Eastern Canadian Championships

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.