I have a few events to now report on! I ended up traveling to Ottawa for Canadian Easterns and I'm sure glad I did. It was a solid weekend of racing and my second ever mini-tour. My mom was also able to make the trip down to watch me race and take some great pictures.

Prologue- a 3.75 km race that feels like it should be a sprint, but isn't. The course was a tough one with some steep climbs and one particularly fast downhill. The first 500m were a gradual incline and my goal was to one-skate the whole section. I've been working my one-skate technique to help take me farther up hills and maintain speed on the gradual ones, and it seemed to work! I was almost able to catch the racer ahead of me but I slowly died throughout the last kilometre and ended up in 12th. I wasn't very impressed with my performance since my legs got so heavy. I was now especially looking forward to the sprints the next day.

Skate Sprints- finally! I try to be indifferent to race formats, technique types and distances, but I REALLY like skate sprinting. It's so much fun! It was shaping up to be a fast day and I qualified 5th and 4 seconds back of 1st. I advanced to the A-Final and after a serious sprint finish I squeaked in to come 3rd. My FIRST medal as a senior! I was surprised to be feeling this fast and fit after coming home from Europe.

15 km Classic- Being a mini-tour weekend, the start list for today is generated based on the results of the last two days. Of all the classic races, I think I enjoy the 15km the best. Emily Nishikawa had earned herself a good lead and no one was able to close it. Myself, Andrea Dupont and Alana Thomas worked hard to close the gap between the next 3 women and ourselves. We got really close at one point but they kept getting away on the downhills. It came down to a sprint finished with the the three of us fighting for 5th, 6th and 7th. After leading much of the race I just didn't have the kick at the line that I had the previous day and I ended in 7th. It was a great race in terms of my technique and I felt for the first time in a while that I was classic skiing well. It was a wonderful weekend of racing. I had a beavertail after dinner and was set to go home.

My mom and I after the medal ceremonies.

15km classic day

Fighting for position in the A-final

Heading into the first hill during the heats.

Yayyy! My first medal in Senior!

About a week after Easterns I headed to Halifax for the Canada Winter Games. This was my first games and I didn't exactly know what to expect. We were outfitted with a ton of Ontario Team clothing to help represent our province. Five guys and five girls were each selected to compete at the games. It was a ton of fun, but a rather tiring week. The racing was competitive and on a different type of course than we are generally used to. Frequent transitions and short climbs.... and a downhill finish! I don't think I've ever free skated or tucked to the line before. We had 4 races:

7.5 km Skate- I was feeling great during this race and was getting positive splits on the racers who had gone out before me. It was hard to tell where I'd finish since there were still a lot of fast ladies behind me. I found it a bit hard to generate more speed than what the course naturally presented. I placed 7th and was feeling like it was a good start to the week, but I knew there was more.

Skate Sprint- yayyyy again! This was a completely different day compared to the sprints in Ottawa. The course was really narrow with very few opportunities to pass. You had to play your tactics out right to even make it through the quarter finals. the snow conditions also broke down during our warm up and we were left with mushy, sugary and deep snow. My qualifier felt horrible. I just didn't feel fast at all. I qualified 12th which means I was into the heats but would make any lucky-loser situations risky. And lucky is what I got. After a crazy quarterfinal with multiple things going wrong I crossed the line in 3rd. Of all the 3rd place finishers in the quarters I would have to have one of 2 of the highest bibs to go on. I got the last lucky loser spot and went on to the semi-finals. Phew! I had last lane choice for being a lucky loser which put me on the very outside of the trail and I had much farther to go to get into the pack than the others. I went out of the stadium in 5th and came back into it in 3rd to cross the line to make the A-final. During the A-final I managed to keep with the pack and it came down to a sprint to the line. Emily Nishikawa and I battled to the line and she got me by the boot. So close, but 4th! It was a successful day and I was happy with how I skied.

Two more races consisted of a 10km mass start and the 4 person relay. The mass start was a gong-show. Seriously, there were pile-ups, and stalls on the first hills, girls all over each other's skis, crashes... it was crazy! I managed to stay on my feet and cross the line in 12th. My teammate (well NDC teammate but she was representing BC) Andrea Lee came home with a bronze in this event! Solid race!

The relay event was 3.75km x 4 with two classic legs and two skate legs. Alana Thomas started for Ontario and brought us into the first exchange in 4th. This was a great place to be, with 2nd and 3rd right in the mix as well. Mary Thompson went out on the second leg and also skied a solid race. Alannah MacLean also pushed it out there as the 3rd leg and exchanged to me in 5th position. I couldn't see 4th place and we had a big gap on 6th as well so I just went out and skied as hard as I could to make up as much time as possible. We came in 5th place overall. It was such a fun day complete with Ontario tattoos and hair ribbons to represent. We looked gooooood. haha!

The games ended that night with a free outdoor concert by City in Colour. The ladies on Team Ontario were fortunate to be able to head to Montana's for a delicious dinner courtesy of John Morrissey. It was a wonderful end to the week. We had to be up and out of our hotel at 5:30am the next morning to drop off our bags for a 7PM flight. Once we got back to the hotel we were supposed to head to the dinner hall to hangout for 5 hours until the closing ceremonies... but we snuck back in to our rooms to grab a little more sleep. We made it out before the cleaning crew came around... all rested for the closing ceremonies! They were quite the event and my mom saw me on TV! We got home to Thunder Bay after crazy travel day at about 11:45 pm. Here are some pictures, courtesy of my Mom:

Peggy's Cove: I can jump so high! haha

peek-a-boooo!

7.5km skate race heading out of the stadium.

Team Ontario! This was the first games where they had para-nordic athlete races. Ontario did really well in the Para category which helped Ontario win the overall games flag!

Ontario girls minus Alana T

LUNGEEE!!!

Andy after winning his silver medal and me with my True Sport noise maker

Closing Ceremonies

Team Ontario boys, minus Jordan C, getting ready to march into the arena for closing ceremonies.

I managed to find a parking meter to sit on in order to see the stage. There were SO many people!

A few other highlights of the trip were having my Mom and Alana's Mom, Diana there for most of the week. My mom and I took a trip to Peggy's cove where my Mom and Dad had visited in the summer. We ate at a few great restaurants and were able to take in a bit of the Halifax culture. I also got to meet snowboard cross Olympic Silver medalist Mike Roberston at an AthletesCAN meeting I attended. I suggest checking out this organization since they are big advocates for Athletes at the National Team level and high performance sport in general.

http://www.athletescan.com/Content/Home.asp?langid=1

I was also selected as the True Sport athlete ambassador for Ontario at the Games. It was a great honour to have been selected and True Sport is another great organization. They stand for good values and ethics in sport and promote fair play at all levels. They do a great job of reaching out to communities and providing younger athletes with sporting opportunities. An article was written about me that you can read here:

http://www.truesportpur.ca/en/page-166

Well I think I've probably tired you out by now so I'll leave it at that. I head to Nationals in Canmore, Alberta on Wednesday and after that to Sun Valley, Idaho for the SuperTour finals, my last races of the season.

Later!

Erin