Canmore

The last two weeks in Canmore have been filled with lots of training, I have gotten in a very good block of on snow distance training and am ready for the race season to start. The first race of the year was supposed to be yesterday but it was to cold to race. There is a rule that it is illegal to race below      -20c (-4f). Right now I as I am writing this I waiting to hear if we will race today its currently -28c       (-18f), so its not looking good for racing today.


When we first arrived in Canmore we had lots of work to do on our skis to get them ready for the season, each pair of freshly stone ground or new skis must go through a complex waxing process to get them race ready. Each ski must be waxed a total of ten times and skied on in between each waxing. I had five pair of skis that went through this process and there is four MWSC athletes here all with new skis. I will let you do the math on how many coats of wax that is. It took about a week but eventually everyones skis were ready to go.

Overall training conditions have been ideal, fresh grooming, until this weekend not terribly cold, and lots of biathletes from all over Canada to train around.

Coach Seth working away in the wax room

All of our skis on the wall

Getting ready to go do so ski testing

My clothes line in our room, a good place to dry clothes is essential when doing lots of training.

Friday, the official training day for the races the massive Canadian flag was  full flap. 

Some ice build up on the beard

On Saturday we woke up to about a foot of fresh snow, since it was to cold to race I decided to shovel our driveway then I shoveled our neighbors driveway and put all the snow in one giant pile. 

Since we couldn't race on Saturday I went for an easy ski with my mom.  

The road to Canmore

Before leaving Maine last week I had a couple of really fun opportunities. First off it snowed in the county, in Fort Kent we only got a couple of inches it was enough to ski in our front yard but that was about it. Further south in Caribou they got about 8 inches and so one of the cross country athletes fired up his snowmobile and groomed a 2km loop in the field behind his house. Considering that there wasnt that much snow and he was grooming by dragging a pallet behind his snowmobile the skiing was quite good. A couple days later it snow more in Fort Kent, this time it was enough to put on some rock skis and slog around the trails. It was not nearly as good as the skiing was in Caribou but we still had skis on our feet and were sliding around on white stuff. 

The skiing in Caribou

My new Madshus ski bag all packed and ready to go

The skiing in Fort Kent

Last weekend before flying west the entire MWSC post highschool team got together in Portland, Maine for a fundraising gala. The event took place at the Portland art gallery, we mingled with the people donating and a couple of the athletes talked about what the MWSC program has done for them. The art in the gallery was very interesting I am not really an art expert but I think it would have been considered "modern" art. I couldn't imagine paying for any of the art that was in the gallery like the piece in the picture below, I thought it looked like it was drawn by a third grader, it could be yours for only $2,500.

A $2,500 piece of art

The next day after the fundraiser the MWSC crew joined the bates, bowdoin, and colby college ski teams aboard the North Haven Island ferry to compete in the Maine state college rollerski championship. I had never done this race before but it was super cool because it started with an hour long ferry ride out to the island then the 15km race made one loop around the entire island. I had an okay race I placed 5th overall. Just being on the island and seeing everything was awesome!

A lighthouse as were leaving the mainland on the ferry

Maddie on one of the island docks

Maddie with the all of the island docks in the background

Riding the ferry home we had a super cool sunset

 After rollerski race I flew home to Washington and then drove to Canmore. I did this rather then flying straight to Canmore because I wanted to race the Canadian IBU cup trials that were taking place before the rest of the MWSC crew arrived. It was an uneventful but long trip. I arrived to Canmore just in time because up until two days before I arrive it had been very warm and the nordic center has been unable to make snow and the frozen thunder snow that people have been skiing on was getting very thin. Luckly it got cold and the snowmaking process was in full swing, right now there is about 2.5km of snow but there is going to be lots more very soon. Like I mentioned earlier I did the Canadian IBU cup trials races on the 2nd and 3rd day that I was here. The first day I shot 2,2 (4 misses) and my skiing felt very wobbly but that was expected since I havent been on snow very much this year. The second race felt much better I shot 1,1 and I felt like I could actually ski and not just flail around on skis.

Flying out of Seattle to Wenatchee

The snowmaking cloud that sits over the Nordic Center

Waxing up new Madshus skis

Racing the Canadian IBU cup trials

Another racing picture

The final week

This last week was a major turning point, the training season has basically ended and the race season is about to start. The thing about this week is that even though I have been looking forward to it for a while I have also been intimidated by it because I knew it was going to be very hard. Luckily, I just traveled to Maine I didn't have very much time to think about it before it actually started. The week really started last weekend in Jericho with the rollerski races then I came home and did four more days of intervals two days of level 3 and two days of level 4. The L3 workouts were 2 x 20mins with shooting and 4x12 min skiing on the road with no shooting. The two L4 workouts were 8 x 3min running on a very hilly course chasing my teammate Russell with shooting, this was the hardest workout of the week, and then the last workout was a 6km time trial with shooting. Overall I did 6 intensity workouts in 8 days and it left me pretty tired but it also need to be done so that I will be skiing fast in about a month. Now I get to take a couple of days of chill time and recover from all the hard work. 

One of the highlights of the week was Sunday afternoon when it started snowing, we only got a couple of inches but Monday morning we pushed all the snow from the yard into one pile and made a jump to go off. It was pretty fun to be back on real skis again!

I came home from Jericho to a big box of new Madshus gear

My Madshus box included a new giant ski bag that could double as a body bag

The pumpkins our house carved on Halloween

Going off the jump in our front yard

Some more going off jumps