Racing With the Flu

Yesterday was a rough day for me. I woke up at 1:30am with another stomach bug. I had a very sore stomach and was able to get back to sleep after a couple of hours but woke up in the morning still feeling like I could hurl at any moment.

I made it to the race site telling myself that I would allow myself to race as long as I didn't throw up and was able to stay on my feet during warm-up. Warm-up proved to be slow but possible, so I burped my way to the start line, did a few running sprints, and went for it.

Racing with the flu was a weird feeling... almost an out of body experience. My brain was so focused on keeping everything in equilibrium that I hardly even noticed the chorus of cheers coming from the crowd lining the course or the advise that our coaches were shouting. I just knew that I had to race 3 laps of the course, keep up a pretty solid pace, keep from red lining early in the race, and not let anything else get under my skin because I was just barely holding on. So I blocked everything else out and just raced. Me, my skis, and the snow.

Classic skiing comes pretty naturally to me (I know, I know, cocky, but it's kinda true) so it was pretty easy for me to just put my body into auto pilot and ski. I finished the race in 22nd, walked back to the wax room and lay on the floor until someone could drive us home. I made it home, climbed the stairs to my room, walked right into the bathroom and puked.

This wasn't exactly how I had planned to race yesterday, but it just goes to show you that if you want something bad enough you can do it under any circumstances. Hopefully my body will be feeling a lot better in tomorrow's 15km pursuit!

World U23 Championships so far...

Both the Juniors and the U23 athletes have each had a day of competition now at their respective world championships. The juniors raced their sprint competition 2 days ago and the U23s raced yesterday.

Team Canada has had a bit of a rough go over here. Almost every athlete has had some version of the flu lasting from 8hrs to 3-4 days. Now our wax techs are starting to get sick too. I myself had a pretty mild version of it 4 days ago. It hasn't been great for overall team moral, but I have been impressed with the way that everyone has handled the situation. It isn't very much fun having the flu at home, but when you are traveling it sucks even worst but nobody has let it get them really down.

We have already seen some solid results. My team mate Heidi Widmer posted a 15th place in the junior women's qualifiers on Monday and finished up 22nd after a heart breaker of a fall in her quarter final. The other 3 junior women and the 4 junior men narrowly missed qualifying for the heats.

In U23 competition our men's team led the way with 3 men qualifying and Len Valjas finishing 9th. I qualified 15th after a bit of a spastic qualifier. I was nervous and it showed in the way the i was skiing. I rushed my strides and got a little tangled up with myself a few times, but I was happy to qualify and make it into the heats.

I felt like I skied my quarter final heat well. I was in second for 2/3 of the race, and both uphill climbs which are not normally my strong point. The European sprinters are much more aggressive in the sprint heats and just staying on your feet with everyone jostling you around and stepping on your equipment is a feat. I held my ground in the sprint, but got a little turned around when a girl stomped on my pole and tugged me backwards and then I lost concentration for just a few seconds and the race was over. I was still happy with the way that I skied it, but just wished that I had been able to finish a little stronger. I finished the day in 21st position. Only one other Canadian women, Emily Nishikawa, started yesterday's race. Emily finished in 27th position after battling with a cold these last couple of days.

I race a 10km classic tomorrow. I am excited to go out there and hammer up those hills. It is a tough course, but I think that it will be fun. We'll see...

Sci di Fondo

Ciao!

So I am beyond overdue for an update here. Let's start from where I left off...

Olympic Trials: 7th in both sprint events. I qualified 5th on day one then 3rd on day two. I was pretty excited about those results, but they weren't enough to qualify me for the Olympics.

From Trials I went home to Pakenham for a short Christmas break with my family.

On January 30th my buddy Pate picked me up and we drove from the Ottawa area to Quebec city for world under-23 (U23) qualification races.

I was 7th (3rd U23) in the 15km pursuit. That was the race that I was least looking forward to because it was the longest, hardest, and involved 50% skate technique... my weaker technique. Day 2 of racing in Quebec was the skate sprints. I qualified as the top skier in my category, but ran out of steam in a big way for the B finals. I pushed so hard in my semi final to try and make it into the A final but just missed an A final position but cemtimeters for the 2nd year in a row. This meant that I had to race the B final and win it, but I bombed it hard.

I went home after that race pretty shaken up. I felt like I had blown my shot at the world championships for a 2nd year in a row. We had a rest day after that race before or final race--a 10km classic technique.

When I woke up on the 10km day I kinda felt relieved. No one really counts me as a contender for a distance race anymore and it felt nice to have no one expecting anything of me. I knew that I could handle this race 2 ways. I could just give up or I could just throw caution to the wind and really go for it. I love classic skiing so I decided that today would be my day. I hit the trails and hammered for the entire race. I ended up 4th overall and 2nd U23. The top 3 women are all going to the olympics for distance races and I finished right behind then! I was pretty happy. the fun thing was that I didn't really care how my results looked I just knew that I had skied a good hard race and tried my very best and at the end I was happy with it no matter where i ended up on the results.

My 2 good distance results were enough to qualify me for the Under 23 world champs in Hinterzarten, Germany! Right now I am sitting in my hotel room in Livigno, Italy where we are staying for 4 days before we head to Hinterzarten for the championships.

Team Canada arrived in Europe on the 14th and spent the first few days in our home away from home in the Hinterzarten area. We raced 2 days after arriving and that was a weird experience. I was so jet lagged on the start line! I qualified first in the German cup sprint that we were competing in but ended up 8th at the end of the day. 8th and totally sleep depreieved! I was shaking because I was so tired, hungry and confused. I found that there was about a 3 second lag between the time that my brain would decide to do something and the time that it took my body to react. A bit of an out of body experience!

We start World champs in about a week. Stay tuned for updates!

Olympic Sprint Trials

Today was the first of 2 Olympic sprint trials races. It was a 1.4km classic sprint here in Canmore. After a stressful week back home in the 'Ham I was happy with my 7th place finish.

In the morning qualifier I finished 5th. It was a warm day so I thought that I wouldn't get race cough today. I was very wrong. Pretty much everyone that I saw cross the finish line felt like their lungs were going to explode. It is not a pleasant feeling. Then when I went inside it sounded like a smokers convention with all the coughing. I always think that it is crazy that we can push our bodies so hard that we make ourselves cough because we have shredded our lungs.

I came second in my quarter final later in the day. In my semi final I was a hurting unit, feeling a little pooped after climbing the giant hill in the course at full speed twice already that day. I ended up making it into the B final and was able to pull it together and win that final to take 7th place.

I was happy with my results but I know that it will not be enough to get me an Olympic spot. Tomorrow we race the exact same race all over on the exact same course. The purpose of this is to make sure that they take the most consistent sprinters to the Olympics. It will be a long hard day all over but it should be fun to see how people handle the course after learning how to race it today.

Bye for now!
Kate

First Race

Hey Everybody,
Yesterday was my first race of the 2009/2010 season. We are currently in the U.S. racing in West Yellowstone at an altitude of somewhere around 7000 feet (aka HIGH!). Yesterday we had a sprint qualifier (only the qualifier, because USA is picking their Olympic sprinters based on just qualifying results--not heats). It was the longest sprint that I have ever done. It was 1.4km and it took the women over 5min!!! This is a huge difference compared to the normal 3min sprints. I suffered through and ended up in 24th. Eeee... I've got some work to do. I felt pretty flat throughout the race, but hopefully that is just because I am knocking off the rust from not having raced in 6 1/2 months.

Tomorrow I will sit out the 10km skate race, as was planned, to give my body a bit more of a rest before the 5km classic race on Saturday.

Now, I think it is time for me to go and cash in on some American thanksgiving chow!

Later,
Kate

Praise You- Fat Boy Slim

Cross Country Skiing may be considered an individual sport, but the average skier is part of a club or team and when I was listening to some of my older songs on my ipod I came across the song that I have used as my title today. There is a line in it that goes like this, "We've come a long long way together through the hard times and the good." This line, and the whole song actually, made me think of how hard I have worked alongside so many different team mates and how so much of my success as a skier I owe to my team mates.

I have had the opportunity to work with many different teams and clubs. As a 7-year-old I had team mates that would build snow forts with me and toboggan for hours after every race that we did. These team mates were the ones that helped me really learn the value of having friends in the sport. I am still friends with most of these people today and it is pretty fun to look back on all of our adventures at Lowney Lake

When I was 10 or 11 my family changed clubs and I was introduced to a whole new group of team mates. These team mates introduced me to the different levels of competition that lay ahead of me and taught me how to set goals and train to achieve these goals.

At age 17, I made the choice to change clubs again because I was the only girl left in the program and I felt that having female team mates and peers was important to my ski career. I made the right decision. This next set of team mates were some of the people that have shaped a lot of my life. I spent 2 years with team McBlennanhauser (sorry, inside joke) and loved every minute of it. This was a group of skiers that had the same goals that I did, loved to train, and were very able to push me in my day to day training. We had some very wacky road trips all over the country and I still have a mix cd that we made after my last year on the team and some of those songs still make me laugh.

When I turned 19 I moved up to the Thunder Bay National Team Development Centre. This was a crazy fun team too. I was one of 2 girls on a team of 8 athletes so I quickly learned how to hold my own against 6 boys. These were team mates who showed me the true meaning of the word team. We were on the road together for pretty much 8 months of the year and this fact alone taught us how the success or disappointment of one individual affected each and every member of the team. When someone succeeded it was a a success for the whole team and when someone failed it showed us all what we had to work on as a group.

Last year, at age 21, I moved out to Canmore to join the Alberta World Cup Academy-the team that I am on now. This team showed me how important it is to have such competitive team mates. On any given day any number of my female team mates can beat me. It is humbling, but it is also motivating. Some of my current team mates don't see the benefit of having peers to train with or learn from, but I appreciate all of the advantages that my team mates offer to me. My team mates are my coworkers, friends, competition, and motivation. I am lucky to have them

So, I want to "Praise you like I should" and say thanks to all of my team mates past, present, and future for pushing me every day and keeping it real.

John Lennon- Arkells

The song in the title of this blog has a line that goes "I'm so lost, and I live just around the corner." That line has always made me think of being so confused and in such a tough situation that you can't even tell which way is up. It makes me think of someone who is so overwhelmed that they don't even know where to begin.

I have to confess that in the last month I have felt like that a hundred times. When faced with my dad's stage 4 brain cancer diagnosis I went through every emotion possible. Then I was able to go back out west and spend some time with my team and boyfriend. I was able to get some perspective on my situation and my family's situation by having some time away from it all physically--mentally I was still at home most of the time.

I had never been in a situation that was so stressful and overwhelming that I couldn't focus on my everyday life before all of this. I would find myself doing tasks and not know why I was doing that or get somewhere and not know how I had gotten there. I would space out in mid conversation and have to ask people to repeat themselves. For some reason I had thought that everything would work itself out when I returned to Canmore and that I would be able to distance myself from all of my problems at home and focus on my skiing. I thought that somehow my two worlds wouldn't meet up and I would be able to keep them separate, but I quickly learned that there is only one world and both of mine where part of it.

Once back in Canmore I hopped right back into training and managed to do a few really great workouts with my team. My hope at that point was to tire my body out physically so that it would match the same fatigue level as that I was at mentally. I thought that if I could tire myself out that I would finally be able to sleep through the night. It turns out that no matter how tired you are physically, if you are really stressed out mentally you won't sleep.

I accepted that I was just going to have to do the best I could on the amount of sleep that I was getting and I headed up to the Haig glacier with my team for a week long, on-snow, skiing camp in mid July. The camp started off a little rocky for me just because I was still unable to focus on technique and what my coaches were expecting from me. But, as the week flew by I found myself slowly falling back into a normal training rhythm and all of a sudden I was able to deal with everything that had been set in front of me again. It sounds strange, but by the end of the week of skiing I realized that I no longer felt totally and utterly helpless. My brain was kicking back in and helping me find somewhere to begin tackling my problems.

I say all of this as though I struggled through it on my own, but my boyfriend, coaches, and friends were all there helping me through each and every day and I know that I couldn't have done it without them. I have an amazing support crew all around me and my family.

This experience so far has helped me realize just how much of my training is a mental process. I can go out and do my hours and be completely zoned out with my thoughts miles away, but I am not going to get much out of the workout. I realize that my mind is a huge factor in winning races and mastering technique and training. It is a factor that I have taken for granted the last 14 years of my ski career. So now I have the opportunity to work with a sports psychologist for the first time in my ski career, one on one, so that I can understand how to use my mental capabilities to their full potential and deal with the road that has been laid out in front of me. It could be a bumpy road but I am in it for the long haul.

I am back at home in Pakenham for the week to spend some time with the 'fam, but I head back out West on Monday to prepare for our Whistler camp and spend some time in Canmore.

Take a Minute- K'Naan

I have been thinking about writing a blog update now for the last 3 weeks but with what is going on in my life I don't really know how to write it.

Just over 3 weeks ago now my Dad was admitted to hospital with a brain tumor the size of an orange. He had been showing signs of a persistent cold and almost something like depression for a few weeks. Then his short term memory started to fade and my mom took him into the hospital.

Phil (my boyfriend) and I flew back the next morning and I have been back in Pakenham since. Luckily my younger brother and sister were at home at the time and my older sister was able to fly back from Ireland shortly after.

This is one event that I never anticipated having to deal with this year... or ever. I have taken one big step back from skiing and really come to appreciate the things that matter in my life. I love to ski, but I love my family so much more. It has taken me these full 3 weeks to decide whether or not I will continue skiing this year, or decide to be at home in Pakenham while my dad battles through radiation and chemo and beating this cancer.

I turns out that I am hoping to do both. I fly back out West to Canmore on Tuesday to try and hop back into training, a glacier camp, and my life out West, but I will be back and forth between Pakenham and Canmore throughout the next few months and year.

I want to thank everyone for the overwhelming support that they have offered me and my entire family throughout these last three weeks. This experience has opened my eyes up to a whole new level of generosity and kindness and I know that it has made me a better person.

"And any man who knows a thing knows he knows not a damn, damn thing at all. And every time I felt the hurt and I felt the givin' getting me up off the wall."

My little sister played the K'naan song that I have used in my title one night as we were driving back from the hospital and it has been in my head ever since.

And... We're Off!!!

Well, the new team had been chosen and the season is under way. We are currently at our first training camp in Silver Star BC. Out of the 20 athletes on this year’s team, 15 made the trip to Silver Star for a 9 day on snow camp.

The skiing has been absolutely amazing with fresh snow almost every day and some beautiful sunny days. Yesterday for example we went for a 2hr ski in the morning and then went down into Vernon, the town at the bottom of the mountain, 20min away. It is full on summer in Vernon. We had ice cream and lounged in the sun at one of the gorgeous parks in the area. It was our first taste of summer this year and everyone was pumped.

After this camp I head home to good old Pakenham for 2 weeks of real summer—none of this mountain summer snow-until-June stuff. I miss the heat and the humidity. I am looking forward to green grass, the hammock, some time with my family and friends and of course a good solid game of euchre.

Nationals Crash!

Some readers were disappointed that I didn't do any stick drawing of my crash during the sprints at nationals, but I can do one better. One of our famous wax techs, Tony Stephen, captured the entire event. Here are Tony's pictures:


I am the second person in the photo...Still on my feet.


Turning looks good...


Woman down! Check out the snow flying!


I got a little tangled in the snow fence.


Trying to shake it off and get back on my feet. I was a little confused at this point. It all happened so fast!


Okay, back on my feet.


Back in the race.

End of Season/ Start of Season

Yeah, I know… What is the point of having a blog if you aren’t going to update it? A good question, but it’s a new season with new goals and one of them is to keep my blog up to date.

The final races of last season saw quite an improvement in my skiing and my results. I really can say that not making World U23 Championships was truly a blessing in disguise. Not going to Europe made me realize that I could no longer let any of the little things in my training and technique slide. It was time to break everything down and work long and hard on my weak areas.

All that hard work began to pay off when I won the sprint at Western Canadian Championships and came 3rd in both distance races. That was the extra little boost in confidence that I needed going into Canadian National Championships in Duntroon, Ontario.

We saw every different kind of weather imaginable in Duntroon throughout the week, but that didn’t stop the Academy from performing at the highest standards. Everybody on the team came out strong and lucky I was one of them. I had some of my best distance races even in the skating events which is by far my weaker technique. Then, on sprint day, I qualified first. To be honest I have never qualified first in a NorAm sprint event before. That was a pretty big high for me. At the end of the sprint day I was 5th because of a fall in the A final (3rd Canadian). I got to bring home my first senior nationals medal and it is hanging here in my room as I write this. (To read more about nationals or check out some pictures follow this link http://www.albertaworldcup.com/main.php?p=44&s=4 to the Academy web page)

Now the new season is about to start and I am pumped! The new AWCA team will be chosen in the next week and I am excited to meet the new team. I have some big goals this year and I am ready to start tackling them.

I’ll let you know about the new team as soon as I have heard!
~Kate

What Do I Do Now?

I am one of those people who thinks that everything happens for a reason—the good, the bad, and everything in between. I believe that the Big Man upstairs needs us to go through these ups and downs so that we can grow and learn and come out the other end even stronger.

Since my last update I raced my last two races at World Under 23 trials in Canmore. My pursuit race was horrible. It was probably the worst race that I have had in years. I was battling the one year anniversary of my former coach’s death and I really wanted to have a good race to make him proud. But with all that on my mind I went out way too hard and suffered for the last half of the race.
I had to refocus for the sprints the next day, but in my semi final I just got nudged out of making the final and kissed my ticket to U23s away.

So for the last week I have been trying to scrape all of the pieces back together and decide what to do next. It has been a bit of a daunting task. With setbacks like these they always make you stop and take a hard look at what you’re doing. Where did I go wrong? What can I change? Should I even keep trying? All of these questions and millions more have filtered through my brain this week. What do I do now?

To be honest I took a day to file through all my options. By the end of that day I had come to terms with the fact that I would be spending the rest of my season in Canada, but I had also come to terms with the fact that it was okay. It is an opportunity in disguise. I have a chance to pursue other types of goals. I can pick up a little more school. I can do all of the races that I have been missing out on the last few years that I have gone to Europe. I can get some solid training in here at home and work on all the things that are holding me back so that they don’t hold me back when it really counts. I have an opportunity to take this so called disaster and make the most of a miserable situation. I can choose to sit back and except defeat or rise to the challenge.

In a sport like skiing, it sometimes feels like if you miss a step or an opportunity along the way that it is virtually impossible to make it to the next one.


It feels like there is no way that you could possibly make it past this point on the stairway to the top because now there is a gapping hole in the staircase.


But if you take the time to learn from your mistakes and become stronger you can build up that stairway again.


And when the next opportunity comes along you will be ready to make it to the top.


My next opportunity is in the form of a world cup race in Whistler this Friday. I have been chosen to race as part of the national group just like last year. I am pretty proud and excited to race against the rest of the world at the 2010 Olympic venue. It should be fun to rip around that course knowing that the very best in the world will be lining up there next year.

Hope you enjoyed my drawings!

Trials- 10km Skate

Well, all in all it wasn't my finest day at the office, but I was happy with how I skied. Skating is something that I have been working on and I think that this race shows that it has come along a bit this year which is encouraging. I was the 5th Canadian U23 skier (11th overall) today so that doesn't set me up well to be chosen for U23 championships but there are still 2 more races.

It was exciting to see some of my training buddies and teammates step up and excel today. Sara Hewitt and Marlis Kromm both had exceptional races finishing as the 2nd U23 and 1st junior racers respectively. It was pretty cool to get to celebrate with them a bit today.

Now, after a cool down, a cold bath for my legs, and a big lunch I am well on my way to being recovered for tomorrows 15km pursuit. Hopefully tomorrow is a little more promising.

Too Cold!

Well, my first World U23 trials race was supposed to be yesterday but due to cold weather I spent the day sleeping in, playing cards, and doing a little ski just to get some training in. The 15km pursuit has now been moved to Monday meaning that I will race the next 3 days back to back to try and qualify to represent Canada in France.

It wasn't much warmer today, but when the sun came out the temperature started to climb from the frigid -31 Celsiuses that we woke up to. Today's race at the Canmore Nordic Centre was a skate sprint that was used as a qualifier for World Senior Championships. It would have been fun to race it, but with my main focus being World U23s I decided that resting would be a better choice.

Tomorrow I race a 10km individual start skate race on a pretty tough course. I am excited to race and pretty nervous. You can find results full results at www.zone4.ca .

The Countdown Is On...

With a whirlwind Christmas in the Ottawa area behind me, the trials races for Under 23 World Championships are just around the corner. This next week will be mentally and physically exhausting for all the Canadian skiers who are hoping to make it to a world championships. Junior, Senior, and Under 23 world Championship trials races are being held here in Canmore from Friday to next Tuesday. I am racing 3 of the 4 races (all the ones that count towards U23 trials). I will sit out the skate sprint that is only being used to determine the Senior World Championships team.

These are the races that most skiers spend their summer training for and I am no exception. We all want to be in peak shape when we blast out of the starting gate and make our way around the trails. So far I am feeling pretty good (knock on wood...) and I am planning on staying that way. I took it pretty easy today and just tested some skis. I did a time trial yesterday that shook me back to reality after a nice, relaxing 4 day holiday at home. Now I am looking forward to racing and seeing how it all turns out.

Silver Star Update

Last Sunday I raced my first distance race of the season. It was a 10km skate (freestyle) event. I was happy with my performance from a training point of view as I felt like I was skiing technically better on the uphills. Overall my result wasn't fantastic, but I was still happy with my race and how much I have technically improved since last year.

Our next set of races were to begin tomorrow in Callaghan Valley, Whistler at the soon to be 2010 Olympic venue, but due to a lack of snow the races have been moved back here to Silver Star. Sooooo... I have stayed put with my teammates and put in a few more days of skiing here.

Unfortunately, I woke up this morning with a sore throat which meant that I had to be moved out of the house with all my female teammates and spend the day at the coaches house. After spending the day like an indoor cat (sleeping, eating, and all the rest...), I am feeling a bit better. I slept for 3hrs this morning and now feel a little disoriented, but my throat is easing up. Luckily I wasn't planning on racing tomorrows race because of such an intense early season schedule so I won't be missing out on that. But, I was planning on racing the sprints on Friday and the classic distance race on Saturday night. I might have to miss out on those if I don't start to feel better fast which is a big disappointment, but I have learnt to deal with sickness as a training exercise. I just have to set up my day like a training ritual of vitamins, sleep, and liquids. I have to learn from each time I get sick so that I can figure out how to avoid it all together as I get older, or at least how to get healthy asap.

As of now, I am on my 6th cup of tea and considering another nap. Maybe I will feel better tomorrow...

Ciao!

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!

Amateur Hour

In sport, you always hear about athletes that suffer an injury then start to recover, only to injure themselves again because they didn’t give themselves enough time to recover. I always thought that this was a pretty amateur move. Athletes get injuries. It happens. But, as athletes we know that it takes time to recover from these injuries and you have to be smart about it.

I have spent the last year and a half trying to recover from a hip overuse injury. It took probably a year of this time to actually figure out what was causing the problem, but with the years of support from my home town chiropractor and the new ideas and tons of support from my medical team out here in Canmore I finally got some relief late this summer. A year and a half of physio, massage, chiropractor, and doctors appointments all seemed worth while when I finally got to lace up my runners and hit the trails with my team mates on our last trip up to the Haig this summer. For a kid who ran track and cross country all through high school it sure felt good to be able to run again. All of a sudden my hip didn’t hurt anymore and I was pumped…

…Maybe a little too pumped. After sitting out on team runs, hikes and ski walks for over a year I was pretty stoked to be back in the mix and included on these adventures. So this week when I looked a the schedule and saw that the team was doing a 4 hour run from Canmore to Banff and up Sulfur Mountain I was excited. You would think that some kind of little red light would go off in the back of my mind or that some little voice would say “Kate after doing almost no running for over a year do you really think that this is a good idea?”. But, alas, my little shoulder angel was turned off this week.

I made it about 2hrs pain free then things went downhill. I finished the workout but felt like an idiot. What an amateur move. Of course I wasn’t ready for 4 hours of running. Hindsight is 20/20 though. I couldn’t sleep that night because my hip was so sore again. I was feeling pretty rough the next day too. I guess I was just so excited to be feeling better that I rushed the rest of my recovery process. One and a half years of work for 3 weeks pain free. This thought made me really stop and think. I have worked so hard at getting back to 100% and now I have a chance to keep it this way. I now have the skills and knowledge to make my hip feel better and I know that I can do that. I also know that I am NOT going to take another year and a half to figure out how to keep it feeling that way. I made a mistake, but I defiantly learned from it. I am not going to screw it up again.

Summer is Over

2 weeks on family vacation in Maine, a training camp in Kananaskis Valley, a quick trip to the Haig and the summer is over!

It feels like the summer has just rushed on by and winter is just around the corner. We have already had a dusting of snow here in Canmore (along with 25cm of fresh powder for our weekend on the glacier). Each morning I head out my door into a frosty atmosphere. I can’t believe how fast summer disappeared!

It’s nice to have the cold weather though. I like when my cheeks are rosy and my ears are beat red. As a skier, you notice yourself and your teammates become a little more focused and serious once the temperature starts to drop. For most of us, the fall means some pretty intense training. I was roller skiing the loop up at the Nordic Centre here in Canmore a few days ago and there were at least four different teams doing intervals. It’s pretty cool to be out west surrounded by such a huge group of hard working skiers. There certainly isn’t a lack of enthusiasm out here!

The snow is on its way and we are going to be ready when it gets here. 11 more weeks until we line up to race in Callaghan Valley!

Haig Glacier Camp

After a spending a week smelling the sweet wafting smells of burning poop and hand sanitizer, playing every card game known to man, and living above the tree line in a moon-like environment, I am home from skiing on the Haig glacier.

The glacier was awesome this year. We had perfect weather, great skiing conditions, and awesome food (thanks John and Joel!) the entire week.

I went into this camp a little leery. I have never made it through a glacier camp without getting sick and I was worried that this trip up would be just the same as usual. I had to hike in while the rest of the team ran because of my continual hip problems, but on my solo journey through bear country I had time to think about what I wanted to take out of this week. I knew that Mike (my coach) had a tough week set up for all of us and was expecting me to bring my game face. I knew that the high altitude would be hard on my body both on and off my skis. And I knew that I would have to step up all my recovery techniques to be able to pull through the week. That said, I also knew that I had an amazing opportunity to pull my training together on snow. I was going to go skiing in July! That’s cool.

The altitude does funny things to my body. It obviously makes my heart rate higher as my body works harder to obtain the needed oxygen. I find it more difficult to sleep and stay hydrated. I also have a problem eating enough food to make it through the night which means that I have to bring a snack to bed that I pull out around 2am.

The first few days of skiing were amazing. I skied my first ever 3hr ski on the glacier and made some huge improvements in my technique work. I immediately noticed that my heart rate was easily 10 to 15 beats lower than last year on the glacier. I have been working hard to bring my fitness level up and waiting for this to happen and it was so exciting to see that all my hard work this spring has paid off.

But, it wasn’t until the 4th day up there that I made my biggest accomplishment. In the core workout, the afternoon after my second 3hr ski day, I opted to do one more set of the core routine with the older girls on the team. It seems like a tiny little thing that anybody could have chosen, but to me it was big. It meant that I was feeling healthy enough to handle a little more, but it also meant that I was stepping up to the plate. I decided to push myself a little harder, to take one more step closer to my goals this year. Then after the core I did 12 pull-ups without stopping! That is the most that I have ever done in one go and that was after 4.5 hours of training that day! I was pumped. While I pushed out the watts on the stationary bike for my cool down I could feel my heart pumping and all of a sudden I realized how pumped I am for this coming race season.

I made it through the entire camp without getting sick and now I have one more though week before I get a nice rest. This week will probably see some tough days where I don’t feel my best, but as Mike says “You will have to travel through the valley of death”. It’s all a part of training.

I don’t think that I have ever felt this excited about racing. I am 100% in this year. I want to race, I want to compete at the best of my abilities, and I want to have fun out there. I am excited about my progress already this year and can’t wait to jump right back into training tomorrow and bust out some tough intervals. Bring it on!

The camp. We hike all the way up to the top left-hand side of this picture to do our skiing!

Practicing some lunges to the line. Hopefully by race season this will be a little better!

The AWCA team!