The Edge (of glory): 3600km

First Monday blog-day!! Yay!

Stop. Hammer time. Yannick and I made it almost to Banff on our Sunday rollerski. The waterfall was pretty

As most of you who follow my blog know, I am now living in Canmore Alberta and training with the World Cup Academy (one of Canada’s top, if not the top, xc ski training centers). But let's back track a bit: why did I decide to make this move?

To simplify my motivation for this big change in scenery down to one sentence (something I’m not sure I feel comfortable doing, but will do anyway): ‘It’s because I have big goals.’ This year I want to qualify for World U23 Championships (they are in Italy!); a couple years down the line I want to be making the podium on the World Cup and in 2018 I want to qualify for the Olympics!

"Yikes! sounds ambitious", you say. "How are you gonna achieve all that?" As with most destinations, figurative or not, the end of “the road to the olympics” or, more accurately for my case, “the road to international success in skiing” can be reached in more than one way, and, to make things even more complicated, some routes may be better for certain individuals than others--so I can’t just be like: “looks like Lenny did 500hrs of training here, a camp in Maui here, this amount of intensity here and he’s really fast now!” And then just try to copy exactly what Lenny did these last couple years, ‘cause what made him fast might not be the best thing for me.

So coming off the end of the race season this year I was putting a lot of thought into how I could get to where I want to be in my sport in the most efficient fashion. With this in mind, I came up with a list of what I thought I needed to do to be faster next season (improve efficiency, improve strength, improve classic sprinting, have faster peers to train with, etc...). Upon reflexion, I realized that I could achieve most of my training goals at home or in Canmore--which is cool, but which didn’t help my decision making process at all!!!

Finally after lots of pointless worrying and lots of thought on the topic, my decision came down to this: I have trained at Nakkertok for 8 years. I have developed an awesome support system in the Ottawa region, I have great facilities to train at, and I know I can get faster working at Nakkertok with Kieran as my coach. But, in Canmore I have new training partners (who also happen to be some of the best skiers in Canada!), better facilities (ice baths, mountains, a rollerski treadmill, a glacier...), and a better coach to athlete ratio. On top of this, I will get a new perspective on high-level ski training, a more focused environment, not having to drive EVERYWHERE (a 2min jog to training rather than a 20min drive is a sweet change) and some cool new trails to explore.

When I realized that things were going to work financially, I decided that Canmore would be the way to go. Even if it’s not a perfect fit for my training style, I know that it will be an awesome learning experience. And as far as being ‘a perfect it for my training style’ goes, things are looking pretty good so far! Since my arrival I’ve: