Easterns Day 3

Sam Anthony

 Here's what all you parents reading have been waiting for, news from the first day of races. For most of us (except Maya Boivin who raced in the sprints at some ungodly hour of the morning ), we had a leisurely morning, eating breakfast around 9:30 and driving out to the races at about 11:30. We successfully navigated our way out of the parkade and made all of our exits on the way to the race (at least the van with me navigating did). We plowed through people in the clubhouse in order to grab a bit of floor space for our bags, much to Cams excitement, we took the same table as the National Team of Canada. We tried to act cool while we put on our boots and ate our lunches. We managed to catch the last of Maya's heats before heading out on the trails to warm-up. Even the warm-up loops were crowded but we eventually made our way out of the pack and into the start zone to do some Dynamic stretching. The race itself was a 3km skate prologue (same distance for all ages under 18) with a 15 second interval start. The course was fast and fun, with one massive hill about 500m in, followed by a huge downhill and some small ups and downs back into the stadium, we then climbed one last medium sized hill before doing a u-turn, descending back into the stadium and finishing up on the brutally windy 100m of false flat into the finish. After the race, everyone seemed pretty happy about how it went, the skis were terrifically fast, and with close to 80 athletes in every field you really got a chance to see where you fit in on a national level (it also means that I got a new personal best of beating 21 skiers). After the races the older group of us (those who started first), went to the food tent and chowed down on free cheese curds, cookies and brownies, some of us had the healthier options but I'm not sure exactly what they were, I didn't pay too much attention to that end of the tent. With our bellies full we cheered on all the midgets and then nagged them to hurry up and pack their skis so we could go back to the hotel. Tomorrow we've got our first longer race, ranging from 5 to 10km, still skate and still interval start.

Lucas tearing up the trails

Cameron putting the hammer down

Levi laying on the pain

Katie Killin' it

Fiona flying up the hills

Anna lookin' fly

#BFFS

Kenora plus Elora

Simon, rocking the raceteam suit

Easterns Day 2

Sam Anthony

Well, this should be an interesting blog post, I just spend 2 minutes trying to figure out why the computer kept correcting me when I wrote "Eeasterns". Oh well, here goes.

The day started badly, when my iPod alarm of "Scotland the Brave" didn't go off on time because I had forgotten to change the timezone. Luckily, my late morning caused no problems seeing as our coaches realized from previous trips that we really need two days before a race to practice things like waking up and not getting lost in the parkade. We had an entire day just for pre-skiing, sight-seeing and relaxing. I eventually woke up at 8:20, 10 minutes before breakfast. After finishing our baked oatmeal, packing our skis, finding the vans and blocking the exits from the parkade while Dom ran from van to van using the same ticket to get us out of the gate, we finally got on the road to Nakkertok at about a quarter to 11. We made at least 60% of our exits and eventually got to the racecourse. We drove into the stadium with Cam making loud proclamations on the size of the hill he could see from his window (which we later found out was rather small compared to most of the other hills on the course). Lorne and Joel staked a claim in the wax tent while we put on our boots in the clubhouse (about the size of the one at Windsor, should be fun when all 700 racers registered are there tomorrow). The trails were beautiful; hard-packed, wide, massive hills (up and down), and corners that are fun but not dangerous, at least not today, it might be a different story after 500 skiers have already gone around it.

getting ready to preski

Sam and Levi 

Levi (pictures from dom's gopro)

 After about an hour and a half of skiing we packed away our skis and played with the automatic doors on the van while we waited for the coaches to finish wax-testing and other important race-related things. On the way home we took the scenic route down Sussex drive and Wellington St, we kept our eyes peeled for Stephen Harper, but we only managed to see Sean Carter and his Big Thunder teammates Instagramming in front of the Houses of Parliament. We got back to the hotel, watched "Keeping up with the Kardashians" and "Mantracker" for an hour or so and then a group of about ten of us walked to the Supreme Court and slid down a couple of sketchy snow covered stairs to get to a walking trail along the Outaouais and then to the Ottawa locks and Rideau Canal. We climbed back up to the Houses of Parliament and warmed our hands in front of the Centennial Flame, took some more Instagram pics and walked back for supper.

Easterns 2014- day 1

Day 1  Easterns- January 29th, 2014

Hello,
 this is Elora and Fiona reporting from Ottawa, trying to live up to the high standards Sean has set for this blog. Everything went smoothly at the airport, although Sam did accidently end up to be carrying scissors in his backpack while going through security. Those were unfortunately confiscated.We had a pretty relaxing flight, straight to Ottawa. While flipping through the channels we watched a portion of a tv show showing a plane crash and the wreckage, this scene may have slightly upset Simon.

Simon making use of the barf bag

Plane window somewhere

We feel lucky to have arrived two days before our first race and are enjoying this extra day of preparation and rest. Upon arriving in Ottawa we took a scenic detour to the hotel led by Pauline. We made our way through a small mall which ended up connecting to our hotel.
The hotel staff were very welcoming and provided us with apples and cookies and an update on every single event happening in Ottawa which we will never have time to do. However if you happen to be in Ottawa there is a canal somewhere which we have been told is very nice!
Once we settled in and soaked up the beauty of our hotel and balcony we came to the realization that we were completely exhausted.

Look a balcony!

Our room is so big

We then split up in to two groups: one to go grocery shopping and the other to scrape skis. Once the grocery shoppers came back to the hotel the lovely Pauline and Betsy prepared us a delicious and nutritious supper. We suggest that all parents (Especially the Adamson and MacIsaac Families) get some tips from these ladies on how to make such great food.

Other highlights in the day include:
Discovering a Booster Juice within 200 meters of our hotel, no walk outside necessary!
Also, laughing at the Ottawa citizens shivering in minus ten weather while waiting inside for their bus.

Check out this video we made of today. It is posted on youtube but is unlisted to the public and can only be seen through this link.
http://youtu.be/ypIcbvkv-r4


It has been a long day so we are off to bed, you can expect to hear more updates from us soon. we tried our best.



Elora and Fiona