The past week of training here in Silver Star has been amazing. Other than it being absolutely frigid last weekend and a bit of a snowstorm for the races this weekend, we’ve been blessed with excellent weather. Although it was cold, it wasn’t on the same level as the deep freeze Thunder Bay went through last year. It was -18 on Saturday, so most of us still did our intensity workout.

Sunday was an easy, long zone 1 ski. We started from Sovereign and skied/walked up to the summit of the mountain, then back down to Silver Star and rounded off our workout on the trails there. This is probably one of my favourite workouts to do here.

Since it was intended to be a very easy workout I took quite a few pictures, the only deterrent was that it was still quite cold and my fingers got quite cold whenever to took of my gloves to take a photo. I think I got some frostbite on one of my toes because it feels weird (not black though, so it should recover).

The view when we got to the top was amazing. When it snows here, the snow collects on all the coniferous (not carnivorous) trees and gives them a ghost-like appearance.

We also took a few group photos at the summit, here’s one that Victor took.

I think I mentioned it in my last post, but we’ve been joined by a few Ontario Team skiers here in Silver Star for the duration of our camp. They are all from the Ottawa area, and three of them currently ski for Nakkertok, and one former-Nakkertok’er now Thunder Bay’er.

I took pictures of everyone on the ski, here are a few more:

And one Julian snapped of me at the summit.

My Dad arrived in Silver Star on Sunday. He’s helping with wax support for this camp, and getting some time working with Victor and Katja to prepare for the Canada Winter Games. Victor is one of the CWG team coaches, Katja is the team manager, and my dad is one of the wax techs. Since he already has a ticket booked to Prince George, I really hope I qualify too…

Timo also joined us early last week, after being in West Yellowstone for the SuperTour. He and Alannah left of Thursday to go back down to the USA to re-join Andy and Bob for the second weekend of racing in Bozeman, before flying back to Kelowna where we will pick them up on our way to Rossland – so lots of travel for them!

On Wednesday we took the gondola behind our chalets up to the summit, then skied down to Sovereign for our workout and to do some ski testing for the weekend.

During my ski testing I was pleased to discover that one of my new pairs of skate skis is actually quite quick. It’s one of the new(ish) Salomon 569 skis. They’ve been available to World Cup athletes (and in Europe, I think), but they aren’t readily available in North America. I’m pretty excited to have a fast pair. You can read a bit about them at the bottom of this post on CaldwellSport.

The race today (Saturday) went reasonably well, as far as first races of the year go. It was puking (wet) snow this morning and I was happy to have my rain jacket to warm up in.

I was the second fastest female on course today, behind Junior girl Eliza-Jane from Hollyburn. She had a super-impressive ski, demolishing -well- everyone. I set out on a pretty brisk first lap, my skis had really good breakaway speed, and I really worked the flats and gradual sections of the course. Second lap was decidedly more hurting – I had a bit of a technique melt-down and wasn’t able to ski nearly as smoothly or with as much power on the first lap. I’ll admit that I was moderately distracted by not being able to see anything through the big snowflakes on/in my sunglasses and eyes. It was still a good hard race effort, and I’m glad to have gotten this out of the way.

We race again tomorrow, a 5km classic on the same course. Hopefully the weather settles down, otherwise it could be difficult waxing conditions – or possibly zero weather. The field will be much deeper tomorrow; the Dartmouth University ski team is here and will be competing. I’ve never raced those girls before, but have seen some of there names on results lists and World Junior/U23 team rosters.

In the meantime though, back to the books. My designated blog/watch World Cup time is about to expire, so it’s time to sign off. I write exams on Monday and Wednesday, hopefully they go well. I’ve been managing the school-stress quite well so far, but I think I’m almost at the critical freak-out point. Time for deep breathing and a mug of tea to soothe my soul, or brain… I don’t know.

Til later,

Jenn