Ye Olde Christmas Races

A few weeks ago my ski team and I travelled to the west coast of the island to compete in Ye Olde Christmas races. As always with these trips it was very fun and exciting. We spent a lot of time just hanging around, playing in the snow and racing. It was both a recreational and competitive trip as the whole time wasn’t spent racing.

As I have mentioned before one of my goals is to beat last years times in the races. This year I did three races a 7.5km classic race, a 5km skate race and a 0.8km sprint. In the classic race I managed to beat last years record as I have worked hard on my classic. In the skate race I managed to be only a minute behind last year. Hopefully I can improve by provincials to beat that record and thus complete this goal. As for the sprint, I manage to be a whole 45 second ahead of last year which is quite the accomplishment.

Below is a video highlighting some of the fun we had at Christmas races:

Time to leave

Tomorrow morning at 8:00am I will be leaving to travel across the province for a training camp. Don’t worry I will make sure to bring along something to write in so that I may write my blog for the day. Unfortunately along with this wonderful trip I have a bunch of homework. They day after I get home I have a test in Chemistry and Histoire du Canada. As well, I have to practice both Math 3207/pre-calculus and physics. In order to reach for my goal of getting 90% average or higher I must practice a lot!

Tomorrow is going to be a boring day. I start the day by waking up at 6:30am, not a fun time! Then I must get ready and arrive at the meeting place at 8:00am. From there we are driving for 8 hours to get to the training camp. During this time I most likely be studying and learning physics, math and histoire. My guess is that I will spend around 6 out of 8 hours on histoire alone and the rest on the rest of the subjects. This means that I will be doing more work during this trip than during a full day at school… It will be so much fun!

Why am I spending so much time on Histoire du Canada? It’s simple, we have absolutely no notes. This means that I must learn everything by reading the book and making notes. By the end of this course I believe way more time will be spent making notes than actually doing stuff in class. This means that I better start making notes early or I am screwed for the final exam in June.

As for my other goals, that are not physical activity wise, I have been working on them as well. I have spent a bit of time playing the piano lately. A Whole New World isn’t an extremely hard song right now. I have only made it through the first line though. I am still reading the same book, which is weird for me. I usually finish a book in two or three days but not lately. I am going to bring it to Gros Morne so that I might read a bit more. Other than that I haven’t really gotten much farther on the other goals.

A Slow Day

Today has been one of those days when you don’t feel like doing much. Tonight I have completed all of nothing on my goals. I did write down a few more scholarships, did a little bit of core exercise, and looked more in-depth at the websites for Cambridge and Durham. Other than that I pretty much spent the whole day listening to music and chilling out in my house.It doesn’t sound bad, but once you have your day-to-day schedule planned out and full of activities it is.

There is one thing “bad” about the Shad Valley Program. After you leave and return to normal life, you see everything as being slow. For example during the first week of school when we were just starting off learning about the subjects, I felt as if we were doing nothing at all. As well some courses it has stayed like that such as francais and histoire. It feels weird to be wishing to have more work to do. Shad Valley has made want to take on so many tasks all at once, so that I may have something to do each and every single day.

Tomorrow is a busy day which is exciting and thrilling. This means I will have something more to write!

Rain, Drizzle, Fog and So Much More

This morning I woke up at 6:30 to go roller-skiing with my cross-country ski team. It was definitely quite the experience!

After awaking at such an ungodly hour I was picked up and driven down to the ferry terminal where we would leave to ski Bell Island. By this time the rain had started to pour and the fog was rolling in. None of us felt quite as awake as we usually do.

Upon arriving on the island my team and I geared up to have the time of our lives as we spent about 3 and a half hours roller-skiing around the island. To start it off we went up a giant hill that felt like it was going to kill me there and then. This was just the beginning. From then on we were faced with giant uphill slopes, long and scary downhills and never-ending slight uphill slopes. There were four hills that I either had to be driven or I had to walk down since they were so steep and scared me nearly to death. Other than I was able to conquer almost all of the hills. The only one that was an exception was this one hill where a car was tailing me and my friend. In order to avoid being run over we jumped onto the gravel. Thankfully there were no major injuries, just minor.

Along with all the tough hills came the Newfoundland weather. During the whole time it was drizzling. We did not see, at any point, even a sign of the clouds clearing. It was bleak, gray and dismal. To go along with the drizzle, about an hour after we arrived on the island the fog started rolling in. At the very end it, it was so foggy I could see at most only about 200 metres ahead of me, if that. To top it all of there was wind. It went nearly up to 30km/h winds today and it was always blowing in the wrong direction! After coming home at around 2:00pm I learned that in fact there was a tropical storm warning for today! Looks like we went roller-skiing in a tropical storm.

It was definitely a journey within itself. Can’t wait for the next one to come!