It's About Time...

Well then. I've been lazy as far as blogging goes. I've been busy busy for a real long time. Since it's been forever I'll make a list.
Things that have kept me busy:

Finals Week - Ok first of all...ew. This semester I took two math classes and two education classes. On Monday of finals week I had my Abstract Algebra exam. This meant a lot of studying, Mountain Dew, and chocolate on Sunday after the first race of the season, which you can read a bit about on the SMC Nordic blog.

After Abstract, which went surprisingly well after my three hour long study sesh in Alliot that morning, I got straight to work on a presentation for my education classes. Our units had been due the previous week for the Curriculum course (getting that done was insane as well. I've never stayed up until 4:30 am doing work before. I'd like to say I'll never do it again...) so the presentations on Tuesday weren't too intense. After Tuesday things settled down a little bit and I focused on skiing until Thursday when I had to study for Probability and Statistics. Nothing worse than a Friday exam when everyone else is having fun.

People thinking it's ok to leave me: One really cool aspect of college for some people is going abroad. With everything I do this will never happen for me. Next semester, however, it will happen for eight of my good friends. Saying goodbye to so many people was not fun. It will be really weird semester with so many people that I love being gone, but a few will be back from their trips abroad last semester and we'll all be together for our senior year. (Yikes. That seems just a little too close now.)

Roomie pic again. Cants 102!
Abby (England), Lauren L., Sam V., Erin, Carly (China),
me, Lauren S. (Ireland)

My loves in Cants 305. Plus ugly sweaters. HA.
Coligs, Jordan, Liane (Chile), Maria,
Erika (Italy), Cara (S. Africa), Mom/Chelsea (S. Africa),
Brookie (Italy)

Skiing - Things were going relatively well for skiing the past few weeks. We had a few good interval sessions and it was nice to be on snow again. As mentioned, we had our first race the Sunday before finals, which was the Bolton Opener. I wouldn't say it actually went well, but it's always good to get in some starts to try to get the bad races out of the way early. Hopefully.

This past weekend was the Eastern Cup Opener for NENSA. Saturday were sprints, which I didn't do and then Sunday was a 10k four lap (2.5k each) mass start classic in Jericho. I've never been one for mass starts, not that they should be used as an excuse. I was in the very back at the start and feel like I did a fair job moving up in the first chunk of the race. Since I worked so hard to move up I was skiing kind of frantically and was anything but smooth. This put me in not so good a place for the second lap. By the third lap I had pulled myself together and once I was skiing more smoothly passed a couple of people to move up a few spots. My results aren't at all impressive to look at, but I feel good about the way I got things together. Part of me wishes it had been an interval start so that I could have seen what I could do on that course without the crazy start and the bad first two laps.

As of now I've taken a few days off after developing a stupid chest cold/annoying illness on Monday. It's really frustrating considering the amount of motivation I gained from Sunday's race, but I rather get better and have solid workouts after a few days off than be sick for weeks because I don't back off.

Christmas Shopping - That's self explanatory, but as of today I'm done done done!

Our lovely tree

So going through those three things it doesn't seem like I was that busy. Looking back on the past few weeks I'd definitely say otherwise. I think it's just everything I do on top of having practice every day. Now that we're on snow it takes 35+ minutes to drive to snow, which makes for some long afternoons even if they are completely worth it. It's nice to have a few weeks off, but I am definitely looking forward to our team's winter camp.