2016 JGP Czech Skate Blog #2

Good morning from Ostrava!

My day began earlier than I planned for because we had forgotten to close the blinds. The sun was legitimately brighter than I have ever seen it…yes. Lindsay went to practice while I just chilled in the room before getting breakfast with some friends and then getting ready to go.

We had the draw, which went well! We will skate 9th and Lorraine and Quinn will skate 7th. We explored the rink a little and then had our first practice in the main rink. The rink is really beautiful, and the ice was great, but we all felt that it was smaller than last time! Probably just our imagination. We had another practice in a few hours so I walked back to the hotel before coming back to warm up again. It’s so nice to be able to walk straight to the rink from our hotel. 

The arena is a huge facility- there’s a practice rink with separate locker rooms in the hall behind it, a complete hockey equipment store upstairs, and then the main rink of course. But that’s not all; there’s a new segment of the arena with additional multipurpose rooms and the best part: the warmup area.  It’s crazy!! Everything is new and clean, the floor is bouncy and there’s also a carpet for stretching that you can’t see from here.

Our second practice was great, so after stretching we both came back to the hotel and relaxed. It wasn’t too late in the day but we all decided that we were too lazy to explore Ostrava today. We ended up all having dinner together along with a bunch of Canadian skaters and Japanese skaters.

Group dinners at JGPs always take ages so by the time it was over I came up to my room to sleep. Lindsay had to help me put eye drops in (shoutout to Lindsay again!) and now here I am writing to you!

So that’s all for today, goodnight from Ostrava!!! 

~ Chloe