Canada Part 2

After the race, we waited around for awards and the raffle. A few of the kids on Sun Valley got awards for the race and everyone got a prize from the raffle. That is everyone except for me. That was a bummer, but oh well.

Skiing at Shark Mountain (Photo courtesy of Morgan Smyth) 

The next day, we went on a ski at Shark Mountain, which was the back up site for the 1988 olympics. It was a fun ski, even though it was a little more like a photo shoot than a ski. We skied 10-15k and then we stopped and took photos for awhile.

Later that day, the Sun Valley coach, Mikey, found out where/when the world cup athletes were training, so we went and watched them ski. Which was borderline creepy, but also pretty cool.

Later that night at dinner, one of the kids, Keene, decided that we should all go around the room and say one nice thing about every single person in the room. He started the "game".  He went around giving strange "compliments" like "I like the way you can wear twelve layers and make it look like two". He gets to me and goes "You... you there... yeah you...", which prompted me to respond "Do you know my name?". At that point he just started randomly guessing names, which is really funny considering there were only two people on this trip who he didn't already know. Let's just say my name became Sofia for the rest of the trip.

The next day we watched the world cup sprints. It was pretty cool to get to see everyone race and Morgan (our coach) and Mikey used to race world cup, we got to meet a lot of the US skiers. We went and cheered decked out in USA gear with our posters. One of the USA girls, Jessie Diggins, got 6th in the sprint, which was awesome to watch.

Go USA!! (Photo courtesy of Morgan Smyth)

After the races, we got to ski the world cup course. The courses were a lot harder than they looked, the hills, turns, and corners were substantially more difficult than I thought they would be.

The next day we watched the races again. The second day was a skiathalon, meaning they start out classic skiing and then switch to skate. Mikey had checked out the course the day before, so he knew where the best points to watch were going to be. We would watch at point, cheer and then sprint to the next location and we repeated this process about 10 times.

After the races, we went to the awards ceremony. We made a tunnel for the winners to walk through and we actually got to meet some of them. Karsten, Anja and I got a picture with the winner from the race and the bronze medalist from the Sochi olympics, Martin Sundby from Norway.

Me, Karsten, Sundby, Anja 

The next day we went home after a long, but fun trip.

- Claire

Canada Part 1

Last week, I went to Canada with my cross-country ski team. Well, it was really just two of us and one of our coaches. We went to Canada to do a 20k race and then watch some of the world cup race for cross-country skiing.

We left early on Saturday morning on our first flight to LAX (yes, I'm aware that LA was out of our way) Once we arrived in LA, we proceeded to switch terminals, get stuck in traffic, go through security AGAIN and make it to our flight just before boarding, even though we had a two hour layover.

After another short flight to Calgary, we rented a car. On the plane we had somehow decided that I would be the navigator, even though I'm really really bad at directions. Our coach had printed out directions and the first step was to leave the airport on "Airport Trail NE". We ended up leaving the airport on "Airport Trail S" (which I noticed), but everyone said that we would connect, so I just went with it.

Long story short, we drove around Calgary for an hour looking for the wrong road and I was banned from ever being "the directions person" again.

We ended up getting to our hotel (which I found) around 9:00. The problem was we couldn't get into our rooms until the other team from Idaho (Sun Valley) arrived because we were staying with them. We waited around for 30 or so minutes until they got to the hotel.

They got there, we got our room assignments, and then ate dinner. That was when I met all of the Sun Valley kids. I thought there were a lot of them on that trip, apparently it was only a small fraction of their team. There were four girls: Anja, Katherine, Ellie and Lonnie. I shared a bedroom with Anja, Katharine slept on the pullout couch and we all had a connecting room with Ellie and Lonnie. There were seven guys: Max, Cash, Liam, Trux (pronounced trucks and it was a nickname), Tim, Danny and Keene.

The next day was the race. It was 45 minutes away from our hotel, so we left pretty early. We got there and as my coach said it was -3 out. Naturally, I kind of, sort of, maybe freaked out a little (ok, a lot) because I didn't bring that many layers. Turns out it was actually -3 celsius, so around 27 degrees fahrenheit. It was also snowing quite hard. To say the least, I was not looking forward to doing a 20k race in a blizzard.

We got out of the nice, warm car and started skiing around before the race. About ten minutes before the race I ran off to go find a bathroom and left Karsten with my skis. I got back and he had two skis in his hand was walking over to the start. I took the other two skis and headed over. We started the race on these tiny little trails and I noticed that I didn't have good kick on one of my skis. I ignored it and kept skiing. The race was hard and I'm pretty sure I've blocked the rest of it out. I finished the race and then saw Karsten. Who promptly asked me "Do you have one of my skis?". That was when it all clicked. He had accidentally taken one of my skis before the race, which was why I didn't have any kick on one ski.

Race Day!!! Standing from left to right: Danny, Trux, Tim, Max, Keene, Liam, Katharine, Lonnie, Anja, Karsten... Kneeling from left to right: Cash, Ellie, Mikey (The Sun Valley Coach), and me... Photo courtesy of Morgan Smyth  

That's all for now...

Check back soon for a part 2!!

- Claire

"The thing"

*** This actually happened a few months ago, but I never posted it and just found it again the other day

The other day several kids on my team decided to create "the thing". There were only a select few who had the privilege of knowing what "the thing" was. It was created at training one day when our team was divided into two groups on a run. One group ran slightly faster and the other slightly slower. The faster group, who I will refer to as "Group A" came up with the thing and quite sadly I was a member of "Group B". I did not get the luxury of knowing what this so-called thing was.

I learned about the thing at the next practice, which was weights. One of the girls in group b (my group) came running up to me yelling what's the thing and I was sitting there like what thing? She told me that there was some thing and no one would tell her what it was. Of course I didn't know what it was either, so I went up to Victoria and was like do you know what the thing is? And she responded "No, but I just heard about it" So we went around and asked everyone what it was. Every one in Group B had no clue what it was, and everyone in Group A wouldn't crack. Victoria and I decided that we needed to get them alone. So, we went to the person we thought would be most likely to crack. We cornered him and demanded an answer. He still wouldn't tell us.

We spent all of the next day at school going mad trying to figure out what the thing was. We were coming up with all of these theories. We started questioning whether it was actually anything? Maybe it was nothing that they just called "the thing" to mess with us. Then we thought this was some kind of hazing, but we then realized that some of the seniors were in Group B, so it couldn't be targeted just at the freshmen. We went absolutely crazy that was all we talked about for hours. We probably spent 5 hours trying to figure it out. Big shocker we couldn't figure it out. So, the next day at training we asked everyone again. Still no response. I was so frustrated, my mind was entirely occupied by "the thing", I thought of nothing else.

The day after that we asked one of the seniors "What is the thing, we been going crazy trying to figure it out" she told us the thing and we both sat there like really that's it. The thing was that Group A was messing with a senior in Group B who puts check marks next to each workout she has done. They would add check marks and erase check marks to mess with her. In the end it turned out not to be a big deal to us that is (the senior freaked out a little)  So moral of the story, if you have a secret "thing" and two people are dying to know what it is and it isn't about them, just tell them. And if you are a victim of "the thing" it probably doesn't concern you, so don't go crazy.

Every single time she does a weight workout... Photo credits