New year, New team, Same dream

2018 is here and for me that means a number of things, mainly that I will be in my final year as an under 23 rider. It also means that I have new team, and with that new opportunities to show myself and prove myself in Europe.

First though, it’s back to basics. For the past five years I have been travelling to northern New Brunswick just after Christmas for a ski camp. The Nova Scotia cross country ski team made a habit out of travelling to Charlo at the end of December to try and get on snow a little earlier than we could in Halifax. Charlo has always delivered amazing conditions every year, allowing us to get to work the second we arrive. Over the 4 days the older group of skiers logged 200 km’s. Luckily before I made the big switch to cycling, I did learn how to ski pretty well so I can keep up with the faster guys, without technique it would be incredibly difficult to do so.

After Charlo it was back home. I had 10 days to prepare for my final examination for Macroeconomics. Not a lot of training got done during that time as I really had to commit fully to this exam. What little training I did do was mostly short and at high intensity, like 5 x 5 minute intervals and lots of weight lifting.

I had to schedule my exam around available time slots at one of the local universities and then my school, Athabasca University could send the exam to them. That meant that my scheduling was tight as I had my flight to Europe on the same day albeit later that evening. All seemed to be going fine with no complications in my preparation and timing of the exam and flight. Until...

The morning of the exam I walked into the invigilation room for 9:00 am and was told that my exam had not arrived. This activated full panic mode as I would not be able to re-schedule the exam and was sure to fail the course. Luckily the staff at Mount Saint Vincent U understood my situation and were very accommodating. They said that if the exam package arrived they would call me and hopefully I would be able to complete it before my flight. I drove home feeling empty, powerless, and utterly disappointed. I finished packing my bags and stared at my phone waiting for the call. I kept doing calculations on how long I would need to confidently complete the 3 hour exam, and make my flight. I figured that I could start no later than 11:40 am and make my 3:40 pm flight.

The phone rang, 11:29 am.

My hands were shaking from disbelief for the first hour of the exam, I actually couldn’t believe that I was writing it. I spent the morning dreading getting on the plane to start my season with that failure hanging over me. I was the happiest student to ever walk into an exam room for sure. I finished the three hour exam just minutes over the 2 hour mark., confidently.

As I write this I am half way to Frankfurt, en route to Valencia, Spain. Now as I am not so stressed, I am pleased that some luck is already on my side in 2018. Stay tuned for updates as I begin full time training in the south of Spain.

Thanks for reading, and as always I am open to input and questions on my posts.