Carnage in Lake Placid

I've never felt so beat up from skeleton. I mean, I've broken fingers, cracked a rib,
burned my lip, crashed and lost my sled twice, but this trip takes the cake. Not only for me, but for everyone! Here's a list of the larger incidents, though there are many more smaller burns / crashes / cuts / strains. It seems like the whole team is hanging out in Sports Medicine every time I go in there!

Incident 1:
The first day, last week, is when I hit my foot with my sled when loading, and landed square on my ribs, bruising them. Since then, I've been sliding with taped ribs and a painful heel, and it took 3 days for my sliding confidence to come back.

Incident 2:
Annie hit hard out of turn 14 and chewed up her shoulder, with a burn through the skin. Youch! She took a few days off and is back sliding now, though it's hard to move her shoulder.

Incident 3:
Audrey crashed in the race and lost her sled, which on ice this new is painful since it's a bit rougher. It also meant that she received a DNF (did not finish) and was out for the finals. Sigh.

Incident 4:
Cassie also crashed and lost her sled, dislocating her elbow (subluxed radial head) and cutting deeply into her fingers and elbow. Plus, her arm was bigger than her calf! She's also back sliding.

Incident 5:
During our second physical test, Chris took one step off the block for his sprints, and ruptured his achilles! That's a minimum of 6 months out, and he was sliding VERY well and was set for a good season. It was awful to see his season end in all of one second.

Incident 6:
Monday night was super warm, and the ice got slushy and soft and frosty. The boys usually have times around 56-57 seconds, and they were pulling 1:06s and 1:07s! I had two 1:12s, with the fastest girl getting into the 1:09s. You would think that with such a slow run it would have been a mellow cruiser, but no way. At such slow speeds, the track was doing weird things, like adding an extra oscillation at the end, or sucking us up onto the corners at the last second and slamming us into walls we normally never hit. It was actually really scary and a lot of us were worse for wear.

Incidents 7-10:
Sliding was canceled Tuesday due to the warm weather and to allow the crew to try to save the track. Save it they did, and today it was much colder and super fast.

Becca was on warm-ice runners, and she crashed out of 12 and lost her sled, getting some blistery burn on her hands.

I also still had warm-ice runners on, and they just weren't biting. My first run, I (again, silly me) pushed it up in 10 and realized I was way above the LP logo...super high. I panicked, and hit the downsteer where it normally should be, and the runners just didn't grab; I couldn't get off the corner! So, I crashed out. This time I refused to lose my sled, even though it was ahead of me and I only had one hand on it. After riding through the straight and into 11 on my side, I finally got back on, and now have cuts and burns all over my right side, as well as monster bruises. After another run with just no control, I tried colder-ice runners, and that was even worse, TOO much control. Sigh.

Conclusion:
It's been a rough week.