them for the sprint races ahead. The qualifying sprint got going at 10am, so it left ample time for everyone to test their skis, warm up at their pace and get ready for the sprint. With the races being literally 200m out the front door of the farmhouse, it made for a very relaxed environment as everyone could come and go at their own pace and no sitting on the bus waiting for it to get closer to your start as either the men’s/women’s race got going, as is typically the case at team races.
The sprint qualifier is exactly that, a quick 3 min of racing and you are done. Along with some cool down and getting changed into some dry clothes; everyone was ready to go by about 11:30 for some classic technique work. With the sprint heats not going off until the 2:30 range, this left for an hour and a half or so for technique time and then lunch. With many of the Waterloo skiers being less experienced with classic skiing, Coach Rhodes was tasked with trying to help out everyone with this. Unfortunately, with the limited timeframe available, he could not get into any technique games or drills, just mostly focusing on looking at and suggesting technique improvements.
A major advantage to having some other guest with the ski team was that with proper planning, lunch could be prepared by these other guests and that the skiers could come right in and enjoy lunch, without the normal delay associated with making it after the workout or activity. The ever delicious tuna melts were on the menu for lunch and the thought of tuna melts, almost made alumni Kieran Jones, who was at the OCUP in his capacity as coach at Nakkertok, abandon the kids he was in charge of out on the course as they raced etc and come and join the team for lunch. Surprisingly, his stomach did not win the battle this time and was unable to enjoy the savoury taste of tuna melts.
After lunch was the sprint heats, with some decent results turned in from the Waterloo skiers as was described previously in the race report. After these heats concluded and associated cool down, most headed back to the farmhouse for some downtime or napping as deemed appropriate.
Dinner helped no surprises as the veteran members of the team had learnt their lesson from the Fall camp and did not let team rookie cook the dinner solo and as a result, no smoked spaghetti was experienced this time.
Saturday evening brought the arrival of assistant coach Justin, along with his three year old daughter Natalie. Of course, anytime a kid is brought into the company of those who aren’t regularly around them, they are the life of the party and Natalie was no exception, providing a great deal of entertainment. And of course Justin got the benefit of having a dozen babysitters to watch out for Natalie as well.
The rest of Saturday evening brought a night ski, and then followed by the annual gift exchange, where a $5 limit is placed on purchasing items, but other items which you did not purchase are fair game. As a result, the type of gifts can vary from items that are gifted because they were not needed in a household as they were a duplicate, to random items that have no practical use but are re-gifted through the gift exchange every year to random items that have accumulated in the barn over the years and our gifted in order pass them on to other skiers, or potential return them to the owner who originally left them there.
This year some of the items in the gift exchange included (Sorry, you should have been there) and (Can’t tell you or UWNN would have to kill you) and a really neat item, (You are invited to come next year and experience the festivities for yourself). With that, Saturday night came to a close as everyone headed off to rest up for the race the next day.
Sunday morning was prep time for the race and the luxury of being able to step out the front door for warm-up being enjoyed yet again. With the race being multiple loops, including Racer Out as the major hill, everyone was pretty tired coming out of the race. However, seeing as it was a camp, there was no time to be wasted, and so after some lunch, it was back out on skis to work on skate technique. With some more time to work with, there was a number of drills working on body position and improving skate technique all around. When it came time to work on hill climbing technique, the tired legs started to show as those who had raced struggled a little bit at the sight of Racer Out yet again. The final activity in the skate technique work was downhill balance and for this it involves going down some gradually inclines well working on balancing on one ski up with various levels of complexity. The top end of this complexity is the Zorra, where you are going down the hill on one ski and you take your other ski off and perform some tricks and then attempt to get your ski back on. There will be some video posted of this feat in a future post.
Sunday night brought Lasanga for dinner and not much else of substance as most of the skiers were pretty tired from the day and disappeared for bed at various times. As well, a few of the skiers also began to head back to Waterloo as there were some exams to be written the next day.
Unfortunately Sunday night brought some unpleasant news to a few in the farmhouse, as Glenn and Ian both had rough nights, coming down with some sort of sickness, possibly a bit of food poisoning.
Come Monday, with a bunch of the skiers having headed home and more being sick, Derek, Colin, Justin, Katie and Ryan were the ones left to head out and enjoy some more skiing and just put in some kms and enjoy the skiing. With the final clean out of the house, the camp was concluded and everyone headed back to Waterloo to enjoy the beginning of their winter holidays.

The Story of Racer Out

2011-01-16T17:24:00.002-05:00

The second race of the OCUP weekend was a medium distance skate race, 10km for both the men and the women. And as is typical for distance races at Highlands, the course was created to feature a significant amount of climbing. This meant that the course was selected as a 3.3km loop, which meant that the Racer Out Hill leading from the stadium up towards Larry's Glacier was feature 3 times in the race, along with the associated descent back down to the stadium. This made these portions of the course very important, as a significant amount of time could be made or lost on these climbs and descents over the 3 laps.

The Waterloo racers were similar to the day before, with assistant coach Justin Faulkner also parachuting in for a start. Having come off the sprint the day before and not necessarily having rested as much the day before, owing from the fact that it was a camp and significant amounts of technique and skiing had been fit in and around the sprint, meant that the Waterloo skiers were not necessarily as fresh as some of their competitors. However, this did not deter any of the Waterloo skiers, as they all stepped to the line looking to inflict damage on their competitors and the course itself.

The race was a mass start and so all of the men gathered at the line and headed out up Racer Out for the first time. There were a total of 41 men on the startline. Justin, fresh from not racing the day before and none to happy about being seeded at the back of the field due to his lack of a CCC number and the fact that all of the university skiers now have them, took the opportunity to double pole on the outside of the track around three quarters of the field and get a good position leading up the first climb. This would appear to be a little overzealous of a move on his part, as his arms would let him know later in the race. Something about being a stay at home day and not having time for a significant amount of training leads to decreased ski specific strength and endurance.

The rest of the Waterloo skiers settled into the field and worked their way up the large climb for the first time and in their minds did the tally; Me: 1, Racer Out: 0.

Over the top of the hill, the field would start to string out as each skier was left settling into their pace and trying to lead a pack or stick with a pack around them.

The women then started off to attempt to chase the men down the course. It was a smaller field, with only 21 taking to the line. Up the first climb for the women, the pace at the front of the group was noticeably slower and this led to most of the skiers bunching up on the climb. It was clear that the women were determined to not let Racer Out win overall and were saving a little bit for the next couple times that they encountered it.

As the men lapped through, the different groups of skiers were clearly starting to form in the race with a lead group of about 5 skiers, a first chase group of about 8 or 10 and then a second chase group of another 8 or 10. Nolan had settled himself into the back of this second chase group and was skiing a fairly strong race. Tim and Glenn were then a little bit back of this group, with Glenn skiing hard to make contact with Tim and settle in behind him. The two coaches, Justin and Colin were also skiing together and were trading leads back and forth over the different sections of the course. Colin, with significantly more training under his belt on the year was holding his own over Justin on the climbs, who was clearly feeling the wrath that Racer Out was dishing out. Ryan was skiing on his own a little ways back of these two, trying to find a good pace and have a sound technical race.

On the woman's side, the pace had settled in over the course of the lap and all were skiing a more consistent pace for the second lap. Both Alison and Katie were skiing around the middle of the pack as they headed up the climb a second time.

It was clear that the second time up Racer Out was significantly harder then the first, as the toll of the first loop and trying to find that proper race pace was having an effect on the racers. For some of the racers, Racer Out won that second time, exacting some revenge and leading to some tired looking technique and struggles getting up the hill. Me: 1, Racer Out: 1.

Coming around for the third lap, the racers had started to string out significantly more, with less defined groups beyond the first lead group and more skiers on their own, trying to keep their pace up. Tim and Glenn were still skiing together and working their way up the field picking off a few skiers ahead of them, as they managed to work together. Justin and Colin were also skiing together and were exchanging leads depending on the point in the course. Justin would manage to sneak by Colin on some of the downhills, and the area in and around the stadium, where as Colin had a little more to give on the uphills and the top portions of the course.

On the third lapped, the skiers were more prepared to deal with Racer Out, as they had experienced its wrath on lap 2. Having settled into a consistent pace and being prepared for it meant that the skiers were able to successfully climb the hill for the third and final time. While the technique and tempo may not have been perfect, the fact that it was about 7 km into the race meant that this round went to the skiers. Me: 2, Racer Out: 1.

Finishing up the last loop and then heading into the finish, the skiers attempted to pick off that extra one or two skiers in order to improve their finish. Or in the case of those skiing together, like Tim/Glenn and Colin/Justin, they were still jockeying to see who would come out on top. In the pairing of Tim and Glenn, they both went hard over the top of the climb and Tim had more to give, ultimately gapping Glenn and besting him by 8 sec and two places as he got an extra skier at the line. In the Colin and Justin pairing, Justin tried to use the same strategy as the previous two laps where he went by Colin leading into the downhill and led into and around the stadium area. Colin however was not going to have any of that, knowing that he did not have another uphill to go around Justin again. As a result Colin lead Justin to the line, taking him by 2 s.

In the final standing, Nolan had the best results of the Waterloo man's group, skiing a respectable race into 20th place. On the woman's side, it was Alison in 10th place.

Nolan: 20th
Tim: 21st
Glenn:23rd
Colin:20th
Justin: 30th
Ryan: 35th

Alison: 10th
Katie: 14th.

Full results can be found at Zone4.

Winter Camp - Race Reports

2011-01-06T14:07:00.004-05:00

The timing of the UW winter camp this year corresponded with OCUP#1 held at Highlands Nordic on the weekend of December 18/19th. As a result, the format for the weekend was a little bit different than a normal camp, with a bunch of racing involved.

So UWNN will start with a race report from the skate sprint and the medium distance skate race and will follow up with more comments on the weekend. While this report is dated, things like Christmas break got in the way. So read it anyway, even if you already know the results and what happened, we will attempt to provide something humorous or insightful (the latter is probably not going to happen).

On to the race report...

The Saturday morning got going with a skate sprint qualifier 1.3 km for both the men and the women. The sprint qualifier was a new experience for a number of the athletes and so it was treated as a learning experience for them. 4 men (Tim R, Glenn, Nolan and Ryan), two women (Alison, Katie) and one head coach took to the start line.
Some decent results were turned in from the group with Nolan placing just ahead of Tim, in 7th and 8th place respectively in the Senior Male field. In the same field Colin placed 16th, just edging out archrival and U of T head coach Hans Fischer by 0.7s. Glenn placed 10th in the Junior Male field, while Ryan followed up in 14th place.
On the womens side, Alison was 7th and Katie 9th in the Junior Female field. Full results can be found on Zone4 (zone4.ca)

As a result of less than full fields in the junior and senior male and female fields, there was some deviation from the standard sprint heat set up. With 17 or 18 racers in each of these 4 fields, it meant that the set-up was 4 heats of 4 or 5 racers in each of the categories. Top 2 from each heat advanced to the semi-final. From the semi-finals, top 2 went to the A Final and 3rd and 4th from each semi-final went to the B final.

With this as the set-up, the heats got off to a start. In one of the senior male heats, Tim, Colin and Hans were all matched up, which resulted in a very interesting heat for Waterloo supporters. Tim skied to a fairly convincing victory to move onto the semi-final, while Hans and Colin battled it out for supremacy. Overall the last climb and entering into the final 150 m home stretch, Colin manage to open a small gap over Hans and managed to hold it as the both struggled towards the line. Both obviously realizing that sprinting is hard, especially when you get less hours of training than you would like as a result of things like full time jobs and being a ski coach. Neither was available for comment after the race to determine if they wished that they had just stayed on the sidelines and coached or whether the sprint was worth it.

Nolan also managed to ski well and move onto the semi-final, while all of the other Waterloo skiers were unable to advance past the quarterfinal heats.

Now some our competitors over at the University of Guelph had a little bit more of an interesting sprint experience. The four categories were the last events of the day, which meant that the schedule was off slightly by the time the races got to this point. So, after having heard that the heats were running behind, they went with the estimated time they had heard for the delay and did not bother to check back in for the actual timing. So when one of the senior male heats rolled around which had all 4 skiers being from Guelph, 3 were nowhere to be found. The organizers delayed this heat and just before they were going to start the heat with 1 skier, the other 3 decided to show up and proceeded to try and get to the start line. Organizers, for some unknown reason, require that the racers have bibs so that entailed some more last minute scrambling. The heat managed to get going eventually, with most of the racers on their warm-up/rock skis. Hopefully, this punctuality things does not carry over to the travel arrangements on the bus this year...

And on to the semi-finals. From the UW side of things, Nolan and Tim were both unable to get in the top two and therefore were on to the B Final.
In the B Final, it was a tight race between 2 UW skiers and two Guelph skiers. Down the hill into the sprint hill at Highlands, Tim, Nolan and one of the Guelph skiers were battling for second place. Coming up the hill into the finishing stretch, only Nolan emerged, apparently having won some sort of roller derby over the sprint hill. Tim then emerged with a pole grip sans shaft and an extra pole in one hand and finally the Guelph skier emerged as well after a delay.

What had transpired was a typical sprint racing crash, which had been few and far between on the day, with a pole being stepped on and the shaft coming out of the pole grip, resulting in those two skiers going done and Nolan emerging looking like someone you don't want to mess with...

Ski Season

2010-12-06T20:27:00.003-05:00

It finally appears that winter has decided to arrive and that of course means that the ski season starts to kick into high gear.
Time to strap on the skis, ski around North Campus and log as many kms as you can while still finding time to study and pass the Medieval History class that you decided to take even though everyone told you it was a bad idea.
It also means, that (hopefully) no more comments like " You know there is no snow" as you head out for a roller ski.

Currently Waterloo has a few cm of snow on the ground and more on the way, which is nice, but not nearly as much as places like London who got like 30 + cm of snow.
But Highlands got even more, so that is a good sign for the up coming Waterloo skiing schedule:
-this weekend Yuletide blast and a Team Time Trial/Qualifier race
-the following weekend, Winter Camp and coinciding with that is the first Ontario Cup

So it will be a very busy next couple of weeks for Waterloo skiers as they get through exams and enjoy the snow and the skiing.

Current conditions at Highlands. Thats a promising amount of snow (http://www.highlandsnordic.ca/snow_conditions.cfm)

Skiing, Waterloo Style

2010-11-27T12:41:00.002-05:00

So like a good portion of the rest of Ontario, Waterloo did indeed get some snow over night, which of course meant one thing. Golf course skiing at Westmount.

With about 2 sm of snow on the ground and more falling, it was not kind on par with Kussamo, but it created some solid grass skiing. Since it was nice and powdery it provided a semblance of glide and overall was a very good grass ski experience.

No pictures this time, as the photography staff was worried about their equipment being damaged during the game of snowball tag. They probably made a good decision with the reckless abandonment that Ryan was displaying.

Looks like Highlands is currently getting dumped on, so it looks like there will be some quality skiing there tomorrow.

Rollerski Duathlon "R U Bad Enough for Badenoch?"

2010-11-23T18:31:00.008-05:00

Editor Note: This blog entry is very much overdue, seeing as this race happened earlier in the month. UWNN would like to point out that other important events have happened since then that have led to its delay. Such as the start of the World Cup season, there was a little race in Gallivare last weekend and a mini tour coming up this weekend in Kuusamo. Which meant that all of the staff was on assignment. If you haven't been paying attention, go to your favourite skiing news outlet and catch up. Oh, and you should probably watch some of the races this weekend, seeing as there are two sprints which are always exciting. Now, on to the race report, with lots of pictures!

UW skiers traveled done to Badenoch to participate in the annual rollerski dualthon organized by the University of Guelph. Entitled "R U Bad Enough for Badenoch?", the event tested the shear determination, will and endurance of every athlete, pushing them to their physical and mental limits.
Okay, so it was a little tamer than that with the women running 2 km and then rollerskiing 10km and the men running 4 km and then skiing the same 10km with the women.

The event was well attended with athletes from the University of Toronto and Queen's joining those from Guelph and Waterloo. In all, there were approximately 30 participants, with 6 Waterloo athletes/coaches taking part.

Everyone lined up at the start waiting for the go.

Alison and Katie, among others, running off of the start.

Katie coming into the transition off of the run.

Alison and Katie in the transition.

Katie heading out from the transition into the rollerski leg.

Coach Rhodes coming in from the run to the transition.

Nathaniel (Top) and Ryan (Bottom) coming in off of the run.

Glenn heading out on the rollerski.

At the end, Glenn was narrowly edge out at the line to end up in a solid 2nd place and earn himself some baked goods. Overall, the Waterloo athletes had successful days and everyone was deemed "Bad Enough for Badenoch".

Editorial - No-Good November

2010-11-11T08:33:00.004-05:00

For most cross country skiers, the end of October and most of November is useless. This is especially true when you attend a post-secondary institution in Southern Ontario.

You want to train after school? Do it in the dark with the sketchy dude drinking beer by himself on North Campus. You want to rollerski? Wear a vest and a light, or some crazy soccer mom from the suburbs will have you as a hood ornament for her Acura MDX. You want to ski? To &*%$ing bad – it’s Southern Ontario, probably between 5-10 degrees and raining and cold, but with no real hope of snow. Want to go out of town to ski? Tough – you have classes and midterms, or if not, a bunch of lazy jabroni’s on your ski team who say they don’t have time to drive 10 hours each way to Quebec. So what are you left with, you ask?

You’ve come to the right place.

Last year, the UW Nordic Ski Team pulled off a pretty solid November session that involved a figure eight loop, a bunch of shovels, and a shit ton of enthusiasm.

In previous years, we’ve rocked Westmount G and CC with minimal snow, which is more fun that you might think, unless you’re a G and CC member, in which case, those were not my ski tracks on your greens.

But if you’re still without snow in the middle of November, there is really only one activity I can truly recommend to avoid a complete and utter skiing meltdown.

A trip to St. Jacobs Market.

That’s right, eating. Who cares how much ass your workout sucks when you can come home to awesome (and cheap) Mennonite bacon? Or those sausages that you know are legit, because they cut them off a 200 foot roll for you when you buy them? How about 20 lbs of potato’s for $5 from a guy who is still covered in dirt from the field where he dug them out of? Fresh bread? Apples? Or maybe a Sherpa jacket?

November – the month to come home from your miserable, rainy, cold, dirty, not-quite-snowing, school-work-talk-filled hell of a workout and settle into some good food, and not moving for at least an hour. Get it in ya.

Snow! and Skiing!!

2010-11-07T17:10:00.005-05:00

Well attending "R U Bad Enough for Badenoch?" rollerski dualthon on Saturday (results and post in the near future), word was received that Highlands Nordic had received 10cm of snow and then had panned some trails for skiing!!! Excitement was rampid with all of those in attendance and the very, very easy decision was made to head up early Sunday morning for some skiing. Upon arriving back from the duathlon, most members of the ski team obviously went and checked the Highlands website to verify the snow and no one was disappointed as this is what greeted them.

Photo credit: Highlands Nordic (www.highlandsnordic.ca)

So a couple car loads of skiers headed out at 7 am to make their way to Highlands and get some early season skiing in. What greeted them did not disappoint, as there was in fact snow and the trails were in good/excellent rock skiing conditions.

The trail leading up to Larry's Glacier had some water/mud portions, but it was possible to ski up. The good skiing was at the glacier, as the yellow, along with portions of the orange loop were panned and very excellent for early season skiing. Overall, the loop was long enough to ski about 20 min continuous on the loop. And so the skiers went out putting in numerous loops in order to take advantage of the snow.

Lots of snow and good coverage on the trails made for some excellent skiing conditions, considering it is only November 7th. Now the countdown begins until their is consistent snow, but obviously everyone was very excited to get the opportunity for some skiing this early in the season.

Trail Building at Bechtel

2010-10-30T19:28:00.006-04:00

This past Saturday was the annual trail building day at Bechtel Park where the team helps to maintain the trail system at World Cup levels, at least by Waterloo standards.

Generally, the tasks entail spreading wood chips on the trails. There were a lot of wood chips to be spread this year and in the picture, Martha and Katie are hard at work spreading out some of the many wood chips.

Coach Rhodes is also seen spreading some wood chips, however this was one of the rare moments he was in one place long enough for a paparazzi to snap his photo, as he was constantly running around helping to organize the entire endeavor.

Another project that was undertaking was of the drainage nature, as Derek, Glenn and Ryan were tasked with trying to prevent a reoccurance of the Ice Crisis of 2010. That is prevent water from going over the trail instead of under it, on the bottom corner of the figure eight loop. Many a Waterloo skier was almost lost on this corner last year while doing intervals, and so action was desperately needed.
So they stuck three engineering students on the task, gave them shovels and said fix it. Surprisingly enough, the three actually knew that a shovel was not just for leaning on and went to work. The end goal is a valley which will help to direct the water in the culvert and additionally prevent dirt and debris from clogging in the culvert. Only time will tell if it is a success, or if the civil engineering student in the group should look for a new career path.

Picture Profiles - Returning Athletes

2010-10-30T15:57:00.013-04:00

And here are some picture profiles of the returning members of the team.
For their picture (the none skiing one), we have tried to guess what they were thinking at the moments that these pictures were taken.
Please add your own (appropriate) captions for these pictures in the comment section below.

Alison

"I'm a caterpillar"

Derek

"Damn, ANOTHER concussion? Eric Lindros, here I come!"

Jess

"I think this should count as training!"

Martha

"Holy s*&t, these targets are SO small!"

Nolan
"

"You got me all of the running race results from the last year, SWEET, oh wait the Office?"

Ryan

"I have a back-up plan in case my career as a skier doesn't work out"

Tim Rhodes

"Damn, this cat has everything going for it right now, I am so JEALOUS"

Team Profile Photos - The Rookies

2010-10-27T20:28:00.011-04:00

Nathaniel

Glenn

Katie

We will look to get some more in depth profiles and/or interviews with the rookies in the near future. And perhaps find out what is behind some of these pictures.

The Team

2010-10-26T20:29:00.003-04:00

Here is a quick glance at the athletes that are training and competing with the team this season.

The Rookies:

Glenn Hartman
Hometown: Stratford ON
Program, Year: Civil Engineering, 1st

Katie Madden
Hometown: Parry Sound ON
Program, Year: Knowledge Integration, 1st

Nathaniel Reilly
Hometown: Stratford ON
Program, Year: Knowledge Integration, 1st

Returning Athletes:

Alison Stephenson
Hometown: Ottawa ON
Program, Year: Kinesiology, 2nd
Years on Team: 2nd

Derek Hartman
Hometown: Stratford ON
Program, Year: Mechanical Engineering, 4th
Years on Team: 5th

Martha Sutton
Hometown: South Porcupine ON
Program, Year: Biology, 4th
Years on Team: 4th

Ryan McNamara
Hometown: Ottawa ON
Program, Year: Mechanical Engineering, 2nd
Years on Team: 2nd

Tim Hughes
Hometown: Duntroon ON
Program, Year: Computer Science, 2nd
Years on Team: 2nd

Tim Rhodes
Hometown: Deep River ON
Program, Year: Kinesiology, 2nd
Years on Team: 2nd

Athletes on Coop, but training/racing with the team in the winter:

Jess Stevenson
Hometown: Calgary AB
Program, Year: Chemical Engineering, 4th
Years on Team: 3rd

Nolan Beanlands
Hometown: Ottawa ON
Program, Year: Nanotechnology Engineering, 3rd
Years on Team: 3rd

Also training with the team and potential racing:
Cam Moore
Greg Cartmell

Time Trial

2010-10-17T20:16:00.005-04:00

To get a little race pace into the training, a roller ski time trial was held this past weekend. 30 sec individual start race, on the road out to Bamberg. Injuries and school commitments limited the number of participants, but here are the results.

As always with roller skiing, the type of ski can greatly influence the results.

What the.....?

2010-10-15T09:37:00.004-04:00

You will notice that there is a new poll! Here at the UW Nordic we value your feedback in order to create the best possible reading experience for you. Let us know what you want most, and we will try to accommodate you.
Except if you like really weird things. Then we can only refer you to the team psychologist. If that is the case, please email glenmacintyre@unlicensedpyschology.com.

Thank you!
UW Nordic News Management

Glen asking about your problems.

What you are reduced to afterwards.

Guest Editorial!

2010-10-05T12:56:00.006-04:00

Today we have a guest editorial from former UW Nordic skier Kieran Jones. In his day, Jones was an avid racer, even more avid blog-writer, and had the reputation of being the fastest man on the team over 100m, and being the proud owner of a mini-van.

For the last four years, the University of Waterloo Nordic Ski Team has been a pretty cool part of my life. Now, some may remember my first few outings with the team, where I gasped along, blaming frosh week, after-frosh week, and just about everything for my lack of cojones and skiing ability. I whined about how the ski team did different things than I was used to, was a different group of people than I was used to, and above all how awesome I was.

Kieran was so awesome when he first joined the ski team, he made pies.

Some things haven’t changed – I still talk about how awesome I am, the ski team still does different things, and above all, the group of people could definitely be called ‘different’.

However, a month into graduation from the ski team, I’ve realized a few things. This is my first fall in four years not suffering through Mountain Mania at fall camp, rollerskiing out to Bamburg on a crappy road full of angry church goers, running on North Campus in geese shit, or fighting traffic – foot and motorized to get to practice on time. No more wet, stinky and muddy Craft shirts, tights, and socks cluttering up the floor of my room at the Barn, rendering it practically uninhabitable.

Some lads year one.

It’s also meant some other things. No fall camp tuna melts, or hiking on the Bruce Trail into the caves where somebody tries to crawl through a small whole and inevitably gets stuck. No Mennonites in carriages, crazy dudes on gigantic scooters, or Glen handing out banana’s at a corner in the middle of nowhere on a long rollerski. No discussions about the value of an Arts degree, the chances of getting sick after swimming shit creek from Student Services to Ron Edyt Village, or chirping people who are playing Beginner Campus Rec soccer while doing running on North Campus. No more debate about whether it’s possible to pick up girls when you are on rollerskis and they aren’t. No more afternoon naps on the massive couch at the Barn while you watch The Matrix, or Top Gun, or The Green Mile on free cable for the second time in two weeks.

Over the time that I was on the UW Ski Team, there were too many people to name or count. People who had nothing to do with skiing, but came out to hack around anyway. People who knew they sucked at skiing, or weren’t in great shape, but were out because they wanted to get better. People like Surabhi, who was obsessed with lower backs and having a shit-storming good time. Natasha, who no matter how enthusiastic she was, seemed to always get injured. Yudai, who started out as the man with the awesome calves, but turned into the man with the killer climbing skills. Mike, with his fancy car, his mad gym workouts, and taking his chirps as the old guy. Andrew, who came in with little ski experience and a truckload of heart and hustle, and left as an OUA All-Star.

Standing around after crawling through some tight spaces

In my four years of fall training, I learned that it is possible to puke every Saturday morning after an interval set, and still feel good about yourself. That wearing tights in residence gets you some odd looks, but because everyone else is still asleep when you get back from practice, it’s not a big deal. That showing up for a 3 hour rollerski practice after having eaten a granola bar and some water isn’t a lot of fun. That just because you think you know how to ski doesn’t make you any better or any faster than the guy who goes out and does the work. That doing your laundry on a regular basis is a good idea. That $200 in groceries is a lot, especially when 4 people with the same amount have to jam it into one car. That kites which can lift a 110lb person off the ground in a strong wind are awesome. That sometimes it’s difficult to remember what you’re actually at school to do.

It's possible to fit two grown people into a deep freeze. I shit you not.

Basically my message for those just getting on the team is; go out there, get into it, and suck it up. In four years, you might look back and realize you took something out of the experience, even if it was just the fact that there are some weird people in Waterloo, and that rollerskiing in a thunderstorm is a bad idea. For those on the team now, realize that the time on the ski team can be whatever you make it to be. If you want it to suck, then it’ll suck. If you want to go out and have a rad time, then do it. Maybe I never jumped off that concrete pad into Laurel Creek swamp on my rollerskis, but it sure wasn’t for lack of talking about it.

Fall Camp Part II- Mountain Mania Horror

2010-10-02T19:42:00.008-04:00

Sunday morning brought out a nicer day than the previous, as the rain had ceased. It also meant that it was time for mountain mania. For those unfamiliar with mountain mania, it is a roller ski race from the town of Duntroon, nearly completely uphill for 4.6 km to the top. This makes for a grueling long climb.

While this photo does not quite do mountain mania justice, this is about the gradient of the hills that are seen for about half of the course.

This year there were 10 participants willing to accept the challenge that mountain mania presented. Double poling was the most popular option this year, however no one is really sure why, as double poling is in no way the easiest way to transcend mountain mania. At points, it is very much a struggle to keep moving up the hill. There are also rumours that someone’s arms have in fact fallen off when double poling mountain mania, however unverified at this point. Even with this in mind Ryan summed up his reason for double poling as “Sometimes you just need to show the hill who is boss and conquer it without the use of your lower body.” (and sometimes you need to show Andrew JeffERY what’s up and beat his double pole time)

Everyone took off and managed to survive to the top without issue, only with the pain that mountain mania dishes out.

The results are seen below:

Impressively Natalie managed to take the win in 12:03, which appears to be a new record for the course. She also did this the day after beating dad, Justin, in the AHS fun run, where she narrowly lead him wire-to-wire and just outsprinted him at the end for the W.

Strick managed to set a new running record for the course by 1:10, while Tim Hughes also set a new road biking course record, taking down the previous time by 1:37.

One none participant was Head Coach Colin Rhodes, who wimped out of mountain mania for the much, much easier task of running the Toronto Waterfront Marathon. He completed it in 3:06:09 and therefore crushing his personal best and qualifying for Boston! Congrats from all here at UWNN.

No one was up for round 2 of mountain mania, so all headed back to the farmhouse for the process of eating all of the remaining food. An impressive dent was made in the remaining food, however ultimately all were unsuccessful in this challenge. This was followed by cleaning up of the farmhouse and after some down time, it was time for the final activity of the camp, a trail hike on the Bruce Trail to visit the caves.

The caves give the opportunity for a little climbing, crawling and squeezing through a number of small crevices and cracks between the rocks.

Photo Credit: Heather Foley. File Photo.

After the caves, it was back to Waterloo, where everyone would proceed to crash and recover from the camp.

Public Service Annoucement

2010-10-02T15:53:00.006-04:00

Replace your rollerski wheels before they get to this point.

Fall Camp Part 1

2010-09-29T21:25:00.002-04:00

Excess amounts of napping, copious amounts of food consumption, many skiers in one place and lots of training can only mean one thing; a training camp. The particular training camp in question is the annual fall camp held at Highlands Nordic. Turnout for this particular camp was quite impressive (by Waterloo standards), with a total of 14 athletes, coaches, alumni and future athletes in attendance, led by the rookie crew of Glenn Hartman, Katie Madden, Nathaniel Reilly and Dan Sabau.

Friday evening marked the beginning of camp and the first event after everyone’s arrival and dinner is the strength circuit. However, snuck in before the strength is a little event known as cheap drugs. Of those in attendance, only 2 had experienced cheap drugs before and so the others were left in wonderment and worry about what it could entail. They would quickly discover its mystery and be dumbfounded by its effects. Details, however, cannot be reported or mentioned; only experienced by those who have attended one of the annual fall camps held over the past number of years.
Editor Note: No illicit drugs were consumed in this activity.

After this experience, the strength circuit proceeded to leave all participants a little sore and then shortly thereafter, all retired to the farmhouse to rest for the fury that is the remainder of the fall camp.

Saturday morning greeted the athletes as a nice, bright crisp fall morning with the leaves on the trees just beginning to change. Except this was the scene in the photograph hanging over the breakfast table. The actual weather was not so kind, as it proceeded to rain intermittently throughout the morning, along with fairly large gusts of winds. This was the weather that the athletes had to deal with as they headed out for the first training event of the day, a long rollerski with technique sessions with Head Coach Colin ‘Marathon’ Rhodes.

Athletes Derek Hartman, Alison Stephenson and alumni Matt Strickland headed out into the headwind and skied to ‘forever’ and back. The trip out resulted in numerous changes in the leader of the echelon as the job of breaking the wind almost proved too much and required near constant one-skating just to keep moving. The trip back was significantly easier, but all those involved decided that one long ski into the wind was more than enough. Therefore, they joined the rest of the crew, including the 4 rookies, Ryan McNamananananara, and new rollerskier Greg Cartmell, who had all been working with coach Rhodes on rollerski essentials, such as grass stops. It was evident that coach knew what he was talking about as all involved seemed to have mastered the skills, with only one injury report. From there it was time to work on some technique, specifically skate. After a solid technique session, all the very wet athletes decided to call it quits a little earlier to get out of the miserable weather.

Lunch was the usual excess consumption of tuna melts, and before and afterwards mutterings of molar mass and cross product could be heard as athletes managed to sneak in some homework time or some shut eye for many of the others. The first casualty of camp was report as Ryan McNamananananara decided joining in the trail run after lunch would not be beneficial to an injured knee and therefore decided to use his time to nap instead. Additionally, Colin and Martha Sutton departed back to Waterloo.

The now shrinking group headed out again into the rain, which had conveniently just started up again after it too seemingly had a lunch break. The ski hike was capped with a team hill sprint, which was won in close fashion by the duo of Glenn and Matt.

Team bonding activities were next on the agenda and it consisted of a blindfolded obstacle course. The rest of the athletes looked on in confusion as Alison, Derek and Matt proceeded to set up various structures which were to be climbed over, under, around and through. The task of the obstacle course was for one non-blindfolded guide to lead two blindfolded teammates through the obstacle course by commands. For the latest arrivals to the camp, coach Justin Faulkner and toddler Natalie, it was an amusing sight as the blindfolded athletes struggled through the course. Glenn ‘Sonar’ Hartman was able to successfully pull teammate Dan through the course; lead by guide Matt who simply clapped in the direction he wanted them to go. On the flip side, the group of Nathaniel and Greg, lead by Alison had a little more trouble, and were therefore more amusing for the others, as they were more hesitant to respond to their direction. The afternoon wrapped up with a game of ultimate, after which everyone retired back to the farmhouse, where it was found that Ryan was still napping. At this point, some prank should have been pulled on him, however he was spared as most were too tired.

Dinner brought an interesting attempt at cooking as 3 of the 4 members of team rookie were in charge of dinner, alone and since they all have just finished moving out of home, there should have been immediate concern by those anticipating dinner. On the menu was spaghetti, which most would think is an easy meal. Unfortunately, the rookies had other plans as they tried to create a new dish known as smoked spaghetti. While smoked salmon and bacon are delicious, smoked spaghetti does not fit that bill. Excessive amounts of cheese and pasta sauce were needed to consume this meal. For those looking to try this new delicacy at home, just put way to much pasta in a pan, with not enough water and do not stir often and voila, smoked spaghetti.

The rest of the evening consisted of oatmeal crisp (which was nicely cooked), a team meeting and then rest, preparing for mountain mania the next day.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Fall camp report.
Editor Note: The staff photographer was on another assignment and as such there are no pictures available.

Fall 2010

2010-09-28T19:39:00.003-04:00

With the calendar officially turning over to fall, it means a lot of things are changing like the leaves and the weather, but UWNN doesn't really care about those things. The important part is what hasn't changed and that is that it is time for another ski season at the University of Waterloo. With the new ski season, it means that UWNN comes out of its summer hibernation and starts up again.

Over the summer, a few things have changed with the budget for the blog, which unfortunately means cutbacks in a number of departments, such as in the dry wit and ridiculous departments, as well as proper grammar and spelling. However, there appears to be room to add a staff photographer, so hopefully there will be a lot of pictures added as the season progresses.

Recent activity with the ski team has included the annual fall camp, as well as a number of new rookies joining the team. So in the near future, UWNN should have some new articles posted including:
Fall Camp Part 1 and 2, and a look at the team for the 2010/2011 racing season.

Day 2 – An Epic

2010-02-26T01:21:00.001-05:00

After turning in several thoroughly dominating performances on Day One, it was time to sustain the success on Day Two. Some sore muscles suggested otherwise, but it was time to throw down in the mass start skate race, 10 km for women and 15 for the men. The course in Orangeville is considered fairly narrow for a skate race, but that was not going to stop the UW team and just meant a more interesting and exciting start. Again the coaching staff had worked long and laborious hours to get the wax right. Based on the skis provided the day before in the relay, expectations were high. The coaches kept the wax a closely guarded secret, under constant harassment and torture from rival coaches (Rumour has it they were using EPO as glide wax, however it is still a rumour at this point, as torture has not unveiled the answer as of yet…)

The women were the first to go and give the beat down to the course. The mass start went off without any major issues, a pair of sunglasses being the only casualty. After two quick laps of the course, the women were in. Alison Stephenson was Waterloo’s only representation in this race and had a solid race. She managed to do the all important beating your bib number and came in 22^nd.

Then it was on to the men’s race, where utter dominance was anticipated by superstar Henry Reich, Andrew Jeffrey and the rest of the Waterloo team. Reich and Jeffrey had set themselves up nicely to All-Star at the championship based on their Day One results, and were looking to improve their positions. Tim Rhodes was able to find his way to the start line on time for this race, which perhaps signified good things to come. Ryan McNamara was looking to use the fact that he is a skate specialist to move up in the standings. Derek Hartman decided that perhaps the press box was a better place for him, after coming off the IR for the classic race.

Therefore the team and the rest of the men’s field were ready and raring to go. Again, the race was off without much of a hitch. Unlike the previous day in the relay, there were no epic crashes.

After a fair bit of jostling for position on the first lap, the men settled into the race focused on getting through the remainder. Henry Reich used fast skis and perseverance to outpace those who had skied around him the entire race and finish in 4^th place. Andrew Jeffrey also used fast skis to beat some other skiers of a close rival, whose team is not to be named, down the hill and into the finish in 10^th. Tim Rhodes used determination to pass a large portion of the field into 22^nd place. Ryan McNamara blew by many classic specialists to finish in 31^st.

With those solid finishing positions, Henry was the 3^rd overall male and an All-Star. He was joined by Andrew Jeffrey who turned in a solid 7^th overall place, to go with their relay gold from the previous day. With those results, the two are off to Nationals, which will be held in Whitehorse in early March.

Stay tuned and stay classy San Diego…

Day 1 – Golden Boys!

2010-02-21T13:51:00.001-05:00

Canadian cross country skiers were excited with 4 men in the Top 16 in the Olympic Pursuit, otherwise known as the greatest day in Canadian male cross country skiing history, but the OUA Men weren’t going to let that overshadow them. So without further ado, from the UWNN team on the ground in Orangeville, a report, poetry-style.

DAY 1!
'Twas the night before OUA’s, and throughout Ontario
All the skiers were sleeping, it’s true don’t cha know;
The groomers were grooming the trails with great care,
In hopes that UW Nordic soon would be there;
The skiers were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of snow-flakes danced in their heads;
And coach Colin in his belle-a-clava, and Justin in his slacks,
Were discussing the conditions and how they would wax,
OUA CLASSIC
The very next morning the skiers awoke,
Now please look closely for what you read is no joke.
Away from the start line Henry flew like a flash,
A few minutes later Andrew took off and crashed.
And the sun on the breast of the new-fallen snow
Reflected into Tim’s eyes so that he didn’t know,
It was six-eight on his bib and not an eight-nine,
And so he began five minutes behind!
Then little Ry-anne, so lively and quick,
Started just behind our good friend Der-rik.
More rapid than eagles these skiers they came,
And the crown whistled, and shouted, and called them by name;
"Now, Henry! now, Andrew! now, Tim and Vixen!
On, Derek! On Ry-anne! on, Alison and Blitzen!
(note the replacement of Kieran Jones, Nolan Beanlands, Martha Sutton and Heather Foley by generous donations from S. Claus)
To the top of the hill! Just don’t hit “the wall!”
Now tuck away! pole away! ski away all!"
As the classic races drew to a close and the skiers collapsed,
The crowd milled about and minutes elapsed,
Then up on the wall the results appeared with no sound,
And every man, woman and chipmunk soon gathered around.
With the bronze there was Henry a smile on his face
And in 7th was Andrew what a wonderful race.
Tim was in 21st, at least in UWNN’s collective mind,
But add five minutes and he fell a 20 more spots behind.
Derek pulled in at a great 22nd
And Ryan in 43rd brought up the end;
Alison carried the whole woman’s team on her back,
And after a fantastic race finished the middle of the pack.
The coaches eyes -- how they twinkled! their dimples how merry!
Their cheeks were like roses, and noses like a cherry!
Their droll little mouths were drawn up like a bow,
They were so happy with how their team performed on the snow;
But is was not over, the team stretched muscles already spent,
In just a few hours the classic relay would commence;
The CLASSIC RELAY
Tim wanted redemption so he would begin,
He took off so fast it was prob-ly a sin.
He strided so boldly, his poles were so strong
And he cruised in so smoothly, just singing a song;
A flick of his wrist and a tap to the bum,
Sent Andrew off in 6th and boy did he hum!
He spoke not a word, but went to work hard and fast,
And pulled into second; tagging Henry at last,
Henry lay his finger aside of his nose,
And giving a nod, up those hills he rose;
He sped to the finish, and his team gave a cheer,
For he was in first and no-one was near!
But I heard him exclaim, ere he skied into sight,
Merry OU’s to all, We’ll sleep like Babies tonight!

Race Day!!!

2010-02-20T12:36:00.001-05:00

With most of the cross country skiing and Canadian attention focused on British Columbia (a haven for drug addicts), Vancouver (a crappy city full of rain, warm air and yuppies), and Whistler Olympic Park (beautiful sunshine, amazing tracks, and the best cross country skiers in the world) the UWNN is focused on something a little closer to home. The OUA Championships, held at Mono Nordic in Orangeville, Ontario.

Held Saturday February 20 and Sunday February 21st, the Championships feature a 5/10 km Classic Individual Start, followed by a 3 x 5 km Men’s Relay, a 3 x 2.5 km Women’s Relay, and finally on Sunday a 10/15 km Mass Start Skate.

The UW Nordic Team is primed and ready, coming off a reading week which involved the perfect tune up, as they are planning on peaking at exactly the right time. Stay tuned for results, because this is one Championships you won’t want to miss!

Eastern Canadian Championships Round 2 – Ding Ding

2010-02-09T12:13:00.001-05:00

With the Individual Start racing out of the way, the UWNT turned their thoughts towards the mess that is mass start classic racing at Eastern Canadians. While the start grid was wide, deep and expertly groomed, the fact remained that each mass start was going to feature at least 50 participants. Mass starts are considered the most fun of any type of start in the cross country skiing arsenal for a few reasons – a whole lot of pretty spandex in one place, the potential for horrendous crashes and pileups, and in the men’s categories, too much testosterone packed into a small space. The UWNT exited the Purple Gorilla at Nakkertok Nordic Center with delusions of grandeur and the possibility of earning a spot on The Discovery Channel’s Destroyed in Seconds in mind.

How much fun does this look? Hint: A LOT.

The UWNT Women were first to go, however participation was limited. Heather Foley decided her race season had been furious and opted to remain on the sidelines, resting, avoiding skiing 15km, and taking awesome pictures of her teammates. Alison Stephenson gave the starting grid a shot, but ended up pulling the plug after the first 5 km, citing extreme tiredness as the cause. With the understanding that Sunday was going to be a suffer-fest, the UW men put on their hard hats and got to work. In the Junior Men 15 km, Tim Rhodes pushed aside heavy legs and slippery skis to finish as the 45th Junior Man, good enough for 11th OUA in the category. Nolan Beanlands overcame his irrational fear of mass starts, steep down hills and klister to ski to a strong 58th position, good enough for 15th OUA. Ryan McNamara, still suffering the effects of his 2-day cold, as well as being on classic skis for only the 8th time in his life turned in a spectacular race. The courageous rookie ended his day in 68th, or 17th on the OUA.

With the Junior’s out of the way, and Rhodes set up in his hammock, the Open Men prepped to ski 30 km with a little trepidation. For most, it was considered to be the toughest race of the season, and some, of their lives. Four laps of the 7.5 km loop which featured every prominent hill at Nakkertok sounded like the perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon. While Henry Reich focused on getting with the right pack and turning in a respectable performance, others focused on the more immediate and pressing goal of making sure they consumed their feeds to avoid bonking and finishing before the bus left for Waterloo. The first lap featured a little Waterloo action – Reich jumped out fast, while Derek Hartman (that’s right ladies and gentlemen, he did start this one) and Kieran Jones avoided trouble for the first 2.5 km and conserved energy. Everything was going according to plan until the 4 km mark, when Hartman, striding up a hill in front of Jones, decided to cross his skis, poles, boots and tights and go headfirst into the tracks, snapping a pole. After struggling around the rest of the lap with a mismatched set of poles, Hartman ended his day early at 7.5 km. Meanwhile, Reich was cruising along, hanging in with a tough group. For a while it appeared Jones was setting up to end his day early, as his lethargic lap splits were not exactly setting the trail on fire, however 3 excellent feeds from Coach Justin Faulkner as well as conservative pacing resulted in a hot final lap, crossing the finish line well before bus departure time. As per usual, Reich ended with the fastest time, 17th in Open Men, or 4th OUA. Jones ended his day with a 36th in Open Men, or 14th OUA.

Selected Team Quotes:

Heather Foley: “Why would I want to race 15km?? That’s a really long way!”

Nolan Beanlands: “I want to go to the Olympics…”

Andrew Jeffrey: “Why are you talking to me?? I wasn’t even there!”

Justin Faulkner: “Am I allowed to run with the athletes when I do feeds?? I heard there is an FIS rule against it, and I desperately don’t want to get fined or end up in jail, which is what the FIS hands out for punishment.”

Derek Hartman: “Ofrrefoncrackcrashshshblaa – crap”

With Eastern’s wrapped up, the Purple Gorilla was loaded, bagels were consumed and passing out commenced. Next up for the UWNT – OUA Championships, hosted by the University of Guelph at Mono Nordic, in Orangeville, Ontario.

Again, for full results, please see Zone 4.

On the Phonograph: Wonderwall – Oasis. No explanation needed.

On the ‘Tube:

It’s a little dated, yes, but considering the accomplishment of Sara Renner this past weekend at the World Cup in Canmore, and the upcoming Winter Olympic Games, the UWNN team finds it appropriate. Enjoy, and get pumped up for the greatest 2 weeks in Canadian cross-country skiing history.

Snapshot:

What is wrong with this picture?? Is it as obvious as it seems?

UW Nordic Team Does Eastern Canadians – Round 1

2010-02-04T00:52:00.001-05:00

This past weekend, January 30 and 31st, much like every other cross country skier and their Grandmother in Eastern Canada, the UW Nordic Team headed off to Ottawa, Ontario/Cantley, Quebec for a non-stop adrenaline-filled weekend, otherwise known as Eastern Canadian Championships.

The race weekend began much like any other – the team arrived at the University of Waterloo’s Physical Activites Complex doors to find a big purple bus with gorilla’s on the side, and members of Waterloo’s illustrious indoor track team on board. After a short discussion, in which several track athletes came to realize that the Purple Gorilla was in fact headed to an outdoor venue with an advertised high temperature of –18 degrees Celsius, the bus was left to the UW Nordic Team. The UWNT settled in comfortably for the short ride over to the University of Guelph to pick up our best friends, biggest rivals, and fantastic travelling companions, the University of Guelph Nordic Ski Team. Ed – Guelph team members reading this blog – this is an earnest statement, meant with the best intentions. Please avoid rancorous diatribes in the comments. Also, you have your own blog now, so go read it instead.

A Gorilla

Purple

After a quiet ride in which quickly improving rookie Ry-An McNamara proved that it is in fact possible to be skunked in back to back games of cribbage, the Purple Gorilla disgorged it’s contents onto the bustling parking lot of Nakkertok, the site of Eastern Canadian Championships, located in Cantley, Quebec. Fortunately everyone brought their passports, so the border crossing between Quebec and Ontario went smoothly, with only one strip search of Tim Rhodes.

On the pre-ski day, Nakkertok was sunny, frigid, icy, and contained roughly 600 athletes jostling for space around the 5km and 7.5km loops creating an extremely fast and somewhat dangerous situation. The University Men prepped by skiing the 5km loop, of which they were to do two the following day, while the women only had to do one. As most of the team had never experienced the exhilaration/misery that is Nakkertok’s race trails, the first trip around the loop was an exciting one. Highlights included the skating rink at the bottom of Beep Beep, the pit in the stomach feeling from the multiple G’s experienced during the descent of Dirk’s Dive and the lactic-acid build up that occurs when herring-boning up Montee McCarthy.

But more importantly – race day! With temperatures suspected to be quite frigid on Saturday morning the race start was delayed until 11.00 AM. This presented the UWNT with the unprecedented bonus of being able to accrue a purely disgusting amount of pre-race sleep. As coaches and members of the Eastern Canadian’s Coordination and Volunteer staff were outraged to learn, the average amount of athlete sleep on Friday night was roughly 10 hours. Normally the downside of this ludicrous amount of sleep and lethargic start is the amount of time spent at the race site, however with the 600 competitors starting at 15 second intervals the incredibly efficient Nakkertok race organisation crew moved things along at a quick pace.

For Alison Stephenson (that’s with a ‘ph’), rookie, female, air miles collector and class attender extraordinaire, and Heather Foley, also rookie, also female, working on a degree in drug dealing and race car driving, a mere 5 km skate was in order. Although most admitted it was a little chilly, the UWNT women took off their warm ups, made sure their buffs were on, and got down to the serious business of racing. Stephenson, a product of Nakkertok Nordic’s racing program and a native of the Ottawa area used her familiarity with the course to finish 84th in Open Women (25th OUA). Foley, who has had a strong season returning to racing after a layoff (not pregnancy, despite popular opinion, women CAN take time off skiing for things besides procreating) showed she continues to improve, finishing 109th in Open Women (31st OUA).

Post race quotes:

Alison Stephenson: “It’s fast. No really, it is.”

Up next were the men, something the UWNT has several more of, but are significantly less important. The lads were instructed to do 10 km – two laps of the 5, and luckily everyone heeded those directions, as well as the common knowledge that wind briefs were to be considered worth their weight in gold. As has been the case all season, Henry Reich, over-age rookie and American, led the way, posting the 29th fastest time in Open Men (5th OUA). Reich was followed by Kieran Jones, who our readers should all be quite familiar with at this point, who placed a respectable 76th in Open Men (21st OUA). The first rookie finisher for the UWNT was Tim Rhodes, who also moonlights as team chef, team porter and team DJ, in 103rd Open Men (30th OUA). Nolan Beanlands, a second-year phenom with a coop job in Ottawa, a few tickets to the Olympics and an axe to grind followed shortly thereafter in 110 Open Men (33rd OUA). Ryan McNamara, a resent resident of Ottawa and rookie had recently contracted a nasty 2 day cold, but refused to be daunted by a little snot, posting a placing of 152 in Open Men (48th OUA). The injured Derek Hartman travelled with the team, however decided to take an extra day to rest for Sunday’s classic race. Andrew Jeffrey was also absent, selfishly choosing to further his career goals of saving lives and helping people instead.

Post race quotes:

Henry Reich: “Are we in Quebec right now??”

Kieran Jones: “My skis were so fast, it was like a slalom on those down hills I was going by so many people. Just call me Manny Osbourne-Paradis!”

Ryan McNamara: “My throat hurts.”

With the skate day all wrapped up, the team hit the bus, and headed back to the hotel for an afternoon of relaxing, snoozing, eating, or wondering why the heck all the Canadian buildings look so weird. Stay tuned for Day 2, which will actually get written.

Please note, all OUA results are unofficial. For full results please see Zone 4.

Confusing colloquialism: “Happy as a clam” ?? Why are clams happy? All they do is get eaten.

In the 8 Track: Human – The Killers. Sure, the line “Are we human, or are we dancers” doesn’t make sense, but since when does that matter in music?

On the ‘Tube:

Newell X Ski from Andrew Newell on Vimeo.

That’s Andy Newell. THE Andy Newell, the USA’s best hope for a medal in cross country skiing in Vancouver. That would be the first medal a US man has won in the sport in 35 years. And he just back flipped on skinny skis. What was it that you did for the sport of cross country skiing recently??

New Feature! ‘Does this kid know anything??’

2010-01-24T11:39:00.001-05:00

Have you ever wondered how much your favourite UW Nordic Ski Team member knows about anything?? His home town, his team, the University of Waterloo, Canadian skiing in general? If the answer is yes, (or if it’s no, too bad) then you’re prepared to love the UWNN new series, ‘Does this kid know anything??’. Although we can't promise to reveal any useful facts or stats stored away in your hero/villain/son/daughter/pyranha’s brain, we can guarantee you a surprise or two. First to take our trivia test is the infamous Andrew Jeffrey…

You’re from Manitoulin Island – what is the current population, according to Wikipedia?

When I look out my window, I can count at least 7, the sign downtown says 1500, but around 18,000. Oh man! 12,600?

Incorrect – 12,600, to be exact

The island has an area of 2,766 km² - where does that rank on the list of Canadian Islands in terms of size?

Largest freshwater Island…77^th.

Incorrect – 31st

What is the main fruit of Manitoulin Island?

Only Hawberries grow there, so I’ll go with that.

Correct

Manitoulin Island is right around the corner from Sudbury, Ontario. Which member of the Canadian Olympic team calls Sudbury their hometown?

Devon Kershaw.

Correct

Name the three Olympic events in cross country skiing in which Canada has won medals.

Womens? 50km? Womens Pursuit.

Part Marks – Women’s Pursuit is right, also Women’s Sprint, and Women’s Team Sprint.

One of your teammates made a brief foray into distance trail running this fall. Name the teammate, the name of the race, the distance they ran, and the time they ran it in, to the nearest minute.

Kieran, 25 km. 2 hours, 4 minutes.

Part Marks Again– It’s called the Run for the Toad, and the time was 2:01:17.

Name places to ski within a 10 minute drive radius from the university of Waterloo.

Bechtel Park, Waterloo Park, North Campus, Schneiders Bush, Laurel Creek, Waterloo Fall loop, Chicopee?

Correct – Although you don’t get anything for Chicopee or the Waterloo Fall Loop behind the arena – you can’t get to Chicopee in 10 minutes, and the Fall Loop is rarely open.

Name 3 UW ski team alumni who have been OUA All-Stars.

Nellie Dow, Cam Moore, Justin Faulkner.

Correct

Which of the coaching staff do you think can grow the meanest beard/moustache combo?

Colin Rhodes!

Correct – And it’s AWESOME!

Final Score – 15 from a possible 20

‘Does he know anything?’ rating - 75%

As per usual, Andrew Jeffrey lays down a strong opening test. Will other team members make him look like a ponce? Stay tuned…

“If You’re not First You’re Last” UW Nordic in North Bay – The One Where They Do The Skate Race

2010-01-22T12:44:00.001-05:00

The UWNN is extremely proud to present OUA Qualifier #1 at North Bay Nordic/Nipissing Campus Trail Network. Last season the first OUA Qualifier was also held in North Bay and featured extremely low temperatures, difficult courses, and the UW Nordic Team suffered a total shellacking. However, in 2010 temperatures were 20 degrees warmer, the team consisted of several top notch rookies, including surprise-specialist Henry “H-Bomb” Reich, Tim Rhodes and Alison Stephenson, and the whole team was generally in much greater shape than 365 days earlier. The stage was set for a historic and groundbreaking weekend; luckily the team did not disappoint.

15km Men Free Individual Start/10 km Women Free Individual Start

As has already been noted, the greatest event of the day for the team was Reich’s 1st place. In his first start on the OUA, Reich surprised the heck out of the competition, rendering the ski community speechless, shocked, and left picking up bits of their brains from all over the North Bay Nordic Center their minds were so blown. However, Reich was not the only one to ski a solid race; Andrew Jeffrey skied to a personal OUA best of 7th, showing his phenomenal growth as a skier from complete rookie last fall to OUA Top 10. Kieran “Ola Vigen” Jones also posted an OUA personal best in a skate race, turning in a shocking 12th place for the traditional classic specialist. Jones also continued his domination on the finishing straight, defeating Reich in a head to head shootout to the line to hold onto a perfect 3-0 record in the last 100m this year. Rookie Tim Rhodes crossed the line in 21st in his first OUA race, representing the best Top 4 men the University of Waterloo has posted in at least 4 years. Rookie Ryan McNamara ended his day in 34th, while second-year coop pro Nolan Beanlands finished 36th. Both McNamara and Beanlands represent the future, and their strong results and disgustingly awesome haircuts showcased the potential that exists. As a team, Reich, Jeffrey, Jones and Rhodes managed to secure 3rd spot, just one point back of Laurentian. The other men’s team member to travel was captain Derek Hartman who decided to sit out with a lower body injury. In the unbelievably competitive and hard fought alumni category, coach/athlete Colin Rhodes dominated the field, skiing easily to 1st.

Not to be outdone, the small but feisty Waterloo women also posted a series of First’s. Alison Stephenson, a rookie and emerging powerhouse, finished in 21st in her first OUA race. Heather Foley, a former Laurentian skier turned-awesome at Waterloo crossed the line in 26th, kicking off her comeback tour with a solid result. Unfortunately, Jess Stevenson was unable to make the trip due to coop commitments in Calgary, AB, and captain Martha Sutton remains on the long term injury list. However, Sutton was present for picture taking and support.

Stay tuned for the UWNN take on Day 2, otherwise known as “The One Where They Do The Classic Race”

NewsFlash from North Bay! Absolute Domination!

2010-01-16T13:59:00.003-05:00

The UWNN is happy to report on the first day of racing at North Bay Nordic. The women's squad skied 10 km skate individual start, and had a fast, hard course to work with. Both Heather Foley and Alison Stephenson posted quick times, but unfortunately at this time official results are not available.

In the 15 km skate mens individual start, UW's Henry Reich shocked the field with his 1st place finish, besting Colin Abbott of Carleton University by 6 seconds. The word around the Nordic Center was 'astonishment', as Carleton, Laurentian and many other schools could not understand who this 'Henry Reich' character was. This historic finish by a UW athlete is the best placing in the last 4 years, and today was only the first OUA race. Stay tuned, because you're not going to want to miss out on this season!

UWNN

URGENT INFORMATION! No, really, it is. You could live without it, but you wouldn’t enjoy the type of life you would be living.

2010-01-13T22:54:00.001-05:00

With significant action on the UW Nordic Team front these days, rumours have been swirling. These rumours are about anything from the multiple locations of the North Bay OUA Qualifiers, the participating female UW team, and the persistent questions about the origins and sheer awesomeness of Henry Reich. In attempt to quell these rumours, the UWNN has steered completely around them and instead opted to inform the team of the upcoming mandatory* team activity. Team half-buzz-half-shave-cuts! The UWNN can feel the excitement radiating out from the team. Now, it is understandable you may have no idea what the UWNN is describing.

Courtesy Vincent Van Gogh

As you can see clearly from an artists interpretation, this involves hair removal on one half of the face and head but not the other. It has been guaranteed as the fastest possible combination of hair for ski racing, tested extensively by the Republic of South Africa’s ski team. Fortunately, for this operation you need to bring nothing but a beard and a full head of hair – trimming equipment will be provided on site.

The UWNN is here for your well being, so trust us.

*Please refer to Form 3b, Section 22.2a, SubSection 12ii, where team members signed away the right to choose your own haircut.

Further elaboration…

2010-01-07T13:33:00.001-05:00

For those of you unsure of what “the same fashion as that of the World Cup” means, refer to this handy-dandy table for all your point collection needs.

Place	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8
Points	100	80	60	45	30	20	10	1

Similar to the World Cup, but not exactly the same.

Petra Majdic, member of the Slovenian World Cup Team – not currently on the UW Ski Team, but has an incredibly awesome suit.

UW Cup – Like the World Cup, but without all the sponsors, prize money, city sprints and Petter Northug Jr.

2010-01-05T13:39:00.001-05:00

At a recent exclusive to the UWNN press conference, coach Colin Rhodes announced the reinstatement of University of Waterloo Cup. The UW Cup is awarded to the most successful male and female skiers on the UW ski team each year, based on consistency, speed, and “square feet of pure awesomeness” to quote some random TV commercial. Rhodes outlined the 18 races counting towards the overall, and the points are organised in the same fashion as that of the World Cup. As with the World Cup, whomever amasses the most points over the course of the season is declared the winner, and receives a truckload of bragging rights.* Notable races on the schedule include Eastern Canadians (held at Nakkertok in Ottawa) as well as the OUA Championships, and the Olympics. Television coverage will be limited, as will live results, and the best way to follow your favourites is right here on the UWNN sidebar.

The UW Cup is the premiere title to win as a member of the UW Nordic Ski team, and has seen past winners such as Justin Faulkner, Andrea Dupont, Ian Murray among many other prominent figures.

It’s the New Year, and with 2010 comes a new age in UWNN reporting – there will be a minimum of two content updates a week for the entire ski season – stay tuned!

Sincerely,

The UWNN Staff

*Please be prepared to provide your own truck.

Skiing Conditions in Waterloo – Sexier Than You Might Imagine

2009-12-16T14:31:00.001-05:00

Last week most of Ontario benefitted from a massive winter storm, which – depending on where you live – provided rain, freezing rain, snow, or bucketloads of snow (there was a rumour circulating regarding a 50 cm dump in the North Bay area). However awesome the entire province getting snow is, what really matters is whether we can ski!

The UW Nordic News (UWNN) is more than happy to report that the UW Nordic Ski Team was able to enjoy rock skiing conditions at least 4 days last week, if you were brave, 5, if you failed all your classes, 6-10. “Skiing in Waterloo?? But where???”, UWNN hears you exclaim. Well, for starters see the previous post, which gained national and international fame via the CCC website. Clearly some skiing is possible in the Waterloo area, even if it requires a little effort.

This past weekend, a wide variety of locales were sample by the crew here at UWNN, and we’re going to give you an update on each one.

North Campus

The Skinny: A piece of land behind some industrial buildings by the Columbia IceFields facility, it is UW Nordic’s prime fall training ground. Some small hills, some soccer fields, and the occasional sketchbag walking the path from residence buildings/campus over to Beringer Rd are pretty much all North Campus has to offer in the fall. In the winter, there is no change, except the sketchbags are colder and more miserable. The location is close to campus, most 1st year residences and quite a lot of residential housing, so is easily accessible without a car to most students.

Trail Conditions: Some old old guy was out skiing back and forth across one of the soccer fields, so I guess there is a little bit of a trail. Other than that, it’s whatever you make it.

Trail KM without loops: Maybe 2, if you’re creative.

Skating: Only if there is a crust. Currently there is not.

Classic: Not track set, but if you’re just going out for a hack, it’ll do the job.

Rock Skis: Highly recommended.

Rating: 1.5 Jaervahinin’s out of 3

The UWNN’s sickest pair of Jarvinen’s ever.

Westmount Golf Course

The Skinny: A small golf course set in town with plenty of fun rolling bits, some T-boxes, and if you get there early enough in the season, greens not fenced off. Used by overage alcohol fuelled sliders, you’re often able to find beer cans and broken sleds in the early season.

Trail Conditions: Beautiful powder. Sunny. Deep snow baskets required, as well as weight shift (at least it was this Saturday).

Trail KM without loops: At least 4, but if you investigate the holes in the middle instead of just circling the outside, easily more.

Skating: Do-able, but is going to be a lot of work.

Classic: If you’re lucky, someone will have arrived before you and skied the entire 18 holes doing a nice job. If not, then you’re stuck grooming your own trail, which will probably suck and end with a lot of fresh snow in your boots.

Rock Skis: Probably, those paved cart paths with the goofy rock retaining walls tend to jump out of nowhere, especially on the down hills.

Rating: A pair of tights, some warm up pants and 3 sweaty smelly Craft’s out of 6

The recommended type of baskets for West G&CC.

Bechtel Park

The Skinny: A large park, with several soccer fields both in and out door. The Bridge St. and University Av. location overlooks Highway 85, borders a cemetery, and has a massive parking lot which is ideal for the up-and-coming rally driver. A place of pain and suffering during UW Nordic fall intervals, and the best ski location per travel time in the Waterloo region.

Trail Conditions: Snowmobile rolled, somewhat grassy and icy. On the one large uphill, gravel pokes through the snow. Roughly 5 cm of rolled cover on all trails.

Trail KM without loops: At this point 5, depending on your definition of ‘loop’.

Skating: Absolutely.

Classic: No tracks set yet, but could be good.

Rock Skis: In places, but if you stick to the fields and the right areas, race skis are a go. On the back hill, and if you suck at technical, tight corners in the woods, rock skis.

Rating: A John Kristian Dahl, Erik Brandsdal, Ola Vigen Hattestad, and Petter Northug Jr. out of the Norwegian Sprint Team.

Northug (Bib 20) and Hattestad (Red Leaders Bib) kicking ass in a World Cup Free Sprint.

What is interesting about this picture?

UW Season Opener!

2009-11-27T10:34:00.002-05:00

While the entire province struggles with warm temperatures, rain, and the frustration of a later-than-usual snowfall, the UW Nordic Ski team has had their first on snow session of the year! A little bit of shovelling, some recycling bins, an arena and several enthusiastic people later, the first annual UW Nordic Ski figure-8 was constructed. It looked something like this:

Derek, Colin and Alison getting their snow legs back.

The comprehensive loop included an uphill, a downhill, and a technical hairpin corner, all designed to challenge the skills developed during the fall on rollerskiis.

Andrew Jeffrey demonstrating proper hairpin-turning technique.

Due to the rather warm temperatures and the large turnout, aggressive repairs had to be conducted to keep snow on the course, but despite these adverse conditions, dozens of laps were skiied, and the loop existed for almost 24 hours.

Most of the team observing Colin working hard.

Rookies Ryan McNamara and Tim Rhodes navigate grass and snow.

Pretty much everyone had an awesome time, and everyone who failed to show up, really wished they had. A highly recommended team-building, muscle-building and skill-building activity. Stay tuned for more news, as the snow flies, so will we.

Today’s Waterloo Snow Report: There isn’t any.

Attendance Challenge!

2009-11-15T14:46:00.001-05:00

You may (if you are on the team) or may not (if you are anyone else in the world) have been aware that for the month of November, the University of Waterloo Nordic Ski Team has been running an attendance challenge. This means that the team is divided into two sections who then compete to generate the most attendance points at practise for the month. The losing team makes the winning team a fantastic, healthy and above all health-code approved dinner.

While in the past the natural division has been men vs. women, the pure lack of women on the ski team coupled with the sheer determination of the men has resulted in the creation of two new teams.

The Babies – Team members in either their first or second year at UW. Probably does not reflect mental capacity, ability to grow facial hair or napping frequency.

The Elderly – Team members in third year or higher. A reflection of the wealth and experience gathered by being a little bit older and a whole lot wiser.

Today (November 15) represents the mid-point of the competition, so we thought we would update you as to the score. Let you know who is in line for free eats, and who is looking at a pile of dirty dishes.

Team	Total
The Elderly	44
The Babies	39

Go teams! (The author is unbiased!)

UW Duathlon Mass Start Time Trial

2009-11-15T14:22:00.001-05:00

Recently the University of Waterloo held its semi-annual fall run-rollerski duathlon. Staged on a beautiful Saturday morning, the duathlon was designed to test the athletes running, rollerskiing and putting-on-boots-under-pressure abilities. The order of events was a 6 km out-and-back run over a quite hilly course followed by a hectic transition to rollerskis for a further 6km.

Results have been made official at this time, and are as follows:

Name	Run	Transition	Ski	Total
Nolan Beanlands	23:58	1:22	20:59	46:05
Andrew Jeffrey	24:11	1:41	21:15	47:07
Tim Rhodes	24:31	0:35	22:44	48:13
Colin Rhodes	25:39	0:52	25:00	51:31
Ryan McNamara	26:31	1:44	24:17	52:32
Heather Foley	34:13	0:57	22:40	57:50
Alison Stephenson	31:48	1:42	25:10	58:40
Derek Hartman	25:52	-	-	-

As per usual with anything involving rollerskiis, there is a disclaimer about ski speed. Various speeds exist, so results contain a measure of inaccuracy.

Injury Update:

Martha Sutton – Week to week with a lower body injury

Kieran Jones – Day to day with a core strain

What Can I Do?

2009-11-06T00:03:00.001-05:00

It has come to the attention of the UW Nordic News crew that the fall is prime time for things to go wrong in your training season. Be it injuries, swine flu, or studying for midterms, your butt has been missing from practise. “But UW Nordic News Team” you whine, “I’ve been swamped – my smelly professor just assigned me 300 pages of molecular orthodoxy, and that’s just for my Medieval History class”. This argument IS a good one. Everyone knows orthodoxy is tricky at the best of times, and mid 15th Century is no exception. However, this does not qualify as a legitimate reason to miss practise, and we here at the UW Nordic News have compiled a list of ways to avoid the busy, soul-and-body-sucking experience that is fall at the University of Waterloo.

1. Drop Medieval History 203. Easiest way to avoid work – get rid of the things eating up your time. Although we do realize it may be after the drop date and you will incur a financial penalty, do it anyway. For the greater good.

2. Don’t share water bottles. Beckie Scott once said “if someone was dying of thirst next to the trail and they asked me for a sip from my Orseldorf, I would say no”. While this may seem extreme, her point is valid. Especially during swine flu season, bring your own water bottle, and make sure you’re the only one who goes mouth-to-mouth with it. Remember Beckie Scott when Beans asks your for a sip, and stay strong. You don’t want what he has.

3. Don’t shake hands. I’m not sure why you would be shaking hands at ski practise, but if you thought about it, DO NOT! While Andrew Jeffries may be innocently offering his mitt for a friendly shake, a closer look reveals you spending a week in bed with your face exploding, and a little one-on-one time with the porcelain god. Ghandi once said “You can’t shake hands with a fist”, and clearly what he meant was you should bump fists instead of shaking.

4. Stretch. Okay, you got me, it has nothing to do with the H1N1 or whatever it’s called nowadays. But it’s freakin’ important. As certain team members have discovered, chronic muscle tightness has led to believing Andrew Jeffrey when he tells you you have a sports hernia, and that he needs to operate urgently with his Swiss Army Knife on North Campus. So stretch when you’re watching TV. When you’re standing in hallways at school. When you’re waiting for your turn to bowl. When your roomate is washing your dishes. When you’re chatting up that cute boy from Thermodynamics you’ve had your eye on. (Here’s when you’re pointing out that I should have said boy or girl. Get real. This is Waterloo, odds are pretty high its a boy, especially if it’s Thermodynamics. Call your local Women in Engineering hotline if you must, but facts are facts.) Trust me, it will make your life better if you do just a little.

5. Sleep. Seems painfully obvious that sleeping is key. However, when you are beset by midterms and the H1N1 you contracted from letting Beans’ sample your water bottle, it may seem like you just have to push through. Fight that temptation – no one ever had a better day by staying awake. Wikipedia states that as an adult you need 7-8 hours a night, and as toddler from 3-5 years you need 11-13, so whatever bracket you feel your mental capacity fits it, try fulfill those needs. As for replacements, while coffee is quite possibly the greatest invention made by mankind next to the Pontiac Aztec, drinking too much of it results in bad things. Lot’s of bad things. Things so bad we can’t tell you about them.

6. Go easy at practise if you’re injured. If something is not working properly in your body, doing consecutive all-out sprints is unlikely to make it better. If that were the case, you would see a lot more track meets happening at hospitals. So instead of acting like your brain has been replaced with a big fat steak and pushing through the workout, do some low impact stuff. Stand around, yell at your team mates, offer positive encouragement, mock their ability at front bridges, make comments such as “man, it’s cold and wet out here, I’m sure glad I’m not lying on my face on a pile of leaves”.

So, while reading this probably used up a fair amount of your precious time, don’t fret, because you gained some helpful tips. Maybe you will even use them. If you do, do not forget where you got them. As usual, we here at the UW Nordic News are always prepared for the worst, and are offering free flu shots. Apply within to jump the line just like the Calgary Flames – only this time we won’t tell anyone. Two-tier health care – it’s better for everyone, so long as ‘everyone’ means rich people.

Mountain Mania Results!

2009-10-28T11:52:00.002-04:00

With the results finally being labeled official and public disclosure forms signed by all participants, times are now available!

Name	Technique	Time	Equipment
Tim H (Tim 1)	Cycling	0:16:27	Not a Ducati
Nolan	Skate	0:21:57	Elpex F1 Sprint
Kieran	Skate	0:22:28	Elpex F1
Justin (Coach)	Classic	0:22:42	Eaglesport Classic
Tim H (Tim 1)	Classic	0:24:52	N/A
Heather	Skate	0:25:59	Salt ‘Speed Edition’ Skis
Derek	Double Pole	0:43:15	N/A
April	Ski Hike	0:49:09	Telescoping Poles with Compass

If you have questions regarding the legitimacy of your time, your equipment or the spelling of your name, please keep them to yourself, as we are not running a democracy.

We're Back! The UW Fall Camp! Extreme-Awesome Edition! Now with more Bacteria's!

2009-10-18T23:34:00.002-04:00

With the temperature dropping, and a lack of action on the UW blog, a new post can only mean one thing. The UW annual fall camp has returned for yet another season, another session, another unreal marathon of excessive training, inordinate food consumption and always mandatory and often graphic team bonding.

Located at the picturesque location of Highlands Nordic Ski Club, just outside the bustling metropolis of Singhampton, Ontario, the camp capitalized on fantastic fall weather. Due to the existence of trees, fall had arrived at Highlands (unlike Waterloo – the concrete jungle continued to defy the wishes of Mother Nature) and rendered the Escarpment a riot of yellows, oranges, browns, greens and reds. The mornings were sharp with frost, but both Saturday and Sunday featured wall to wall sun and the afternoons were sweaty.

While the turnout was hampered slightly by illness, educational commitments and the hiccups, there was still plenty of sweating to be done. The suffering started on Friday night with the arrival of Andrew ‘the Pain’ Jeffrey and his grab bag of strength toys and the institution of a circuit which somehow managed to feature massive hamstring destruction despite being advertised as ‘full body’.

After a less-than-full sleep, Saturday morning dawned with hot oatmeal, chilly athletes, and two unnecessarily aggressive cats. After a brief skirmish with the cats over breakfast, round one went to the athletes, who then hustled out the door for a rollerski session. The rollerski was interspersed with intensive all-consuming technique, featuring none other than Glen ‘Naps’ Mcintyre and Head Coach Justin Faulkner. Armed with a semi-functional digital camera and serious amounts of fleece, the two set out to change the world, but ended up settling for Nolan Beanlands’ skate technique.

With technique wrapped up and stomachs growling, the gang headed back to the Woolner House of Camo for lunch. Forty-five minutes and 30+ tuna melts for 7 people later, lunch transitioned smoothly into napping for some, working for others, and petting cats for others. Snoring, meowing and scratching of pencils filled the house for the better part of an hour, until ankles were shaken for the afternoons ski hike around the Red Loop at Highlands. An entirely uneventful ski hike later, the entire team convened out front of the lodge for team building and unbelievably fun activities such as (removed – had to be there) and (sorry, you should have come). Afterwards Coach Faulkner passed out million-yen bills to all camp attendees.

Despite protests of “sore muscles” and “horrible injuries”, cooler heads prevailed and the traditional excessively-intense soccer game ensued. The small sides contributed to fast and furious odd man rushes, and resulted in the discovery that certain team members were far better at hitting posts than open nets. A hat trick for resident soccer pro Derek Hartman and several strained groins later, the team packed it in and headed home for dinner.

Another feeding frenzy ensued, involving salad and an obscene amount of pasta sauce. Also a few other things, for those concerned about dietary variety. Sign up for Sunday mornings’ Pure Pownage - Mountain Mania ’09 was undertaken, and bed time was expedited as everyone realized the following morning was going to involve some suffering.

For those unaware, Mountain Mania is the yearly event in which a Waterloo Nordic member must choose one variety of technique and then complete the 5km course. Running from the town of Duntroon to the quarry at the top of the escarpment, the course contains upwards of 6 major climbs, 1 small downhill, a large elevation gain and several angry people in trucks. Popular choices for technique include: rollerski-skate (not impossible), rollerski-classic (quite doable), double-pole (slightly hellish), run (miserable), rollerski-skate-legs only (unbearable).

A slightly slow morning saw more oatmeal, and round 2 with the aggressive cats, not to mention the toasted bagels topped with a thick layer of pain. Frost on the rooftops and grass was a hot topic, as the collected group discussed clothing, strategies, and whether this activity was in fact optional or not. As the cars were being loaded, enthusiasm was building, and Africa by Toto was being hummed.

At 9 AM on the dot, the first time-trialist left the telephone-pole start line, and roughly 9 minutes later the last starter began. As the climb steepened, temperatures rose, muscles hurt, and testosterone raged (at least among some). Most felt that the experience was definitely an experience, whether good or bad. At the time of publication, results remain classified, but they will be made available to the public later this week.

The small number of participants (6) meant that by 10.00 AM everyone had completed the course, and was itching to move onto the next activity. After a short blast back to the farmhouse to inhale a few tuna melts, granola bars and cookies with peanut butter, the athletes were re-geared for another fall camp classic: the ski hike on the Bruce Trail with side trip into the caves.

Always a beautiful stroll along the bluffs overlooking Collingwood and Georgian Bay, this year was no different. With leaves, burrs and rocks it was a pretty stereotypical Canadian fall ski hike. After spending a solid chunk of time playing with boulders and climbing rocks, it was decided that one group would put their hustle hats on and get back to the Camo Shack early in order to prepare lunch and expedite the departure process. While on the surface a fantastic idea, pounding feet, covered ground and slippery rocks make for treacherous up-tempo activity. Several kilometers and a sprained ankle later, Team Tuna melt piled into the van and headed back to the Woolner Place and began cranking out lunch.

A furious food-filled hour followed, involving cheese, cookies, spaghetti, bagels and hot chocolate. A quick clean and sweep, pack and exit, and both vehicles were on the road back to civilization and the books. A good weekend weather and training-wise, the UW Nordic Ski team would like to remind you to wear a helmet while engaged in strenuous activity. Thank you, and good day!

Pictures will follow.

Fall!

2009-09-15T15:51:00.002-04:00

With summer ending and fall beginning, things at the UW Nordic News are set to heat up once again.
While it is just the first week of school, preparation for the upcoming season has already begun. Members of the team have been sighted running, and in extreme cases, rollerskiing. Officially, practises have yet to begin, but currently exercise is being run out of the unofficial headquarters, otherwise known as the Barn. Please inquire further if you are interested.

Next week features the first team activity - the walk-on meeting. Come out and learn about the team, the competition schedule, and what awesome-cool things you have to look forward to this fall. All are welcome, bring your game faces and your favourite pair of poles (just kidding about that one).

Where: PAC 2021 (that's the big athletic-looking building with a gym inside it)
When: Wednesday Sept. 23, 2009
Time: 6.30 PM
Why: Why not?

And we're back!

Summer!

2009-04-20T15:57:00.003-04:00

It's that time of year again...
The season without snow, with rollerskiing, running, bugs, sun, heat, sweat, misery, work, hammocks, beer, lakes, swimming, more sweating and finally, and most important for us here at the UW Nordic News, a general lack of UW events.
That's right, for 4 long months the UW ski team is scattered throughout Ontario and Canada frantically trying to make enough cash to survive another winter, or if you're on a screwy Co-Op stream, frantically trying to learn as many things as possible to prevent you from being removed from the ski team in the fall.
Unfortunately this means there will be little exciting news or excessive adjectives posted on here for the immediate future. As training camps are planned and executed over the course of the summer, information will be posted, but for the most part it will be sporadic.
Thanks for checking in with us on a regular basis this year, if you didn't do that, sorry, you missed out big time.
Next year things will be much the same, perhaps with more features, perhaps with consistent posting. Reader feedback is always encouraged, either reply in the 'Comments' section or send us an email.
Enjoy the heat, because in a short 5 months, it will be alllll gone.

The UW Nordic News Team

Awards!

2009-04-13T00:02:00.002-04:00

As April is upon Southern Ontario, so is the end of the ski season (despite the snowfall of last week). With the end of the ski season comes the inevitable awards season! This is the part of the year where people are recognized for their hard work, dedication to the team or overall awesomeness. This year's awards are as follows:

MVP (or MVS):
Awarded yearly for best performance on the team, or contributions above and beyond, the MVS is fairly self explanatory. If you haven't figured it out, if you're an MVS, you're pretty much entitled to whatever you want. Rides to practise, fluoro's on your skis at races, bagels out of the rookies lunches, you name it, you got it.

Female MVS: Nellie Dow
No surprises here. Nellie Dow has been outstanding her past 2 years of OUA Competition, All-Starring twice. This year she capped off her season with a 4th place at OUA's, a personal-best. On top of that, she was the Women's Team Captain and maintained a full courseload with a high average, as is evidenced by her intimate knowledge of the 3rd floor of the Dana Porter Library, as well as being able to tell you exactly how many books are in the St. Jerome's Library.

Male MVS: Kieran T. Jones
From his point of view, also no surprise, but for the rest of the team, who realized that listening to Kieran Jones was a waste of time, it came as a shock. Jones, in his third season with the Warriors, posted several personal best finishes, including an 11th place monster-come-from-behind-pull-out-all-the-stops-un-real-storm-the-finish-line performance on the Classic Mass Start day at OUA Championships. Overall at OUA's Jones finished in 16th as UW's top male skier. Described as a "team leader" who was "dedicated to practise" and was in general an "all-around great guy" by Head Coach Faulkner, Jones, for possibly the first time ever in his life, deserved an award which he received.

Most Improved
Almost as important as the MVS category, the most improved goes out to those who pulled up their socks from the previous year. This is usually acheived through an increased dedication to training, a significant decline in academic performance, or by failing the drug tests at OUA Championships.

Male: Yudai Nakagawa
Without a doubt the strongest member of the UW ski team, last year Yudai Nakagawa relied mostly on his gigantic calves and sleep deprivation to propel him to success on the ski trails. This year, with renewed dedication to physical activity, Nakagawa quickly became the bouldering and slacklining expert on the ski team. With his focus shifting away from legs and onto the upper body, he improved greatly, moving from placing 39th and 34th in the 2008 OUA Champs to 29th and 27th at the 2009 OUA Champs, and thus is well deserving of the 'Most Improved' Title.

Female: Kelly Skinner
Without a doubt the shortest member of the UW ski team, Kelly Skinner is also the only mother on the team. Taking last year off to have her first of what will undoubtably become countless children put a damper on her training and racing for the season, but Skinner returned with a vegenance and a baby jogger this past fall. Again, not to harp on this point or anything, but following the grand tradition of birthing mothers turning in hot ski seasons, Skinner placed far better this year than her last two competitive seasons, in '07 and'05 respectively.

Rookie of the Year
Always hotly contested, as rookies generally come in with great enthusiasm, ideals and acne, this year the competition was a little different. While UW did have the requisite baby-faced, pre-drinking age, cut-the-crusts-off-my-white-bread-peanut-butter-and-jelly-sandwich rookie in Nolan Beanlands, the team also featured some more elderly first-timers who managed to steal the coveted award. Presented for dedication to the team, exceptional performances or bringing a much needed fresh presence, the ROY always goes to those who deserve it.

Male ROY: Andrew Jeffery
Much has been made of this young man for the entire ski season. Be it his uncanny resemblance to the University of Guelph's John Rennie, his unrelenting dedication to a massive pile of curricular and extra-curricular activities, or his willingness to come out for the varsity ski team in his third year at UW, Andrew Jeffery pretty much did everything a rookie could and then some. Somewhere in the middle of laying down consistently the best performances on the UW team throughout the OUA qualifiers and the UW time trial season while at the same time juggling intramural ice-hockey, ball-hockey, six courses and volunteering, AJ became the standout for Rookie of the Year.

Female ROY: Jessica Stevenson
Much like Andrew Jeffery, Jessica Stevenson waited until her 3rd year at UW to join the team. An shadowy, ghost-like figure for most of the fall due to coop commitments, Stevenson had the misfortune of joining the ski team at the beginning of Winter Term, thus missing out on the many team building opportunies in the fall. Luckily for us, however, Jess is neither wierd nor socially awkward, so after a few nights at Bechtel Park getting frostbite together, things were pretty much normal. A previous standout for Foothills Nordic, Jess took 3 years off racing and her willingness to get back onto the boards after such a layoff earned her the title of Rookie of the Year.

The 'Final Climb' Award
Named after the last race in the Tour de Ski which features a ski race up a downhill run, gaining approximatly 425 vertical meters in 3km, this award is doled out to those who take the most possible pain in a season. The 'Final Climb' in the Tour is done on a voluntary basis, so to achieve this award it must be the same. Getting hit by a car while rollerskiing, closing your finger in the van door or falling on the S-Turn at Highlands and having to spend 20 minutes picking trees out of your belly button because of your own idiocy does not count.

Derek Hartman and Martha Sutton
Split between the two because the panel couldn't decide who suffered more, both Hartman and Sutton struggled valiantly - and finished. Martha managed to sustain a knee injury early in the fall which kept her in a knee brace and unable to train for the majority of the season, but, determined to give the UW Women's team the best possible shot at success, came to OUA Champs anyway.
While Hartman was not injured for quite as long, a groin injury in the middle of January limited his on-snow racing and intensity sessions, throwing a wrench into his plans for the ski season. What was the best shape of his life quickly became a nightmare, as at OUA's he was restricted to large amounts double-poling. Despite this, Hartman still managed to post OUA personal best placings.

OUA Championships Classic Mass Start - Finally

2009-04-01T14:20:00.011-04:00

Well, now that it's official that no one ever checks this blog anymore, it's time to post the most exciting, surprising, fascinating and spine-chilling news of the season.
Despite the fact the race was over a month ago, a recap, some pictures and a review of the Waterloo results remains necessary.

Sunday morning saw the women prepping for a hilly two-lap mass-start 10km. With perennial All-Star favourite and classic skiing specialist Nellie Dow sitting just out of the top 10 after Saturdays skate race, the Waterloo coaching staff and Men's Team hunkered down for what was going to be an intense race. They were not to be disappointed, although a lot of other OUA women were.
Following a hectic start with 41 women jostling for position, Dow managed to find herself in the front group with an assortment of high-powered OUA women, including Queens' Julie McVicar, a pile of Lakehead women, and Carleton's rookie sensation, Adele Lay. A little further back, Kelly Skinner, Jess Stevenson and Martha Sutton rounded out Waterloo's women's team. With 4 starters, this effectively doubled the number of women Waterloo fielded at last years' OUA Championships, and gave our women a chance to punish U of T severly on the scoresheet.

Nellie Dow (center) destroying the pride of Queens (left) and Carleton (right) on her first lap.

Skiing strongly, Dow managed to come through the top of the stadium in 3rd, on her final loop just ahead of Linnea Kershaw, sister of National Team member, World Cup participant, all-around Canadian skiing hero Devon Kershaw. The two battled it out to the finish, with Dow falling just short of an OUA medal, finishing in 4th, but easily securing her spot as an OUA All-Star yet again.
Shortly thereafter, Kelly Skinner crossed the line in 23rd, the exact same placing as Saturday's skate race. Jess Stevenson rebounded from a tough day at the office on Saturday to post the 29th fastest time, narrowly edging out a U of T rival. Martha Sutton cruised to 32 place, and while it was off her pace from last year at OUA's, her ability to fight through a season-ending knee injury to give Waterloo a team is inspiring and courageous.

Kelly Skinner fighting off the agressive U of Guelph.

Martha Sutton, injured knee and all, also dueling the persistent and ever-present U of Guelph. Man, they have a lot of skiers.

With the women finished racing for the year, it was time for the Waterloo men to take to the chevron for the 15km Classic. Cam Moore looked to be Waterloo's most promising hope for a male All-Star, as his 13th place on the skate day indicated, as well as last year's success on the circuit. However Andrew Jeffrey had been improving all year, and knew when to bring his A game, and Kieran Jones had put all his chips on the classic race, exclusively double poling for weeks beforehand. Not to mention Yudai Nakagawa's raw upper body strength and Nolan Beanlands green hat. As for Derek Hartman, going into Sunday with a strained groin and a best-ever OUA placing on Saturday, his goal was simply to finish.
Due to the small stadium size, and the ridiculous loop that was planned for the start of the race, the Waterloo men opted for discretion, and stayed out of the 50 man-hectic traffic jam which began the race. Once out of the tight turns full of testosterone-charged Lakehead and Guelph skiers, Moore and Jones got on their horses, and made some moves up the field. Jeffery, a little intimidated by his first mass start spent a little time working out the kinks. Nakagawa and Beanlands, who prefer skating, were a little further back but still holding strong.

Kieran Jones followed closely by Cam Moore on the first lap, both just having worked their way out of significant traffic.

Yudai Nakagawa, Andrew Jeffery and Nolan Beanlands (in the green hat) preparing to completely overwhelm U of T's Andrew Bradbury.

After the first lap, things began to shake apart with strong Lakehead and Carleton contingents stretching out the pack. After losing Moore, Jeffery and a large chase pack, Jones bided his time until the start of the second lap, and then began his quest for a top 10 finish. Passing 5 men in the last 2km to set himself up for a sprint finish, Jones came into the last 500m loop 10 meters behind Lakehead's Matt Cuddy and Jake Porter, both strong skiers. With a little jump on the last uphill, Jones downed Porter in a heated double-poling exchange, but just ran out of real estate to catch Cuddy, and had to settle for 11th place. Moore and Jeffery, a little further back in the field were busy engaged in a tight battle between each other and several rivals for key spots. Moore managed to throw some bows and slide into 22nd, with Jeffery 3 seconds behind in 23rd.

Kieran Jones crushing Lakehead's Jake Porter in the double pole into the finish.

Nakagawa rounded out the scoring men with an impressive 27th, fighting off U of T's hotshot rookie Todd Inkila, who clearly could not handle Nakagawa's double-poling strength. Beans, after posting his OUA best result on Saturday, ran out of gas on his second lap and faded back in the field a little, finishing 36th while Derek Hartman's groin suffered a relapse, forcing him to double pole 5km into the finish, placing 38th.

Yudai Nakagawa coming into the finish strong. The man who usually is behind the camera finally gets some photo time.

The final result showed no UW men in the Top 10 overall, disappointing to be sure, but strong results on both days indicate that the young talent on the team is maturing nicely. While this year and next can still be considered rebuilding years for the UW team, especially with the departure of Nellie Dow, the fact that the entire mens team save Mike Neilly, who was not present at OUA's, will be returning bodes well.

Pictures!

2009-03-22T19:43:00.010-04:00

For those two people who are still mildly interested in this blog, UW Nordic IS still alive. The nice weather in southern Ontario combined with the desperate need of this reporter to watch Cross Country Skiing World Cup and pretending to get a degree of some sort has really put the breaks on creative writing. And that is not going to change, as today is just the photo update from the relay race at OUA's.

Cam Moore holding strong in the pack at the start of the men's relay.

Andrew Jeffrey showing his love for bananas in his crucial second leg role.

Kieran Jones leading Laurentian A on the anchor lap, both gearing up for the shootout at the finish line.

Kelly Skinner making sure she keeps her brains warm on the lead lap of the woman's relay.

Martha Sutton overcoming lower-body injuries to ski a hard second spot, leading Queens, Guelph(who we love), and University of Toronto.

Nellie Dow fighting hard on the anchor leg.

Yudai Nakagawa checking his camera during a break in relay action. A rare opportunity to see the man behind so many of the pictures you see. While he was missed due to a severe oversight by a terrible blogger last post, this week's blogger is keen to give Yudai his credit as brillant photographer and great supporter of the relay team.

UW's rabid fan base, discussing the mornings results and just how awesome Kieran Jones is.

A quiz this week to get some fans back on board:
How many pictures is Nolan (Beans) Beanlands in?
Comment, and maybe you'll get a sneek look at The Post of the Year if you guess correctly.
(Ed. Note: the post of the year might be the update from day 2 of OUA's - but you won't know until you guess correctly)

OUA Championships Relay

2009-03-06T17:00:00.000-05:00

Apologies for the length of time between blog posts; the author has been on Safari in Africa. Several lions, an elephant and a giraffe later, the UW Nordic Ski Team took to the trails at Glebe Park in Haliburton. On deck in the afternoon was the Women’s 3x2.5km Skate Relay as well as the Men’s 3x5km Skate Relay. Waterloo fielded just one team in each category, as holes in the Men’s lineup as a result of injury prevented the Waterloo B team from taking to the start line. The Women’s Team consisted of Kelly Skinner, Martha Sutton and Nellie Dow, all of whom put forth strong races in the morning. As Waterloo did not have enough women to make a relay team at OUA Championships last year, they set out with a high bib number and a vengeance, showing the rest of Ontario that women do, in fact, go to Waterloo, regardless of the rumours. Ed. Note – The male to female ratio at Waterloo is not as high as some claim. The most recent census lists only 1.5 males to 1 female. If you’re female, the odds are good, but the goods are usually odd. Lakehead again proved that they are the dominant force in OUA Nordic Skiing and took 1^st and 3^rd. Waterloo A, with Nellie Dow running the anchor leg scared ahead of All-Star Queens anchor Julie McVicar, managed an impressive 6^th place.

On the Men’s side, much deliberation was done for the relay team selection. After a lengthy round-table discussion, a Q&A session and a end-goal quantification meeting, it was decided that Cam Moore, Andrew Jeffrey and Kieran Jones would have the best shot at repeating the success of last year. The experienced and cagey veterans Moore and Jones rode lead and anchor respectively, while recently-drafted Andrew Jeffrey was sandwiched in the middle like a good Oreo cookie. Again, Lakehead was the class of the field, placing 1^st and 3^rd. The surprise of the day however, came from Waterloo A. Sitting in 4^th after the first leg, and then dropping back to 6^th and 15 seconds out of 5^th on the second leg, Jeffrey tagged off to Jones, who is of dubious skate-skiing value. Somehow, despite the fearsome firepower of each school’s anchor skier, Jones managed to close the gap to 5^th place Laurentian and engage in a fierce battle, culminating in a exciting sprint finish, which Jones disappointingly lost. While on the surface the 6^th place result is equal to the performance put on last year, the coaching staff was impressed that the men were able to finish 1 sec behind Laurentian A.

While clearly the men on the relay team have to take the overwhelming majority of the credit for their impressive finish, credit must be given to the enthusiastic cheering squad, including injured Derek Hartman and easily-identifiable Nolan Beanlands.

Pictures commemorating the epic event will follow shortly.

OUA Championships Skate Race

2009-02-27T11:12:00.006-05:00

Hosted by the University of Waterloo, OUA Championships this year was set in the picturesque town of Haliburton. Not really near anything resembling a city, Haliburton dubious existence in most peoples’ minds was justified by their technical, hilly, luckily snow-encrusted race course centered around the equally-dubious of value Sir Sanford Fleming College of Glass-Blowing, Fiber Weaving and Statue Hewing. The College provided a great venue for the Championships, and despite the poor weather of the preceding week, the trails were groomed into perfect condition.

Hard pack, fast conditions and a nice day.

Saturday morning dawned bright and early, bright because of the cloudless sky, and early because the race start was set for 9 AM in order to get the Women’s Individual Start 5 km and the Men’s Individual Start 10 km underway before the afternoon relays. In preparation for the start, the Guelph men’s team played a rousing game of chess, followed by hide-and-seek. Ed. Note - If this blog was written by Guelph, we would now delve into a discussion of their race weekend, but because it’s the UW Nordic Blog, we’re going to stick to talking about Waterloo skiers. The conditions were hard and fast, and the rare one-loop 10 km course contained several large up hills before culminating in a long downhill with some fast corners, and a little art.
The UW women showed up with their skating hats on, and led once again by 2008 All-Star Nellie Dow, dominated the hilly course. Dow, who has been struggling all season long to find her skate form, continued the trend, finished in 12th spot. Kelly Skinner, wife of outstanding head coach Justin Faulkner and owner of several important pieces of paper, placed 23rd, followed by Martha Sutton in 28th, freshly activated off the injured reserve in order to give the Warriors the best possible shot at crushing the University of Toronto’s Varsity Blues women’s team for the 15th consecutive year. A lock for Female Rookie of the Year, Jessica Stevenson finished in 32nd continuing her climb back into racing form after a 3-year layoff. With a successful morning under their mostly one-piece racing suits, the women hit the change rooms and bagels quickly before getting out on the race course for the men’s 10 km skate.

Jess Stevenson cruising her way through 5km in blasting sunshine.

With much the same real estate to work with as the women, just with more up hills, more down hills, more flats and more suffering, the Warrior men gathered their marbles and bet everything on 13 black. Ed. Note – For those of you confused at this point, it’s a ridiculous way of saying they got ready to start. After struggling through the rare one-lap 10 km, Cam Moore was again the fastest UW skier, finishing in 13th. Andrew Jeffrey and Kieran Jones had slightly off days, crossing the line in 19th and 25th respectively. Yudai Nakagawa finished in 29th with Nolan Beanlands close behind in 31st, one second out of the Top 30. Beanlands was ecstatic after his race, stating “Best skate race ever! I don’t know how to classic ski, so I’m screwed tomorrow, but I’m living in the moment! Can’t talk now though, I need to go check the results”. Derek Hartman, despite having an injury plagued season managed to shake off his nagging groin injury and cross the line in an OUA Personal Best of 42nd. When asked about how his injury felt during the race Hartman said “It was fine for the first 5km or so, but a couple of killer up hills really hurt me. In hindsight, I could have made up a couple of places if I hadn’t stopped and talked about dropping out with Colin[Rhodes, assistant coach], but it was a tough day regardless”. With mixed feelings about the morning race, relay teams were selected, granola bars were eaten, naps were taken and smack was talked. Due to the enormous size these blogs are becoming, take this opportunity to relax, eat something and breathe while you eagerly await the relay update.

Andrew relaxing like you should be, Nolan breathing like you should be, just a little too enthusiastically.

Profile Numero Uno

2009-02-16T19:27:00.002-05:00

Name: Kieran Jones
Program: Arts, History and Philosophy(part time)
Year: 3 of 5?
Years on the Ski Team: 3
Favourite Coach: Justin Faulkner of course, it is important to have a coach that can beat you in Tuesday night sprints.
Favourite race: any race that is only one lap, the second and third lap can be tricky. Lapping makes dropping out too tempting.
Three most important aspects of your training regime: sleeping, hydrating and watching world cups at 5 am.

UW Nordic News

Snow? and Racing? North Bay OUA Invitational 2012

Back to Highlands/Time Trial #2

Time Trial # 1

Twas the Night before Ski Camp not a Snow Flake was in the Air

December's Daily Dilemmas

No time like snow time!

A little bit of a makeover?

September, according to us.

Email Subscription

Season Wrap-up

Eastern Canadian Championships

OUs 2011

North Bay– Welcome to the Chill Zone

Qualifier Season

Winter Camp - The Summary

The Story of Racer Out

Winter Camp - Race Reports

Ski Season

Skiing, Waterloo Style

Rollerski Duathlon "R U Bad Enough for Badenoch?"

Editorial - No-Good November

Snow! and Skiing!!

Trail Building at Bechtel

Picture Profiles - Returning Athletes

Team Profile Photos - The Rookies

The Team

Time Trial

What the.....?

Guest Editorial!

Fall Camp Part II- Mountain Mania Horror

Public Service Annoucement

Fall Camp Part 1

Fall 2010

Day 2 – An Epic

Day 1 – Golden Boys!

Race Day!!!

Eastern Canadian Championships Round 2 – *Ding* *Ding*

UW Nordic Team Does Eastern Canadians – Round 1

New Feature! ‘Does this kid know anything??’

“If You’re not First You’re Last” UW Nordic in North Bay – The One Where They Do The Skate Race

NewsFlash from North Bay! Absolute Domination!

URGENT INFORMATION! No, really, it is. You could live without it, but you wouldn’t enjoy the type of life you would be living.

Further elaboration…

UW Cup – Like the World Cup, but without all the sponsors, prize money, city sprints and Petter Northug Jr.

Skiing Conditions in Waterloo – Sexier Than You Might Imagine

UW Season Opener!

Attendance Challenge!

UW Duathlon Mass Start Time Trial

What Can I Do?

Mountain Mania Results!

We're Back! The UW Fall Camp! Extreme-Awesome Edition! Now with more Bacteria's!

Fall!

Summer!

Awards!

OUA Championships Classic Mass Start - Finally

Pictures!

OUA Championships Relay

OUA Championships Skate Race

Profile Numero Uno

Eastern Canadian Championships Round 2 – Ding Ding