OUs 2011

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.