We left Whistler for Vancouver to catch our flight to Salt Lake City. The drive from Whistler to the airport is very scenic going right through the centre of Vancouver. We had a stop-over in Denver and spent the time having something to eat and browsing the shops. Kat, Jackie and Gill experimented with the massage chair in one of the shops, the consensus being that the back massage was good but that the calf massage was a little painful! Kat was keen to fit in a quick pilates session for recovery in the wide open spaces of the airport but for some reason Nic, Gill and Jackie refused!

After arriving in Salt Lake City we collected our luggage and the hire cars and drove the 30 minutes to Park City. The house we were staying in this week was even better than last week and was handily situated 5  minutes from the track, funnily enough just off Bobsled Boulevard! Our time in Park City seemed to fly by as we juggled training with shopping on Main Street and at the outlet malls. It seemed that every day Kat would come back with another handbag for the team to admire and advise her on which one to keep. Jo was the handbag model as the rest of us are obviously not sophisticated enough to give a suitable impression of what they would look like. In the end a decision was made and everyone breathed a sigh of relief although we are bracing ourselves for shopping dilemmas to come on our trip to New York!

We were still receiving a per diem to buy food but decided that, as eating out was so cheap, that we wouldn’t cook dinner and so worked our way through the menu at Ruby Tuesday’s. I think we could all recite the menu by heart we went so often but we did break from routine on the last night when we went for Chinese.

Jackie had been the night before but enjoyed it so much that she came back for a second night in a row. It was perhaps overkill when she then had a third Chinese at the airport the next day! Our only other break from Ruby’s was a reception put on for all the bobsleigh and skeleton athletes and staff at the track.

The barbeque was excellent and most people went back for a second helping. The entertainment was provided by the Romanian team who were trying to make a Coke can take off by attaching balloons to it. Everyone contributed the balloons from the backs of their chairs and watched with interest to see if the launch would be successful. The can did indeed get airborne amid a round of applause. Maybe we need to get out more!

The excitement of the week was Kat’s taxi bob ride, a chance to experience first hand what the athletes she treats week in, week out actually do every day. As the time approached she got more and more nervous and decided to tell everyone who would listen at the track that she was going down in a sled so that she couldn’t back out. We took bets on what her first words would be when she got to the bottom, Jo getting the closest. For the record they were “Oh my God that was horrible!” After all the excitement and adrenaline it took a while for her to recover enough to be able to join the rest of us at the barbeque but she now has a newfound respect for the athletes and the sport!

Training went well, with Jackie doing the majority of the runs to give Gill’s sore knee a chance to recover. On the last day of training Gill got the all clear to slide and finally got to experience the track for the first time. She had been a bit disgruntled that even the physio had been down this track before she had! We went into the race confident of a good result and came away with our fifth podium finish of the season taking 6th place, missing 5th by only one hundredth of a second. This result meant that we finished the World Cup series ranked 3rd overall.

Nic couldn’t wait to get her hands on the trophy, a glass globe on a glass stand. Once she did have it though she was terrified she was going to drop it and quickly gave it to Jo for safe-keeping! Transporting it and the smaller trophy for the brakemen on several flights continues to be a challenge but, as Sean pointed out, it’s a nice problem to have! Our development team was also in action in this race and they excelled themselves, securing a top ten finish, coming ninth.

After the race we quickly beautified ourselves in the track toilets and then rushed off for a photo shoot. Since we were posing at the side of the road leading to the track we attracted a lot of unwanted attention, several cars full of athletes from other nations honking their horns as they passed. We are looking forward to seeing the pictures and hope that there’s at least one with everyone with their eyes open! After the photos there was just time for one last shopping trip to pick up last minute bargains and for Kat to return all the handbags she wasn’t keeping, go for dinner and go home to pack for the trip to Lake Placid the next day.