This week was one of the most freakin'-wicked-sweet-awesome weeks ... EVER!

I got to forerun for the the first World Cup skeleton races ever held at the new track in Whistler.

Don't know what a forerunner is? What, you didn't hear my interview on Mountain FM? (AKA Squamish Surround Sound... seeing as it is the only station around here, you can get out of your car, grab a coffee at Starbucks, get some groceries then go to the bank, all without missing a single note ... ) Ummmm ... I don't know how to put this but I'm kind of a big deal ...

Essentially a forerunner goes down before the competitors to make sure that everything is A-OK - that the timing system is working, the start grooves are cut straight, the braking stretch is not too fast or slow, that there are no animals wandering in the track, or random unattached bodyparts left from previous bobsleigh crashes. In summary, a forerunner gets many of the perks of racing at a world cup (great ice, fans lining the ice, TV cameras in your face, event passes ... ) with none of the pressure. Except getting down right side up. You look like a pretty big moron if you crash as a forerunner. Then they need to send down another forerunner to clear the ice. Kinda embarassing.

This is the first time I have been involved in a world cup event, and it was mind-blowing. My mind was blown.

Three years ago I didn't even know what a skeleton sled looked like. Two and a half years ago I moved to "a town I had never been to, for a sport I've never done, on a track that doesn't exist." A few months ago I got to slide on Whistler for the first time. And today I was standing at the fully operational 2010 Olympic venue, surrounded by every one of the best sliders in the world. Six people in that start house are going to win Olympic medals next year. Five of them already have.

There is just no one word to describe it all. It was intense, and inspiring, and fun, and nail-biting and overwhelming.

There's only one thing I would have traded that experience for ... a bib with a start number on it. Well that, and maybe for a big bag of sour soothers. Or tickets to a Peter Fox concert.

One day ...