Lake Placid races - first medal!!!

I may have given it away in the title, whoops, but I had a great week of racing!

After the balmy weather in Europe, I arrived in Lake Placid to find record low temperatures. Our first day of training was on -19 Celsius ice! (That's unusually cold, in case you wondered.) I had to really bundle up.


Adam Pengilly (Great Britian) and I, trying to get a photo of our breath fog. It didn't work.


So we took a nice picture instead.


Not only was it cold, but snowy. Caleb got stuck by the start of the track...


And had to be pulled out.


I was a little nervous about the race, since I had strained my quad in Winterberg. It didn't seem bad at the time, but then I pulled it solidly training in Placid. I was taking it easy, I swear!

Sports Med at the Olympic Training Center put me back together as much as they could. During training, my leg was taped like this to aid in healing and I was only allowed to walk off the start instead of pushing fast:


For the race, it was taped like this to prevent the injured muscle from working while encouraging other muscles to take over:


I swear, it's half art, but it seemed to work regardless!

Then of course, this went on for the actual race.


My leg was so tightly taped that I could hardly feel it, and managed to almost match my personal best push times! Thank you Curtis from Sports Med!!!

Actually, Sarah Sydney and I were both injured - me with my quad, and her with both a foot & back injury. We cheered each other up, and then, ironically, somehow we had the two fastest pushes for several of the race heats! Craziness.


The first race was on Thursday. My first run felt like $$$! Made a few small mistakes, but was in second place with a personal best time of 56.10! (Previous best: 56.97, so huge improvement!)

The second run.....I let the sled ride a bit too much and had a snowball effect. One mistake from curve 3 to 4 translated into a mistake 4-5, then 5-6...and so on down the track. I got a bruise on my chin and down my left arm...and dropped from 2nd to 4th. Oops. Still, a 4th was my best finish to date!


Rachelle from the USA finished in 6th, also her best finish, so we had two of us on the podium!


There was a lot of hugging, since we're all pretty good friends.


The next race was on Friday, and I had gone through all sorts of mental contingencies to correct things should I make mistakes like I did the first race. My first run was again, $$$! I actually made the SAME mistake from 3 to 4 that I did the day before, but was able to fix it and keep it from snowballing this time. 56.08, a new PB and tied for 3rd place with Sarah Reid, who had won the race the day before. Woot woot!

Second run finally came, about an hour later after the men went for their first run, and after a break for the track crew to spritz the ice again. It started off amazing, with the best curves 1-13 that I'd had all week. Then, I had a bit of trouble coming out of 14 and hit twice in the chicane (long straight with a kink in it) and also had a small tap out of curve 17.

But even so, when I came across the line, I saw a "1" next to my name, which meant I had come out of the tie ahead of Sarah. I was guaranteed at least a 3rd place medal, with a new PB of 56.05! I laughed and pounded my fist on my sled.

The next sled came down, Sophia Griebel from Germany. Kim, the announcer, started getting all excited towards the end. "It's down to a hundredth, who's it gonna be?" And then, Sophia got me by only two hundredths of a second. So close!

The final sled, Michelle Kelly from Canada, started her run. "She's losing time...." And then, in the ultimate in racing, she TIED FOR FIRST with Sophia!

I was in third place by only 0.02 seconds (by the way, a blink is .20 seconds, so I was in third by 1/10 of a blink)!!!

Pretty much that made my day. My week. Yeah, my mistakes cost the win, but it was still my very first medal at that level, only my second medal on the international circuit at all (3rd in an America's Cup race last year), and my closest race ever. My second run was also the fastest of all the women, with the highest speed, so my confidence has been helped quite a bit.

The award ceremony was amazing. More hugging.


Getting my bronze.


Cheering for the first place tie.


Getting ready for the two anthems (both firsts get their anthem).


My first flag at this level, made me so happy!


Then the group photo. Not only was there a tie for first, but there was also a tie for 5th, in a sport timed to the hundredth of a second.




Celebrating with Kim.


Wow, what a week!

The first thing after the race was lunch. Rachelle ordered cheesecake to celebrate, and we all wanted it. Look at these two eyeballing it.


Then it was time for Curtis to get serious about my quad. Up until the races, it was all damage control and making sure I could push. Now, it's all pain or no gain. By the time you read this, I'll have had one more week here with his healing (read: painful, hahaha) touch, and when this posts I'll have just arrived back in Europe for a training week in Igls followed by two weeks in Koenigssee for World Championships.

This is the unfortunate tool of choice.


He looks WAY too happy.


I was screaming and laughing (I usually laugh the pain out) too much to take a picture of that tool in use, but then he moved to a smaller one. Breaking up adhesions and increasing blood flow - or so he says. ;)


When he was done, my leg looked just a little different from the healthy one...


I also have an ice machine that cycles ice water through a pressure cuff on my leg, that I'm supposed to be in several times a day. As a result of all this effort, while it now looks like this, trust me when I say it's working; it feels quite a bit better already.


I should be ready to go for World Championships, phew!

Now, don't take this the wrong way - by NO means am I complaining about World Cup, but it was actually a very nice break to be back on the Intercontinental Cup for the week. There is a much lighter atmosphere and more international camaraderie here, while World Cup is very very very serious business (as it should be). Here, we joked around and cheered each other on at the races, and then went out after and did some crazy neon bowling and dancing. I was on a team with two Canadians and a Brit, against a team consisting of Canada, Japan, USA, and Great Britian, and several other mixed nation teams.


We finally got the bumpers up for our left-handed challenge. (I think we won, but by that point we were a little scattered.)


Kelly really REALLY wanted a turkey. He came surprisingly close in the left-handed bowl thanks to the bumpers, but it was always 2 strikes, miss, 2 strikes, miss. Poor guy.


Good times.

PS - welcome to Placid. Grin.