Welcome to the week! Morning workout Monday was tough today. My legs were still shaking after 2nd breakfast, getting ready, and the 30 minute drive to work. Nothing like trying to blow dry your hair and put on eyeliner when you're in a hurry and all you're body just wants to sit down and rest. No time for that! Suck it up buttercup! You've got to get to work! That's the pep talk I give myself after morning workouts when all I want to do is go back to sleep. All those workouts are for a reason, and they're going to make me better.
So I thought I'd talk today about my grand Canadian adventure. We were in Canada for almost the entire month of November. This is the second time in the past 5 years I've spent a month abroad and over a major US holiday. I found myself in Whistler for Thanksgiving on both occasions. Last time we had Mongolian BBQ followed the next day by pumpkin pie because we were too tired to cook. Good times and great memories with awesome people.
Calgary was our first stop after team trials. I drove my car home from Lake Placid and jetted off to Canada for 4 weeks. I've competed in Calgary several times now, but this trip was different. I learned a ton and was able to take in a lot more information and actually apply it. We had legendary Canadian bobsled pilot and Olympic silver medalist Helen Upperton coaching us for a few days, which was amazing. I ended up taking 3rd the first day and 6th the second. I was super pumped. I've only been on the podium 2 times before, and I've never finished higher than 7th in Calgary. Great way to start out my season. Wish the second race day had been better, but such is life. I learned a ton and am excited to see more improvements next time I go back. We were able to spend 3 days pushing in the ice house after the races. This is a ice track created just to work on push starts. You get to just focus on pushing and not worry about driving, which is really nice. There was even an off day in between 2-man and 4-man race days, so all the girls decided to go on an adventure. We all piled into 2 cars and drove a few hours to Lake Louis. Even with the fog and clouds, it was breathtakingly beautiful. We were surprised to walk into the clearing and meet the Brazilian bobsled team. Everyone was out for a little site seeing. We spent the afternoon exploring Banff and eating at Eddie's Burger Bar. If you're ever in the area, I highly recommend it! I love that good hamburger joints are included in most of my adventures. Life is just too short to miss out on such a beautiful thing.
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| Race day! We pack our runners in gun cases and don't put them on until about an hour before the race. We don't want them getting scratched as our sleds are transported in the back of the truck. |
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| Calgary's bobsled track isn't off on a mountain nearby. It's right in the city! |
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| Malaikah and I wearing our 6th place medals with pride! |
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| Lake Louise was breathtaking. God's creation is so beautiful! |
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| Kristen and I took 3rd place. So excited for my first podium finish at Calgary! |
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| Post race pic. Can you tell we're excited? |
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| Skeleton training was before our session, so we walked outside the track and poked our heads under the shades. |
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| This lovely lady in the lower left is the one and only Hellen. |
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| This year we even got to bring our own bobsled into the ice house to practice loading into the sled. That was a new experience for me. |
After Calgary, the team moved on to Whistler, BC, for the next stop on the North American Cup tour. Whistler was home of the 2010 Olympics and is known as the fastest track in the world. I raced my first World Cup as a brakeman there my first season with Megan Hill. I had only drove the track one week during my first month as a pilot, so it had been 3 years since I visited this track. We started our training week at the men's luge start, which goes into Curve 3. I spent 3 days there before moving up to the top. On my 3rd day, I told my mechanic I thought my sled looked funny. The front half looked like it had sunk forward a little away from the back half. He moved the sled around and didn’t think it was anything to worry about. I took both runs and took the sled apart afterwards in the garage. Turns out the frame was almost completely cracked, and we were in a fairly dangerous position the whole time. The front half of the sled around where my knees go could have completely broken away. Good times. Thanks goodness we have a sled mechanic on tour with us this season and lots of family who were praying for our safety. He and the coach spent hours trying to figure out how to fix the middle of the tube steel frame cracked on 3 of 4 sides without weakening the rest of the steel with welding. My fate was in their hands, and they took care of us. As if I wasn't already nervous enough, let's just add that to the mental plate on the day when we bomb it off the top.
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| This was about 30 minutes into the project. I think Kristen's face says it all. Something like, "Welp. Don't know how they're gonna fix this, but more power to ya. Just make it safe because I have to ride in this thing." |
Flash forward to the next day: I made it down from the top of the fastest track in the world! It was super fast because the temps dropped so low Thursday and Friday night and the ice was really hard. I think there were 11 crashes on my first day from the top and at least 6 the second day, and that was with half of the field still sliding from the lower starts. It was out of control. My first run off the top, the Brazilian men were before me in the start order and crashed, putting a 5 minute hold on the track for them to check everything. That was an eternity. Nothing like standing at the start line for 5 minutes to contemplate your fate. I was ready to throw up at that point, but we made it through and cheered all the way up the outrun. Run 2 was the same drill. The guy who crashed in front of me the first run scratched and his teammate crashed this time. 10 minute hold on the track. More nervous waiting before making it down for the second time. Definitely not the prettiest runs, but making it down upright was a victory. Even the Canadians were struggling on their home track. We went 86mph on terrible runners which I cross sanded with the highest grit sandpaper I had trying to slow us down in any way possible. The track was blazing. A 4-man sled went 93mph. This is crazy!
By the 5th day learning a new track and trying to make it down upright, my brain was toast. If we had more time here, I wouldn't have slid that Friday. I was on the edge of exhaustion mentally and knew it, but I decided to slide anyway. Just wasn't feeling like my usual optimistic self. We made it down both runs, but I was super frustrated by the end. I knew I was past my limit when I was talking to the coach about how to fix problem areas and started crying. I was done. As usual, I was over analyzing everything. His advice: Just stop thinking. Don't think about bobsled for 24 hours. I was really struggling because everyone coming up the outrun was cheering and saying how much they loved the track, and I was just thinking about how many walls we hit, how we almost crashed and all the problems to fix. He reassured me that everyone was hitting a lot of walls and making errors. It was not just me. I'm just being way too hard on myself trying to be perfect on the fastest track in the world in a week. Not feasible, so let it go and focus on replicating the positives and pick one curve top and bottom to work on each run. Good advice. I just needed to hear someone tell me I was still a good pilot, which he did.Thank goodness I have people who will talk my confidence back up when I'm not feeling it! I took the weekend to relax and came back ready to go on Monday. We crashed out of Curve 13 the day before the race, which was not ideal. The track workers pulled us out of the track, loaded the sled in a truck, and back up to the top we went. Get right back on the horse. We made it down. Praise Jesus! We celebrated Thanksgiving at the Athlete Center, which our awesome chef Marney prepared for our team, and got ready to race. I finished 5th and 6th in those 2 races, and I considered it a huge success to finish both of them upright, which was not a given for anyone in the field.
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| The athlete center were we lived is on the left and the gym is on the right. |
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| This was the view from our room every morning. Gorgeous! |
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| I wish I'd taken a picture with our AWESOME chef Marney, but this is the best I can do. I could devote an entire post to her and her amazing food. Everything was amazing and super healthy. That's by far the best I've ever eaten on tour! |
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| Thanksgiving dinner with the US bobsled & skeleton athletes. |
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| Marney was also the chef for the British skeleton team, so they joined us for our celebratory meal of thankfulness for our independence from British rule. Just made me laugh... |
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| The shirt says it all. I conquered the fastest track in the world. |
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| My knees took a beating in that pre-race day crash. |
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| Straight from the finish line to the crates. Nothing like packing a sled that just been down an icy shoot into a metal box while it's freezing outside. Love packing metal runners with bare hands. Love it. But I gotta take good care of my babies. |
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| Some of my teammates decided to go bungee jumping on our day off. I was the official photographer and clothes holder. I may have also laughed at everyone who was having second thoughts or afraid of heights. Not even sorry about it. |
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| Here's one of my skeleton friends who was crying before he jumped, but he followed through and screamed like a little girl the whole time. Way to go Anthony! |
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| Obligatory rings pic |
So that's the story of my Canadian bobsled adventure in the month of November. I survived and learned a ton and made lots of great memories! What more could a girl ask for?
