We just harvested our garden.  Pulled up everything we had planted.  In an earlier entry I said that we had gotten some beets and carrots.  These filled in and we came out with a bunch.  We were still worried about the potatoes, though.  During the summer the plants did not flower.  It was peculiar so we thought that it would yeild no potatoes.  Arne dug the makeshift shovel (we have no gardening tools!) into the ground and up came a pretty good load of potatoes!  As Arne was getting everything out of the ground, I was in the kitchen washing all the veggies.  I cut up all the beets and their leaves and separated them into bags so that we could just pull it out of the freezer and make a big pot of borsht in the winter.  Thanks for the idea, Mom!

As for skating, you could say that it is coming to the time where I need to “harvest” my training from the summer to see what my “yield” is in racing.  In 2 weeks I leave for Richmond again, but this time I will be racing for a spot on the World Cup team.  The competition is from October 17-20.  If I make a spot I will be travelling to Berlin, Germany and Heerenveen, Netherlands in November and Calgary and Salt Lake City in December.  I have a feeling that because I put in so much hard work this year that my yield will be plentiful :)  Happy Fall!

Hi All!  I am back in Vancouver for another training camp.  We arrived here on Monday and are spending 10 days training at the Olympic Oval in Richmond.  I just came off a super intense training block. (What I mean by “training block” is: my coach sets up our training into 3 week “blocks”.  We do 2.5 weeks of hard intense training and then we get the remainder as recovery.  During recovery we still train, but it is easier and without intensity.)  So, we got here and enjoyed our recovery and Thursday we got back into another block.  After recovery, sometimes you feel really bad when you start back up.  It is like your body is telling you, “What are you doing?  I liked it when you were resting and I am going to fight you every step until we rest again!”  At this point it can be very frustrating, but I beat my body this time and it finally came back around and is taking the training I am giving it. 

Saturday we raced our first practice races of the season.  Because of my body resisting coming back, I was really nervous.  Turns out I felt fine just in time and had some really positive results.  I skated the 500m and the 1500m.  They were both better than expected and I am happy to start here and improve with every race! 

After races on Saturday, a few friends and I made our way to Wreck Beach and enjoyed one of the most beautiful sunsets!  It was really fun and chill.  What a nice reward after another hard week

This was our second summer at our house.  Last spring, when the snow had melted, a very shabby yard was revealed.  It had not been kept well and Arne was determined to make something of it.  His Dad is an avid gardener and Arne has inherited the green thumb.  He started by ploughing out a flower bed around the perimeter and marking it off with some stones.  He also trimmed up all the trees and we planted a few pansies.  It looked pretty good.  This year, a portion of the flower bed was used as an experimental vegetable garden.  We were curious to know if anything could grow.  Arne called it a “high density garden”.  That translates into several very small rows lined back to back.  We planted beets, carrots, onions and potatoes.  The yard flourished through the summer and we had our first pot of borsht using the harvest of beets and carrots!  The potatoes are still waiting to be dug up and the onions had a hard go, but the flowers looked beautiful.

It’s been a while since my last post.  Right now it is hard for me to even read my email let alone come up with something to write about.  My life for the past couple weeks has been all about training.  We are officially back on the ice full time and my coach is kicking out butts!  It is hard to recall from the year before how much this part of the season is going to take out of me.  Coming into the Olympic year, the final push is on and we are pulling out all the stops. (Wow that was a lot of cliche’s in one sentence!) I guess my creativeness and motivation has been stifled by the cloud of fatigue I am under.  My energy is sapped, but I will soon be feeling better.  So, after all this complaining, please excuse me for a couple more days to write something interesting!