Still in the dark

In the satellite image above the 

base of Pano was lights out as well 

as most of the road leading out of 

the valley. Invermere however was

unaffected.

We woke up this morning with no electricity. This is not the first time we've lost power through the night in our stay here. It is however, the first time that power remained out from the evening through the day. Our power was restored around 1pm (MST) the operations administration decided not to run the lift for the day. Thankfully York had a deck of cards because we lost charge on electronic devices quickly through the morning. Some lost cell service, once power was restored our cable was down for a while so we all gathered around a laptop monitor and watched our Canadians race in both the Lake Louise DH and the GS in Aspen.

We put the athletes through the yoga ringer with a 90 minute session of P90X yoga with Tony Horton. The video [a 90 min time laps reduced to 23seconds] was uploaded earlier onto the NCOST FACEBOOK PAGE (If you are a Facebook user you can click the hyperlink and it should direct you to our page). And to keep our trivia tally going the ladies were back in the kitchen tonight. The boys took the "W"

The weather is very cold here, we have a later start tomorrow and will be skiing GS on old timer (the NorAM run).

Skiers are known for their beautiful feet (everyone can relate) - there was a lot of this
reaction today when I told the athletes you don't use socks in yoga.

"Without challenge there is no change"

There are a variety of things that can challenge a ski racer. There is weather, (which we encountered today - and everyday that it is not bluebird and hero snow). There is injury, which many of our racers are learning is inherent with the risk associated in our sport. There is fear, in many forms; fear of failure, fear of injury, fear of disappointment etc.. Everyday we go out on snow all we ask of our athletes is to challenge themselves to make a change - in this undertaking some challenges may be overcome and for others another obstacle may be established. This requires focus, it requires energy it requires patience and most importantly this process requires a lot of support.

"In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater then your fear of failure"

3      -      1 

Today the rain challenged our GS conditions, today injury plagued some athletes, today some demonstrated their weaknesses and others established new strengths and this is what makes working everyday with this group of athletes an exciting experience.

We watched a video tonight from youtube - many would think this video would intimidate viewers. It was cool to see our athletes associate with some of the world cup stars it was also refreshing to have their vulnerabilities exposed. If you wish to watch the video check it out hit the link: THE THIN LINE .

Boys were back in the kitchen tonight after a tough set of questions asking the athletes about powerhouse Nations and digging deep into some ski racing history.

Light's OUT!

Panorama was hit with a power outage around 815am this morning. Fortunately Kat, Marty and York who were hauling gates for our training session got off the lift before the outage happened. Mike, Jillian, Sophia, Sophie, Hunter, and Zac were stuck on the chairlift for about 40 minutes and Nicole and Lake were at the bottom having not got on the lift before the outage.

As it turned out the snow conditions were very challenging to begin with so our session with red & blues was already in question. It had snowed about 10-15cm of fresh stuff and was starting to rain so the fluffy white powder we love was quickly turning into concrete for our quads. When you have 40 minutes to spare, no where to go and no one to have a snowball fight with - BUILD A SNOWMAN! We were highly entertaining for a group of coaches and onlookers stuck on the chair. This handsome fellow was constructed in approximately 10minutes "With a pine cone grin and a basket nose and 2 eyes made out of gate tops?!"... (that's how our version of the song goes)

opening up the upper back with partners

The power came back on at 930am. Athletes have been doing homework since then and took a break between 1130 & 1230 for lunch. We had a PNF [proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation] session at 1:30 and the athletes continued on with their studies through the remainder of the day. With teams vacating at the end of the week the potential exists to have longer training sessions. We have assured the athletes this is the direction we want to go in confidently, but this confidence will only come if their homework efficiency is maxed on days like today.

We had a meeting through dinner and the later part of the afternoon where we talked to the athletes about our expectations for the season and some team rules to make the season run smoothly :)

1. proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) stretching, is a type of stretching technique that is used to improve active and passive ranges of motion in an attempt to increase motor performance and flexibility.   

We stumbled upon these gems just outside our door the other
day - there will be a lot more coming off the BBQ in the future.....

So we decided to throw some steaks with baked
potatoes and roasted peppers on the BBQ. 

2            -          1

Stay tuned for more from the gang after our GS training session tomorrow. The weather is suppose to get colder and with all the moisture from today that should provide for a solid base moving forward. And for those keeping score (check out our ongoing tally to the right) - the boys demolished the girls in trivia tonight 3-0. It's official they are on the board!

"You can't fix something you don't understand"

This is the terrain we have to work with for the next few days. The U16 athletes have been skiing slalom on the bottom portion of 'show off". Our lane allows us to set approx. 80 slalom turns if we so desired. 

2    -    0

Tonight we had a great chat with the athletes about understanding the process of ski racing and the importance of communication between coaches and athletes. We wanted them to understand a few things about being a U16 ski racer. We engaged this conversation in a very creative format that we like to call dinner trivia.  For those who are new to the team: dinner trivia is where we ask the athletes a variety of ski related questions in a competitive format [girls versus boys]. The first group to 3 correct responses to our questions gets out of doing the dishes, our current score can be viewed on the right. You are reading that correctly, the boys are enjoying their time in the kitchen.

We like to have themes to the questions so tonight we asked the athletes a variety of questions involving the rules of the game (ski racing being the game) and the qualification process for different events for both Ontario and Quebec affiliated athletes. Lets just say we had to dig deep into the rule book of items they should understand in order to get to a very tight score of 3-2. Lets just say that this may be one of the many circumstances where loosing is fun and the learning is quite evident.

We skied in sessions 1 & 3 today in stubbies. The athletes completed a circuit in the weight room after skiing today and they re-fuelled with pulled pork sandwiches on ciabatta buns with some broccoli slaw and raw veggies with hummus. We will move to full gates tomorrow if mother nature decides to let up on the accumulation out here. If not - we ski pow! In our books thats a win/win :)

We're BACK!!!

We're back on BLOGGER and we're BACK in PANO!!

There is certainly never a dull moment on the road with the NCO U16 gang. Even flights get exciting when we have a registered nurse, and EMR and a 'medlink' telephone line when athletes are sick mid flight. I feel its necessary to publicly thank WestJet for doing absolutely everything they could to make our sick athlete comfortable. She was moved to the front of the plane, given her own bathroom, they moved passengers so she could sleep across three seats, they moved a coach immediately across, so we could be close by, they paged the plane for any medical practitioners aboard. They made our on the road first aid kit look elementary with their injectable anti-nauseant serum (that happened) and they had our athlete(s) - yes, thats plural. We had another sick athlete during landing and they were both evaluated at the gate to make sure they were safe to continue travelling.

Thank you WestJet for doing your diligence in securing the safety and health of our athletes. 

If you look back to last years post, I'm sure our arrival says something about highway 93... again we were in and out of snow storms as the provincial parks in the area got dumped on through the evening. We checked in at 6pm so the athletes had plenty of time to rest up for our 745am start.

The athletes skied slalom today on showoff (the main run under the lift) from 8am-12pm. We had stubbies and brushes setup so that the athletes could challenge themselves to maximize their edge angle staying in forward active position. The athletes are already working hard on homework and completing tests and quizzes on the road. We had an amazing yoga session post-ski, and enjoyed a pasta casserole for dinner.