Spring is the season of new beginnings, growth, life and happiness.  Well, that’s the cliched version of what spring is for most normal people (correct me if I’m wrong).  For me spring is the time of horrendous allergies, running in ovular loops, late assignments and sun burns.  Okay, so that’s not the most positive way to look at it… Seriously though, for me, spring time is usually about track, allergies, sunscreen, the start of ski season (yes indeed non-skiing folk, cross country ski season starts on May 1st), and finishing off the school year.  I think that’s it.
So let me run down some of the stuff I’ve been up to lately.

Track

• Eastview wins GBSSAs for the 8th time in 9 years
• Eastview sends 2 relay teams and at least 10 individuals to OFSAA (lost count, there were too many)
• Several school records were broken this year, which is fantastic.

woo-hoo relay team is OFSAA bound ! (I managed to sneak in for steeple chase as well)

Fun fact:  OFSAA Track & Field 2012 will be my 11th trip to OFSAA and I’m just finishing off grade 11. huh, not too shabby.
Another fun fact is that for the three times I’ve been to track OFSAA I’ve raced in three different events.  In grade 9 I made finals in the 1500m, grade 10 was in the 3000m finals and this year I’m looking for some results in the Open steeple chase event.  I really like steeple chase because it’s not just plain old running.  Track isn’t exactly my calling, actually, I find it rather boring.  But my parents aren’t too keen on my playing rugby, I’m a horrendous soccer player and … I don’t really know why I don’t play Ultimate.  Maybe I’ll do that next year!  Anyways, I like steeple because you don’t have to run as fast as the people in the 1500 and 3000 do and you get to jump into a large puddle of water and negotiate some very stable hurdles.

OST Training Camp

this was a pretty good time, and I’m getting pretty good at travelling solo now.  It started off with a drive to the airport, flight to Ottawa, bus to train station, train station to the university.  Planes, trains, automobiles, bus and foot people. – it gets you places.  I lot of really awesome stuff went down during this testing camp, so please try and understand that I die a little bit every time I have to leave one of these camps.

• Ultimate frisbee is super fun.  Turns out we’ve got some seriously skilled players.  We’re thinking about crashing an ultimate tourny sometime, just because.
• Roller skiing in the tunnels/hallways.  Residence was pretty quiet so we took the liberty of hastening our travels by rollerskiing through the buildings rather than walking.  It was very worthwhile and quite entertaining.

Just roller skiing in the halls. nbd

• They say you cannot fail a Functional Movement Screen, but I think I was borderline close to doing it.  I’ll get better, they say, if I do certain exercises and subject myself to foam rolling torture on a daily basis.  It’ll be easy, they say, it only takes 30 minutes a day, plus the 30 I’m supposed to spend practising squatting for ankle flexibility.  It’ll be worthwhile, they say, … yeah it probably will be, I’m just a little sore from the exercises and long list of things I’m not good at.  Witness this when I say that I will do the stuff they say I need to do on a more regular basis than I update this blog!
• We learned how to ski like Marit Bjoergen.  It wasn’t really that big of a deal
• Soccer and slack lining in the pouring rain was pretty fun.  Mind you that we skiers are much better Ultimate players than soccer and slack liners.  Actually, some of these goofs are decent at both.
• EXTREME SPOONS  you need to hear this in person.  Basically just a game of spoons (four of a kind, grab the spoon, don’t be the one without a spoon or you’re out), except you need to race across a room or to a different floor of the building to get your spoon.  Risk of serious rug burn in this game.  But worth it. oh and grounders. Grounders never gets old.
• Oh yeah, we did some training/testing stuff too.  eh, not important, won’t write about it. ….  Okay maybe just quickly.  We did strength testing, 1000m and 3000m/4000m time trials, beep test and a bunch of video analysis for technique.  It was a good time
• Quote ‘To the Hintonburger for the recovery meal!’ – Coach Pav  … They were superb burgers.  Best recovery meal I’ve had in a while!
• Shout out thanks to all the coaches, the FMS people, the residence people (for putting up with us), Shelby (for putting up with me as a roommate), to Ben and his fam for the UNREAL ice cream sundae ‘surprise’ and just everyone who was there. You guys are all fantastic.

So skiers, until next time… may fate be with you.

Other stuff I’ve done recently…

• Cottage visit with the Hills.  Super fun, water skiing, paddling, golf ball retrieving (not as exciting as it might sound), ping pong, trampolining, and unicycling.
• Past three weeks of school have been three, one and three day weeks respectively.  That attendance record is going to be killer.
• GOT AN AWESOME BATTLE WOUND

I go hard.

Life’s good.  Time to go slay some exams.

Jackson out.