Can(we get)more snow

I’ve had a really swell time here in Canmore so far. After wrapping up a week of training with the Junior and Senior women’s team on Saturday I (quote) “came back to the good side” to spend the rest of my time in town with my fellow NDC’ers. Not wanting to leave my recent training partners out to dry, I put up a bit of an argument against there being “good” and “evil” sides in this situation. Unfortunately, they weren’t fully convinced and I soon found myself on the pullout couch in the living room /TV room /mud room/ hallway of my new accommodation (shoot…).

The week of girl camp was a really positive experience, and I had a lot of fun getting to know people who I used to only know as competitors as friends and teammates. Training, living, and eating together day in-day out for a week will do that for ya’. On top of the standard training material, the camp also featured some guest speakers, testing, and involvement from members of the national team staff and IST. It was definitely a week full of learning. If there is one take-away from this camp it’s that I should probably brush up on that grade 9 french vocab and grammar – big thanks to all the girls from Quebec for parler-ing avec moi en anglais.

The snow is falling steadily here in Canmore now, just in time to head back home to 3C and rain in Thunder Bay. I think it’s going to be a bit of a slap in the face having to go back to roller skiing, school, ‘n stuff… Fortunately I’ll only have to endure it for a couple weeks because there’s less than a month until the first races of the year – crazy!

Even after spending the past 6 months training and getting ready to race this winter I can’t help but feel like it’s too early to be racing. One part of me is saying “we need more time!, we’re not ready yet!” and another part is saying “geez, about time, lets get on with it already.”. It seems like I’m struck with this great inner struggle every year; trying to convince myself that everything is all good, that I’m ready to do some racing, that training for another however many months isn’t the answer to my nerves. That said, I’m really looking forward to getting out to Silver Star again this year – it’s one of my favourite places to ski. … Yes, skiing is good.

Anyway… it seems that I’ve been slacking a bit on my picture taking (too busy doing rad training), so big thanks to Pav, Dan, Chloe for snapping pics this week.

‘Til later.

JennOUT