Well we have not been great at keeping our blog updated this trip . .will have to come back to it and comment on how great the racing went during the last 8 days of competition. We had some amazing highlights, one big one being Conor finishing 2nd overall in the aggregate points for juvenile boys 1999 birth year. He was called up at the banquet and shook Jesse Cockney's hand to get his loot, which included a knitted Newfoundland style toque and a CCC belt buckle that we joked was something like getting a WWF belt! We were certainly proud for Conor and for Manitoba!
Levi Nadlersmith also had some huge results this week, including his 4 th place finish in the mass start 10 km classic race on the last day, just 14 seconds off the winner!!
I should also mention top 10 finish for Lisle in the classic 5km interval start and top 10's for Levi N in the interval start 7.5 km skate race. The Red River Nordic team sprint teams of Anna and Elora, and Dominique and Conor were in the top 1/2 of their respective fields. Many personal goals were set and met by the team as a whole. Great work!
Our wax technician Tim nailed the wax all week which was no mean feat on the classic days. We were lucky to benefit from his fleet of test skis (thanks to Mike from Fischer) and also from the wisdom of coach Mike Neary from Alberta who was in our wax room. I tried to learn as much as I could . . .
The banquet last night was good. . .our athletes stayed for the dance at the end and most of them enjoyed the mosh pit dancing which was sweaty but a lot of fun, apparently. Elora was seriously hoping to crowd surf but the DJ put an end to that after several athletes were passed along the top of the dancing frenzy. There were a couple of dodgy looking moments that Pauline and I witnessed as the crowd surfer seemed to finish in a rather head down sort of direction . . .
Today we had a free day as we travel home tomorrow. Pauline organized a snow shoe and cookout birthday celebration for Levi N's 16th birthday today. We drove down the west coast a bit to Stephenville and met up with a friend that Pauline had met through MEC gear swapping. Lori Deeley and her son Kip met us at the Whaleback Nordic Ski trails and provided us with 10 pairs of snowshoes from the local high school. We spent a wonderful afternoon snowshoeing the trails and had a birthday hot dog roast and birthday cake for Levi at a warm up shelter on the trail. The team may have invented a new sport that they call extreme snowshoeing, involving leaping repeatedly over the nearby stream ON the snowshoes. Somehow there was also some dangling of each other by the ankles to lower head first to the stream but I don't know exactly how that fit into the picture. I think a video account will make its way onto the blog in the form of some sort of P90X training video. Stay tuned . .
No comments:
Post a Comment