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I am REALLYBUSY right now but I thought I’d just drop in and let you know that I’m still alive post-skeleton and everything.

I was going to post a really gross picture of my friends helmet after he hit his face on the ice but I just changed my mind. I will spare you. Let’s just say it looked exactly how you would think if you got a nosebleed at very high velocity.

He is fine, by the way, he still did a run afterwards. That’s just what might happen if you choose a helmet that is too small so your nose is pressed up against the visor. My nose has plenty of clearance so it won’t happen to me.

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I finished 1 of 4 midterms, I’m keeping up on labs, case study is done, essay draft is done, assignments are done. I’m doing well at keeping on schedule so far. Probably going up to Whistler this weekend is not the smartest choice, but it’s the last skeleton session of the season and I can’t miss that!!

I’m hoping that the ice will actually be a little slow, so that I can try out out some new things and try to arrive early in each corner as opposed to late. Early means less slingshot type forces on my body so hopefully that makes everything a little smoother. Our coach only told me this AFTER our last run of the last session, so I’ve been sitting on it for a month.

I am also really excited to see if my weight training has helped at all. I’ve been doing a lot of training of my traps, which should help in holding my head up in the really high pressure last corner. And hopefully I will have an easier time carrying my sled around as well. We shall see.

All for now, gotta get back to studying.

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I got SO riled up on Friday night about skeleton. I was watching the final race of the 2012-2013 Skeleton World Cup season, which was in Sochi on the new track that they will be using for the next Winter Olympics. I’ve been watching all season long and was REALLY excited to see how all my favourites do on this track that was brand new for all of them.

I follow a lot of skeletoners on Twitter and for the past two weeks they had been tweeting about cancelled practice sessions and poor ice conditions and horrible hotel food and all sorts of negative stuff. And the fact that it was 17ºC out!

Anyway man oh man the mens race was BANANAS. Especially the first half of the first heat.

  • Tomass Dukurs started pushing his sled, then at the last possible second decided it wasn’t a good push and quickly managed to stop his sled, do a u-turn and carry his sled back to the start line to try again. This is allowed as long as long as they haven’t reached the first timing eye, and they do actually start within the 30 second start window. It was very surprising because I have never seen any one do that before.
  • The start groove was really NOT straight and many sliders hit in to the walls right at the very top of the run.
  • One guy smashed into the side and a mini avalanche of snow and ice fell down on to the track. And then no one cleaned it up!! So the next few sliders had a big disadvantage because they had to slide over a bunch of ice chunks.
  • The track has a totally unique uphill section.
  • The outrun looks super dangerous and several sliders hurt themselves trying to slow down.
  • There is exposed wood in several places down the track, and the ice is super bumpy. Many sliders pinballed down the track. Some sliders opted out of the race because their brain was too rattled from training runs.
  • Everyone struggled except Martins Dukurs, he made it look easy as usual. He is an INSANELY good skeletoner from Latvia. If he won this race he would win €100,000 for the “Triple Crown” by winning three specific races during the year. It was close between him and a Russian but of course Martins won!! HE IS AMAZING! I think he finished the season with 8 gold medals and 2 silvers, in 10 races, plus the title of World Cup Champion. And when he won a race he won by a mile.

The womens race wasn’t as exciting. The ice was deteriorating quickly and each person coming down had a slower time than the person before them. At least they straightened out the start groove so there wasn’t near as many wall smashes. My favourite non-Canadian slider Noelle Pikus-Pace won the race, and a German girl won the World Cup.

Well now I’m sad that the skeleton World Cup is over, but I’ve still got one more weekend of sliding to come in two weeks so that is good. And I can’t wait until the Olympics!!!

PS My skeleton coach was Martins Dukurs coach in the Vancouver Olympics. :D You can see him yelling at him to run fast in the Olympics footage.

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I haven’t been sleeping well for the past week or so. I lie down and my mind just races. I think it’s because of a combination of having 500 things on my To Do list, and also having so much exciting stuff to look forward to!

  • 2 days until the end of this school rotation!
  • 24 days until skeleton!
  • 30 days until Scott and I go to L.A.!
  • 34 days until I am in the same country as my sister (FIJI!!!)
  • 52 days until family reunion!
  • 100 days until I’m finished school!
  • 205 days until I’m finished BCIT!!

The week right before my big trip is going to very hard. So far we have 4 midterms scheduled, a big assignment for our online class, and a huge paper due within one week. I can’t really complain though because this is very good news for my holiday… so far it looks like I won’t have to do a single piece of work while I’m gone for 3 weeks!! YAHOO!!! That makes it ALL worth it.

Scott and I have been a lot more active lately. Scott has been running almost every day for the past couple months, and I just joined a gym last week and have gone a bunch of times already. I found a good place to go that is really close to our house so it’s pretty easy to work it in to my daily routine. I’ve been lifting weights and doing cardio. The weights are so I will be totally ready for skeleton next year, and the cardio is good for my fast heart.

I figure if I write about it all on here, that will keep me motivated because I don’t want you guys to yell at me if I get lazy again!

PS I thought exercise was supposed to help you sleep but it’s not really working for Scott OR I. Yeesh.

PPS I am nominated for a 2013 Homie Award in the Healthy Cooking Blog category. I don’t really expect to make it to the next round, but it’s been pretty neat to get so many new views from people checking out all the blogs. It would mean a lot to me if you voted for me as well to keep me up near the top of the list. :D You have to register but it only takes 5 seconds. THANK YOU!!!

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So.. I went to Whistler this weekend. Twice.

I was only planning on going skeletoning on Saturday, but it ended up being such a good session I HAD TO GO BACK for the Sunday session as well. There were people driving back and forth each day so I came home in between the sessions. BOO for spending like 6 hours in the car for approx 6.5 minutes of sliding. YAY for getting to slide from Junior start a bunch more times. And YAY for breaking 120 km/hr for the first time!

It’s kind of funny because I don’t actually care how fast I go this year. Last year I was all about going as fast as possible, but this year I just wanted to move up starting positions, which I already did. I don’t really want to go super fast, I just want to have clean runs with no bumps or smashes. But I have been consistently creaming all the guys in speeds. I was the only one who went broke 120 km/hr the whole weekend. :D :D :D

My next skeleton goal is to meet the land requirements for the BC team by next season. I will have to train over the summer because at the moment I am probably far from it.

In other news: Clinical is still going quite well. I have a lot of homework to do this weekend. My printer is a hunk of junk that likes to shred up papers inside of it. There are only 45 more days until we go to L.A., and 49 more days until ULTIMATE-SISTER-TIME-IN-FIJI!!!