Sprint race

Well, that didn't really start too well for any of us. Greg hasn't talked about his race much, except to sound fairly unhappy about it, and given the result, I can understand. Alex had a fairly crappy race and is in the process of whining about being out of shape, but Ali took the cake, and broke a ski at the third control, after visiting the 2nd control before the first one. Both girls nearly missed the start, and Greg was wandering around the finish arena attempting to wear Ali's jacket, which fit about as you'd expect, since his clothes never made it back from the start. One of those days.

However, we're in fine spirits! We just attempted to buy a new pair of skis in town, and neither TEAM Sportia nor Interport seem to be carrying skate skis, although I guess it is the end of the season. Thankfully Ali does have a pair of rock skis she can use, they'll just be less fast. We did finally acquire a Euro-iron at Intersport before the races today - Greg's duct-taped-together iron + transformer is functional, but we've decided it'll just be easier to have a one-piece (as opposed to many pieces, duct taped together) iron for the team. And, we all bought matching lime-green ginormous Rex pole baskets. So yay! shopping!

Greg is off at the team leader's meeting right now, where I'm sure he'll hear endless complaints about how the map was just a blow-up of a 1:10,000 map, and the trail lines were way too wide and the control circles too large. Whatever, everyone had the same map. At least it was better than the model event, where they'd clearly taken the gps tracks and just export-dumped them into ocad and printed from there, the tracks were pretty crappy. I bet there will also be plenty of whining about the deep, icy lips at road crossings - clearly what did in Ali's ski. In the meantime, I have been charged with making the big sausage into a "big sausage from the oven", so it's time to go get creative, I think. The creativity will involve putting the big sausage into the oven, for sure.

On a completely unrelated but utterly hilarious note, Greg met the Swedish version of Ed today. They were talking on the bus, and Greg was convinced this guy was one of the organizers (he was missing the beard, but was otherwise looked like Ed), until they started talking about start times.

Swedish Ed: So when do you start?

Greg: 1:08.

Swedish Ed: I start at 1:02! But first I have to go put radio controls in the forest!

Sounds just like Ed =)

Tomorrow is a relay, and Ali and I are joining Greg in the men's relay. Should be fun!