And we are literally hours away from the start of the World Cup season… ok ok false, the men have started their pursuit for Gold day 1 of the season in the 20km Individual competition. BUT the women are just under 24 hours away. It’s going to be yet another exciting year with rookies, newbies, returnees and veterans. By now, I guess I really fit into the veteran category! The veterans, though they are getting old and creaky, they have the experience, insight, and knowledge, and can still surprise! Just as the newbies can come out of nowhere and shock us all! So… the question is who is going to step up to the plate this year???

I had an excellent autumn… in October, 4 of us from the AB development training center (Melanie, Kat, Andrea, and myself) went to Salt Lake City (Soldier Hollow) for a 2 week training camp. Us girls were a dynamite team in the kitchen, cooking up delicious meals for optimal recovery post training! We even had a mini Thanksgiving dinner, roast chicken, quinoa stuffing, roast veges, a huge delicious salad, and of course, (not pumpkin pie) but pumpkin crumble…. in fact it even ended up being a gluten free meal with the crumble being made with buckwheat flour! ANYWAY… aside from great meals, we also trained. And we finished the camp with 2 Sprint races with the American team – part of their World Cup trials. The races were a good test and race practice. I finished 4th and 1st (with 8/10, 9/10).

After we returned on Oct 23rd from our warm extended summer training in Salt Lake, we happily were able to put the rollerskis away for the season! Because in Canmore it was cold enough for the saved snow from last year to be put out for a 1.8km loop! Frozen Thunder… the so called track, was really good this year. Soon we had snow making and then it was even more awesome….Plus Lake Louise received a good dump of snow and was full on winter wonderland beginning of November.

Side note – I have been fortunate to have had the opportunity to help out and hopefully inspire the growing team of Red Deer Nordic this fall. They have reached an astonishing number of 33 athletes! (When I was starting biathlon at age 15, Red Deer Nordic had disintegrated and was nonexistent.) I spent one full day with the team – run/ski bounding, roller skiing, technique sessions and finishing it with a team curry potluck. Just before I left for Europe, the team had a camp in Lake Louise, and I was able to join the team for a nice easy skate ski with 6 of the amazing young chicas!

On the 14th, 15th of November we had our World Cup trial races. I had decent races, coming 2nd overall, and therefore on the 20th was headed to Calgary to catch the long 10hr flight to Frankfurt. Note to newbie travellers… always bring a sleep mask, ear plugs (Bose noise cancelling headphones are a wicked addition), and if you can’t sleep, take a sleeping pill! A zillion hours later I arrived in Ostersund, Sweden and met up with our wax tech Tom Zidek to go his place for some jet lag recovery time. Tom and Anna Carin live in a small farming village named Lillhardal, so it was an excellent homey place to get some rest and relax before the big show. I thought I was a pretty adventurous eater, even from the age of 3, but little Liam Zidek at 3 1/2 was requesting a dollop of tubed caviar on his boiled egg at breakfast! Nope…none for me thanks!

Well it is now time for that show to get underway. Let’s see what the warrior princess has in her this year!

More to come as the races begin…

Our van was filled with the noise of young girls crooning to each pop song, whether it was ABBA, Avril, or ACDC. This is how we survived our drive to and from our camp in Whistler from August 18th-28th. Music, singing and seat dancing are marvellously important to the sanity of one’s survival in a long drive. Don’t forget that next time you take on the road. Even if it is only a 5 minute drive to the store. Sing it out…. and don’t forget car seat dancing.

On the way to Whistler we stopped overnight in Kelowna and were graciously taken in by one of our teammates family and absolutely fed to high heavens. Then next morning we did a long rollerski up a pass before continuing the drive to Whistler. The reason for a camp in Whistler was to do higher volume of intensity at a lower altitude than Canmore. And that we did. Day 1 we did a rollerski cross country sprint race with the World Cup Academy (a development and senior xc team based in Canmore that we are co-connected with). Being that is was my first cross country sprint race, I was a bit nervous about my sprinting abilities. I’m really not a fast-twitch! Well the result wasn’t too bad… but I think I will stick to the longer distances!

A couple of great hikes to add to the list as well – hiking the Squamish Great Chief (although climbing the Chief could have been more awesome!), and hiking up to front of Whistler to the Peak to Peak gondola in Whistler. Great views, great scenery and fun times. In honor of hiking up a mountain called the Great Chief, we put on war paint… only it was neon zinc oxide! What we didn’t realize was that your face gets really really sweaty underneath that zinc!

It wasn’t only train, train, train… Whistler happened to have live band performances going on every few days and we got out to see Bare Naked Ladies. “it’s been 1 week since you looked at me, cocked your head to the side and said I’m angry…” Memories anyone?

And then it was back to training… We enjoyed some solid summer heat, jumping into cold lakes, eating ice cream, and of course, roller skiing- technique, intervals and races – shooting, hiking, running and then it was back to Canmore…

Richard’s (my coach) little summary of the camp in this great video –  Whistler Training Camp