travels: Nationals wrap up Thunder Bay March 2015

CLASSIC SPRINTS: THURSDAY March 19

I left you on our training day before classic sprints, so I will pick up from there. In the evening of our training day, our 2 incredible host couples cooked up a feast for us and treated us like royalty! Not only did they open up their homes to our team, now they were cooking us feasts! Cam Roe summed it all up very well with a big grin on his face . . . " I am soo happy!"

Feast for Kings and Queens!

Next up was the classic sprint day for younger age groups (open men and women went the day before). In a word: awesome!

We had more good weather, with temperatures around -6 at the start of the day. The snow remained coarse grained and icy but the groomers did another great job of preparing the trails.

The team raced well in the qualification rounds. Levi N and Conor made it through to the quarter final heats (all age groups take the top 30 skiers to advance to the heats). Simon put in a great race and ended up 31st, a mere .07 seconds from a spot in the heats. 5 spots ahead of Simon all within 1 second. Sooo close! Great job Simon! Conor qualified with 13th fastest juvenile boys time, within 3 seconds ahead of him were 7 finishers, and 4 more behind him within 1 second. Levi N qualified with the 11th fastest junior boys time.

Advancing to the heats meant more waxing for our ever capable gurus - Andrew and Alan. It was great to see Alan looking so pro in the stadium area with his Team Toba wax apron.

Caution: wax guru

Sprint touch-ups in the stadium.

Heats were VERY exciting. By then temperatures had climbed up to about +2. Levi N moved from his semi-finals to the A finals as "lucky loser". If you look at the zone 4 results you will see that the top 5 of 6 skiers all had faster times than the first place skier of the next semi final. In his A final, he came from behind at the start and gradually moved his way up in the field, finishing 3rd at the line (and 2nd for national championships because the winner is actually a visiting Norwegian).

Conor had a very solid quarter final race, finishing a comfortable 2nd place. He also had a good second place finish in his semi final which qualified him for the A final! He skied into a 5th place finish with great tactics, just 2 seconds shy of a medal. Well done!

The team did some good relaxing after races were over for the day, including more sauna action and some good rest and recovery. We also piled into the vans in the evening to attend the awards ceremony for Levi N and Conor. We arrived in plenty of time and got good seats up front to support them!

En route home we stopped for a few quick groceries. In the aisle of Safeway, Alan announced "Pauline, we are out of treats for the snack room, er, the wax room". And some non organic non-quinoa items were added to the cart :)

Levi on far right, blue toque

Conor Sprint podium

Levi Sprint podium

SKATE TRAINING DAY: FRIDAY March 20
One week home and this day seems a little fuzzy. I know we made the switch from classic to skate skis in the wax room, and that the team all got out for a pre-ski of the course before lunch. The team had the bonus of having both Tim Wintoniw (with the boys) and Andrew (with the girls) provide their technical expertise and tactical tips during the ski.

During the afternoon, Simon, Elora and I met up with Sean to go and see the Lakehead University campus. We were just in time to join an official tour and Sean was pressed into service as one of the LU ski team guides as well. Sarah Tipples also joined us to check out future possibilities for combining high level ski racing with University.

FINAL RACE DAY: SATURDAY March 21

Well we came to our last race of Nationals and the weather dipped down significantly. -16 on race morning! This was the first Nationals in at least 5 years that we have not finished the week of racing with a slush fest and so the cold was most welcome.

Open men and women started the day with their 50km and 30 km races and a significant number of male racers were heard openly regretting their lack of sufficient wind panelling during their races. Our crew had a later start which allowed things to warm up somewhat. It was really not feeling much like March.

Junior boys and girls were first off the mark. 82 junior boys and 54 junior girls lined up for their respective mass starts. It was pretty darned crazy. The course was very congested on the first few km especially, and those not in the first few had to slow down to a walk as skiers reached a bottleneck up the first significant climb. Levi N went down fairly early in his race and the first time I saw him a few km in, he was sitting in about 30th place. He was to fall a second time in the first of two 7.5 km laps. His second lap was epic, as he made his way back up through the pack to cross the line 11th. Check the zone 4 results and you will see his lap 2 split was 4th fastest. Now THAT's how to refocus and get back on task!

Levi W put in a really strong race and had his best finish of the week, 48th of 80 with a very strong lap 2 (43rd). Also very proud of Cam as he gritted it out to finish the 15 km skate. And still smiling too.

The junior girls race was equally crazy, according to Elora. Poles were broken, people fell left and right, poles were grabbed (and yanked) and Elora had to lift a foot to clear a fallen skier. She stayed on her feet for the duration of the race! She looked strong each time I saw her, and she finished with former Red River Nordic skier Sarah Tipples just seconds ahead of her. Lisle skied a gritty race ("We are Strong. We are grit." ;) and posted a strong 11th place finish. Top 10 if you remove the Norwegian skiing for Edmonton Nordic!!

The juvenile boys race later in the afternoon was a similar festival of broken equipment. Conor started strongly but had a fall early on in the first lap. He broke a pole. The first replacement pole he was given had a bad strap; the second time he asked for a new pole he got the wrong size. He finally got an acceptable pole on the 3rd try. Meanwhile some bad sportsmanship from a competitor fuelled him to an epic come back all the way from about 28th to finish his first lap in 13th and climb up to a 7th overall finish of 73 racers. He just needed a bit more time!

Simon and Lucas, meanwhile, were experiencing the exposed icy corners and were fighting for their race. Simon took a hard fall and hit his head. He showed great determination as he re-focused and continued the race to finish strongly. Lucas managed to avoid adversity and raced a steady race, finishing in 64th place.

The evening saw everyone cleaned up and at the Awards Banquet. A highlight of course was
seeing Levi N accept his second overall award for aggregate points in junior boys 1998 birth year. Toba Pride!

Another evening highlight for 5 of 8 team members was something that passed for "dancing". This consisted of 5% of the space in a very large room being used for a whole heck of a lot of people all pressed together with sweat, jumping up and down. Three of them ran away when I went over to speak to them. I think I broke some kind of code by going too close - what, with some grey hair showing and all.

And now the season ends . . looking forward to a summer of hard work and even more great racing next year! Congratulations to the team for some seriously good results this year.