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.
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| 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
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