Sport Vs. School

Hello my loyal blog followers!  So my blog posts are getting a tiny bit more frequent!  At this point, it looks like I am posting about once every two weeks, but I will try to continue to shorten the time lapses between blogs until I hit the once-a-week milestone.

Anyway, on to the blog proper...

Over the last couple weeks I have been trying to work out a schedule for my fall term at Carleton University.  This process has, among other things, opened up old wounds related to discontent with our glorious nation’s amazing co-operation between high level sport associations and post-secondary educational institutions.

Last Winter I had the unfortunate experience of registering for a course who’s Prof. told me I should be able to work Labs around my race schedule, only to be told three weeks into the course by the same prof, that his previous statement regarding Labs had been retracted.  I am not the only one who has had problems fitting together sport and school schedules either.  

All of my ski friends have had to, or will have to, make the big choice eventually: continue with skiing at a high level or complete your undergraduate degree in a timely fashion.  For example, my ski team lost a number of high performing athletes going from the 2011/12 season into this one, athletes who might not have chosen to quit competitive skiing if there had been some way to integrate it more smoothly with school.

One the other side of the spectrum, I have friends who have abandoned their post-secondary educations, for the time being, and headed off to National Training Centres.  The fact is, all but one of Canada’s Training Centres do not have any post-secondary institution within reasonable driving distance.

Now, I don’t want to sound completely delusional.  I am fully aware that one must make a choice to either focus on skiing or school--but I don’t think that it should be so black and white.  I hope that some day Canadian Universities will be able to work in collaboration with CCC’s National Training Centres--to allow athletes who want to continue skiing at a high level to do so--but still be able to keep working away at their degree without having to be in a continuous fight against the system.

Anyway, if you have any questions, disagreements, or comments regarding my nice little rant today, please feel free to leave them in the comment section.

Finally, in other news 1) BATMAN IS AWESOME, and 2) I’m sure you all know that the Olympics are starting today, so go watch the opening ceremony RIGHT NOW!

*Because I had two songs in the last blog I’ve neglected to add one in today’s post.

Dream big, people!!

Days Go By

Hi everyone!  Sorry for the horrible lack of blog posts for the past month.  I know I said I would post something every week, but Days Go By and it was harder to motivate myself to do this than one would think.  I have also been quite busy with respect to training...

Found Figgy sleeping in the car today

The part of the ski training year that is defined by big volume zone1 workouts starts up midway through the month of June for me.  To help keep these long zone1 workouts interesting, I have attended a couple training camps over the last number of weeks.

To kick things off, me and my two friends/teammates Do Moncion-Groulx and Kat Stewart-Jones represented the Nakkertok contingent at the first Quebec Team training camp of the year, held in Lake Placid NY.  

Lake Placid is definitely one of favourite places--if not my favourite place--to train in the East.  It has awesome mountains to hike/run on (Do commented midway on both of our two hikes that “we’re on top of the world!”), it has great scenery, it has roads that are amazingly paved for the amount of traffic they get--great for rollerskiing (and probably for the huge U.S. deficit too...)--and it has lots of water to jump into after workouts.  For those who have not experienced it, it is hard to describe how awesome it feels to jump into an ice cold stream-fed lake after climbing a mountain.  

Unfortunately, Do and I could not stick around for the whole training camp (apparently I didn’t even have time to take any pictures :p ); after two solid hike/runs and three good rollerski workouts, it was time to head home for a rest day... and then go back out the door for Training Camp II: RELOADED.  This time in Tremblant with the rest of the home team.

Last year I had a great time, and got in some really good quality training at the Nakkertok camp in Tremblant, so I was really looking forward to the camp this year.  Here’s how this year’s Tremblant training camp went down:

On Saturday June 30th Do and I returned from Lake Placid.

Canada day was spent watching the DH world cup in Windham NY on my computer, and going to bed early after watching Sherlock Holmes 2!!!  I am so patriotic.

Monday is travel day!  I pulled on my cut off Blue Jeans, and Nakkertok peace’d out en mass for Tremblant just after lunch time.  We manged to squeeze in a short hour forty-five minute hike/run up and down Tremblant upon arrival.

The Boys at the top of Tremblant (note that Ryan is floating and Do is really tiny looking)

Every ski hill worth its salt seems to have one of these cell phone towers...

Tuesday I realized that I should’ve done a better job recovering between Tremblant and Lake Placid, when I elected not to finish a zone4 interval set.  We also happened to get kicked off a private road in the ritzy subdivision where we were planning on doing said zone4 intervals.  Annoying.  After lunch a napped away my sorrows and then proceeded to go for a 2hr bike ride.

Wednesday we threw down a really fun Classic sprint workout and managed to not get kicked out of any ritzy subdivisions (probably because we avoided them).  In the P.M. coach K-dogg and assistant(?) coach MC-Gui put together a fun strength workout for us.

My awesome supper on Wednesday--I am such a chef

Thursday was getting lost day  It consisted of....well... getting lost.  And hiking.  And getting lost.  Today the girls got lost on the way to the hike, and Bryana and I got lost on our afternoon bike ride to the beach.

Friday we did an awesome tempo zone3 workout at Domaine Saint Bernard.  In the afternoon I climbed up and down a hill near our chalet with Colin, as we tried to hit 80kph on our road bikes.  We reached 79.5.

Saturday we went for a 3:30 ski before we embarked on the short drive home.  More importantly, on the way home we stopped twice: once for slush puppies and once for poutine.  It was damn good poutine.

Sunday I returned home and finished playing Portal2, and was then depressed to be not at a training camp, and not playing Portal2.

So that sums up my life for the past two weeks.  Again, apologies for not posting in awhile... I have hidden TWO songs in this blog by ways of an apology.

In passing, I would suggest that everybody reading this do two things:  watch Sherlock Holmes 2 (Robert Downey Jr. is a boss), and play Portal2 (but only after playing Portal).

Dream big, people!