Training is once again in full swing, we just got home from our first camp of the year down in Bend, Oregon. It was once again a great camp with great skiing, great mexican food great afternoon coffee outings:


We timed our camp perfectly to have the Americans around to train with. The women will meet again in Alaska in July. North American Women's Training Squad (NAWTS?) We obviously need to come up with a name for ourselves...
I'm only back in Canmore for a few days before heading to Ottawa for a Fast and Female event on June 12th! If you haven't signed up yet, do it quick, there aren't many spots left. Go to: Fast and Female Registration

Bike month is also underway in Almonte, and I'll be out for a ride on the 11th. Those details can be found here: Bike month info
It will be sponsored by Baker Bob, so you know it's going to be awesome.

In the meantime there are lots of other sweet biking activities going on like bike polo!

After a few days at home it's back to Canmore to unload my duffle bag, wash, and reload for our Hawaii camp!
June is shaping up to be a pretty good month, I even have lettuce sprouting in my garden, so I'm pretty excited.

Spring Road Trip

Just got home from a road trip down into the Colorado desert to do some biking, and get some warmer weather!
Here are a few photos from the trip courtesy of one P. Wood who did a most excellent job of documenting our outings.







Time to get back at it!

Spring so Far

It's mid winter in Canmore...

Thanks for a Great Year!

It’s that time of year again, we all start looking back and reflecting on our respective seasons, and start looking ahead to the next one.
As I look back at the 2010-2011 racing season I have to consider it one of my most successful. Especially considering where I came from last season. At the end of last season I was dragging myself around the race courses at Nationals in Whitehorse, having just recovered from a brutal cold and pink eye. My body was telling me something- it wasn’t happy.
I took a few months off to get some energy back, and made a plan with Eric about how I was going to get back on track.
It seems like the plan worked, I skied to a number of personal best results this season, and I feel like a completely different person than the tired sack that fled Whitehorse Nationals early because she could barely think rational thoughts.
It’s been a fun season, and I’m looking forward to the next one eagerly as I have an amazing team of people around me that have helped make this year a good one.

Eric and Justin were a great coaching duo all season. Crawford and Company Canada Inc, ADHS the Almonte branch of the Royal Canadian Legion and the Almonte Civitan Club were also key in supporting me this season. THANK YOU!

Here’s a few photos from the spring so far- Kieran has been out visiting, so he has been documenting the last week.

World Champs recap in numbers:

2- number of team members who were crowned World Champions!
6- where Dasha and I finished in the team sprint
20,000- number of people camping in the bush on Saturday night before the 50km
120,000- number of people who came out to watch the 50km
1 million- number of people so spectated throughout the championships
4 million- population of Norway (that means about a quarter of Norway watched part of World Champs live)
15- my estimate of how many hats my teammates and I made this week- amount of yarn was our limiting factor.
10- rating out of 10 I would give the 2011 Oslo World Championships

We have now moved to Finland where we will race this weekend, so here are a few Finnish stats:

106- my score from bowling last night
93,94- Eric and Nish’s bowling scores
200-Lenny’s bowling score (his arms are so long he only has half as far to bowl)
0- number of tasty meals I’ve eaten since arriving in Finland

And here's a you-tube video you should watch if you haven't already seen it:
Alex & Devon's race- by George

A few notes on the Norwegian Culture

First of all I always knew that Norway was a country full of pride and nordic super fans, but until World Championships started I don’t think I realized just how into skiing they are. With crowds between 50,000 and 70,000 race days have been nothing short of amazing.
So, yes they love skiing, but what else?
-They love waffles, and brown cheese.
-There are ski trails everywhere- probably partly due to how deeply rooted in nordic culture they are, but around the Oslo area alone there are over 2000km of ski trails.


It’s not uncommon to see sights like this in urban areas...


Or a dude like this getting on a city bus or train...


Or a dude like this plowing his driveway...

-They love wool sweaters- and really anything wool.

And climbing trees I guess...

-Bjorgen and Northug are essentially rock stars, appearing in news papers daily every month of the year, and in the gossip rags that you find at the grocery store checkout.
-A sweet Sunday outing includes packing a backpack full of beer, sausages, reindeer hides, Norwegian flags, and chocolate, strapping on the cross country skis and trudging many kilometers.

Notice the flatscreens, this is out in the bush-waaay out.

-They built a sweet ski jump.

Sweet ski jump floating on the top of the holmenkollen hill.

-They like art that airs on the erotic side of the spectrum.


They are into skiing-all in, and the atmosphere on race day is something that can’t be matched anywhere else in the world of nordic skiing.

Oh, and they have a bit of a rivalry with the swedes.

Sprint-relaying tomorrow!
Thanks for stopping by, and thanks to Dad for the photos :)

Oslo 2011

The crowds are out, the tents are up, the fires are burning, and the Norwegian flags are flying high. Oslo 2011 is underway!



Stadium crowds on sprint day- this photo doesn’t even come close to showing just how many pumped Norwegians there were out to watch the races.

Yesterday was day one of the championships, with the sprint race kicking things off. I’ve been looking forward to this day for a while, after spending most of the season racing Nor-Ams in Canada I was excited to test my sprinting legs against the rest of the world. I ended up being on of the first starters of the day with bib 9, so it was a little suspenseful as I waited to see if I would remain in the top 30 as the big guns came across the line one by one.
We managed to qualify all three of the women in the top 30, Chandra 23, Me 24, and Dasha 27.
The heats were scrappy, it seemed like everyone was getting skis stepped on, or crashing, or stepping on others. Dasha came away with a top 20, while Chandra and I ended up 28, and 29th respectively.

In other news our new teammate Brooke and I have been crafting like crazy, and fashioned some pompoms for our training tuques!


Chandra and I modeling our new look- new sauce headwear, and little white pompoms with a tiny bit of sparkle!

The women’s pursuit went off today with Brooke as our lone Canadian skier, she was faced with the heaviest pea soup fog I have ever seen. Congratulations to Brooke for competing in her first world Championship race, it looked brutal out there as the ladies pushed the pace from the gun.


This is a photo taken looking at the big screen in the stadium, I wasn’t more than 50 metres away, it was part skiing part swimming out there today.

The boys are off tomorrow hopefully in the sun for their 30km pursuit, and then we are up again (all 4 ladies this time) in the 10km Classic on Monday.

Thanks for stopping by,
Hopefully more photos will be up soon, Brad is out on course snapping photos so quickly that it takes him a while to sift through them at the end of the day.
Stay tuned!