The road to Sochi 2014

Gooooodmorning. Some things I failed to mention last night:

  At this last Am. Cup, there were a number of Canadians that came down to Cleveland, from Calgary. Some were very fast. There were two or three that were faster than me out of the 11 that skated in Am. Cup A. After each day, they sped out of the rink to catch a bus at the corner of the rink and there must have been about thirty-five of them total. It was real cool to talk with them and I talked to their coach about which races we could go to in Canada. He said there were none coming up and that's why they came here but next year at the Octoberfest in Quebec is where we should go.
  On another note, the new system of qualification was tried for the first time this meet, where only the winner of the heat, quarter-final, or semi-final is guaranteed to move to the next round; the next designated number of spots are all by fastest time. So technically, a whole 1500m semi-final could move on to the final if it is faster than the other races in the semi-final round. The problem is that it is almost impossible to judge in the spur of the moment if your race is fast enough that the pass into first place maybe isn't necessary. In my case, both times I was penalized for passing and trying to block a pass, my race would have been fast enough that I would have advanced to the next round. As Mrs Krueger said, the novelty is a system of hindsight. The bright side of the system, and this is why National Coach Jae Su Chun pushed to implement it, is that in every distance, the times were much faster overall than at Am. Cup I, even though the World Team competed in St Louis and not in Cleveland. My 1500m times were very fast, two of the three setting personal bests.

  John-Henry continued his unbelievable recent success. He won the whole Americas Cup overall - at age sixteen. Not bad at all. He leaves for Salt Lake City Thursday. In fact, Cole does too. Mrs Krueger and her two sons are DRIVING a Toyota Corolla all the way to Salt Lake City!!! Meanwhile, I will be here hoping to make some real technical progress and do some new training to try to keep pace with them while they train with the National Team.
  I talked to a higher-up in Usspeedskating and confirmed that I have a sweet package of equipment coming my way, all Under-Armour clothing and paraphernalia as they are our new material sponsor.
  While waiting for practice thursday night in Cleveland,  submitted my final lesson of the American Government course and when I got back last night it was another A. All except my first submission have been A's (that was an A- as I didn't know I was allowed to refer to the textbook for answers - haha). Now I have to study for the final. Same for my other course, Lit. of the Future.