The Alberta World Cup Academy

I have made the move from NTDC Thunder Bay to Canmore, AB where I am now part of the Alberta World Cup Academy team. It is a new program this year that has attracted many high performance athletes from Alberta, BC, and Ontario.

I am currently sitting at our kitchen table in Silver Star, BC where we are having our first training camp of the year! Silver Star is just outside of Vernon. We are at a fairly high altitude here so there is still tons of snow for us to ski on. It is so incredible to be skiing in May. I have never skied at this time of year before. It is warm and sunny so I don’t have to ever worry about getting cold. Actually the conditions are kind of like the what the European conditions are like all winter.

Today I skied at Sovereign Lake Nordic and the conditions were unbelievable. We can use our good skis and everything! My heart rate was pretty high from the altitude and all of the traveling in the last couple of days, so I decided to just ski for an hour and a half but loved every minute of it. I did a lot of technique work and now my butt is really sore!

The new team is awesome. I don’t think that I have ever been on a team with so many high caliber women to train with. It is really amazing to get to see how they train and learn from them. I am really excited to be here and can’t wait to see how this season turns out!

The End

So my season is over. The 30km race at nationals was not a pleasant way to end it. I was exhausted, on antibiotics for a sinus infection, and my wax/skis were not right for the conditions. I had way too much grip for my first 7.5km lap. The snow was stuck inches thick on the bottom of my skis until Eric de Nys put down a piece of wood for me to ski over that basically took all the built up snow and wax off my skis. That was really nice, but I was already exhausted by then so I just wandered the rest of my race and finished off a tough season with a tough race.

Now I am in the midst of trying to make decisions for next year. Where to go? What to do? The Cross Country Canada annual general meeting is this weekend so hopefully some big decisions will be made there that help me decide what I am going to do next year.

I wanted to take this opportunity to thank all my sponsors and supporters. Thank you to my equipment sponsors Madshus, One Way, and Alpina. A special thanks to my financial sponsors Kanata Cross Country Ski Club, Pakenham Civitan Club, and the Pakenham Royal Bank. Thanks for helping me chase my Olympic dreams.

~Kate

Nationals So Far...

Hey Hey!

So we have raced 3 races here at nationals in Callaghan Valley at the 2010 Olympic venue. I raced the team sprint, a 5km classic, and a 10km skate. The two last races sucked. There really isn't any other word for it. We raced on hairries (waxless skis) for the classic race because the conditions here are so crazy. It keeps snowing, raining, getting cloudy, clearing up, and that is just in one hour. I have never skied on hairries before so it was a bit tricky for me. I need some practice. The skate race didn't go so great either. I felt okay, but it was snowing really hard and my balance was way off. Something else to work on.

But the team sprint was money! I raced it with my Kanata Racers team mate, Danielle McVicar who raced up in the open category so that we could have a team. We did great and had a good time. We won our semi final heat and headed into the finals. We gave it our all in the finals later that day and ended up 6th overall. We pushed really hard and had some great lap times. It was pretty cool getting to race the Americans Kikkan Randall (who won a sprint world cup this year) and Laura Valas (who won U23 Championships last year). It was also fun getting to catch up with Danielle and spend the day with my old team mates. I have really missed them this year. Overall it was a great day and I know that Heinz would have been proud of how well we skied.

2 more races to go: a sprint and my first 30km ever! Should be sweet!