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

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

          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!

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?

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.

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.

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Season Wrap-up

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.