NorAMS with CVTC By: Martin Schrama

The past three weeks have been fast and furious with CVTC, we have travelled over two thousand kilometers crammed in our team van headed to different races across western Canada.

Our first week long trip was to Canmore, Alberta for some on snow training and some tune up races with the Alberta Cup. After everyone getting excited for the race season we pilled back into the Van and headed to one of the most beautiful ski venues in Canada, Silverstar. As always we were greeted with huge amounts of snow and surprisingly freezing temperatures. Both Saturday and Sunday’s races started with interesting mornings as we were all unsure if the races would actually happen. But luckily it would warm up just enough to race. Thankfully no one froze too badly and the team had some great early season results, including some personal bests!  After a long day of sprinting on Sunday we did not have to travel right away, which was a nice change. We had a relaxing time in Silverstar on Monday including a beautiful ski in the morning and a highly competitive hockey game in the evening.

Next journey started with a 5 hour drive to Rossland, complete with a Christmas shopping stop in Kelowna. Staying in Rossland is always a treat as there is no choice but to stay at the fancy houses located at Red Mountain. Our second night there we were lucky enough to be invited to Geoffrey Richards house for a big team lasagna dinner. Thanks to the Richards for feeding us with some great food!! After waking up still full we had to prepare for our next dinner, Christmas dinner!! We had a huge Christmas dinner with athletes, coaches and even team Ninja! Our dinner included turkey, ham and all the usual goodies complete with pumpkin pie at the end. All of that weeks food prepared us for some more important Nor-am races. First up was the always wild skate sprint course. As usual there were many crashes throughout the day but our team was lucky to not be involved in any of those. On Sunday we had a very tough 15k classic race. It was 3 laps of a brand new course with huge steep uphills, wild downhills and generally not much rest. Everyone seemed pretty please with the first period of racing.

The team now has a break for Christmas, Many are going home to visit their family. Andrew is headed back to Godrich, Colin back to Ottawa, Liam to North Bay, Martin and Paul are in Canmore, Sebastien is in Calgary, Geoffrey stayed in Rossland, Sam is in Vancouver, and Ben will be staying in Whistler with some guests.

Next races in January decide the junior and U23 worlds teams.