My Hero

Trial races start in 4 days and things are looking good. I came down with a head cold a few days after arriving home from Vernon, but that quickly passed and I was able to spend a relaxing Christmas at home. Now I feel healthy and ready to go.

As part of preparation for these trial races, our coach decided that we should compete in a Bow Corridor Regional "fun" Race held here in Canmore this past Sunday. It was a team sprint where you compete in teams of two and each person completes 3 laps of a 1.2km course, while you tag off to your partner, alternating each lap. We have a total of eight girls on the team, which made it easy to divide into 4 teams. Unfortunately my partner (Kate Brennan) arrived back to Canmore at 1am in Sunday morning, after spending Christmas at home, and was not quite ready to do a race. But luckily my good friend Kelly McBroom came to the rescue.

Kelly was born and raised in Canmore. Growing up, she was one of my greatest arch rivals in the sport of cross-country skiing. We were always battling for the podium at every Alberta Cup and regional race. Kelly being the talented person she is also competed in Alpine ski racing. Luckily for me, Kelly decided to make the switch at age 15 to only compete in Alpine racing. And she is doing awesome! She is now on the Canadian Alpine Ski Team, pursuing her dream of going to the Olypmics one day.

Click here to view her blog.

OK, back to my story. Kelly was on a week break from downhill skiing and training, so I called her up and asked if she wanted to be my partner for the race. After a little bit of convincing (and reassuring) she agreed to do it. What a sport! Kelly hasn't done a cross-country race in ages and has NEVER competed in a classic sprint in her life. But she did great!..besides the fact that she fell on the first downhill of the course... I guess she misjudged her carving capabilities in those skinny cross country skis. Oh well, she definitely held her own, and I think we both had a lot of fun that day. Thanks a lot Kelly, you ROCK!

Lining up for the start of the race.

Me tagging off to Kelly McBroom (in her National Apline Ski Team suite)

Way to go team!

Great Start

Hi guys,

So far, 4 Noram (basically Canada Cup) races down and they all went great. Continuing from my previous post, I completed a 15km mass start skate race on Thursday. It was a little bit of a difficult start as I was placed in the forth row back from the start line There were roughly 30 girls ahead of me and I had to try and push my way up to stick with the lead pack. I managed to do quite well dodging my way around some fallen racers with no broken equipment on my part. I felt strong that day and attacked on every hill. I crossed the line in 15th spot, 7th Canadian and 2nd U23 once again.

Friday was the classic sprints. I decided not to do them in order to make sure I didn’t over do it at the start of the season; saving myself for the races in January.

On Saturday was a 10km individual classic night race, which started at 5pm. I completed three loops of a 3.3km course that was lit with lights. It was one of very few races I have done in the dark. It is actually quite fun, except they were missing a light on the steepest downhill of the course. You literally could see nothing and felt like you went temporarily blind for about 200m. Luckily I didn’t fall. The race was OK for me. I had a little trouble with skis and waxing. Having decided to try a brand new pair of classic skis, they were too stiff for the conditions and I did not have very good grip for climbing the hills. So I ended up in 25th spot, 10th Canadian and 4th U23. Not bad… I still feel very strong and it was a good learning experience.

As psychologist Terry Orlick says, “Every race is an opportunity to learn, practice and perfect.”

Now I am home for Christmas. Time to regroup; focus and fine-tune myself for trial races starting on January 2nd. Weeks are just flying by, but things are going great and from the last couple weekends I have gained a lot of confidence and am ready to take on anything that comes my way.

Me, during the skate sprints Saturday Dec 6th

4 of my teammates managed to make it to the final heat of 6 that day

Go Alberta World Cup Academy!

Thanks to the great waxing support we had both weekends!

First Races

So I completed my first races of the season on the weekend and I’m happy to say they went well. Saturday was a skate sprint followed by a 10km skate on Sunday. I’m not much of a sprinter, but they went surprisingly well. I qualified 17th, and in my first heat I was put up against many strong skiers mostly from the United States. I had a great start and set myself in a good position. Unfortunately I had trouble on the last downhill toward the finish. I did not use drafting to my advantage, and was unable to make up the time on the final stretch, so I was unable to continue on to the next heat. But I felt like it was a good effort and it was nice to get that first race out of the way.

Next was the individual 10km skate. This means that everyone starts out 15 sec apart and is individually timed. It was my kind of coarse with lots of climbing and fast downhills. I had quite an early starting position because my points from the previous season were not great. I knew I would be passing quite a few of the skiers that started around me, but to my surprise I passed ALL of them on the first lap, which meant I was skiing the second lap completely by myself. I kept a good pace and felt strong. I finished in 25th spot, 9th Canadian overall, and 2nd U23.

I can already feel a huge difference from last season, and it was a lot of fun to go out and race this past weekend. The next set of races were supposed to be in Whistler, BC, but due to lack of snow they have been changed to here in Vernon, BC. So the team is spending another week in Silver Star. There will be a 15km mass start skate on Thursday, Classic sprint on Friday and finally an individual Classic 10km on Sunday.

Stay tuned!

Its GO TIME!

In precisely two weeks I will be competing in the first Noram races of the season, in Vernon, BC. We completed an on snow training camp in Lake Louise less then an week ago, so I feel like I had a solid adaptation to skiing on real snow. Now I’m cutting the hours down and pounding in a few more intensities to get my body ready to race.

I feel really good. Because of the fact that I started out sick last year, and things just went downhill from there; I am just relieved to know that this year I can go out, have fun and actually feel like I can race. This is a good mental state to be in, because I am not too nervous that it may inhibit my performance, but excited enough to make me ski fast and have fun, which I think is an optimal performance state for me. It’s also nice to know that I can only go up, and that there are no expectations from the last season that I need to uphold.

After the Norams in Vernon we head out to Whistler, BC for another set of races and then back home for Christmas.

But there will be very little partying and celebrating for me this holiday season, as the biggest trial races of the year start on January 2nd hear in Canmore. These races will determine who qualifies for World Cups, European tours and the U23 World Championships. If everything goes well I will be racing a few World Cups here in Canada then off to Europe to compete with the best in the world.

Wish Me Luck!

Great skiing conditions for our training camp in Lake Lousie Alberta, probably the best in the country at that time.

What a Treat!

Secret Valley

I found the snow!

Over the past few days some members of the World Cup Academy team along with a few other guests had the opportunity to stay up at the Golden Alpine Holidays Sentry Lodge out in the back country to get some early on snow skiing in. It was quite short notice but within a few days Gord Jewitt (a member of the team) along with the rest of the crowd managed to get food and logistics organized in time so that we were able to take off in a helicopter on Sunday afternoon just outside of Golden BC... We flew into Paradise!

The pictures describe it best, but the first night we were there, the tempertures cooled down quite a bit to harden the bottom baselayer of snow. With a small sprinkle of fresh powder on the second day, we were able to crust ski for miles around what is known as the Secret Valley.

Enjoy the photos!
Comfortable accommodation in the fancy Sentry Lodge

First shine of light as the sun peaks over the mountains

Rhonda enjoys the training that doesn't feel like training


Heidi completeing some nice turns down a slope



Jess Cockney getting a little air

A little technique work with no poles

Heidi and I skiing on the track

Where's the snow?

Ok, so there is one more week to go in October…that means so far I have been training for almost six months. We completed testing for the final time this week, and how were the results? AWESOME!

The highlight would have to have been my VO2 Max test. I went into it focused, ready to perform, and managed to come out with a great result. My value changed from a 52 ml/kg/min (in the spring) to a 58.5 ml/kg/min and was seen to be as high as 60! **(see June update for details on VO2 Max)** Normally an improvement of 2 or 3 is pretty standard on a good day, and an improvement of 6.5 is something I would have never expected. The Lab Techs could hardly believe it was the same person. The test also showed a big improvement in aerobic and anaerobic thresholds, which means I was able to run at a much faster pace while keeping my HR and lactate at a level where I could hold it for several kilometers.

The roller ski tests on the other hand were a little more difficult to determine the results. This time of year the weather can be unpredictable and a drop in temperature can affect tests quite a lot. For example, the double pole test was extremely windy and with the cooler temperatures, the poles don’t stick to the pavement as well. But my time was still a big improvement from the spring and most importantly I feel like a have gained a lot in strength. The skate uphill time trial was changed to a standard 7.5km roller ski race. My result was solid and left me itching to start racing on the real stuff in one month.

So what now? As my coach, Mike Cavaliere put it “As we approach the race season we will do some fine tuning to ensure everyone is ready physically/mentally for the seasons first races.”

For me, my coach and I have decided that I will put one last effort into giving my muscles a bit more power and snap to make sure my body is in the best shape possible to race in early December. This means a few more weeks of strength, some good on snow intensity and finally a bit of power and snap.

Everyone can feel the snow coming and we all are left with one thought, which my coach has put into good terms, “What was obvious in the last few days is that competition is going to be stiff - we have to get used to the idea that we will have to compete for every second.”
“Attacking the hills and always thinking of ways to be faster.”

Happy Halloeween!




Teammate Heidi and I doing some core

Marlis Kromm completes her VO2 Max Test

The Boys start out on thier double pole test

Revelstoke

view from part way up Mt Revelstoke

Our last dry-land camp of the year came to an end today. It was gorgeous weather for the first half of the week. The leaves had all turned to bright yellows and reds with the sun beating down, and temperatures hovering in the mid twenties. Near the end of the week, it started to get a little wet with the casual rain here or there, but nothing too troublesome.

Most of the week consisted of long roller skis in and around the town of Revelstoke. After doing hours of roller skiing all summer, it starts to get frustrating trying to keep finding things to always improve on when the only thing on everyone’s’ mind is that racing is just around the corner. But everyone managed to buckle down and get the most out of every workout.

We also had new addition to the team a couple weeks ago; coach Jan Arne Enevlodsen was hired as a second full time coach for the Alberta World Cup Academy. Born and raised in northern Norway, Enevoldsen has coached professionally since 1993, filling a variety of positions in the US and Europe; most recently as Program Director of the Green Mountain Academy in Vermont.
Bringing perspectives as both an elite-level coach and athlete in biathlon as well as cross-country skiing, Enevoldsen also has significant wax room expertise. He has now relocated from Vermont to the Bow Valley for the 2008 – 2009 competitive season, which begins on December 6 in Vernon, B.C.
This was our first camp with Jan, and things worked out great. His expertise and experience was quite evident and I think everyone learned a lot. The team is lucky to have him.

Here are some photos:
roller skiing with coaches Mike and Jan

Jan giving the guys some technique advice as they pass by

Ski Striding at the Revelstoke Nordic Centre

A little baseball game one easy afternoon.

Some medicine ball core in the parking lot of our motel. The other guests were trying to figure out what kind of circus had rolled into town.

Wintertime’s a’Comin

After completing our training camp last week, I was sure of one thing; summertime is definitely over. The whole week we woke up to temperatures hovering around zero. No more shorts and tank tops, we wore spandex and long sleeves almost everyday. For skiers this is an exciting time of year. We start to realize that all the roller skiing and running workouts start to come to an end, and we know that winter time is just around the corner. Suddenly the thought of racing jumps into everyone’s head, and you get that little bit of extra energy for training.

The first half of the week, we put in some good hard days up in the Highwood Pass area. Lots of roller skiing, which included one day of roller ski sprint races with the Foothills Nordic Ski Club. We had qualifiers, heats and everything. It was a little sketchy racing full speed on pavement rather then on snow, but luckily there were no big falls throughout the day.

The second half of the week we headed up to winter wonderland at the Haig Glacier. Yup, you guessed it, there was a TON of snow. The run in was a little miserable as it was POURING rain, and the temperature only got colder the further we climbed. But once we were all-warm and dry up in the huts, things started to look up. The next day greeted us with two feet of fresh powder! Skiing conditions were perfect. We were using hard wax and everything!

It was yet another week of great training. We have one more hard training camp in October and then its smooth sailing from then on into the racing season.

I can’t wait!

Me, completing my qualifier for the roller ski sprints

The Mens final

The daily hike up to the Haig Glacier

Kate Brennan about to start her ski.

Boo-Ya!

Wow! I don’t know how else to describe it. A week ago I completed both the uphill time trail for skate and double polling. In the skate time trial I improved by 45sec, and almost 2min in the double pole time trial!!! This is huge! Clearly all the hard work has shown a big improvement in my training and fitness level. I can’t wait to see what I feel like in another couple months!

After completing the tests, I took off to Ontario for a week to spend some quality R and R time. I spent a few days at the Summerfolk music festival in Owen Sound and then spent the rest of the week doing nothing but lying around in the sun. I was amazing!! I finally got to experience what a real summer vacation felt like.

The last couple weeks have also been quite an exciting time to be involved sport. When I am not lifting weights in the gym, sprinting up hills, or roller skiing for 3 hours straight, my face has been glued to the TV watching the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. I just can’t seem to get enough! Watching the best athletes from around the world, come together to give it thier all and compete for the gold medal gives me the tingles. It makes my dream of one day going to the Olympics grow stronger and stronger.

So far, the high lites for me have been:
#3- Jason Burnett winning the sliver in Trampoline- I love it when an underdog comes out and gives the world a shocking surprise.

#2 – Usain Bolt beating the 100m AND 200m world records- he just shows that there is no limit to human potential. Anything is possible.

#1- Simon Whitfield’s sprint to the silver medal- He showed how powerful the human mind can be. The last 2km was ALL mental, and he was able to push his body to the max!


I am only starting to realize how much of sport relies on the power of the human mind. Sport Psychology is one area of training I have been working on over the past month. I can’t even begin to explain how important the mental aspect is in competing to the best of your abilities. It takes years to master, and without it, there is no way you will be able to reach the top.

Tomorrow I am heading into another week of hard training. The first half of the week will be dry-land training at Highwood Pass in the Kananaskis, and then I will be heading up to the Haig Glacier for the last half of the week for some on snow skiing. I feel great and am ready to tackle anything that comes my way.

“Live the Dream!”

Haig Glacier

Hi,

I hope everyone is having a great summer so far. My training has been going better then ever, and I feel like I have been gaining a lot.

I just completed a hard week of training up at the Haig Glacier. The Haig Glacier is located in the Kananaskis. Every summer, skiers will head up there to train and get a chance to be on snow. We stay at a base camp located about 1 km down from the actual glacier. It is about an 18km run into the base camp, while a helicopter flies our gear in for us. The camp is actually quite luxurious. We sleep in bunkhouses and there is a fully equipped kitchen where we eat and hang out.

Our biggest volume weeks of the year are usually done at the Haig. Happy to say I met my goal of achieving 22hours of training this past week. Everyday we were skiing by 8:30am. We had great conditions the entire week. The weather stayed cold at night, but was bright and sunny every morning. After each ski the routine was to head to camp for a quick lunch followed by a nap. Then we woke up, played a little Frisbee golf, and ate dinner then back to bed. Occasionally there would be a short core workout in the afternoons as well… Yes I know VERY stressful.

As an athlete you have to be careful when training at the Haig Glacier. Lots of athletes make the mistake of training too much or to fast. Because you are training at such a high altitude it is very easy to “burn out”, putting your race season in jeopardy and potentially your entire ski career. For this reason coaches will make you do a lot of monitoring. For example, each athlete will take a “rusko” test every morning. This is basically recording your heart rate for a couple minutes right when you get out of bed to make sure there is nothing abnormal, indicating that your body might be fatigued. Coaches will also measure our blood lactate levels while we are out skiing. This is done by poking our fingers and taking a blood sample that is then read by a small machine. This ensures that we are training at the right speed.

After a couple years you start to get the hang of how your body responds and how much you are able to push. I think everything went well for me this year. I am now on a couple weeks of rest and recover before I do a couple small tests to see where I am at and what sort of improvements have been made.


base camp

teammates Brooke and Shayla ski on the glacier

Alysson, Marlis, Kate and I doing some double pole sprints

girls doing an afternoon core session

the team

Testing

Hi Everyone,

So far I have been training for about 5 weeks now. It has only been a short period of time, and yet everything seems to have gotten off the ground quite quickly. We have been pumping iron in the gym with our new strength coach Rob Soffer, and have been assessed by our team doctor and physiotherapist. I have settled into my new house in Canmore, and am loving it! I am surrounded by a gigantic playground, where I can step out my front door and go for a run, bike, roller ski, you name it; all surrounded by a beautiful backdrop of the Canadian Rockies.

This past week we completed what we call “testing”. Testing is done every year in the spring to establish where you are physically and what sort of things your need to work on throughout the summer. The idea is to see an improvement when we test again in the late fall. And hopefully by the time race season rolls around we will start to see improvements on the results board as well.

First of all we headed to the TCR Sport Lab in Calgary, where we acted as guinea pigs by running on treadmills with tubes attached to our face. This gave us information such as our VO2 max; aerobic/anaerobic thresholds; and training zones. (FYI, VO2 max is the maximum amount of oxygen in millilitres, one can use in one minute per kilogram of body weight). Basically the goal is to gradually increase this number throughout our ski career. With all the training and racing we do, our heart slowly starts to grow larger and stronger, enabling us to pump more oxygen to our muscles faster.

Next, we strapped on our roller skis and hammered up a 3km hill as fast as we could. This provided us with a base for how fast we are now, in order to set a goal for how fast we want to be by the end of the fall. We also did a similar test, only we used our arms to double pole as fast as we could up a hill that was about 800m long.

Like always, there is a lot to work on. I have discovered my weaknesses and set my goals. Now I am keen and ready to do whatever it takes in order make me a faster skier when it comes time to hit the race trails in the winter.

Until next time!

AWCA Team

Road to the Nordic Centre

doing some skate roller skiing

Silver Star Spring Training Camp

On May 5th the new Alberta World Cup Academy team took off to Silver Star, BC for our first training camp of the year.

We arrived to tones of snow and great weather conditions for the entire week. In the morning we would wake up and be skiing by 9am. The trails were in excellent condition with a good 10-15km loop of nicely groomed tracks. There were occasional snowfalls throughout the week, and on the last day we woke up to a good foot of fresh powder!

In the afternoons we would we would change things up by doing several activities such as weights, running, canoeing, or soccer.

All in all, I think everyone put in a solid week of training, while having fun and learning a lot at the same time. Thanks to all the coaches who helped out and a special thanks Glenn Bond for giving us the opportunity to paddle in the outrigger canoes.

Great skiing conditions at the Sovereign Lake Nordic Ski Centre

My teammate Kate Brennan and I ski with coach Chris Jeffries

Going for an afternoon run on the BX trail

Paddling in the Outrigger Canoes