For the past few years, I have specialized in skating to be a sprinter.  I like short races and have excelled in them.  When I was a younger skater I used to race all the races.  Everything from the 500m to the 5000m.  One year, I actually qualified for World Cups in every distance that was skated!  I was really proud of that, top five in Canada in every distance.  Since my knee injury, I’ve had to scale back the training and that is when I started focusing on the sprints.  Well, this year, I was able to put more training in.  I got the idea that I should do a 1500m.  To put this into perspective, I haven’t raced a 1500m since Olympic trials - 3 years ago!  Needless to say, I was nervous.  This Saturday we had our regular training races.  I signed up for the 1500m.  It didn’t sink in until 20 minutes before I stepped to the line.  What was I thinking!  The memories of pain started flooding into my brain.  Well, I stepped to the line and I just did it.  Bam, just like that.  It turned out pretty well.  I think I will be doing more in the future.  It will only help my 1000m.  No more being a scaredy-cat!   It feels good to step it up.

Tamara and I pulling the prank

Arne is known to pull pranks on teammates on the road.  Since we got together, I was privy to be a part of the fun.  This year, I have been travelling without him and had yet to pull a prank on my own.  I have been thinking about it, but haven’t had the guts or a great idea yet.  My last trip of this season was to Erfurt, Germany.  I knew that I had to somehow come up with something, but as the week wore on, nothing had come to mind.  Until, the perfect situation arose… 

Kim Weger and Jeremy Wotherspoon were walking home one night and saw a Christmas tree on the side of the road to be taken out as trash.  Kim and Jer decided that they should bring it back to the hotel and use it as a joke some way or another.  They thought that they could easily hide the tree under some clothes, but when they woke up in the morning the tree was bigger than they remembered!  They put the Do Not Disturb sign on their door and headed to the rink to watch the races.  I had just finished the races when Denny Morrison (a guy who often was involved in being pranked by Arne forgot his skin suit at the hotel.  Someone had to take his room key and get it for him.  Who could do it?  Of course Jeremy could do it for him, no problem.  Hahaha!  We had a prankee! 

Kim, Tamara, Jer and I, put the prank into motion.  Kim cut out snowflakes while Tamara and I wrapped up a bunch of their stuff to put under the tree.  We finished quickly and headed back the oval to hum Christmas carols every time we were around Denny and his roommate Lucas.  When they got back to the hotel they were pumped/annoyed like every other prankee of all times.  They opened their gifts to find their missing shoes and brand new jeans they had bought earlier in the week.  Arne was very proud!      

Lucas and Denny opening gifts

Red Square

Who knew that Russia was full of chruches.  Okay, people probably know that, but there are so many!  This set of World Cups began in Moscow with World Sprint Championships.  I never in my life thought that I would be crossing the border into Russia.  The skaters that have been here prior, told horror stories about the food, the hotels and how scary it was in the streets.  I went prepared for starvation with protein bars and snacks.  I was prepared for the terrible hotels and of coused I was not planning to set foot outside the safe hotel.  Arne had been there and he said it wasn’t as bad as everyone said.  How could a man who spends weeks in the wilderness of Kananaskis be trusted?  The trip began with my bike box not making it.  No biggie.  It happens all the time.  Two hours later, the paper forms were filled out (they had computers on the desk, but I think they were just for show) and we were on the bus to the hotel.  Turns out we were staying at a different hotel than the skaters of years past.  They had a list in the lobby of who had been guests and it included President Bush and Angelina Jolie.  The food was good, but everthing was expensive!  The next day I found out that I would have to go back to the airport to pick up my bike.  It had to be in person!  The driver picked me up at 9pm for the 2.5 hr round trip.  I went with a random man in a car by myself on the highway in Russia.  Ahhh!  After he gave me his cell phone with the game Battleships on it, I knew it was cool.  I got back to the hotel at midnight and woke up the next day to race.  World Sprint Championships is my favorite competition.  I have always felt it is one of the hardest competitions to qualify for and it is comprised of only the best.  Monday morning before the bus left for the next tour stop, a few of us took the subway down to the Red Square to look around.  The subway was beautiful.  It was so long down the escalator and it opened up to marble tiles, murals, bronze statues and chandeliers.  The square had an amazing church that dated back to 1363.  Wow.  It was weird to think of all the things that had happened in that square and I was standing there next to a skating rink that was set up in the middle.  How times have changed.

The escalator to the subway

Well, besides the stray dogs in the streets and having to carry my passport everywhere just in case a cop randomly arrested me, it was way easier than I thought.