You may have already seen it on Facebook, but my first night skeletoning back at Whistler after Calgary was quite eventful. I was super nervous about sliding fast again after slow and bumpy Calgary. But my first run was fine. It felt so smooth and lovely. My second run was even better. It became really obvious to me how much I learned the week before. Everything was making sense!
And then on the third run I tapped after corner 6, entered corner 7 super late, dropped a toe to correct…. and then ended up spinning around backwards!! It was freaky. I didn’t know I was supposed to bail if that happened, so I just stayed on the sled. It was surprisingly smooth, and I was pretty calm (since I didn’t actually know how dangerous it was). My coach was SO MAD. I got quite a lecture for not ditching my sled. Apparently I am the first person ever to go around Thunderbird backwards ahahha. I went 112 km/hr BACKWARDS??!! I feel so lucky that nothing bad actually happened.
I took a few days off after that, haha.
Rosemarie and I had a girly weekend up at Whistler last weekend. She watched me slide on Friday night, and she skied and I slid on Saturday, and then we skied together on Sunday. SO FUN! We stayed at the athletes accommodation which was nice and comfortable. I love sister time.
This coming weekend is the last bit of skeleton for the season (except for the BBQ). It’s the provincial championships and there are going to be a lot of people competing this time! It sounds like there will be about 12 people going from the top, around 8 from corner 3 (including me), and another 8 from corner 7. Us corner 3 people are apparently doing a consistency race. The person with the four most consistent runs will win. I think this is pretty boring, but it’s because we’re all at different levels so can’t really compare. I have a feeling we’ll all still be looking at the times in the end though, haha.
My fancy new helmet arrived last week and I’m feeling good about my sliding. I fixed a major problem last week that I had been struggling with for a few weeks (that darn tap after corner 6!!), so I’m very excited to race this weekend. Here’s hoping I have four consistent fast runs.
You should caption that photo “how Rose felt watching the bobsled go down the track upside down”