Withdrawal

Having lived and spent most waking hours with cross country skiers for the duration of the Paralympics and a few days before, and having had the opportunity to ski from morning to night I will confess a certain amount of withdrawal particularly with no significant skiing opportunities in the Ottawa area.

This posting is somewhat triggered by  having read Claudia and Dirk VanWijk’s  “Trackside” blog which I linked to through the NCD website.  In their posting they refer to a compulsion to wear some item of “smurf blue” clothing each day.  (Most of the volunteers were fitted with the light blue Olympic wear that is very prominent in any Olympic coverage and near any Olympic or Paralympic venue.  The “smurfs” was the named coined for this wonderful crowd of people)

Although the forerunners were fitted in less prominent navy blue we did have a unique hat in smurf flue colour.  We had to come up with our own moniker, however, and we became the F ‘ ers as distinguished by the large F (for foreruner) on the bibs we wore while on the courses.

I have not felt the same compulsion to wear my Forerunner suit only because it is a race suit and the men’s size large was not quite sized large enough to fit my frame.  I also think may daughters may object if I wore the tights around the house to much.  They are still getting used to me wearing bike shorts in public!!  Of course their sensibilities would even be more offended if I ran around only with my F ‘ er bib.