Good morning readers!
So, we mentioned yesterday that we haven’t been posting as much because of school, but that’s only a half-truth. The other half of why you barely heard from us on the weekend is because we had our OUA championships for cross country! 🙂 OUA stands for Ontario University Athletics, which is a fancy way of saying Provincials.
This year, York University in Toronto was hosting. The race was held at the Kingbridge Centre in King City, Ontario. We left for Toronto on Friday afternoon and went straight to the course. On paper the course sounded lovely, some woods, some grass, rolling hills… fun, right? While yes the grounds were very nice, this course wasn’t! It was a 2.5km loop, and when they said “rolling hills” they really meant mostly uphill with one really big, long hill after nearly 2km of slightly more gradual uphill. There was a downhill section, but it was on a winding path in the woods, so you couldn’t really use it to pick up any speed. The flat sections were 50m at the start, 50 m at the finish, and a small section at the top of the big hill. Needless to say it left us all feeling a little bit nervous.
We went out to dinner that evening at Boston Pizza. Not an exciting. super interesting place, but they have a few tasty options. We both ended up choosing the same meal (though we were at opposite ends of the table!), which was the Mediterranean on multigrain crust. This pizza had sundried tomatoes, artichokes, spinach, portabello mushrooms, feta and a pesto drizzle.
We were both really pleased with our decision! It was delicious. The only thing we would have changed is cut the artichokes a little bigger, cut back on the cheese and put on more sauce. Our waitress, unfortunately, was pretty rude, but you win some you lose some, right?
Saturday morning arrived chilly and rainy. It had rained all night, and didn’t stop once during the day, making the race course extremely soft and muddy. Essentially, it took an already difficult course and made it even harder. It was slippery, soft and hard to run on, with giant puddles everywhere! 5min into the race you were soaked, covered in mud and your toes were numb. It was a day for grinders, those who did well were those who ran tough!
Because only the top 7 runners from each school can compete at OUAs, the rest of our teammates were cheering from the sidelines. They are seriously the best teammates ever! They were wearing less clothes than the racers were, and were super enthusiastic! And you know what? All their cheering worked, because we won the Bronze Medal! 🙂
To celebrate after, all the athletes, parents and alumni went to Chili’s for a late lunch. Again, not a really interesting restaurant, but the food and service was good! We shared the Mushroom Jack Fajitas, which are chicken, jack cheese, green peppers and mushrooms. They were really yummy! It was nice to just have something warm in our bellies after freezing out on the race course.
Once we got back to London, we had a halloween/OUAs celebration. A couple of the girls on the team made “spooky” cupcakes, which were SO GOOD! They made regular ones and gluten-free, for our two no-gluten teammates.
Big kudos to Court and Sarah, they were awesome! 🙂 Every year for Halloween, our team does a group costume. Our first year we were tinker bells, last year we were Cheetahs, and this year, Gold Diggers!
We had a lot of fun (and were safe from any flying objects all night – thank you hard hats!)
Only one more race of the season, our National Championships, to go, hosting here in London! If you’re around and feel like watching some excellent cross country, put on some Purple and come out to the Thames Valley Golf Course on Saturday, November 10th. The girls race at 12, and the boys at 1. Go Mustangs!
For the full story from this weekend, go here.
We hope everyone had a safe, happy Halloween!
-twosaucysisters
What did you dress up as (or your kids) for Halloween this year? Did you do anything fun or exciting?
twosaucysisters 