Thursday, November 19, 2009

Racing in Calgary

Last week in Whistler we had a race and I did really well and won. As each week goes by, it only gets worse. I keep thinking ok, NEXT week I will have time to write and then the week comes and I get a run-down with what the team is doing, then I say "shoots!".

After the race in Whistler we packed our boxes. The sleds travel in the hard plastic boxes. I put any extra clothes to pad my sled. We place all the boxes in a U-Haul (a sponsor) Our team manager, Fred, drives the U-haul to the airport.

We traveled to Calgary on Monday. So now I am officially with the senior team. This is how it works. Everyone gets 6 runs to understand the track and then we race. For the newbies, we get an extra run, and if you are an A-seed (top 15) then you get 5. This was hard for me to understand because on the Junior circuit we can take 12-15 runs. On top of all that, we go from a higher start. So all of that equals stress. Also, you have to qualify to even race in the World Cup. The race is called "Nations Cup" and the top 15 in this race, race in the World Cup. This is because when the World Cup comes, they do not want to have inexperienced sliders crashing and slowing down the race. So pretty much Nations is to weed out all of the sliders who just are not ready to be in the big leagues. Sounds mean but it is true. I hope I do well tomorrow, I finally got my lines down on my last run today, so I am kinda sketched out.

One cool part about being with the Seniors is that we get to wear bibs for training. This is only for sponsor purposes but with the Juniors we never get bibs to keep, so I was excited. For everyone that was a Senior last year, they all got their last names and the countries' flag on it. Well for me, mine was blank and it only had a number on it. I decided to write my own name and write USA all over it, I dont know if it was allowed but I did anyway. If I qualify tomorrow, then the race on saturday is going to be televised, cool huh? You can watch on universalsports.com but I will let you guys know tomorrow how I do, send me some good vibes!

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