August 19, 2008 – Jess Cockney is a 2nd year member of the Junior Team. He lives and trains in Canmore, Alberta and is a member of Foothills Nordic and the Alberta World Cup Academy. Looking back on the past few weeks I’ve decided to choose one of the more mundane and average days to give you all a look into the life of Jess Cockney. So far my summer has been full of training, working at the Coffee Mine, and hanging out with friends. I’ll take a minute or two to recount the events of Tuesday August 12th.

Tuesday started like so many of the days have in Canmore this summer; bright blue sky and a wake-up time of about 7:00 AM. After throwing down some breakfast and checking out the coverage of the Beijing Games I packed a lunch for my post workout snack that consisted of a handful of day-olds from the Mine, a juice box and a drink belt full of iced tea.

We were headed out to Highwood pass for some roller skiing on roads that until Tuesday were un-chartered territory for me. Turned out to be the perfect place to slay 5hrs of skiing. So maybe 5hrs isn’t an average workout for me…just roll with it. Heading into this punishment the longest single workout I had completed was about 3hrs maybe 3hrs 15min, so right around 3hrs 45min into the roller ski I hit the wall hard, or rather the wall snuck out from the trees and slapped me across the face. Due to one of my more agile team-mates crashing as we came down Highwood the team van was preoccupied and I was left to suffer the last one hour and 15min with no water, sweet skills Curtis.

I was not a happy camper for the immediate 30min after the workout. Having to ski an extra 15min to get back to the van was not how I wanted to finish the 5hr ski. But after a quick trip to the gas station near Highwood to refuel with some chips and dip, my smile was restored and I was back tearing into coach Cavaliere. All was right in the universe as we returned home at about four in the afternoon but cutting it very close to get to my hair cut on time.

So I ended up being late for my haircut, but I would have been better off missing it as Chantal ended up butchering my Ronaldo-cut. I grumbled to myself the whole drive home from the hairdresser, and continued to grumble at dinner with Marlis, Curtis, and Dougal. Post dinner events would take too long to recount, so I will leave it here and let everyone speculate on what happened after we left the Grizzly Paw Pub. See you on the trails!

Jess Cockney