Babes for Breasts and the Beginning

Yesterday I had the chance to go and see Babes for Breasts, a group of female singer-song writers that are touring around Canada to raise funds in support of Breast Cancer Research (not in support of Breast Cancer itself as they had to make clear haha). There are quite a few Babes involved, but performing last night were founder Ana Miura, Amanda Rheaume, Tara Holloway, Leela Gilday and Ann Vriend. Each is very talented and they are great live performers. The Babes each rotate through playing a song and also engage in the normal banter and humour between songs. If you are in Calgary and you are interested in checking them out and supporting a great cause as well, they are playing at the Ironwood Stage and Grill tonight. They are also playing in Edmonton tomorrow and continue across the country during the month of October. You can check out babesforbreasts.com to see if they might be making a stop near you soon or for information on any of the performers, the cause, news etc…

As for skating, well we are gearing up for the competition season to really get underway. The meat of the season starts next weekend and I know people are getting excited. Around this time of year, we have been training for a long time (as I talked about in the last post), we’ve done thousands of laps and a bunch of different simulation races in order to practice new passes, track patterns and such. But all of this still doesn’t come close to being the same as racing. I might be wrong on this, but I’m going to guess that most of the skaters I know and train with on a daily basis put themselves through all this suffering so they can race well, not simply because they like hurting themselves, although you may have to be a bit masochistic in order to excel at any sport.

So starting next weekend we will start the more fun part of the season (I say this because training has to be fun and enjoyable or you wouldn’t make it to competition season in shape without quitting). The first competition of the season for most in Western Canada is Octoberfest in Calgary. Those of us from my group going to World Cups, as well as the group of Europeans/New Zealanders that train with us will use the first two days of this competition as a tune-up for the World Cups season which gets under way in two weeks in Salt Lake City. Everyone else (or at least those in the Oval program) are looking to get some fast times so that they can qualify for the National Qualifier (I know I know qualifying to qualify seems weird but that how it is in Canada) which will take place at the end of November and determine the 16^th to 32^nd seeds at the Canadian Championships in January.

I’m definitely getting antsy to compete again and I can’t wait for Friday. Also, I’ve noticed that the blog has been getting a few hits from people in BC. If you are interested in checking out the World Cup that will be in your backyard in three weeks you can get tickets at ticketmaster.ca. It would be awesome to fill the bottom bowl of the Pacific Coliseum (8000 people!!!)

Booya!