I have officially been a working girl for 6 weeks now and am adjusting to a different lifestyle from the one I had become accustomed to over the past year and a half.
As I knew that the job would be starting sometime in January I decided to travel and race as much as I felt like it before and then settle into working and focus on getting ready for Nationals in late March. I had a successful start to the season in the Silver Star and Canmore Canada Cups with a 9th place in the pursuit and at 6th in the sprint and 2nd and 3rd at the Quebec Cup in Montmorency. I have been feeling the effects of the job and all the early season travel lately but I'm getting excited about Nationals, which is coming up in about 3 weeks.
The first three months of my job is to take a training course that starts at 9 and goes till 4 every day. We also have 4 exams to write during the first 2 months. It feels a lot like going back to high school! It has definitely been a change!
Luckily, it is fairly easy to get to the office in the morning and I don't waste much time commuting. From our place in Chelsea, I can get to work in 10-15 minutes and I dont have to deal with any of the bridges. However, my favourite way to get to work is to ski! I came up with the idea after a few weeks of work and tried it on a Friday a couple of weeks ago. I figured I would ski from the Chelsea picnic field to the parkway on trail 1 and then proceed down the parkway to Gamelin. At Gamelin, I would cross the road and continue down the bike path (ungroomed but skiable) until I reached Tache (near the Universite de Quebec a Hull). I thought that should take about 1.5 hours at which point I would take off my skis and run the remaining 2 km to the office building (Place du Portage). The first time I tried it took 1hr 50min (slow snow) and the second time it took 2hrs (even slower snow!). It was a lot of fun though and made me feel like a bit of an adventurer heading out into the sunrise with my backpack on! How many places could you ski from your door to your office? I think it is a pretty cool thing to be able to do!
While the adjustment to starting work has been a bit challenging, I am slowly figuring things out:
- Finding fun ways to get my training in during the week (ie. skiing to work, skiing with friends) and
- Savoring the weekends!
"OWL Rafting - The Mighty Ottawa River"