Tis the Season

          Hard to believe that we're already past mid-February.  Somehow the season that you spend the rest of the year training for and daydreaming  about the day when there will be snow seems to pass in an instant filled with a flurry of weekends with long car rides, hotel rooms, warm ups and start lines, and weeks with exhaustion, midterms, and skiing at Bechtel in between.

Who says we have to ski on snow? 

          Skiing at Bechtel?! Yes, we've been doing lots of skiing at Bechtel, and the skiing has been good. The racing has also been quite good.  So good, in fact, that I can say that it's been the most successful season, results-wise, that the UW Nordic ski team (UWNST) has seen in a few years.  Since the past update we have been in attendance at the third stop of the Haywood NorAM race series in Duntroon, Ont. and more locally, Mono Nordic invitational in Orangeville, with some nothing-short-of-epic training weekends in between.

          The weather  in Southern Ontario this season has been a tad bit moody.  Our first supposed-to-be-race weekend of the year turned into more of a water ski show than anything.  And although the official Snow Dog race was cancelled, we still managed to squeeze a race in at good ol' Highlands, which had a surprisingly high attendance.  Only two UWNST member's were keen enough to suit up, so Coach Colin and Katie took on the entire field consisting of Guelph, U of T, and various members of Highlands.

Oliver and Glenn take
on the quarter finals

Ryan powers up yet another climb

 The next event was Walden (see previous post), and somehow within those two weeks Highlands was able to accumulate enough snow to host a great NorAM event.  The first day of racing was a classic sprint day, and the course couldn't have been better.   Backwards up the stadium and racer out, around the haripin , lots of double poling and back down.  The second race day was a 10km for the women and 15km. for the men.  The course was just as epic- but in a much different way.  To directly quote Coach Colin, "the course will be good for those who like to suffer"...  It was a 5km loop- but in the course of one loop was two trips from the very lowest point of Highlands to the very top.  So that's 4x up for the ladies, and 6x for the men.  Yup, it was a lot of climbing, my quads thought so too.  For a full race report of both days  check out the official Warriors website  http://www.varsity.uwaterloo.ca/news/2013/1/28/NORDIC_0128135545.aspx.

          The UWNST was not in attendance at the Easter Canadian Championships, as it would have been the third consecutive weekend in a row of racing.  Although most other universities did choose to go, the UWNST is bound to see some direct benefit from this by being more fully prepared for the OUA championships this upcoming weekend.  Instead, the trip was made to Hardwood Hills for a fantastic training weekend.  Mother nature decided to turn itself against Highlands once again, as they were still closed from lack of snow from the second meltdown of the season.

Skiing and Studying- easily done when you can ski to
school.

          To continue with the moodiness, Southern Ontario got the biggest dump of snow it's seen in a while.  Really though.  UW was even closed for the first time since 2008.  This of course led directly to members of the UWNST suiting up and hitting the streets, libraries, Laurier, Waterloo park- anywhere and everywhere that was skiable- and that was everywhere.

 The amount of snow that we got also meant that the Mono Nordic Invitational was a go, so the next day 5 athletes travelled to Orangeville:  Alison, Katie, Glenn, Ryan F. and Colin P.    The snow was soft and the course tough.  It was the same as the invitational trail run that Mono hosted in the fall- 5km of seemingly unending hills.  But it was a gorgeous sunny day and a real treat to have a race that close to home, which made for a positive attitude all around and a great race day.

Lots of sunshine and snow at Mono
Nordic

The OUA championships are now in the line of sight, and they will be hosted by Lakehead University at Lappe Nordic in Thunder Bay, Ont.  Eight Waterloo athletes and two coaches will make the trip and be competing at their very finest in a deep field of Ontario's best university skiers.