Ski2Sea

As the orienteering season is starting and from now on blog post are most likely to be all about that sport we know and love, I thought I would post one last one about an interesting race I did a couple weeks ago. It is a tradition for the outdoor club at my university to enter teams in a relay race at the end of the year. The race is called Ski2sea and starts up at Big White ski resort, with the first leg being a down hill skiing section. This person has to run up (yes, UP-carrying their skis, poles and helmet) most of a downhill run and then ski to the bottom to tag off to their cross-country ski partner who skis a loop (about 8km) and passes off to a mountain biker. The mountain biker bikes a bit down the road (about 28km) and hands off to a road biker who rides their leg (around 36km) and hands off to the runner. The relay is now in Kelowna and the runner runs (about 14km) to the lake where the last leg of the relay is a canoe across the lake and back. This being our last year my boyfriend and I decided to do a two-man team and alternated the legs (normally it is a 7person relay).

 Okanagan Sport did an article on the race
 www.okanagansportspage.com...too bad my technique looks so bad... 

To being the day, my roommate (our shuttle driver) and I, dropped Jared of to take the lift up to the start of the first leg. Meanwhile I was to get warmed up for the cross-country leg. First problem: the skis that I had beautifully waxed, scraped and brushed were sitting at home and a pair of classic skis that I had summer waxed were in the ski box with me at big white. They also still had grip wax on them… So here we are 5mins to start, sitting in the parking lot scraping my skis with credit cards to get the glide wax off. Jared came in fast from the downhill and we were the 6^th team at the first transition. My skis actually weren’t that bad (considering I was skating on poorly scraped classic skis with grip wax :) ) thankfully the snow was cold and I was gliding well. After the cross country to mountain bike handoff we discovered our second problem: somewhere between loading the bike in the morning and the bumpy drive up to Big white my road bike had gotten a flat. So we were now racing Jared down the access road in the car to get to the transition in enough time to switch my tire. It was a great race to practice crisis management :P Jared says he only waited a couple minuets ....J I was a bit outclassed on the road bike as Kelowna has a very large triathlon community and there were quite a few fast men on 5-6000$ bikes and me and my little old LeMonde just weren’t very good competition! I was thankful that I was not required to run the 14km course and happily waited in the canoe for the last leg. Although neither of us have canoe raced, the last leg was fun as we could catch up on what had happened in each other’s parts of the relay. It was a really fun day and reminded me once again the benefits and sense of community that comes along with sport. Jared and I were 1^st in the open mixed category and 19^th team overall BUT most importantly we were the first team from the outdoor club to cross the line!

A group of the outdoor club teams - It is also tradition to wear some sort of costume