Biography

I started cross country skiing at the age of seven. I was asked at my local daycare in Pakenham, ON if I would like to try the sport by Heinz Niederhauser, who soon became my first coach. I started skiing and racing in the National Capital Division and loved it. Every weekend there was a different race somewhere and a chance to meet up with all my friends and team mates.

When I was 14, I started racing the Ontario Cup series races. I qualified for the Ontario team that year and represented the province at my first national championships, held in Canmore, AB.

I spent 2 seasons training with the National Team Development Centre in Thunder Bay, ON before I made the move to Canmore last spring to train as a member of the newly formed Alberta World Cup Academy team. I am now starting my second season on the Academy.

With 2 world junior championships, an under 23 world championship, and four world cup races under my belt I am looking forward to another great racing season that will be filled with new adventures and hopefully some new opportunities that will lead me closer to achieving my goal of representing Canada at the Olympics.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Racing on a Cloud

Sorry for the lack of updates in the last few months. I've been focusing all of my effort into training and now I am ready to fill everyone in on the first race of my season.


Today's race was a skate sprint up on the mountain in Vernon, BC in extremely foggy conditions. The first race of the season is always one of the hardest. You never know how you are going to compare to your fellow competitors after a whole summer’s worth of training. There are a lot of uncertainties. In the past, I have found these races here at Sovereign Lake Nordic to be stressful just for that reason. I spent a lot of time this past November trying to get excited for these race, trying to just shake off all those uncertainties and nervousness so that all that was left was the fun associated with skiing and racing. Today, I woke up and was able to ski for fun. This has been the first race in quite a while that I can truly say that I have really enjoyed. I was able to tell myself that it is fun to race and that is why I do it.


I pulled off an eighth place in today's qualifying race, but ended up 21st at the end of the day, only competing in one quarter final heat. My qualifier felt pretty shaky, but I heard a number of people say that same thing today about their own races. I think that the snow conditions were to blame. Now I need to do some work on my heat racing abilities and I will be ready to rock. Once I learn to race the heats a bit smarter things will probably go a bit better.

We race a 10km skate race tomorrow before packing everything up and moving onto Whistler Olympic Park for next weekends NorAms.


All the doubts and stress of November training have passed and now December has brought on a race season that is bound to be filled with many fun races. I'll keep you updated!

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