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2014 was pretty great. I did a fair bit of travelling (Ottawa/Calgary/Portland/Listowel/Nanaimo/Osoyoos). I dyed my hair purple. I finally graduated skeleton school and started training with the BC team. I got to attend CanAm week in Calgary, moved up to corner 3 in Whistler, fell off my sled, did 2 180’s, raced in several races and attended summer dry land testing too. I got to ski a few times, started weightlifting lessons and doing yoga. I worked a lot, and started monthly games days with some work friends. I ate a lot, lots of Tasting Plates events, offal at Black Hoof twice, life-changing ice cream, and even attended a food bloggers conference. I gave up sugar for 3 months. Oh and I also did a buttload of crochet and cross stitching.

2015 hasn’t been that great so far… broken fridge/sickness/I think I need glasses… but I’m sure it will improve.

My goals:

  • get way stronger
  • slide from the top of Whistler
  • improve my blog
  • finish my blanket
  • handstands
  • be nicer to Scott

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Last last week I was lucky enough to be able to take part of Can-Am week at the COP in Calgary. It was a week intended to give extra coaching and training to new sliders. That being said, Matt and I were definitely the most new out of everyone. Most of the other people had been sliding for a couple years and already had experience on a bunch of different tracks, or at least had a lot of experience on the Calgary track. There were a few guys from USA, a few from Ontario, a whole bunch of people from Alberta, and the four of us from BC.

The Calgary track is not near as fast as Whistler. But it does have its own challenges. The main one for us was that it is REALLY REALLY BUMPY. Also really really dirty. Because it is so close to the city a lot of dirt blows in. Also the track workers just aren’t as awesome as at Whistler. We are so spoiled at Whistler. There was bird poo frozen onto the track, and also sawdust? Yuck.

ANYWAY because it wasn’t so fast we were able to start from the top on our second run! This meant doing my first ever running start!! (My skeleton/life goal for this season!) The first few runs I did two-handed “running” starts (really I was pretty much walking). Fun! Later we had a couple sessions in the icehouse (an indoor push track practice thingy) where Ivo helped us work on our real one-handed running starts. It did help a lot but I will admit I still pushed somewhat tentatively on the real track because I was terrified of popping the groove and also crashing. PS you can see a video of me doing a running start on my Facebook wall.

The best part of the week was that there were always at least 3 coaches watching our runs. One coach even took videos. Then after each run they would come give us feedback on how we did and how we can improve. Very cool and very helpful. A lot of the pictures in this post are stills from the videos.

Like I said, the track is not super hard. There are only two parts that I had to worry about. 1) corner 8, which has the potential to flip you over if you go into it too late. I came close to flipping but managed to stay right-side-up the entire week. And 2) the kreisel (a 270 degree corner 3 pressure corner), which I also survived fine. Maybe just because I did “safety steers” though, which helped me but also slowed me down a lot. The fastest speed I got was only 107.9 km/hr!! (The good dudes were getting around 114 km/hr). One time I was NINE SECONDS slower than Mitch. NINE SECONDS!! Was I even on the same track?? I swear there was a short-cut I didn’t know about, haha.

On the last day of the week we had a fun race. I expected I was going to come in last place, and I did, but they were some of my best runs of the whole week so I still felt pretty good. They were my quickest and cleanest runs with my best push times. That’s success for me. Also it was really awesome that Lesley was able to come watch, it made me feel supported.

COLD KATRINA.

All in all it was a successful week. I learned SO MUCH. LIKE, SO MUCH. Everything makes a lot more sense now. It was tiring and challenging at times, but also super fun. While it was extremely embarrassing being so bad/new sometimes, the coaches and other sliders were always really encouraging and friendly. I loved meeting other sliders and making new friends. I’m so glad I was given the opportunity to take part in the training week.

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I’ve been putting this post off for a long time, because I didn’t want to be all “LOOK AT ME I’M SO GREAT AT FITNESS” and then end up not sticking with it and looking stupid. But it’s been 6 months now and I’m still going to the gym on a regular basis so I think it’s safe to say I’m somewhat committed.

Before six months ago I hated exercising, I thought. But actually I think I really just hated running. I did the Couch To 5K program a couple years ago and hated every second of it. When I got home from a run I felt like puking! People say things like ~you never regret a workout~ but when I’d come home from running with a purple face, shins hurting, and feeling a thousand times worse than I did before the run, I DID REGRET THE WORKOUT. I was quite content on the couch before I went out!!

But then I got into skeleton. Skeleton isn’t really the sportiest of sports (probably part of the reason I like it), but even as a beginner it does involve walking up inclines, carrying really heavy things around, and keeping your body really tight on the way down. And I sucked at that. So I joined a gym.

I started with the cardio equipment because they weren’t as scary. But upon further research I realized I really needed to be in the weight room. I got a bunch of books on weightlifting from the library and tried to memorize some of the exercises [this was pre-smartphone] and slowly started trying more and more things out in the weight room. It was terrifying at first!! Weights are intimidating! I mostly stuck to the machines and dumbbells at the beginning, and only when it wasn’t very busy. [Getting my new phone later helped a lot because you can sneakily look things up while at the gym.]

I followed the dumbbell only routines from The Body Sculpting Bible For Women for several weeks. They were fun and challenging and not too complicated. The best thing was writing down the weights I used in a little notebook [eventually replaced by phone] and seeing the numbers go up and up every time. Super addicting! I finally understood what people meant when they said they never regretted a workout because I always felt great after a sweaty lifting session.

Over the past few months I’ve progressed from those timid dumbbell moves to exciting stuff like deadlifts and power cleans with the barbell! I’m a million times more confident at the gym now. It’s been a fun journey, thanks to watching other people, reading on the internet, and coaching from my skeleton friend.

My original weight lifting goals were to try not to embarrass myself at the skeleton tryouts, but then they took out the weight lifting part anyway. My new goals are to get my benchpress to 100 lbs, and my squat and deadlift to bodyweight. And to be able to do pull-ups and handstands.

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I may be smiling in that picture but actually I felt like puking from nervousness!! I was so so so scared to actually do the tryouts. Scott had to drag me there, pretty much. I felt more nervous than I do before giving presentations!!!

Thankfully it ended up being a super small group (5 people) and not super intimidating. My sprint performance was pretty pathetic but I apparently had the best broad jump form. (THANK YOU YOUTUBE!) I jumped 1.78 m which is only about ONE METER TOO SHORT. Lol.

But I guess since so few people actually showed up I made the team? I’m just kidding grandma. I don’t have the time/money to actually do that anyway. Even though it was slightly embarrassing I’m still glad I went and glad I got the chance to show Ivo that I am still really interested in skeleton. I guess it worked because he talked about bringing us to Calgary to try running starts in the icehouse in a couple weeks!!

BTW my skeleton goals:

  • Year 1: Break 100 km/hr. DONE.
  • Year 2: Move up starting positions. DONE.
    • break 120 km/hr (this was mostly Chris’s goal but I beat it first so it became my goal too). DONE.
  • Year 3: do a running start!

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We went to Washington on Sunday to do a little shopping. I got new running shoes for work and unflavoured protein powder and approximately 20 different types of cheese products. I REALLY LOVE CHEESE, OK?? Let’s count the number of cheeses I talk about in this post.

It took us a long time to cross the border so by the time we got to Bellingham it was lunchtime. I saw Sonic on the highway exit sign and made the executive decision that we would eat there. Probably no one knows this except my dad and Rosemarie(?) but I have been wanting to go to Sonic Drive-In for like… my entire life. For some reason even though mom and dad were willing to take me there (I think??) we were never in the right spot at the right time.

They are known for their waitresses on rollerskates and customizable limeaids. You drive in and park and then order through an intercom and then they bring you your food in your car. I thought they would have things to hook on your car door like on the Flinstones but actually they just gave us our food in a bag, ha.


I had a cheesy bacon pretzel dog (1) and chilli cheese tots (2), and Scott got a chicken burger and onion rings and we split a strawberry limeade. Everything was fairly good. The onion rings were oddly sweet though, like dessert onion rings. The strawberry limeaid was DELICIOUS. If I ever go back to Sonic I’m going to order and XXXXXXXL drink. It had chunks of real strawberry and a half a lime at the bottom. Mmmm it was tasty.

I’m glad that I finally got Sonic checked off my bucket list.

After lunch and the mall we went to Trader Joe’s. We seriously stocked up. It’s easy to go overboard in Trader Joe’s. We got heaps of strawberry lemonade, three types of cheese (gruyere (3), jalapeno monterey jack (4), brie (5)), frozen gorgonzola gnocchi (6), fancy salad dressings (cilantro, and cranberry walnut gorgonzola (7)), lots of white chocolate pistachio cookies, lacey cookies, and more.

Yet again they didn’t have any cookie butter. Apparently there is an actual shortage right now. I am seriously cursed… how many times have I been to Trader Joe’s and STILL no cookie butter for me??!! It is beyond ridiculous now. Please can someone mail me some?? I will pay you back.


Finally we stopped by a regular grocery store to get yet more cheese (900 grams of cheddar (8) for $5.49??? O_O) and jalapeno Cheetos (9). Mmmmm cheese.

Cheese #10: Cheetos macaron??? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA I WANT TO TRY THIS. This is incredible. Time to go to NYC!!