Back to Reality…
Going to bed on day 1 in the lead felt grrrreat. We slept well in the tents (despite the -40
degree temperatures) knowing we had done ourselves proud on day one. Day 2 promised to be something entirely
different. The dreaded cross country
ski:
Arriving on site, the wind was howling and the temperature were
hovering around -40 with the wind chill.
We both knew that we were going to have a long day when we had
troubles getting our shoes (boots??) on and off and had to ask for help to put
our skis on. We opted for an abbreviated
warm up after watching the other contestants glide gracefully around the
starting area (for fear of further embarrassment). One of our competitors was a former Turin Olympic
biathlon champion!!
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| Katja Beer-Wustenfeld - Former German Biathlon Champion |
6 laps later Ryan finished a miserable 6th place
and Chantal managed a respectable 4th. A few meager points for team Canada after the
first event of day 2.
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| Ryan completing lap 3/6 |
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| Chantal mid lap |
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| Ryan -crossing the finish line ending one of the toughest events |
The second event was one of the most exciting so far: The helicopter tire drop. A glorified ‘game
of chance’, this event matched well with our skill set of gambling, video games
and darts.
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| "Get to the choppa!!!" |
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| Hans Joachim Stuck explaining the challenge |
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| Team Canada listening the Hans (Chantal # 14, Ryan taking a knee) |
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| Taking strategy with German competitor Alexander Lang (3x Hawaiian Ironman Champion) |
The organizers strapped the athletes into the side of the
helicopter with a harness, so you could lean out as far as you liked.
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| Chantal strapped into her harness |
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| Ryan's only complaint... how tight the harness was |
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| Ready for take off! |
Standing on the skid, you held a tire in your hands and
played ‘bombs away’ while directing the pilot via a headset.
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Bombs away Ryan
 |
Chantal nailed the 2nd circle from the middle and
Ryan managed the 3rd. That
gave us enough points for a 2 way tie for second in the overall team
standings.
As we thought, Chantal is carrying this team while holding
down her spot as the first overall female.
A tad dejected, we rounded up and went to the Sundog
retreat. The girls got a night in the
cabins, as the European journalists wanted to experience what we were going
through (idiots…). The mercury dropped
and we met -40 overnight. The fire went
out in the boy’s tent and no one wanted to get out of their bags to re-light
it, so we suffered from 3 or 4 o’clock onwards.
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| The hunter becomes the hunted... Wolf Pack!! |
Tomorrow we have Skijorring and the Gold Rush run after a
drive of 4 hours to Dawson City. The
forecast they are calling for is -43 with a wind chill taking it into -50 or
so. Not much fun to be had there…
We are still trucking though, and haven’t come close to a
divorce yet :)
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