Trials

Happy 2013 everyone!

On December 30th of last year I hopped on a plane to Thunder Bay.  This year, World Junior Trials (the Canadian qualifier event for Worlds) was to be held in this northerly town on the edge of Lake Superior from January 3rd-6th; I wanted to get in a couple of days of pre-race training on the race courses.  My team was not showing up until the 1st of January, so I spent my first two nights rooming with my friends Greg Kilroy (the Cross Country Canada athlete rep) and Leif Lenny (former NDC Thunder Bay athlete).  Huge thanks to them for putting me up, and to their landlord (none other than Adam Kates, coach of Lakehead University and Big Thunder ski teams!) for lending me a super comfy mattress so I didn’t have to crash on the couch!

After some solid pre-race training days at Lappe Nordic I moved, on the 1st, into the hotel where my team would stay until our return to Ottawa on the 6th.  On Thursday (the 3rd), the first race of the event was relatively late in the day.  I don’t think I have ever been more stressed before a race in my life.  At 1:17pm, the “3 minutes to start” was shouted out over the speakers at the Nordic Centre, and I pulled off my warm-ups and stepped into my skis.  “2 minutes to start.”  “1 minute.”  “30 seconds. . .”

At the beginning of the training season last year, I posted up a big piece of paper on my wall.  It was to be a map.  At the top I wrote “goals for May”.  At the bottom I wrote “qualify for and place top 30 in each race at Worlds”.

. . .and the race started.

I have been pretty confident about my abilities this year but, unfortunately, in sport and in life, nothing can be taken for granted--and there’s always a part of you, deep down, that has doubts.

As it turned out, the skiathlon on Thursday was one of the better races I’ve had, and I managed to carry that momentum into the classic sprint race on Saturday, and the 15km skate race Sunday.

Finally after the skate race (and an hour or two of anxious anticipation in the Lappe Nordic lodge!) I was congratulated and informed that I had made the Canadian Junior Team for Worlds!!!!  I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited.

So!  Now comes the hard part.  Next Saturday I’ll leave Ottawa for Europe--and the most competitive, intense races of my life!  I am so stoked.

This last week has been an amazing one--and not just for me!  I’d like to give a shout-out to Katherine and Patrick Stewart-Jones, fellow teammates who made the Junior Worlds and U23 Worlds teams respectively!!  I also have to make a shout-out to all the other Nakkertok athletes who did so well this past week: more than once it was one of you guys at the finish line first.  Congrats!!

HUGE thanks to the awesome Nakkertok support team as they did everything and more to make this week a best ever.  Huge thanks to SuperMikeVieira for the years of coaching that have prepared me, and many other athletes for this event, and--of course--for the spirited race motivation and cheering!!  And, last but most definitely not least, huge thanks to my awesome coach Kieran, who has done everything to make me and the other Nakkertokers SUPERFAST!

Find pictures from the event here: http://www.lappenordic.ca/gallery.html

Find results here: http://new.zone4.ca/

The race season has only just begun: dream big, people!!

Canmore and Silverstar

Whoa!  Fall always goes by so much faster than I expect it to.  Between school, training and work, I didn’t even end up having time to write a review of the October Lake Placid camp that I said I would do.  As it turns out though, I did write a blog post when I was out in Canmore doing some early season training/racing, but, I didn’t end up posting it because the internet connection at my lodgings was pretty bad.

So, it may be a bit late, but here’s a look into my mind on the evening of November 30th (in all it’s highlighted blue glory!).

Winter is here!  Well, at least, winter is here for parts of the country.  Luckily, I made the decision early in the year to head out to Canmore Alberta (where there is usually early snowfall) on the 23rd of November.  So, now it seems we’re almost into December, and I’ve been skiing on snow in Canmore for just over a week now.

This last week or so has been super exciting, and not just because I’m skiing for-real now, but also because it has been a week of preparation for my first race weekend of the year--which starts tomorrow!

For me, and for a lot of skiers I think, the first races are a bit of a milestone.  They signal the switch from the training season to the race season (o b v i o u s l y), and they also trigger a mental switch too.  The last month or so is always a bit of a stressful time for me.  It’s that time of year when you know you’ve trained hard all summer (at least, I know I have!), race season is looming ahead, and inevitably, you wonder: “have I done enough?”  From past experience, this question can almost always be answered with a resounding “YES!!”  But that doesn’t quash the anxiety.

So, finally, that time of year is about to end!  With the first races comes the answer to this question, and I’m confident that this year, yet again, it’ll be that common three letter word.

Dream big, people!!

Well!!!  As it turns out, I managed to throw down, not only in Canmore, but in Silverstar (Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre) the weekend after.  So, the trip was definitely a success, as I had three solid races out of a total of four (the distance race in Canmore ended up feeling a bit more like a Viking Death March than a race, for me), and I managed to eliminate my pre-season anxiety--yay!

As an added bonus, I met up with ski-friends that I haven’t seen in awhile, and I had a spectacular time in Silverstar, which, by the way, happens to be Paradise on earth (see pictures).

A HUGE thanks goes out to my ex-coach and homie Mike Vieira, for letting me chill with him in Canmore for a week and a half, NDC Thunder Bay and CVTC, for getting me and my gear respectively, over to Silverstar from Canmore, CNEPH, for waxing my skis in Canmore, and of course, Kieran, Kevin, and the rest of the Nakkertok support crew for doing such an amazing job of getting me, and my skis, race ready in Silverstar.  Last but totally not least, thanks to Salomon for top-notch support and awesome gear--let’s make this season a good one!

Dream big, people!!! (and check out my trip in pictures below!)

Overpacking

Goodbye Ottawa

Hello Calgary

At the Nordic Centre

Naps were a reoccurring theme in Canmore.

Yeah, I made some Banana Muffins

Race anticipation

My Sister was in Canmore on an exchange for a few days when I was there, so, obviously we had to get a picture of us with the mountains.

Welcome to Paradise!  Check out the swedish ski team members in the background, and Riel gettin' the wax right.

Chris Weller--as interpreted by Chris Weller.

uh oh--a selfsie.

Snow Angel by yours truly.

Okay, I know how stupid food shots are, and I'm embarrassed that two of them made it in here, but, I was really proud of myself for making those banana muffins, and this pizza.  All done from scratch.

Photo cred's to Em for this one.

The one!  The only!!  Dominique M-G!!!  Ridin' the chair lift.

I'm dead serious when I say that The 'Star is paradise.

Just like at Tremblant (see previous blog post), Silverstar has a radio tower at the top.

Update

Hey inter-web!!

Since the start of school I've been super busy with stuff like training, working, managing time very poorly and--well--school.  Ultimately, (and to my utter dismay) this has left me with less time to blog.  So, I don't have too much time to write today, but I'll give a quick update on what I've been up to in the last month or so...

At the start of September, the team (Nakkertok Train-to-Compete group) had a sweet intensity training camp.  Unlike most training camps, it was held locally, which gave us the opportunity to shred some sweet Gatineau park workouts.  For instance, we got to run the ever-painfully-fun Luskville Falls uphill time trial, which runs--you guessed it--up the Luskville Falls hiking trail.  It gains some pretty crazy elevation over the course of 2.some kilometers.  Unfortunately, I didn't post a PB, but I wasn't exactly expecting to since we threw down some crazy sprint simulations the day before.

Next up, after the camp, it was back to school for Zeke!!  Zeke doesn't always speak in third person, but when he does, he usually talks about school.  

This fall, school for Zeke is made up of two courses.  "What?!?  Only two courses!?!?" you say.  "Zeke must be absolutely horrible at time management!!"  While Zeke is somewhat insulted by this negative stance, he agrees that he is not very amazing at time management, but at the same time, he would like to point out that although he only took three courses last semester, he ace'd all three of them.  Zeke intends to add two more ace'd courses to the list this year.

Anyway, this year Zeke is taking Intermediate French, and a pure math course on Linear Algebra.   Both of them are full year courses, so that should be interesting.  Surprisingly, Zeke finds the French course harder.

...back to first person.  So, between these two courses, working at FAE like usual, doing some killer training like usual, and coaching the Chelsea Masters once a week, I've been pretty busy.  I did manage to throw in an informative session on goal setting for one of the younger groups at Nakkertok, one Sunday in September, which was cool.  Anyway, coming up to the end of last month, I was feeling kinda overwhelmed.  I needed something to get me back on track, and help me re-realize that my big goals for this season are all skiing related.  Luckily, that "something" showed up--and in the form of another training camp too!

On the last day of September, the Nakkertok team peace'd out en-masse for our third, and final, dry land training camp of the season, to be held in a sweet location.  Just to get things straight, by en-masse, I mean only six of us, and by sweet location, I mean Lake Placid.  This training camp turned out to be very productive with respect to both physical training, and technique training.  It also has seemed to help me refocus with respect to both training and school, so, a huge thanks goes out to my awesome coach for everything he did to make the camp possible (thanks K-dogg!!).

Anyway, I would really like to devote an entire blog post to Lake Placid, with pictures and videos and such, so suffice it to say, for now, that this awesome training camp involved sweat, blood, and tears, in varying quantities, and rain ridiculous quantities.

Look for a Lake Placid camp post coming soon; dream big, people!

*(sorry, no song this time)

La Malbaie

Every August, the Quebec Team comes together for its second summer training camp--a joint training camp held with CNEPH.  This event yields a great opportunity to get in some good high volume zone1 rollerski training, talk with CNEPH’s awesome support staff, and experience what it’s like to, essentially, be part of a training centre for one week.  At last year’s training camp in Jericho, Vermont, I had serious trouble recovering between workouts, so going into this year’s camp my goal was to improve upon this.  I was not super happy with the location of the camp last year either, so when I heard that it was to be held in La Malbaie, I was happy for the change of scenery.

A change of scenery: the Fleuve

Monday dawned bright and early (with respect to my usual summer schedule at least), as I jumped out of bed at 5:15 am to meet up with the prodigy ski-twins Em and Kat Stewart-Jones.  With the first training session of the camp at 2pm and a 7hr drive from Chelsea to Malbaie to tackle, time was of the essence!

It was my first time going farther up the St. Lawrence river than Mont Saint Anne, and the big thing I noticed as we neared our destination were the hills.  They definitely didn’t qualify as mountains, but they dwarf any hills around Gatineau, and they are a fair bit steeper too.  As it would turn out, these hills would prove to be a reoccurring theme for the camp.

Shortly after discovering that the St. Lawrence gets tides in Malbaie (super cool!), we met up with the rest of the Team, and headed out for the first workout of the camp: rollersking hill reps on one of Malbaie’s crazy hills.

Unfortunately, a sharp pain started in my shoulder partway through the workout, so, after picking up groceries and heading back to the auberge, I went to bed feeling injury-stressed about this Burden In My Hand--or shoulder, rather.

Day two of the Malbaie camp continued the disaster theme that was started by my hurt shoulder.  To make a long story short, the three of us in the Stewart-Jones-mobile got completely lost on the way to the morning workout and ended up returning to our lodgings to go for a late morning bike ride.  To top off the disastrous day, I realized that my shoulder was going to be a problem for the rest of the camp and I cut my finger chopping vegetables for supper.

On Wednesday the situation reached the breaking point.  Either I was going to give up and be sad about my shoulder pain or I was going to find alternative ways of completing workouts.  Since giving up is for losers, I really only had one option.

From Wednesday to Friday, I set myself some specific goals to take advantage of the legs-only skiing situation:  1)good ankle/knee bend; 2)hips forward; 3)activate glutes.  In the past I’ve never been as good as I should be at using my gluteal muscles when skiing, and the 6:20hr of legs only I completed on Wednesday through Friday of the camp were a great opportunity to change this!

After I centered my focus on Wednesday, the rest of the camp went by in a flash.  High points in order of occurrence were: an awesome hike through the cloudy, surreal, boreal forest in Les Haute Gorge de La Riviere Malbaie provincial park, Soccer and Ultimate with the Team on Friday afternoon, and, finally, a sweet running interval workout, to finish off the camp, with Alexis Turgeon from CNEPH on Saturday.  Unfortunately, Alexis injured his hand during the week, so both of us were unable to race the time trial on the last day.  Luckily, running intervals were the next best thing.

Inspecting the beautiful scenery on our hike/run in the provincial park

To sum things up, I completed my goal of recovering more effectively at this year’s late summer camp than last year’s, and I learned something too:

When life gives you lemons, what do you do??  YOU GIVE THOSE LEMONS RIGHT BACK AND ASK FOR A FULL REFUND!!!!!!

But actually, whenever an injury decides to rear its ugly head, there should ALWAYS be something positive that you can salvage.  Sometimes it’s harder to find than others, but look for it, because it’s

 guarantied to be hiding back there somewhere behind the hurt and the pain.  Besides, I like lemons.

Yours Truly, looking extremely un-photogenic, and obscuring another amazing vista

Dream Big, people!

Mountain Biking

Hello vastness-that-is-the-internet!!  It’s a rainy Friday today in Ottawa, and rainy weather is depressing.  Know what’s not depressing?  Blog post number five!!

The awesome thing about being a cross country skier is that, unlike in many other sports, there is a huge variety of activities that you can participate in for cross-training.  On any given Summer day, I could be swimming (actually I don’t really like swimming, so x that), rockclimbing, running, rollerskiing, mountain or road biking--and still be becoming a faster skier for it.  

Out of all these summer sports though, there is one that I enjoy doing more than the others, and that is... mountain biking!  If one were to ask a friend of mine about my association with mountain biking, the friend would probably say that I’m obsessed, in fact, obsessed to the point that my manic excitement over mountain biking events can be somewhat annoying.  So, in honor of my offseason obsession (and the fact that the olympic xc mountain bike race is coming up very soon!), I have decided to post a countdown of (a few of) my favourite mountain bike videos from around the web!!

Is there anything better than a sweet mtb ride with friends?

This is a cool twist on trials riding that I found a couple years ago.  Older video--still fresh.

Dh rider vs Moto rider?  Recipe for awesomness.

I had to include one of Danny Macaskill’s videos for the uninitiated.

This is a Point of View video of a warm up run done by the current world champ Dh rider.

The video isn’t sped up.

I just really like this video of Rilor Wilderness.

As far as editing+song+riding goes, this edit of a rainy Winter day in BC is Epic.

So there they are!  Hopefully this has made your rainy Friday less sad.

Until next time,

Dream big, people!

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!