Whitehorse Nationals!! March 19-26

Greetings from beautiful snowy Whitehorse! Posting from Saturday March 19.

We had a relaxed morning yesterday, giving athletes a chance to sleep in and recover from the long travel day.  12 hours of travel but here are some fun  details on how we spent the day:

- The flight to Vancouver was easy and uneventful, which is always a good thing. We left Winnipeg at 11:40 AM.

- Pauline had a short stop in Vancouver and was off to Whitehorse 5 1/2 hours before the rest of us.  She almost got bumped from the flight (and would have been happy to join the rest of us) but then ended up bumped to first class with a BC coach! How sad for her. Poor Pauline had a giant seat, hot towels and a full meal including quinoa and a kale salad.  How poetic. When she arrived she organized the rental vehicles, shopped for groceries and checked out the accommodations.

-Meanwhile the 8 athletes and I received great tips from a Vancouver coach on how to spend a few hours in Vancouver.  And so we were off! We jumped on a sky train directly from the airport which was fast and smooth running.  We saw some great scenery but then disappeared under ground for half the journey. Within 20 minutes we were at the waterfront area down on False Creek.  We caught the worlds cutest and smallest ferry (I think it was Fisher Price ) and made our way up to Granville Island to spend an hour.  The weather was amazing, the grass was green, flowers out, trees budding (cue Walt Disney music). We walked back along the sea wall which was a great chance to stretch our legs.  Impressively we found the sky train terminal  and in good time made our way back to the airport.

- One sad lowlight of the day was that Lisle got pooped on by a sea gull but bounced back magnificently thanks to hand sanitizer and Tim Hortons napkins.

-The flight to Whitehorse gave us some incredible views of mountain ranges!

With 2 hour time change we arrived in Whitehorse at 11 PM Winnipeg time.


Today was our first training day. We had a relaxing morning and then made our way to the venue. Everything is very accessible in Whitehorse because it is a small community. The Canada Games complex is right at the stadium area for the main cross country ski trails. Whitehorse ski club is a booming 1300 members so skiing is very big around here!

We had a ton of fresh snow falling for most of the day today.  The trails are in great shape! Stay tuned.

Megan

Easterns 2016 Day 1

Easterns 2016 Day 1

Greetings from Québec! Hope everyone is well. As you know, today the Manitoba HP ski team departed from Winnipeg for Gatineau to compete in the eastern Canadian cross country ski championships. To be perfectly honest, I don't have a whole lot to tell about today’s events. But keep reading for exciting news! Put quite simply it was a nearly seamless travel day. We departed from Winnipeg at 9:45, and touched down at Ottawa international at about 12:50 local time. We then loaded rental vans and made our way to fresh air ski shop, to top up on our klister supply. Today the temperature was a balmy +6 degrees Celsius with light rain, so of course if the temperature drops below freezing our lovely wax techs will have the thorough pleasure of applying said newly purchased ice klister to our classic skis for Sunday’s classic races. Let's just say all of us athletes really  appreciate having someone there to do that for us. After the ski shop, we then headed to a local superstore for some groceries. We divided into teams and bought copious amounts of eggs, milk, bread and of course quinoa. It wouldn't be a Manitoba ski trip without quinoa. I was also informed that without Elora on the team anymore, I am the only remaining vegetarian. I was also informed that I was a loser and was off the team as a result of this. I feel very loved and appreciated to say the least, but I digress. After superstore, we made our way to our accommodations. The place where we are staying is roughly 30 minutes north of Gatineau and is ingeniously named “The Barn”. Yup, you guessed it. It's a barn. A renovated barn of course, that includes several bedrooms and bathrooms, a living space and kitchen. The walls are lined with hundreds, maybe thousands of books. They range from encyclopedias published in the 40s to the latest people's magazine, if you can consider that a book. We may even end up reading some of them, because of the absolutely horrifying realization that we would not have access to wifi for the duration of our stay. I was able to interview Jordan Hamilton, someone who was deeply affected by this tragic news. “It's like living in the Stone Age” he said. “We may even have to revert back to the ancient technology that is text messaging.” Simon however is quite content, because people are finally going to play some board games!  We've all settled into our barn quite nicely, it’s quite peaceful out here. Now our main focus is to prepare for tomorrow's training day at Nakkertok Nordic centre. All of the skate skis were sorted in preparation for Friday's prologue free technique race, which most of us are very very excited for. The smell of burritos has now wafted into the living room from the kitchen, which marks the end of my blog writing for today. Hopefully I'll have more to tell about tomorrow's training day, but for now it's so long from Québec!

-Liam Allan