A lesson in training



This morning, Harris, my parents and I went back to Gatineau Park, our National Capital natural treasure. This time we were there to rollerski. The forecast was calling for rain but not until this afternoon. So we were very hopeful it would stay dry, which it did, for the most part. Luckily, it only really started pouring when we were on our way home.

When I got up this morning, I felt so tired from yesterday's long hike that I was sure today's session was not going to go well. To my surprise, however, as soon as I got on my skis, I felt my energy coming back. And as we continued skiing along and I got over the initial bit of pain in my ankles from the heavy rollerskis (they are metal and so weigh much more than skis do), I started feeling even better. Today may possibly have been the first skate rollerski session that my technique (especially one-skate) actually felt super right. I was getting nice long glide on each ski and planting my poles more softly just as Patti Kitler (my provincial coach) taught me. I wish you could've been there Patti, it was a real Eureka moment! Just goes to show that you don't have to feel great when you get up to have a great race or workout session!

 

Sorry about the picture quality. It was taken with Harris's Blackberry,whereas yesterday's photos were courtesy of my awesome iPhone :)



That's all I wanted to share today. I'll have to write an explanation about rollerskiing at some point. For now, I'd better go to bed as tomorrow's Monday again. Sigh. Good night from the capital once more.

It's a multi-task life

It's not quite the week of the 26th, but at least it's only the next week. This is going to be harder than I thought. There is just too much to do and too little time. I'm still multi-tasking like crazy with work, wedding planning, training for the 10k and all the other little things that come up along the way.

Last Tuesday I participated in filming a documentary to promote hiring people with disabilities. It was a really interesting experience. The film crew came to my office, and they were there from 9 to 1:30 filming me work; doing an interview with me and my reviser, Monica; and shooting a messaging session with a white background. They aslo came to Mooney's Bay Park after work to shoot me training. We were not finished until 8 p.m.! Who knew filming a short took so long! I was exhausted the next day. I think the film will be a really powerful advocacy tool for people with disabilities, and I am proud to have been a part of it. The finished product will be ready at the end of this month and will be available online. I will provide a link to it as soon as I have it.

I have also been asked to do two speeches in June, one for Relay for Life, apparently in front of 700 people (Agh!) and one for a women's leadership group that is part of Bank of America. I am honoured to have been asked but totally terrified as well. However, doing this can only make me stronger as an athlete and a person and teach me valuable public-speaking skills. I did my first speech at the CNIB a few weeks ago, and it wasn't all that scary, but it was only a small, very friendly audience - actually it was a great place to start my "public-speaking career." Haha!

The wedding planning is going well too. We have booked our honeymoon: we're going to Hawaii! We're so excited about it! Can't wait! The wedding is only 2.5 months away: wow, I didn't even realize till now how close it was! It'll all be good though, I'm sure.

My 10k training is going well too, though sometimes it gets pushed to the back burner with all the other things going on. I have done a couple of 6 km tempo runs (sustained-pace faster runs) that were under 30 minutes (under a 5 min/km pace). Today I am doing a 7 km tempo: since the race is only a few weeks away, I need to start getting closer to the race distance.

Well, it's just after noon and I have my horseback riding lesson at 4, so I'd better get going for my run. Happy Mother's Day from Ottawa!

Last day in Canmore

Our last day in Canmore was pretty uneventful, which is okay: we might as well save all the excitement for tomorrow! We went for a short ski this morning, which, by the way, I found really difficult today - I guess I'm not as recovered as I thought I was. What's worse, it seems everyone staying at the house is sniffling and not feeling 100%. I'm sure I am, if not fully, then at least partially to blame for that, though Jamie also brought something back from Vancouver with him. No matter whose fault it is, we're officially the "sicky house" now, so much so that the "A" team declined our dinner invitation today, for which we don't blame them in the least. We wouldn't want to be around us either if we were healthy!

The rest of our day was spent packing, cleaning and resting. We also had an amazing dinner tonight: steaks and saussages on the BBQ, sweet potato fries, salad and steamed kale with lemon. It was delicious! And pretty mcuh everyone had a hand in making it (not literally, that's not why we're all sick).

So tomorrow morning we're off to the Calgary Airport, from whence we fly to Vancouver, where VANOC will pick us up and take us to the Athletes' Village near Whislter via the new Sea to Sky highway. We get to have our first taste of Paralympic surrooundings. We also get out sizable clothing package and other "swag." All in all, quite an exciting day ahead. Better get a good night's sleep. Good night from the Sicky House!

Gorgeous day at Lake Louise

I was finally feeling well enough today to go for a bit of a ski. I can't remember the last time that I took three days off in a row, so I really needed to shake the cobwebs out and get some movement in. Andrea took us up to Lake Louise today, and what a day it was to be up there! The sun was so bright and warm that our new warm-up suits were definitely too hot to wear, and the scenery was so beautiful that I had to keep stopping for pictures.

That being said, I got a solid 1.5 hours of skiing in with a few short sprints to shake myself up and get my muscles to remember speed. It was really hard to get myself going at first, but after about 40 minutes it got easier: I could breathe better and my muscles felt more inclined to do their job. I think in a couple more days, I'll be good as new. Now, if only the rest of my teammates can stay healthy!

It being as warm as it was, we of course had to use klister for grip today. For those of you not familiar with this ski-specific stuff, klister is what nordic skiers use when the conditions are warm and icy. It's a really sticky liquid grip wax that is a huge pain to deal with. We Ottawa skiers are a little spoiled when it comes to ski conditions: our snow can most often be counted on to be cold and wet - very easy to wax for. As a result, I don't even own any klister, much less know how to apply it! Well, I got a lesson today from the non-spoiled west-coast skiers! If you're interested (and I'm sure most of you are not), Klister comes in a tube like toothpaste, and you have to put little dabs of it all along your grip zone and then use a cork - or apparently your thumb (no, thank you!) - to spread it very evenly. But the really fun part is of course cleaning it off your skis after you're done skiing! It's a sticky mess. Yuck!

Anyway, after we'd finished our ski, Andrea took us "to say a quick hi to the lake." So today I actually saw Lake Louise for the first time in my life. Granted it was covered in ice, but it was still breathtaking. See for yourselves!

The Lake Louise Ice Festival is on there now. They've got a skating rink set up on the lake, an ice castle bult and some Olympic-themed ice sculptures including giant Olympic rings. Of course, we had to take a picture with those. Don't we look sharp in our new team outfits? Apparently, Andrea missed that memo :).

And that's our day! Two more sleeps till Wistler! Good night from Canmore for now.

Canmore: Day 4 - Skiing in K Country

As you have probably gathered from the title, we went for a ski in Kananaskis Country today, more specifically, at Mount Shark. The ski area is at 1750 metres of altitude and has got some amazing, perfectly groomed trails. It was sunny and beautiful all morning, and the air smelled wonderfully of pine. Courtney and I went for a two-hour relaxed ski. I'm still not back to 100% and don't want to overdo it. Most of the others skied for 3 hours.

That is Mount Shark in the background of this picture, which Courtney and I took hurriedly before our guides started complaining about our dallying. It's supposed to look like a shark's fin. The scenery around here is absolutely breathtaking. Here is another shot of the mountains around Mount Shark. 

And guess who we met on our way back from Mount Shark? This cute gentleman right here.

It was pretty funny too because Andrea, who acts as our local guide to the area, was just saying that sometimes you have to stop for mountain goats when you're driving up here, and the next thing we know there's this mountain goat right in front of us! And then he ran up the cliff face like it was nothing!

Well, we're now about to eat our shrimp and pasta supper prepared by Courtney and Robert (who is a self-proclaimed professional vegetable chopper). So talk to you tomorrow.

Back in Canada

Judging by my lack of writing, you have probably already figured out that I'm back in Ottawa. It's funny how much busier one is when they're at home. I've been back for a week, and I have a couple more weeks at home before I head back out. I'm leaving for Canmore, this time for Para-Nordic Nationals, on February 26, and from there, if all goes according to plan, we head to Vancouver/Whistler on March 8. For now, I'm just taking a little break from hard-core racing, seeing some of my friends, hanging out with my fiancé, watching the Olympics, and of course, getting the last bit of training in before the Games.


Cliff, Jenna and I checking out the ice sculptures at Winterlude (Jesse F. was there too: he took the picture :))

Last weekend, we got lots of skiing in in the Gatineau Park. We did another biathlon simulation on Sunday, focusing on faster shooting. I shot 22 out of 25 with range times of around 1 minute to 1:10. Those are much faster range times than I had in my World Cup races, where I usually took over 2 minutes to shoot. If I can emmulate this at the Paralympics, it would help me a lot. I also worked on some high-speed downhill corners last weekend because we figure that is where I can gain some speed in my races in the short time we have left. Step-turning around difficult corners has always been really difficult for me, but snowplowing around them makes me lose most of my speed. This means I have to start climbing the next hill almost from a dead stop, while my competitors' speed carries them up part of the hill. In Whistler, the most important thing for me will be to get really familiar with all of the downhills, so that I can go down them confidently and let my momentum carry me up as far as possible.

Next weekend is the Gatineau Loppet in the Gatineau Park, and I'm taking part in its shorter distances this year: the 16 km classic and 10 km free. It'll be good to do another couple of races before Nationals the weekend after and the Paralympic Games in March. The Gatineau Loppet is especially valuable experience because it is a mass start and it will allow me to practise racing in a crowd, passing people and being passed.

Well, it's time to do some shooting practice. It's my day off but it's always good to practice shooting whenever possible. After all, there are only a few weeks left! Good morning from Ottawa.

France - Day 1: We've arrived!

So we're in France. And it's beautiful here! We're staying in a little village called Bessans. It's in a valley framed by spectacular mountains. The skiing is really fantastic: there are tons of snow and it's groomed almost to perfection with deep straight tracks. It's not as warm as you'd expect it to be in Europe and the snow is pretty cold, but that's just how we Ottawa skiers like it.

We arrived at around 2 in the morning and slept in till around 10, so that we can adjust to the time change quicker. The time difference with Ottawa is 6 hours. Amazingly, we took no wrong turns on our way to this tiny little hamlet lost in the French Alps, and the only thing that slowed us down was the weather. It snowed in Switzerland, rained at the border and then was dry for the rest of the way until we got here, where it was also snowing.

So today we just took it easy: went for a nice slow exploratory ski in the afternoon, settled some admin questions about our stay here while practising our French, and had supper.

Now's it's just about time for bed, so that we can get up at 7 and get started on anothe day of adjusting to the time change and altitude. We're at almost 2000 metres here. For now, this is our only goal: take it easy and acclimatize.

Good night from Bessans!

A little training update

Our European tour is fast approaching, and as a result, my coaches, my guide and I have stepped up our training. Since recovering from my Holiday-time cold, I've been doing lots of volume (longer skis) and  more intensity (harder skis). This increase has been taking a bit of a toll on my body though: I was really tired all of last weekend and Monday.

I had an amazing training session yesterday though thanks largely to having a back and leg massage a few hours before my workout. My quad muscles had been getting tired and stiff really easily during workouts lately, so my massage therapist performed Active Release Techniques (ART) on them yesterday. He explained that, from constant use and rubbing together, the muscles making up the quad group can get stuck together and not work properly. Using ART can help separate the muscles thus making them slide across each other and perfom their functions as they should. And what a difference that massage session made! I was able to go up the Pink Lake hill in the Gatineau Park, about a 7-minute uphill interval, five times without my quad muscles giving out on me as they had been. I encourage all athletes reading this to use the services of an ART-certified massage therapist. If you don't know one in the Ottawa area, ask me for a recommendation.

This weekend we have a couple of time trials planned with our Kanata Nordic coach, Harris, in the Gatineau Park to test ourselves before we head out for the World Cups. We were considering going to a race a few hours away, but thought better of it, what with the risk of getting sick and over-tired from travelling right before our big trip. I've got two more workouts planned for today as well, and I should be heading out for one of them as I write. So, I shall bid you good afternoon from Ottawa and head out to Mooney's Bay! 

Introducing a new mini-series of posts...

So I'm off work now until after the Paralympics.  Thanks to the Canadian government's International Sporting Event Leave policy, I can be off work in order to train and compete in international competitions for three months with pay. Pretty awesome deal!

So now I'm able to get my 8 hours of sleep and put in extra hours of training. I'm able to go outside in the daylight and keep my house clean and my fridge stocked with real food (those are the things that get put on the back burner when you have to work full time and train). I feel so much less tired and actually have energy when I hit the trails, even if I still have to do a lot of my training at night because my guide still works full time.

So I thought that while I'm in Ottawa and there's not much to report on, I would do a few posts explaining how things in my sport work. I could also answer questions about things in my blog or in my sport if anyone has any. Ask away!

I hope to post my first "how it works" entry later today.

Good morining from Ottawa for now!

A snowy blowy day

It was really windy and snowy in the Gatineau Park today. There was lots of snow coming down and blowing around. All the icicled tree branches from the Boxing Day ice storm kept hitting each other and making a weird glass-like sound overhead. I kept thinking they were going to fall and hit me in the head. They did fall onto the trail, and it felt like we were skiing over little shards of glass. One actually hit my hand, but it didn't hurt or anything. This almost blizzard with falling ice didn't scare away the skiers though. There were swarms of them on the trails, many with little kids in tow.

Robert and I skied mostly up and down Trail 5 today. There are some nice downhills with corners on there. We practised a few of them several times, trying to stay as close together as we could and step-turn rather than snowplow. It wasn't all that hard to do today considering the amount of fresh snow on the trail. We could be perfectly in control since there was no ice to slip on. The only obstacles we had to negociate were other skiers. It still made for good practice though. I'm slowly regaining my health and strength. It really sucks to be sick right in the middle of on-snow season when every practice counts. But things like this happen to everyone, and there is not much that can be done about it now.

Tomorrow there is no one to take me up to the Gatineaus, so I will have to ski at Mooney's Bay. I really hope they have been grooming! It's also my two weeks to have the biathlon rifle so I will have to go over to my parents' place (my dad is one of my coaches) to practise shooting tomorrow.

Good night from Ottawa.

December training update

We've now got lots of snow here in Ottawa, and the skiing up in the Gatineau Park has been awesome. I just went for a nice classic ski tonight. It was a little chilly out there, but the park's got lots of trees to protect us from the wind, which is the worst part of the Ottawa winter. Classic-ing felt weird after all that time spent on skate rollerskis this summer and fall. I couldn't really engage my grip zone on the uphills because either (a) I didn't have enough grip wax or the right kind of grip wax or (b) I've got to get my classic technique back! Either way, it was good to do some classic hills in anticipation of some classic racing this weekend.

I'm off to Thunder Bay on Friday. It's kind of ironic that we're going there considering that they hardly have any snow and we've got lots of great snow. Oh well, as my coach Patti says, it'll be good experience in preparation for our trip to Europe this year. With Europe, you never know what kind of snow you're gonna get! Could be white and fluffy, could be icy, could be brown and puddly. So you've got to be prepared for the worst.

On a training note, I'm still having some trouble getting out for a ski. Mooney's Bay hadn't been groomed yet on Monday, so I ended up just having to do some shooting at home. Yesterday, my dad and I did get out for a ski at Mooney's Bay, but it was kind of similar to doing moguls. Very bumpy! But I must admit, it's better than nothing. Thankfully, we were able to get out to the Gatineaus with my guide, Robert, today, but tomorrow it's back to Mooney's Bay. Though we'll have to wait and see: so far the forecast is for -15 with a wind chill of -22 tomorrow afternoon. And who knows what it'll be like in the evening!

That being said, I'm almost done working for the winter. I go on International Sporting Event Leave starting Dec. 24, and then I'll be able to ski during the day, granted only at Mooney's Bay, but hey, I'll be out in daylight!

Alright, this entry is getting a little long, and I'd better go to bed. So good night from Ottawa!