Michael Gilday

Experience Pays

2011-11-06T15:01:00.000-07:00

As some of you reading this may know, we had a World Cup last weekend on home soil and I managed to put together a nice result with my teammates in the 1000m. I finished second while Charles Hamelin won and Olivier Jean finished third to complete the first Canadian sweep of a World Cup podium since 1994. I'm sorry for spoiling the story for anyone who was planning on watching the race here, or the entire CBC broadcast of the weekend here, but it has been a week, soooo....

Anyways, on to an update of the weekend that was the World Cup in Saguenay. I think the best way I can describe the weekend is that experience pays. In fact the weekend felt like deja vu of the 2008 World Cup in Vancouver.

Flashback to 2008. After failing to qualify for the final rounds in my 1500, I have a near breakdown in between races and end of having a long, long conversation with my Mum about all sorts of things, skating related and not. Following that conversation, I manage to cobble together a decent set of races in the afternoon to qualify to the final rounds in the 1000m. On Saturday I don't make it through the repechage, but gain a lot of confidence in my skating setting me up for a good day on Sunday and my first World Cup medal, a silver in the 1000m.

Flash forward to last weekend. After a stupid mistake costs me a spot in the final rounds in the 1500 (I toed in with one to go) I am shaken a bit but manage to put together a couple good, but nervous, races and qualify for the 1000m final rounds on Sunday. On Saturday morning, I feel that I should easily qualify though the repechage and into the finals that afternoon. But I don't. Instantly in an awful mood, I storm out of the arena and go for a walk by myself. While walking, I realize the parallels between the two world cups. I realized that this years world cup was shaping up almost exactly like the one in Vancouver in 2008 and that I would be capable of good result if I could get my head back in the game. Sure enough, Sunday came around, and because I was able to draw upon my experiences from the past, I ended up with a very similar result, a silver in the 1000m.

The World Cup in Saguenay turned out to be a resounding success. Canada did very well, winning 11 out of 26 possible medals. The crowd support was absolutely phenomenal. I have never been at a speed skating competition where they had a huge screen on a flatbed in the parking lot for people to watch the races on. Inside the arena, the noise was deafening, and I know each and every one of the skaters, Canadian or not, appreciated the noise of an educated and enthusiastic crowd.

Lastly, I have to give a huge shout out to the organizing committee and all of the volunteers that made this event happen. The event was not only a weekend of racing, but a week long celebration of Short Track. The bar has been set very high and I would like to say thanks for the great weekend Saguenay!

Update Time!

2011-10-26T17:32:00.000-06:00

With one World Cup under my belt this season, I figured it was time for an update. I'm writing this from my hotel room in Chicoutimi, Quebec, which seems like a different universe than where we were last week, Salt Lake City.

With the first two World Cups being in North America, I think most of the team was expecting, and hoping, that the travel to and from wouldn't be too long or hard. Well we figured wrong. As we found out, Salt Lake and Chicoutimi are not the easiest places to travel between. But more on that in a bit.

Travel to Salt Lake from Montreal was relatively easy though, and despite a 3:30am wake up call, we all arrived in Salt Lake ready for our first World Cup of the season. For me, the week of training leading in the competition went pretty well. As per usual I had some problems in the first few days with the altitude (Salt Lake is around 1300m, Montreal close to sea level). But other than that I was enjoying late season summer weather (seriously do clouds exist in Salt Lake??) and feeling ready to race. I was planning on racing a 1500m and a 1000m, but due to a small registration snafu, I ended doing a 500m instead of a 1000m. Not a big deal since I need practice at 500m anyways.

Friday's qualification rounds went alright, I managed to qualify easily in the 1500, but had to wait and see if my time was good enough in the 500. Luckily it was and I was qualified straight to the rounds in both of my distances.

On Saturday we had the finals of the 1500 and for me it went pretty well. While I didn't end up on the podium (I finished 5th), I am still satisfied with my race as I was well positioned the entire time and I was aggressive from start to finish, something I have been working on.

Sunday brought the 500m finals, and it didn't go quite so well. I was penalized in the quarter finals which meant my day was over individually. Luckily though, we still had to the relay to go. It was one of the more chaotic races I have ever been involved in as there were five teams and I got us off to a bad start by losing the start badly - oops!. Anyways, we managed to make some timely passes and get some good exchanges in while staying on our feet, and eeked out a solid win to finish the weekend.

With that, we wrapped up the first World Cup and got ready to head to Chicoutimi for stop #2. This is where the part about travel comes in. Turns out that traveling between Salt Lake and Chicoutimi is not easy. Actually its probably easier and cheaper to fly to Europe from any major city in Canada than travel between Salt Lake and Chicoutimi. Monday, our travel day, started off with bus to the airport at 6:30am and finished at 12:45am that night. In between that we had a flight to Montreal via Minneapolis, a fight with line ups in customs and traffic jams in Montreal and a five and a half hour bus ride from Montreal to Chicoutimi. An 18 hour travel day, but we made it!

So that brings us to this week. Chicoutimi is a shock from warm and sunny Salt Lake (its about 3 degrees and rainy here), but we are excited for our home World Cup. For those who want to watch, CBC is showing the world cup this weekend all across the country. I'm not sure of the exact times, but I'll try to post the times on my twitter page once I know!

Video Tuesday

2011-10-11T19:05:00.002-06:00

Today for Video Tuesday, I'm going to share another of my favorite all time videos: the mens relay from the 2010 Olympics. Most of the readership knows who won this race. If you don't I won't spoil it for you. This race, and the whole Olympics in fact, were bittersweet for me, since I had missed qualifying for the team by so little. But there is a reason why I have posted relay videos two weeks in a row. They are unbelievably exciting and definitely the best part of Short Track. This race was the definition of execution by my teammates and I was screaming at my TV while watching it. Enjoy.

P.S This is the video of the entire event and includes the B final as well as post race stuff. The actual A final itself starts at 19:00 so you can just skip to there if you like.

Video Tuesday

2011-10-04T18:46:00.000-06:00

And the new content onslaught continues!

Its another new series! Starting this Tuesday, and hopefully continuing every Tuesday, I am going to post a video that is a favorite of mine. Most of the time the videos will be skating or skating related. Enjoy.

This week, since its the first week, I'm going to put up two videos. The first video is the Men's 5000m Relay A final from the 2011 World Cup #4 in Shanghai China. This race is one of my favorites for a number of reasons. First of all, this relay was the first time that I was skating in the anchor position. It is also the first World Cup relay final for my teammate Liam Mcfarlane. Lastly, this race is a great example of how exciting a relay can be. The race features many, many lead changes, a bunch of contact, some great passes and a great battle in the last two laps between yours truly and one of the best relay anchors in the business, Ho-Suk Lee of Korea.

In the second video, two of my former teammates, Gilmore Junio (behind the camera) and Tyler Derraugh (mainly in front of the camera) teach everybody about teamwork.

Industry Sunday

2011-10-02T15:25:00.000-06:00

Industry Sunday is a new series here at mgilday.blogspot.com. Each week (or post that comes out on Sunday - I'm not making any guarantees here!), I will address a topic specific to the sport of Short Track Speed Skating with the goal of informing, educating, starting discussion and/or editorializing.

This week, in the first installment of Industry Sunday, the topic will be my take on the new passing rule one year since it has taken effect. As you may or may not know, the International Skating Union introduced new rules last year in order to increase passing in the sport. There are many different opinions on the new rule, and although I don't have any hard figures, I would guess that in general passing during races is up. Is that a good or a bad thing? And what are some of the consequences?

First of all, we should look at exactly what the new rule is. In previous years, the rule applied by the referees was that a skater that was leading, or more specifically, a skater that was being passed, had the right of way. In this scenario, if skater A is leading, in order for skater B to complete a successful pass, skater B would have to be sure that he executed his pass fully without interfering or impeding with skater A. Under the new rule, the skater that has the right of way, or who is in a sense protected against interference or impeding, has changed. Now, the skater with the right of way is whichever skater is in front going into the corner. This is measured at the shoulders. So going back to our scenario, Skater A is leading, and Skater B is passing. Now, if Skater B can get just his shoulders in front of Skater A, the onus shifts to Skater A to not cause any contact as he is now behind. If contact is caused by Skater A, he can be penalized since he was effectively "behind". This is applied the same way for outside and inside passes.

Confused? Well you aren't the only one. In the the first few months of last season, there was a lot of confusion amongst the skaters, coaches and even the officials. There was a learning curve for everyone. It took time for skaters and coaches to change from their old tactics and learn the proper way to skate defensively and offensively under the new rule. Officials had a similar learning curve as they had to learn to look for different things than they had in the past. As everyone learned how to function best under the new rule, changes as to how races were raced and officiated emerged.

Athletes quickly realized that they could get away with what may have been, in the past, bad passes. There was an increase of skaters trying to squeeze their shoulders ahead of another skater at the last second before the entrance into a corner. "Suicide passes" or passes where one skater hurls himself from the back of the pack to the front without an actual space to fit into increased as well. This subsequently lead to more multi-skater crashes, or whole pack pile ups. There were also changes in the way races were officiated. Due to the fact that all it took was to have ones shoulders ahead of the other skater, something that is very hard to tell with the naked eye at 40+km/h, the need to use video replay increased substantially. This subsequently slowed the pace at which a day of racing rolled, as there were longer delays between races.

So has the new rule improved the sport? In my opinion as a skater, I'm not sure. Yes there are now more opportunities to pass. On the flip though this means its easier to be passed. I think that more passing in the sport is generally a good thing, as it will only serve to increase the excitement of the sport which, ideally, will increase the overall viewership and popularity of Short Track, promoting the growth of the sport. But is there a cost? With the increase of big crashes are we likely to see more injuries? Although big crashes are unfortunately what this sport is known for (Stephen Bradbury 2002 Olympics anyone?) having more of that isn't the way to sell the sport. Especially if the top skaters, the ones that the sport relies on as headliners, role models and spokespeople, start to get seriously injured more often. In addition, there will need to be a way to mitigate the length of time it takes for video replay. Obviously we all want fair calls to be made by the officials, but in todays on-demand world, where people's attention spans are shorter than ever and TV audiences demand non stop action, we can't have big delays in between races either. Ultimately, I think its going to take at least another year to really see whether the changes are in fact good for the growth and development of the sport.

Update time!

2011-09-28T18:17:00.001-06:00

Oufffff. Well, I'm well overdue for an update here at ol' mgilday.blogspot.com. Since my last post about our camp in Font-Romeu, not a ton has happened. First thing on the agenda after getting back from France was to get moved into our apartment here in Montreal. Moving isn't easy, but lucky for us, everyone who moves in Montreal moves on July 1st, so we were able to poach some nice furniture that people had left on the side of the road.

Following moving in, we received the fantastic news that our normal training centre, the Maurice Richard Arena, was out of commission for a least a month. I say this with a massive amount of sarcasm. Unfortunately, there aren't any Olympic sized arenas situated on the island of Montreal, so the whole group got to enjoy the joys of commuting more than an hour each day out to a brand new arena in Chateauguay. Driving an hour each way also let me get a taste of what driving in Montreal in the summer means. From what I have been able to find out there is some sort of rule that says all major roads in Montreal, including major bridges, must either be under construction, or have a lane closed off by hundreds and hundreds of orange cones during the summer months. Needless to say, this wasn't the highlight of the summer.

Lucky for us, August rolled around and with it came the good news that Maurice Richard would be opening! From a training perspective this was the point were I started to turn around my summer. Prior to this, I had been getting pummeled day in and day out at training as I worked to adapt to a new training environment and style. As we moved towards the end of August and the start of September, it was really nice to feel like myself again on the ice, even if the feeling was at times fleeting.

All of a sudden, we found ourselves in the middle of September and face to face with a Short Track skaters annual end of summer routine, the Fall World Cup Trials. I was really not sure what to expect from myself as my summer of training had been so hit and miss. One thing I was sure of though was that I had put in as much work as I could. This was one goal I set for myself this summer, under the knowledge that there would be an adaptation period in my new training locale.

Well, a summer of suffering seemed to pay off. After an up and down weekend that featured some good skating, bad skating, early season jitters and a healthy dose of good fortune, I managed to snag 3rd overall and a guaranteed spot to all four stops on the World Cup circuit this fall. I definitely left the weekend feeling unsatisfied though and I realized that I have a lot of hard work in front of me so that I can continue to progress here in Canada and on the World Cup scene. Luckily, I also finished the trials weekend off motivated to get the required work done, so I'm looking forward to suffering some more before we leave for the first World Cup in a few weeks from now.

This is a video of the 1500m final that I won. I'm helmet cover #21. I actually finish 2nd at the line, but Olivier Jean was disqualified for an earlier pass.

5 Reasons Why Font-Romeu is Awesome

2011-06-27T17:02:00.001-06:00

I'm back. In Canada that is. The whole team arrived safely back in Canada on Friday from what proved to be an amazing camp. For me, it was probably my best ever camp. Coming out of this camp I feel like I am in a great place physically, far ahead of where I was last year, but most importantly, motivated and excited to keep training this summer.

Here are 5 reasons why I thought Font-Romeu was/is awesome.

1. The training centre has everything.

Olympic sized arena, running track, inline speed skating track, soccer fields, swimming pool, weight rooms, gyms, medical support and from there you can access a myriad of fairly tale like roads for biking that wind infinitely through the valley.

2. The setting is beautiful

For me it was the perfect setting. The town is nestled on the side of a mountain and looks over a large valley towards Spain. You are surrounded by nature and mountains with trails to explore and viewpoints to relax at. Clouds roll through the valley, the sun paints the mountains red in the evening. Beautiful.

3. The town creates an ideal training environment

Font-Romeu has only a few thousand habitants. As you can imagine, there isn't a whole lot going on. But this is perfect for training. It means that for the most part, all you can do is train or recover. No distractions.

4. Altitude.

The town sits at around 1800m, and the training centre is slightly higher than that allowing us to take advantage of the thin air to boost the value of our hard work.

5. The general atmosphere.

A laid back mountain vibe permeates from every part of the region. Small, quaint, family run restaurants and shops. The town shuts down on Sunday, and most of Monday. Street corner food vendors selling products they have made themselves. Beauty.

I could go on and on about how I loved Font-Romeu. It simply was the perfect place for us to put in some hard early summer training and set up the rest of the season. I hope to be back someday, road bike in tow, in order to explore some mountain climbs and explore the region without being obligated to feel good for the next days training.

The view from our balcony....

on a cloudy/rainy day...

in the evening...

and first thing in the morning.

The training centre.

Lastly, watch this. Its a video made my Cameron Sylvester of the Canadian Rowing Team. Mega inspiring.

Inside The Olympic Dream from cameron sylvester on Vimeo.

Jet-Lag

2011-06-10T12:54:00.000-06:00

Today, I present to you a post about jet lag. Seeing as I am currently overseas attending a training camp in the beautiful mountain town of Font-Romeu, France, I figured a post about the joys of jet lag and some of my own personal strategies on how to best beat it would be appropriate.

So first, what is jet lag? Jet-lag occurs when you a quickly transported to another time zone that is either far ahead or behind the one you currently reside in. Therefore, your circadian rhythm is thrown off and your body thinks that it is day when in fact, it is night, or vice versa. The primary symptoms of jet-lag are not being able to sleep and the side-affects of sleep loss or sleep deprivation such as lack of energy, grumpiness and general lethargy. Although not being able to sleep, or feeling sleepy in the middle of the day is never any fun, it is especially troublesome for athletes as we need to be fully alert and awake in order to perform at our highest levels. It is for this reason that many athletes have spent much time and effort coming up with strategies to combat the effects of jet-lag.

Everyone has their own best method. Some swear by staying up late the night before traveling. Others like to use copious amounts of caffeine to stay awake upon arrival. Some prefer to turn to the brilliance of modern pharmaceuticals and use sleeping pills or melatonin to help them sleep when its night. Personally, I like to use a very basic method that helps me regain a normal schedule as normally as possible.

The first step in my own personal jet-lag battle plan to be as caught up on my sleep as possible before I leave. That means making sure that I go to bed as early as I can and sleep as much as I can before I leave. I do this because I am not the best sleeper on planes and I prefer to rely on my nice comfortable bed for sleep instead of hedging my bets on an uncomfortable airplane seat. By doing this, I also virtually assure myself of being exhausted from a long travel day when I arrive, and thus can have a good first nights sleep.

Secondly, I make sure to try and bring my own healthy snacks on the plane with me, as well as drink a lot of water while on the plane. This helps to make sure that I keep me healthy since its easy to catch something when you are inevitably tired in the first few day.

Upon arrival, I like to get some exercise. I normally do a light jog, combined with a good long stretching session since my muscles are always tight from sitting in a plane for way too long. I find that this helps tire me out a bit so that I can sleep better that first night and also lets me see some of my new surroundings and exposes me to natural light (or darkness) thus helping my body figure out what time it really is.

All that helps me get through the first night. But the hardest nights are often the second and third. At least for me anyways. My key to sleeping on the second and third nights is quite simple. NO NAPS. I always want to nap on the second and third days. Always. My eyelids will get heavy as I enjoy a quick sit down after a meal. I think, oh I'll just take a 15 minute power nap. Then bang, I wake up and I have slept for an hour or two or more. By night time, I'll be wide awake and end up falling asleep at 4 am only to have to wake up a few hours later. Its also important to go to bed at your normal bedtime. After I manage to not take a quick nap, 7:30pm rolls around and I think, I'll go to bed now, I'm really tired only to wake up at 3am with nothing to do, nowhere to eat and my roommate sleeping so I can't even watch crappy late night TV in Russian (or Chinese, or whatever language may be spoken in that particular country). With any luck, I manage to get a solid block of sleep each night and by the fourth or fifth night, I fall into a nice rhythm of sleeping and eating at the proper hours.

So that's that. My jet-lag strategy. Does it always work? No. Some places are easier to travel to. I find Europe is easiest on the trip out, but harder on the way back. Asia is hard no matter which direction you travel in. Sometimes I am lucky and it works well, sometime its tougher. Beating jet-lag isn't an exact science, but if anyone out there has a foolproof method, let me know!

Moving Mega Post

2011-06-01T16:32:00.001-06:00

For a while now, years actually, I have face a single question from many many different people. Usually the question would arise at competitions, either at home or abroad. Sometimes I would get it at training camps. I've even been asked it while on vacation. The question?

"When are you moving to Montreal?"

It also came in variations.

"Have you thought about moving to Montreal?" "Why don't you move to Montreal?"

I've even got "So I heard you moved to Montreal a while back"

For the longest time my answers were the same. "No, I'm comfortable in Calgary", "Everything is going well so why change?", "Where did you hear that? Its not true by the way".

But finally, the time has come. Actually it has come and gone.

Once the season finished in March, I decided to put some serious thought into moving. After all, moving across the country is not a decision to be taken lightly. I started to piece together some details, talked to some key people who's opinions I valued a lot. I thought A LOT. Probably too much. But finally after a trip home in April, I made my final decision. I would move to Montreal to join the rest of the National Team for this season.

There were many factors at play that led to my decision. But ultimately what it all boiled down to was that I didn't want to look back on my career as a skater and think, what if I had have had the courage to move to Montreal. Could I have been a better skater? Could I have achieved more or learned new methods? I didn't want to have these question nagging a me forever.

Once the decision was made, the work started. Along with my other Calgary teammates, I attended a pre-season evaluation camp here in Montreal in the last week in April. This gave me the perfect opportunity to search out a place to live and get acquainted with what would be my new neighborhood. Once I got back from Montreal, it was really game on. Packing up my condo, cleaning, recycling, selling and giving stuff away (I still have two desks for sale, leave a comment if you are interested and in the Calgary area!!).

Then on May 16th, I packed my Volkswagen Golf as full as it has ever been, and pointed it east.

At the Saskatchewan border

The Manitoba Border, taken at 120km/h.

Welcome to Ontario!
(didn't manage to get a Quebec border sign pic because it was pouring rain and I just wanted to get there by that point)

3800km and four days later, I arrived in Montreal. The drive across the country was long. But it was also beautiful and even a bit fun. I don't know if I would be eager to do it again soon, but I will definitely do again in the future, and hopefully take more time to explore along the way. Canada is really big and beautiful.

So thats that. A big change. The six years that I spent in Calgary were awesome. I've met so many neat people and been fortunate to train with great training partners and under a fantastic coaching staff, but it was time for a change. I'll miss Calgary for sure, but I'll be back one day. I've been in Montreal for two weeks now and even though there have been times where I have felt homesick and had doubts, things are going well and I'm looking forward to this season in a way that I haven't for a long time.

The whole team is off to Font-Romeu, France, for a training camp on Saturday so I'll try to get some pics up as well as some news from the Pyrenees!

Three months in 25 lines

2011-05-25T11:25:00.000-06:00

Get ready, were going to do this fast. Like really fast. This fast.

Feb 6, 2011
Landed in Russia.
It was cold, but not that cold.
Raced. Won a bronze in the 1500m. Won a bronze in the relay.
Got stuck in the worst traffic.
Flew to Dresden.
Raced. Crashed hard, twice. Won a bronze in the 1500m. Won a bronze in the relay.
Flew to Montreal. Trained
Flew to Sheffield.
Raced. Won World Championship in the Relay.
Flew to Warsaw.
Raced (poorly). Finished third in World Teams.
Partied in Warsaw.
Flew to Calgary.
Season over.
Went skiing in fresh powder (sick!)
Relaxed.
Watched hockey.
BSD!!
Went to Yellowknife. XC skied alot. Wish I had more time there.
Flew to Montreal. Testing Camp.
Back to Calgary.
Started work required for a life change.
Which will be covered later
May 16th.

Pre Road Trip 15 (sort of) Random Thoughts

2011-02-05T14:14:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I'm heading on the road again for another set of World Cups. But I'm going to be adding some other stuff onto this trip. Like World Championships among other things.

1. Packing is tiring. And I'm not even finished. Luckily every trip needs the same thing, so packing is also repetitive, which may add to the fatigue (cause its boring)

2. The longest I have been on the road at one time is three weeks.

3. This trip is going to be six weeks long and will cover 5 countries.

4. They are Russia, Germany, Canada, Great Britain, Poland. I have never been to Russia, Britain and Poland.

5. Basically my itinerary looks like this. Russia one week, Germany one week, Montreal two weeks, Britain one week, Poland one week. Oh, and I may add on a week of sightseeing at the end. We'll see.

6. I'm not sure how many Aeroplan points I'll end up with, but hopefully it will give me a really good head start towards Elite status for next year.

7. Tomorrow will be a long travel day. Calgary, Toronto, Montreal, Frankfurt, Moscow.

8. I'm excited though. Racing is why we train, so its nice to be able to have a lot of racing to do after all the work we have put in this season.

9. One thing I regret not doing while I was in Asia in the fall was taking pictures. I don't know why I didn't. I am going to make an effort to take some this time. Which will hopefully mean some for the blog.

10. Modern Family is an excellent television show. Just brilliant.

11. Canada's freestyle and ski cross skiers are awesome. Just this week they have won four different World Championships. Jenn Heil in moguls, Warren Shouldice in aerials and Chris Del Bosco and Kelsey Serwa in ski cross. Major Boom.

12. In other amateur sport news, mad props must be given to Christine Nesbitt, long track speed skater, who just won her first World Sprint Championship. Not bad for a non pure sprinter. Also boom.

13. I'd love to be on the podium at World Championships this year. That will now be my goal for the rest of the season.

14. I have a plant that is dying. It has barely grown in the three years I have had it and now it has a few brown leaves.

15. In the words of Ronnie Coleman, Ain't Nothing to it but to do it!

Since Christmas...

2011-02-02T12:26:00.004-07:00

So whats been going on since Christmas? Honestly, not a whole lot out of the ordinary. Upon returning from Yellowknife for a short Christmas break, it was time to get back to business and put in our last bit of work before we headed off to the Canadian Championships in Montreal Jan 21-23. The Canadian Championships, as they do every year, determine who will compete for Canada at the last two world cup stops and the World Championships and World Team Championships.

Early in the season I had set my sights on this weekend as my main goal for the year. With Worlds being my main focus this season, I would have to skate well at the Canadian Champs in order to qualify.

The weekend started well enough, I finished 3rd in the 1500, but things quickly took a turn for the worse as I was disqualified in my heat. At this point, I knew that I wouldn't be able to accumulate many points in the 500, and in a competition like this where cumulative points from four distances qualify a skater to the team, consistency is key. Coming back on Saturday, I wanted to just skate well and get as many points as I could (30, compared to 1000 for a win). I did this and looked forward to Sunday and the 1000 and 3000m distances.

Leading the 1500m Final. Olivier Jean and Francois Hamelin behind. Photo: Paul Shoebridge

Overall on Sunday I felt I really brought my A-game physically and mentally. But it was a terrible tactical mistake that I had been making all week that cost me a spot in the 1000m A final. Following this, I figured for sure my chance of making the team was over.

But, as they say, its never over til its over and there is perhaps no other place where this is true than in Short Track. Following nearly 20 (out of 27) laps on my own trying to lap the pack, I managed to finish third in the 3000m and claim 5th overall (5 go to worlds) by only 28 points. I don't know if I have ever hurt as badly as I did in that 3k.

Needless to say, it was a roller coaster of a weekend for me, but I showed myself that I am improving as I did not need to have my best performance to make the team. A few years ago a weekend like this would have left me way back in the results. I know what needs to be fixed and changed.

So with that weekend behind me, its time to look forward to the rest of the international season. On Sunday, Jess Gregg who was the other Calgary based athlete to make worlds, and I will head to Montreal to meet up with the rest of the team and head off to Moscow, Russia and Dresden, Germany for two weeks of world cups. Following that I will either return to Calgary for a few days, or head straight to Montreal to train with the rest of the guys prior to the World Championships which take place in Sheffield England, and the World Team Championships in Warsaw, Poland.

Big Cheques are Fun!!

2010-12-29T20:43:00.002-07:00

My annual trip home for Christmas has come and gone, much to quickly as usual. While I was at home in Yellowknife though, I attended a small ceremony to hand over a cheque on behalf on Intact Insurance to the Yellowknife Speed Skating Club. As I have mentioned before, Intact has introduced a new program this season where for each individual podium achieved by a Canadian athlete on the World Cup circuit, $1000 will be donated to a grassroots club in Canada. As a bonus, the first podium by any athlete will see that $1000 donated to their home club. So as I was on the podium for the first time this season in Montreal, our club was one of the first to receive support from this great program! Speed skating in Canada is really lucky to have Intact as a sponsor, not only at the National Team level, but through all levels of the sport in Canada. They are a true example of corporate philanthropy. Thank you Intact!!

20 Thoughts from the last month

2010-12-17T18:59:00.004-07:00

To be honest, the idea of writing the same good ol' blog update blah blah about how things are going isn't inspiring me to write anything. So I'm going to try something different today. Here are 20 random thoughts from the last month(ish)

1. Skating is a funny thing. You can be good one day and bad the next. Good one week and bad the next. Cycles are good though. Leaves you wanting more. And makes you work for it.

2. World Cups and exams always seem to coincide. That makes for a crazy week returning from a trip. I had two exams upon returning from Quebec and China. Fun week...

3. But the best way to come down from a hectic post world cup/mid-term week is to go to Canmore for some altitude/volume/mental recovery training.

4. I'm trying some new blades. Got on them just over a month ago. They are called EVOs. Men's National team coach Derrick Campbell is involved with the company and let me try some. So far, so good.

5. Trying them made me realize that its good to be able to adapt quickly to equipment. You never know when something could break and you will have to go to something you aren't necessarily comfortable with.

6. Airline upgrade certificates really do work! Got to use my first one (after having them for several years and never being able to use them) on the way to China. A 11 hour flight is a good time to be in first class.

7. You can still smoke in arenas in China. In Changchun, even the security guards were smoking in the stands despite the announcers asking people not too. Its hard to race hard when all you see when looking across the rink is a haze of smoke.

8. Speaking of China, I have to say China scares me. Not physically being there, but realizing the shear size of the population and how fast they are developing. With the increased wealth and growth, the amount of raw materials needed in the future will be ridiculous. China will surely control much of the world in the next 20 years.

9. The suburbs of Shanghai are a nice place though. All brand new. One of the neatest places I have skated for sure.

10. The Koreans are in great shape. Most would consider this a no brainer, but I guess selecting a team only on time trials doesn't compromise racing skills.

11. I thought I gave Ho-Suk Lee a pretty good run for his money at the end of the relay in Shanghai though.

12. Unfortunately that was my best skating in the Chinese world cups. Individually I made too many mistakes. Tactical mostly.

13. I'm hoping to get another 20 questions up soon. Probably with one of my teammates who did their first world cups in China.

14. It was awesome to have 5 athletes all from Calgary on the World Cup team.

15. One cool question we got was from a lady after getting off the plane in Beijing enroute to Changchun. "You guys are the Canadian Short Track team? Aren't you supposed to be francophone?"

16. That being said, I really enjoy my time on the World Cup circuit with my teammates from Montreal. We have a lot of fun. And my french always improves after two weeks on the road with them.

17. Jet lag sucks. Why can't we just jump half-way across the world and have it just be like nothing happened.

18. I once again realized how spoiled we are to have such an amazing facility here at the Olympic Oval in Calgary. The rink in Changchun was FREEZING. Shanghai's rink was slightly warmer. At least in Shanghai we could warm-up in our shorts outside in +18 degree weather.

19. It was great to have Dustin Miller and Gabby Waddell's families in Shanghai. We had our own personal cheering section!

20. I am constantly blown away by the support I receive from Yellowknifer's. I'm looking forward to coming home for Christmas big time.

We won gold in the relay in Changchun.

Teammates from Calgary. I kind of missed the cue that we were taking a pic. Liam didn't though.

Montreal World Cup Wrap-Up

2010-10-25T06:26:00.004-06:00

Yesterday evening we finished of the first world cup stop of the season here in Montreal. Overall the weekend went really well for the team, especially Sunday. Sunday Team Canada managed to pick up another 7 medals, including 4 gold (mens/womens 500m, mens 1500, mens 5000m relay). For me, I had a solid weekend as well, winning a silver in the 1000m and taking part in our winning relay team.

Obviously without the Koreans here, the races took a slightly different shape than normal, as everyone normally expects the Koreans to be in a fight for podiums at every turn. Despite that though, I don't think you can take to much away from our team. Both the men's and women's teams skated well and this was a good point to start off on as we begin a new Olympic cycle.

A second change this weekend was the introduction of several new rules. In order to create more passing the ISU decided to tweak how impeding was called. Previously, the onus was on the skater that was passing on the inside to make a clean pass (i.e no contact) as they moved up. Any contact with the skater being passed that caused that skater to lose position would have resulted in the skater executing the pass being disqualified. This year, the onus to keep the race contact free changes over to the skater being passed once the passing skater draws even with the lead skater. Because this was the first competition where we have seen this new rule being enforced, there was a bit of confusion on the part of athletes, coaches and officials, but as the weekend wore on, everyone got more and more used to how the rule would play out. It will still take time to iron out exactly how to take of advantage of the new rule from an athletes perspective, and also how to defend against it, but hopefully everything will lead in a positive direction for the sport.

Lastly, I want to extend a huge thanks and shout-out to one of our teams sponsors, Intact Insurance. Intact has been with our team for a long time and this year, has announced a new initiative that will help develop grass-roots skating in Canada. For each Canadian that steps on to a world cup podium this season, Intact will donate $1000 to a speedskating club in Canada. I can't even begin to explain how fantastic an initiative this is. Huge thanks goes out to Intact and if you have a chance to support this company, please do!

So thats all from Montreal, we head up the St-Lawrence this afternoon to Quebec City for the second World Cup of the year next weekend.

Photo by Antoine Gelinas-Beaulieu

Photo by Peter Doucet - Speedskateworld.com

Montreal World Cup

2010-10-21T16:04:00.003-06:00

The 2010-11 World Cup season starts off tomorrow morning here in Montreal. Tomorrow will see all of the qualifying heats go in each of the four distances being skated this weekend (500m, 1000m, 1500m, 1500m, 3000m Relay (women), 5000m Relay (Men)). I personally will be skating in the 500 and 1000 meter events as well as the relay. Despite the 500m maybe not being my strongest distance, I have chosen to compete it a few extra times this year so that I can hopefully be just as strong in it as other distances.

If you are interested in tuning in to coverage of the competition, there are lots of options for you! First of all, for those who live in the Montreal area, come out and watch LIVE! It should be a great show Saturday and Sunday afternoons when the finals go. Info on scheduling and tickets can be found at coupedumonde2010.ca.

For those that aren't in Montreal, there are the following options:

1. Live Stream at cbc.ca/sports. The stream will be live both Saturday and Sunday beginning, I believe at 3pm ET, which is 1Pm for those of you in Calgary and Yellowknife.

2. CBC television will be showing an hour of coverage at 3pm EST on Saturday.

3. Tony Chung of ShorttrackHD.com should be twittering all day long for all three days of competition. You can find him at twitter.com/shorttrackHD.

4. The ISU site normally has live results on their website. Find it here. Click on the yellow LIVE button on the top to reach the live results.

Nascar Nutrition

2010-10-07T11:45:00.003-06:00

One question I often get asked when the subject of skating comes up is "do you follow a specific diet?". The answer I give is normally quite simple. No, I'm not on a diet, but I do eat a certain way in order to help myself recover the best I can from workout to workout and from day to day.

The way I eat is actual a bit more complicated than that simple response. The key in my response is that I am not on a "diet". To me, a diet means that one is eating in a specific way in order to achieve certain changes in ones body shape. This is not something I am normally trying to do, although as an athlete I will occasionally try to achieve a certain body weight that is optimal for me just prior to major competitions. For me, eating is about two things. The "what" and the "when". Everyone today knows all about the benefits of eating in a healthy and balanced way. This part makes up the "what". The "what" is very important, but I have learned from experience that to get the most out of the "what" part, it is important to pay attention to the "when".

By this I mean paying attention to the timing of your meals. For example, picture your body like the gas tank of a car. Before you go on a long or difficult journey, you would fill the gas tank to full. If you don't start full, you may run out of gas before you reach your destination. For me, filling up before leaving means breakfast and the long journey means the hardest workout of the day, which normally occurs in the morning. Running out of gas means I bonk in the middle of the workout and don't get the full benefit of the work I am doing.

Once you get back from a long journey, you need to fill up your car with gas again, so you don't run out of gas later when you head out to do some errands. Also need to do general maintenance to repair the wear and tear the long journey has put on the engine. For me, general maintenance comes in the form of a protein shake immediately after the hardest workout of the day. Following that, I will eat my biggest meal of the day (i.e dinner, but at lunch time). Think of this as the refilling the gas tank at the end of the journey so that I can be prepared for shorter journeys later on. Think of these shorter journeys as errands, or in my case my second workout of the day which is normally a bit easier than the morning one.

But running errands also takes gas and the tank the gas needle will slip farther away from F and closer to E. You know that you have another long journey the next morning, so you take the time to top off the tank and do some more general maintenance to help the car be ready for the next time you need to use it. So in my case, general maintenance again occurs right after the second workout, and then following that I will top of my tank with my second biggest workout of the day (i.e lunch for dinner).

By repeating this process day in and day out, your car will never run out of gas (or energy in your body's case). Also, by filling the tank the fullest before and after the longest journey, you are never carrying more gas than you need, which is inefficient as it is just extra weight. The same can be said about food. I always try to eat to most (by volume) when my body needs it the most (after the longest/hardest workout) and eat less when I haven't drained my own personal gas tank as far.

2 Year Anniversary Post

2010-09-26T12:52:00.002-06:00

While I was writing yesterdays post, I realized that today (sept 26) was the day two years ago that I started blogging. So in honour of two years of blogging, I thought I would look through my blogs statistics and throw out a few numbers.

In two years:

total # of views: 23067

average # views per month: 923

highest # of views in 1 month: 2851 (Aug 2009)

lowest # of views in 1 month: 188 (June 2010)

total # posts: 88

average # of posts per month: 3.67

Visits from people living in Canada, United States, Great Britain, Germany, Poland, France, Brazil, China, Japan, Korea, Belarus, Australia, Russia, Namibia and others.

World Cup Trials recap

2010-09-25T14:49:00.005-06:00

For my first real update about my own personal skating this year I present a post about the Fall World Cup Trials that were held last weekend here in Calgary.

This season, like many before it was set to tee off with a trials. And as usual, the trials came early (actually a little later than normal but early none the less). This year, being a post-olympic one, would see a little bit of a different qualifying format being used. We skated all three distances (1500, 500, 1000m) twice. In order to determine final ranking, your best two combined distances would count (i.e counting 2x1500 and 2x500 and not 1x1500 1x500, 1x500 1x 1000). From these rankings the top three overall skaters would automatically selected to compete at all 4 fall world cups stops. The remaining three spots on the team would be decided by the discretion of Speedskating Canada's (SSC) High Performance Committee. The reason for this is that at the start of a new Olympic quadrennial, it is important to give experience to younger and less experienced skaters who may be integral parts of future Olympic and World Championship teams.

Anyways, enough with the technical blah blah and on to the competition. For me personally, the trials went quite well. As you may have seen in the press release I posted on sunday night, you can see that I finished 2nd overall behind Charles Hamelin and qualified for all four stops. I was quite happy to have qualified automatically and decide my own fate, instead of waiting for the committee's decision. After not competing on the World Cup circuit since March 2009, it will be good to get back to racing at the highest level.

Another positive that came from last weekend was that a number of my teammates also performed well, and as such will have the opportunity to test themselves on the World Cup circuit for the first time. As I mentioned before, one of SSC's goals for this season is to introduce younger and less experienced skaters on to the world cup circuit. This meant that Dustin Miller, Liam McFarlane and Gabby Waddell, all of who train in Calgary will be traveling with the team to the 3rd and 4th World Cups.

I guess I should also mention where the Fall World Cups are being held. The season will kick off in Montreal Oct. 22-24 followed by a stop in Quebec City Oct 29-31. After a month long break, things will continue with two stops in China, the first in Changchun Dec 3-5, followed by a stop in Shanghai Dec 10-12. So if you live in or near any other those cities (im guessing more readers will be close to Quebec haha) come out and watch. We always appreciate spectators!

For those that are interested, the following are the men that will be competing at each of the 4 World Cups (I apologize for not having the women's team, I can't remember t exactly and don't want to put false info.)

Montreal: Charles Hamelin, Michael Gilday, Francois-Louis Tremblay, Francois Hamelin, Remi Beaulieu, Guillaume Bastille.

Quebec: Charles Hamelin, Michael Gilday, Francois-Louis Tremblay, Francois Hamelin, Guillaume Bastille, Maxime Fortin.

Changchun and Shanghai: Charles Hamelin, Michael Gilday, Olivier Jean, Remi Beaulieu, Liam McFarlane, Dustin Miller.

Lastly, here are a couple pics from the weekend courtesy of Tracy Hillis.

Leading Francois Hamelin and Gabriel Chiasson-Poirier in a 1000m quarter (I think)

Start of my heat in 500 #1

Leading 1500m #2 A final, which I eventually won.

Press Release from this weekend...

2010-09-19T17:37:00.001-06:00

from Speed Skating Canada, here

Six Short Track Skaters Qualify for Fall World Cups
Date posted: 09/19/2010

Victories in today’s 500m and 1000m events at the short track selections at the Calgary Olympic Oval helped Charles Hamelin (Ste-Julie, QC), Olivier Jean (Lachenaie, QC) and Marianne St-Gelais (St-Félicien, QC) secure their spots on Canada’s team for the Fall World Cups. Thanks to solid performances through the weekend, they, along with Valérie Maltais (La Baie, QC), Marie-Ève Drolet (Latterière, QC) and Michael Gilday (Yellowknife, NT) will represent Canada for the Montréal and Québec World Cups on October 22-24 and 29-31, as well as for the two Asian stops of the circuit, scheduled for early December.

The day started off with the 500m, won by Valérie Lambert (Sherbrooke, QC) in 44.050. She was never threatened in the final, easily cruising to the finish line, with Andréa Do-Duc (Montréal, QC) behind her in 44.144. Maltais took the third position in 44.194 and Drolet, who fell in the last corner, was fourth.

On to the 1000m, all girls wanted good races as it would determine who would make the team. St-Gelais started out front, but Lambert passed her outside in the first lap. St-Gelais was quick to get back out front, with an inside pass, and she managed to create a gap with the other skaters, crossing the finish line in 1:31.339. With six laps to go, Gabrielle Waddell tried an outside pass but collided with Lambert and fell. Lambert was later disqualified and Waddell, after getting back up, finished third. Marie-Ève Drolet was the other skater in the final, and she took the second position in 1:32.945.

Meanwhile, in the B final, Marie-Andrée Mendes-Campeau (Montréal, QC), Maltais and Do-Duc went all out, and all three skated under the old Canadian record held by Kalyna Roberge (1:29.870). Mendes-Campeau’s name will now be in the records book as she crossed the finish line in 1:29.132.

St-Gelais finished on top of the women’s combined ranking, thanks to three victories over four races (she sat out the 500m events due to an injury suffered earlier this week). Maltais took the second place with two second places (1500m), one first and one third (500m). Drolet takes the third spot on the World Cup team thanks to two second places in the 1000m, a third and a sixth in the 1500m.

On the men side, Charles Hamelin took the honours in the 500m. François-Louis Tremblay (Boucherville, QC) actually led most of the race, but Hamelin, who was just behind, overtook him at the finish line in 41.470. Tremblay had to settle for second place in 41.480. Allyn Gagnon was in third place all along, finishing in 41.849 and François Hamelin (Ste-Julie, QC) took the fourth position in 42.113. Liam McFarlane (Medicine Hat, AB) fell mid-race and had to settle for fifth place.

In the 1000m, Olivier Jean knew he needed to pull off a victory in order to make the World Cup team, and he did just that. It was a tight race to the finish between him and Gilday, but Jean took the lead with five laps to go with an inside pass and managed to win in 1:24.793. Gilday crossed the finish close behind in 1:24.844, and Rémi Beaulieu (Alma, QC) was third (1:24.968). Guillaume Bastille (Rivière-du-Loup, QC) and Dustin Miller were the last two skaters in the final and they finished fourth and fifth respectively (1:25.800 and 1:26.252).

Overall, Charles Hamelin takes the first position on the World Cup team, thanks to a first and second place in the 500m and a first and third in the 1500m. While he won the first 1000m race, he sat out the second because of a small injury. Michael Gilday is second overall with a fist and third place in the 1500m, and a second and third place in the 1000m. Olivier Jean’s victory in the 1000m, combined to a fifth place in that distance yesterday, as well as a second and fourth place in the 1500m, secured the third spot. Jean is however not planning on racing the first World Cup events this Fall, as he now wants to remain in Calgary and take part in the Long Track Fall World Cup Selections next month.

Speed Skating Canada’s High Performance Short Track Committee will meet in the next week to select the other three women and four men who will have the chance to represent Canada at the four stops of the World Cup Circuit taking place this fall.

Competitiveness in Short Track Speedskating

2010-09-05T15:58:00.001-06:00

Recently, I was reading a few articles that were posted on TSN.ca about women’s hockey, and the lack of competition that exists within this sport. As some may know, the sport is dominated by two countries, Canada and the USA. Together they have won every World Championship since they began holding the world championships in 1990. At the recent World Hockey Summit, the basic debate surrounding women’s hockey is how to increase the competitiveness of women’s hockey in more countries around the world so the same two teams are not the only ones winning major championships and Olympic Games.

Anyways, this got me thinking about Short Track. Now obviously, Short track is not dominated by only two countries as women’s hockey is, right? Well as much as I’d like to say it isn’t, if you look at some numbers from past Olympics its easy to see that the sport is predominantly dominated by two countries on the men’s side, South Korea and Canada, and two countries on the women’s side, China and South Korea. Of the 120 medals that have been handed out at the Olympics (both genders) since Short Track became an Olympic event, Korea has won 37 or 31%, Canada has won 25 or 21% and China has won 24 or 21%. Add that up and you have three countries winning 72% of Olympic medals. The rest of the medals are scattered across a number of countries with a major (18 or 15%) going to the USA.

So these numbers beg the question, does short track have a similar problem to that of women’s hockey where a small number of countries dominate the podiums? My simple answer is no. Why? Well there are several reasons.

First of all, our sport has three (and more recently four) “superpowers”. These of course being South Korea, Canada and China, with the USA following closely behind and quickly catching up. Compare this to women’s hockey, which only has two “superpowers”.

Secondly, the sport is still quite young as Olympic sports go (although the same could be argued for women’s hockey as it joined the Olympics in 1998) and continues to grow, especially in Europe, a continent that is traditionally a winter sports mecca. Not surprisingly, those countries that have a history of short track since the beginning are strongest. But the sport continues to grow. On the world cup circuit we increasingly see skaters from non-traditional short track countries getting into A- finals and threatening podiums. We have also witnessed coaches from traditional short track powers move to countries with newer short track programs and bring the level of those countries skaters up to a higher level. Primarily we have seen this with South Korean coaches such as Jae-Su Chun who is coaching the American team, as well as his brother Kevin recently joined the Great Britain team and others who coach in France and at various clubs across the USA. Coaches from Canada and China have also ventured overseas to spread their knowledge. Eric Bedard spent the last two seasons as the head coach of the German team and Li Yan coached in the US before heading back to China. Australian and Polish teams have also employed Chinese coaches at one time or another. This spread of knowledge across borders can only help the sport as it brings the level of less skilled skaters up and forces those at the top to continue to innovate if they wish to continue winning. Better results from non-traditional short track countries also increases interest in the sport, theoretically increasing growth as well.

Thirdly, Short Track is not over-shadowed by a bigger, more popular sibling, as is the case with women’s hockey. The NHL and men’s professional leagues are big business in North America and Europe and command a huge portion of attention away from the women’s game. Some might argue that short track may have in fact experience this syndrome from Long Track, but the reality is that Short and Long Track skating share very little other than two skates and some ice, whereas men’s and women’s hockey are simply separated by gender. There are also no professional leagues in speed skating, with the exception of the Netherlands, which has several professional Long Track teams. Despite this, neither short or long track receive lopsided media attention when compared to the other, as in men’s vs. women’s hockey, which puts the two on even ground for growth in interest and exposure, even if both sport are starting out with levels of exposure that are very low compared to mainstream sports (exception again being Long Track in the Netherlands.)

So that’s my take. Obviously my analysis is a little narrow, as it does not account for the fact that hockey is a team sport, while short track is not. There are probably several other problems with this analysis, but I think overall, it is fair to say that short track is not experiencing the problems that women’s hockey is, at least not to the same extent.

Agree? Disagree? Feel free to leave a comment and add to the discussion or let me know what you think!

Why not relive?

2010-08-26T20:51:00.002-06:00

At a video session this week, we stumbled across this Youtube channel while looking for a specific race from the Olympics. It has the majority (if not all) of the events from the games in full without commercials. I watched a few, and thought it would be worth sharing. February was a pretty amazing month for Canada and its worth looking back and reliving some of the moments that made the whole country so proud.

http://www.youtube.com/user/olympicvancouver2010

First post in a while. Check back for more, hopefully soon enough.

Jessica Gregg

2010-02-18T06:56:00.003-07:00

Congrats to my teammate Jess on her 4th (ya I know...she'll probably be the first one to tell you that 4th isn't ideal) last night in the 500m at the Olympics. But she did race very well and we are all happy for her!

If anyone wants to know more about Jess, check out this video I shot of her back in the fall.

P.S If anyone who reads this blog is from Old Dutch, hook Jess up!

An Article- No more Hero Worship

2010-02-08T17:59:00.002-07:00

I came across this article today. It was written by American x-c skier Kris Freeman on the Fasterskier website. Kris has an interesting message, and one that I think can be applied to short track. I doubt there is any skater out there who has not compared what they do and how they do it to Korean skaters. It is important to learn from the best, but also important to realize that Canadians don't need to do exactly what the Koreans do to win. We can learn from them, analyze and be better!

Take a read:

"I check fasterskier regularly because I love this sport and there are frequently informative updates and news on the website. Over the past few years it has become a legitimate, unbiased site that has moved away from worshiping Norway, Finland or whatever other country was having dominate results at the time.

As the most popular xc skiing site in North America I think this is very important. Developing athletes should know what is going on in the skiing world without the mythical context that used to plague much of North America’s xc ski journalism.

When I was coming up as a junior I heard rumors that American skiers couldn’t ski Bjorn Daehlie’s 10k pace for 100 meters. I heard that US skiers could never again achieve what Bill Koch did in 1976. I heard about incredible training plans that the Scandanavians followed, 1200 hours with level four intervals everyday etc. These rumors made believing that a US skier could be a red group skier let alone a world or Olympic medalist difficult to believe.

At my first Olympics in Utah what I learned about international ski racing is that all of my competitors are just men. They train, they race, some win, some lose but they are all just men.

This realization was very important to my subsequent racing career. I was able to ignore over-blown hype about mythical Norseman and German “ski-gods.” I could focus on real training plans and focus my energy on succeeding at the highest level.

Over the past decade I have seen the xc-skiing climate in America change as more and more racers have seen through the fog of hype that has surrounded international racing. Clear focus has enabled the US Ski Team to post stronger and stronger results. There is no more excitement around simply scoring world cup points. The excitement is gone from a top 20 finish. A top 10 is met with congratulations but only a medal is met with true jubilation as it was for Kikkan last year in Liberec. This is the way it should be.

XC skiing in America holds itself to higher standing than it has in several decades. It could be seen this past weekend in Canmore when the nations group wasn’t here to gawk or spectate but to put there heads down and race. I saw a focus and confidence from our skiers that I have not seen in my nine years with the ski team. I hope every skier in the US will have this kind of focus soon. There is no more time for hero worship, its time to become heroes ourselves."

>Insert Stereotypical holiday greeting here<

2009-12-27T13:59:00.002-07:00

Looking along the right side bar of my blog yesterday I noticed something. At first I thought I was seeing in quadruple. But upon closer inspection, I just realized that everyone had published the holiday edition on their personal blog (if you are now looking at the right side bar to see evidence of this, don't click on another blog just yet...). So I have decided to join in on the conga line of holiday blogs that Denise, Gil, Liam and Andrew have all started and write my own version of a holiday blog.

I'll start by wishing everyone Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. I hope that your Christmas holidays have been going well. Mine have been going well for the last five days since I jumped on a plane for Yellowknife last Tuesday. Right off the plane I headed to the ski club for the first of several skis I have gotten in since I arrived in YK. I skied with Thomsen and thought I did ok for my first ski in over a year, but I was put in my place the next day when I did some intervals and my pathetic arm strength showed through. Oh well, it was still good to get out with Thompy and Corey. I bumped my ego up a bit on Christmas day though by skiing with my dad haha.

Other than skiing I have been enjoying the fairly warm weather we have had lately (low minus teens which is pretty warm for this time of year in Yellowknife). We did a quick trip to the cabin yesterday and I have been out for some long walks with the dog too.

Surprisingly I have been getting quite a bit of training in too. We had a program to do, but I came here with the idea to do what I felt like in order to take a bit of a mental break since I don't have any major competitions for three months. But surprisingly I have been really motivated thanks mostly to getting back to training with Thomsen and my old ski coach Corey and also re-meeting Denise Ramsden who is now on the National Team for road cycling. When I think about it, Yellowknife has produced quite a few elite athletes for its smallish population I'd say.

The other day I also headed back to my old place of employment, Body Works, a local gym here in town. I worked there for a solid three years and went in to see the owner, Francis. If anyone from Yellowknife is interested in getting an early start on some New Years Resolutions that involve fitness, I suggest you take a trip down to Body Works and chat with Francis for a bit.

Well thats a pretty long one and I'm sure everyone is busy. Ok, now you can click on one of the side bar links now...

Happy New Year!

National Team Trials WrapUp

2009-12-17T17:39:00.002-07:00

Well since I promised it, here it is. But first let me say that I don't feel any obligation the blogosphere to put this out just since I said I would. or maybe I do... either way read on!

I guess the first two days are fairly self-explanatory. I don't think that I need to explain how good I was feeling because two wins and two world records in polar opposite distances speak for themselves.

Monday was a different story though. I was still strong physically obviously (just so you know, great form doesn't come and go from day to day, you have it for longer than that), but I had an incident where I was taken out in the quarter final of the 1000m. This threw me off a bit, but nonetheless I made it to the final handily. In the final I was in good position, but unfortunately, I experienced what we skaters called booting out (you skate boot hits the ice more than you blade causing you to fall). So down I went on my own. At the time I fell I was leading the race with just under 5 laps to go, a position that I would consider the best place to be. But instead I got to watch the rest of the race from far behind. But that short track, thats the way it goes.

In the 3000m I decided to try and lap the pack, which proved a futile effort. After chasing for about 5 laps, I headed back to the pack where I held on for a solid third place (out of 8), finish, which I consider good because I had basically sprinted the first 5 laps while everyone else just sat there.

A good competition for me in which I won the overall (a first for me, and I know the top guys weren't there but hey, you gotta start somewhere) and gained a bunch of confidence for the rest of the season.

So why so on fire this weekend you might ask. Well basically Jon and I have been trying a few new things over the fall. Nothing drastic but we have been trying to put in place some different methods of training and trying new amounts of training. Apparently its working...

If anyone is interested in watching video from the weekend, please check out the Brickhouseent's youtube channel here.

If this is the last time I post before the holidays, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all of the readers of this blog!

National Team Trials

2009-12-14T17:32:00.002-07:00

Don't have a lot of time to do a long post. A More in-depth post will come soon. But until then here are two videos from this weekend. The first one is the 500m final. Then second in the 500m semi final, which I broke the World Record in by 0.1 seconds. Enjoy!

making a global impact on the local level?

2009-12-07T14:04:00.004-07:00

Two days in Canmore. Thats how we spent thursday and friday of last week. Well we didn't spend the whole two days, just a couple hours out of each day. We had been displaced from our normal ice surface due to an invasion by all of the worlds speed skating nations for a World Cup. Obviously we don't like to get bumped out, but hey as short trackers we were happy to give up our ice for a couple days for the chance to grow speed skating (any publicity is good publicity even if it is long track) in our country and around the world. And while we were at it we would get a chance to skate in beautiful Canmore and as it turned out, even grow the sport a bit in our own little way.

On each of the two days in the mountains, we did our own workout, on ice which I must say was very very good for a rink that mostly sees hockey and is also quite cold, and then were joined by an enthusiastic group of skaters from the Banff/Canmore club. At first we weren't sure if the kids from Canmore were just happy because they were missing school to skate with us both days, or if they were actually pumped about skating with some National team members. Turns out these kids just love to skate and really got into it. But really, who can argue with missing some school right?

So on the program was some fun relays, slalom races and even a few drills to show them that yes, even when you train like its your job, you still have to do drills.

Dustin and I about to launch Cassidy and Siobhan

Yasu trying to get his team back to the front.

Even though we had to drive near white-out conditions and evade a massive six car pile up to get back to Calgary on friday afternoon, it was worth it. Maybe we didn't grow the sport on a global level like the long-trackers were busy doing, but we had alot of fun, and I think the kids did too. Mission accomplished.

While we are on the topic of crazy weather and growing a global awareness, how about this. I was reading the blog that my good friend Andrew Matthews writes, and ran across a post that he did about the United Nations Climate Change Conference that started today in Copenhagen. As a snowboarder, he was most appalled by a UN report that warned all downhill skiing could disappear by 2030. As a winter enthusiast myself, my interest was also piqued. So far it seems this year is a good snow year which will probably make people push the potential consequences of climate change to the back of their minds. But that doesn't mean that we can forget about it. Continuing to plagiarize from Andrew's blog check out the first part of Age of Stupid, and interesting movie made to open the world's eyes to the effects that climate change is having on our one and only planet earth.

Trials are this weekend. All prep leads to the races on Saturday, Sunday and Monday.

(insert guitar solo here)

So whats been going on anyways? (updated)

2009-12-01T12:58:00.003-07:00

Well well, looking back at the last few posts I've put up, I see that there hasn't been anything lately about whats been going on with our training at the Oval. Other than the video I posted the other day, which has some of whats been happening but might only be understood by those that know the sport personally, its been a drought.

So heres the scoop. Basically its been boring. By boring I mean boring to most people but not to us. We've been training a ton, getting is some serious work before we get ready to compete again. Long days at the oval, with at least a couple hours of warm-up/on-ice in the morning and a weights/imitations/ice program in the afternoon (never all three, but normally a combo of any two). Its been hard, but its been good. Add in some school and its busy, busy, busy.

I mentioned getting ready to compete. We have a National Team trials coming up next weekend, Dec 12-14 (finishing on a monday which is different). These trials will generate 1/2 of the points that will go towards qualifying for the last three spots on the National Team and the 4 spots available on the National Development Team for 2010-11.

If anyone out there is interested in coming out and watching the competition, feel free to come by the Oval on any of those three days. Racing starts at 10am on all three days, with the 1500m on Saturday, 500m on Sunday and 1000m on Monday.

After practice... (video)

2009-11-26T13:32:00.005-07:00

After practice, do short trackers just change and take their own separate ways home? Not a chance. Everyone has to talk about pratice, and about what they have heard that will make them better than the next guy. Check it out...

Olympic Blogging Opportunity

2009-11-12T07:18:00.004-07:00

The following is a re-post from my coach, Jon Cavar's blog. You can read all about it in the part below but I'll give you a little blurb first. The blog he recommends is written by his friend Hart Shouldice. Hart spent four months in Yellowknife during the winter of 2008. In his blog he writes very eloquently about his time there. I have read through it all in the last couple days, and his blog posts brought back quite a few good memories of growing up in Yellowknife. So, if you are from Yellowknife check it out. It might make you appreciate a few things about living in YK you may have taken for granted. If you aren't from Yellowknife and like a good read or want to learn about what its like in Yellowknife, I suggest taking a quick look at it.(You have to scroll back to the 2008 posts to find the ones on Yellowknife) And if you don't fall into either of those categories, why not just vote for Hart in the contest! (see below).

Opportunity of Olympic Proportions

Almost half my lifetime ago, back in Ottawa, I lived around the corner from a young man named Hart Shouldice. I was in the same grade as his older sister in high school. While I don't remember much of that time long ago I can say one thing for certain, that even back then he was more articulate than I. Or should I say than "me". Not sure.

Anyway.

Hart has entered a contest to become a writer for the Globe & Mail during the Olympics in Vancouver 2010. An amazing opportunity for any writer. A position that I am confident Hart would do amazingly well.

He needs your votes to win!
Vote for Hart
(http://journalismdream.theglobeandmail.com/entry_article.asp?id=887)

Hart is truly fantastic with the written word. You can and should check out his blog to see for yourself. You won't be disappointed.

A Harty Meal
(http://hartymeal.blogspot.com)

JC

Day 3, Charles' Day

2009-11-07T18:08:00.004-07:00

Day three. First day of finals. Turned into a good day for the Canadians. But as Mark Mathies, National team Coordinator told me, it was good, but what was better was that it could easily have been great.

This day turned into Charles Hamelin's day really quickly. He started out with a semi in the 1500 that was quite difficult. Si-bak Sung, Apolo Ohno, Nicola Rodigari and Sjinkie Knegt. He made it through fine. The final turned into the real show though. With three Koreans in the final, Charles knew to stay close to the front and not let the Koreans dominate. Si-Bak Sung hit the front and it looked to be a done deal. But Charles held in second, and then sniped Sung at the line by .001 seconds. A great start that really pumped up the home crowd. On a side note, this was the first World Cup win in the 1500m in 12 years. Jonathon Guilmette was the last to do it.

Video of the the 1500m and post-race interview can be found here:

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/amateur/story/2009/11/07/sp-short-track-speed-skating.html

A second shout out goes to Travis Jayner of New Brunswick, who now skates for the US on getting his first individual wolrd cup podium.

The biggest thing that I noticed with the 1500m skating was that no one was going to let the Koreans just take over the race like they did in Asia. The Koreans finished 2, 4 and 6 a big difference to their two sweeps in China and Korea.

500s were next. Highlights on the womens side were Kalyna Roberge's silver. Almost better than the second place was that she had a great start and managed to pass Meng Wang early in the race. This is something Wang isn't used too, and will give her something to think about. Jess Gregg said that Wang in beatable and it seems the girls really believe it.

In the men's 500, Charles and Flou both had dominating performances through all the round and were one two on the line for the final. Charles lead, but Flou made a nice pass. Unfortunately for him though he slipped and had to settle for 4th. This opened the door for Charles' second win of the day.

From what went on today, it would be fair to say that Flou is back at the level that he was before injuring his ankle and he could have won today if not for bad luck. The only slight hitch is that Si-Bak Sung lost an edge and went down earlier in his semi, this not allowing us to see him in the final and the crowd missed out on what could have been an even bigger showdown.

I had mentioned that the ice was pretty bad earlier this week. Things aren't a ton better, the ice is still soft apparently, but the refs seem to be smart about making sure that there are lots of Zambonis so that the the ice is fair for everyone.

If you are looking for video coverage and live in the US you can check out full coverage of today's racing at universalsports.com.

Hope you all enjoyed the live coverage by CBC today. They will be back tomorrow as well so make sure to check it out.

Day 2...a bit delayed

2009-11-07T08:02:00.003-07:00

Day 2 wrapped up last night. The day turned out to be a bit shorter, mostly due to the fact that one of the men's relay teams (possibly Bulgaria but I'm not sure) pulled out thus eliminating the need for a round of heats.

The 1000's went of pretty well for the Canadians. Unfortunately, Olivier Jean was dqed. He tried to pass outside to inside and made contact. Other than that all Canadians skated strongly and will skate on Sunday in the quarters.

Olivier's DQ and that of Cho Ha-Ri of Korea on the womens side really showed everyone the value of skating clean in a qualification meet. Their DQ's means that the team as a whole will have to pull together next weekend in order to qualify the full quota of three skaters. This is because qualification happens as a COUNTRY, not as an individual.

For example, Canada's worst result in the men's 1000m next week, regardless of who skates, will count with Olivier's DQ when the combined placings are added up. That means that our third skater will have to have enough points to get in to the top 32 overall after the WCup in Marquette, despite starting with zero, while everyone else starts with their points from this weekend. Therefore, another dq next week by any of the three Canadian skaters eliminates our chance of having three skaters entered in the men's 1000m at the Games.

Our mens team is very strong though and I know that everyone is motivated to go out and get three top results next weekend.

The second half of the day was the relays. Watching this was definitely the most exciting part of the weekend so far. For some countries, the relay is the best chance they have to qualify for the games. That combined with the aspect of the pride of racing as team for your country brought out a lot of emotion. The heats were tight for the second qualifying positions and this brought out good and bad skating. Mistakes can easily be made under the big pressure and they were. Others rose to the occasion and had excellent performance when they needed too.

The most tense moments were once the races were over. On the women's side, Britain and Hungary had an epic battle, with some contact early on causing the Hungarians to go down and the Brits to go off-track. Both teams got back in the race, but the Brits had a substantial lead. With three laps to go, it looked like the Hungarians would be hard pressed to close the gap and they put their top skater Hiedum Bernadett out to do three laps (almost never done). She was closing fast on the British who completed their last exchange with 2 laps to go (normal). As Bernadett went to pass, she collided with the British skater who had given the relay push to their anchor. She fell, essentially ending the race for them. But wait, they had to wait for the refs decision. Both teams waited anxiously on the ice, and in the end the British were DQ'ed. They were crushed, the Hungarians elated. The emotions and pressure of Olympic Qualifications personified.

Finals today in the 1500 and 500. Come out and support the Canadians if you are in Montreal or watch live on CBC 5pm EST, 3pm MST.

Day 1 over.....finally!

2009-11-05T18:30:00.003-07:00

Just got back from the rink. 500's are in the books. All Canadians are through to the next round easily. Everyone will try hard to rest up before as tomorrow is another long day.

Only really big surprise today was that Kwak Yoon-Gy went out in the first round after stripping his edge (From what I could tell anyways). He was completely unable to put any pressure on his left skate.

One thing I also saw today is the intensity of the skaters and the staff of the various teams. They know what is at stake. Every race really counts. Not that they don't at every world cup, but with Olympic berths on the line, you have skaters looking closely at times and placings to find out where they stand.

Another thing that I have been learning this week is that many countries have standards on top of just placing skaters in the top 32 after the two weeks or racing. For example in Germany, to qualify in the 1500, you not only have to be top 32 after the two qualifying World Cups, but you also must achieve a top 18 (semi final) either this weekend or next. (This only applies if Germany does not qualify a relay team. If they do qualify a relay team, then anyone who reaches the ISU standard of Top 32 is eligible to race individually in the distance they have a top 32)

Remember to check out live TV coverage on CBC friday and saturday.

Live!

2009-11-05T13:49:00.002-07:00

I've been at the rink now for a few hours. Not as long as the racers though. One thing is becoming really clear though. These are loooooooong days. For someone skating both distances today (1500 and 500) the day started probably around 7:30am with arrival at the rink for warm-ups. Racing got under way at 10:15 with the 1500's and they wrapped up just before three. The 500's are going right now, and the schedule has the day wrapping up around 8pm tonight. Talk about a long day. Oh and everyone will be back to do it all again tomorrow.

Canadians are doing well. Olivier and Charles are through in the 1500, Bastille is out. He got into some trouble and was a bit unlucky to not have been advanced.

On the womens side, both Kalyna and Val Maltais are through, while Tania ran into a very very hard heat and did not advance.

World Cup #3 update

2009-11-04T13:49:00.003-07:00

Competition starts tomorrow. For those interested in minute by minute updates check out these two link

ISU Results webpage click on the live button at top for real time lap counter and positions.

Tony Chung's Twitter. Tony is a dedicated short track fan from the US who films tons and tons of video at races across North America. He does do some sales of his video from various events so visit www.shorttrackhd.com if you would like to order anything from him. He also does regular blog updates from events and he will be twittering like mad.

Schedule of what races are when can be found here.

CBC will also be showing live coverage on both Saturday and Sunday on the main CBC network and also streaming live on their website. This will be a first for Short Track in Canada. If you are a fan of amateur sport in Canada watch this! The more viewers the more coverage Short Track will get. It airs at 5pm Eastern, thats 3pm for all of you in Alberta and the NWT!

So, lots of options for live coverage. If you are in Montreal, come and check it out in person. I know all the athletes will appreciate a loud Canadian crowd.

Observing a World Cup

2009-11-02T17:51:00.002-07:00

So again somehow I managed to go almost a month with no update. Might have been worth it though so that everyone got there dose of Jess Gregg's video and told their personal contacts about her personal dream of getting sponsored by Old Dutch Chips.

But enough of old posts. I'm in Montreal right now. Have been for a week now. Since I'm apart of the Olympic Alternate squad, we were invited out here to train with the team and help them out with some relay stuff in preparation for the World Cup this week that serves as the qualifying meet for a country's starting quota at the Games. I also managed to get up to Chicoutimi for an Elite Cup which I somehow managed to win despite being at the end of 4 exceptionally tough weeks of training.

These two weeks are all about different experiences. After settling into a routine in Calgary over the past few months, I was looking forward to changing things up a bit and coming out here. It really helps my motivation to go out and do new things with my training. I feel like you can learn a lot from training with different people too, and that can only make you better. My french is also loving being here in Montreal. This past weekend up in Chicoutimi was complete immersion for me and my french has never been better.

Enough about me though. Since I'm here at the World Cup, and I'm going to be trying to learn as much as possible, I am hoping to share some of my observations with all the short track fans out there who can't be in Montreal personally. I'll have my computer at the rink and will try to update a couple times a day if possible.

But to start here are a couple things I have observed to so far:

1. The ice was bad today. From what I could see it was really soft and wasn't freezing very well in between zambonis. There are about 12 hours of practices a day though so that will take a toll on the ice. Hopefully they can get the ice in top shape by thursday.

2. Countries are putting everything into this competition. If you don't do well in this World Cup and the one next weekend in Marquette, Michigan, you don't skate at the Olympics. Countries can qualify up to three spots per distance by placing skaters in the top 32 at the two World Cups. I got here two weeks before the start and by the time I got here, Italy and Great Britain had already arrived and were training in Montreal. The Netherlands, Hungary and Poland were all training in Trois-Rivieres, before they could get on the ice this past saturday. Poland was actually driving the 1.5-2 hours from Montreal to Trois-Rivieres each day.

3. Kind of unrelated, but it is really hard to find plain, unsweetened yogurt in the grocery stores these days.

4. Injuries are the talk of the competition so far. Two big names are out as of recently. Jordan Malone is out after a fun-wrestling accident. The biggest news is that Ho-Suk Lee has broken his ankle. Both of these skaters can still be at the Games though as the World Cups qualify spots for countries, not individuals.

Keep checking in.

20 Questions with Jess Gregg

2009-10-07T11:45:00.000-06:00

Hewitticious

2009-09-30T15:42:00.002-06:00

I now present to you Hewitticious. Video and lyrics created by Keara McGuire and Kaylin Irvine. Jess Hewitt asked me to post this because she wants to see how many views it can get on youtube. She has been shamelessly self-promoting this video for a while, but it has only hit youtube recently. It is pretty sweet though, so if you haven't seen it, check it out.

Things that are REALLY awesome day

2009-09-23T11:30:00.005-06:00

I thought we had a well sponsored team. Well the truth is we are. But this is a little over the top. And awesome.

From Fasterskier:

Flying Start for the Swedish National Team

The Swedish National Team is aiming high this winter and they are reaching the sky with the help of their own airplane - Swedish Ski Force 1. “This is literally a lift for us. With our own chartered plane we’ll save both time and energy when traveling,” says Olympic hopeful Emil Jönsson, 24.

Last season the Swedish team presented their unique wax truck. The impressive, easy to spot Scania truck gave the team many advantages on the World Cup and at the World Championships in Liberec. It is a great advantage to be able to travel from race to race with your own mobile workspace with room for 600 pairs of skis, poles and waxes. Now, get ready for the sequel: an airplane - Swedish Ski Force 1. The plane is painted in the Swedish National Team colors, just like the Scania truck.

A few days ago the athletes were told about the plane, their newest weapon when battling the other skiers on the World Cup, and they gave it two thumbs up! “It’s a nice, cool and very comfortable plane. We will feel like kings traveling to and from the World Cups like this,” says sprinters Emil Jönsson and Robin Bryntesson. Both Emil and Robin were onboard for the first flight, a domestic flight between Bromma and the Östersund/Åre Airport.

It is the very progressive airline NextJet that will be sponsoring the national team with specially chartered flights, carrying Sweden’s fastest skiers to their destinations. “This sponsorship agreement means that we can, on very short notice, fly skiers to and from races all over Scandinavia and Europe. We will save a lot of time. We don’t have to deal with the difficulty of buying tickets or the long layovers in airports. In addition, we’ll minimize the risk of exposure to sick travelers,” says Johan Sares, head of marketing for the national team.

“We are happy if we in any way can add to the team’s success and victories, says Magnus Ivarsson the CEO of NextJets. He adds, “I’m also exited over the fact that 13 out of the 15 national team skiers live in my native Jämtland (region in Sweden).

Nouvelle Blogue - Laurie Marceau

2009-09-18T20:41:00.003-06:00

Pour les francophones qui lisent cette blogue, et je pense qu'il y en a, car il y a un link sur le site du CNCP, je vous presente la blogue de Laurie Marceau, patineuse de l'equipe nationale. Comme vous le savez peut-etre deja, Laurie est dans sa premiere annee sur l'equipe nationale Canadienne.

Vous pourez trouver sa blogue ici.

Je m'excuse si il y a des defauts dans cette petite paragraphe, mais ca fait longtemps que j'ai ecris en francais.

Old Age

2009-09-11T11:47:00.002-06:00

This morning I read a story about Japan populations. Apparently, Japan now has more than 40 000 people that are aged 100 years or more.

http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/09/11/japan-centenarians-record.html

It got me thinking about a conversation I had the other day with Jeroen, the coach of the European mixed country team that trains with us. Basically the debate was this. I figured that because I am an athlete, and therefore eat very well, don't smoke, don't drink excessively, get alot of sleep, exercise daily etc, I would be a likely candidate to live to 100. Makes sense right? Jeroen didn't think so, and I think his point is valid too. He figures that the exercise that I have to do to get to and stay at an elite level is actual harmful to my health. Each day an elite athlete breaks down there body in training. Doing this repeatedley over many years can't be good he argued. Of course we take time to recover, but all that training has to be hard on the body. Probably true. Will I live to 100? It's probably all genetics anyways...

Food for thought I guess.

Olympic Trials recap

2009-08-24T09:53:00.002-06:00

Its now been a week since the last day of racing at Olympic Trials that had any meaning. With the team mathematically decided after Monday's racing, Tuesday was an opportunity to have some fun. I ended up finishing fourth that day. My legs were still strong, but unfortunately, I managed to somehow lose my whole left edge and fell on my own two laps into the race. Not a great finish, but after the emotional low of the day before, I wasn't really worried about the outcome. It would have been nice to go out and beat guys that had made the team over me one more time for pride, but it wasn't to be I guess.

Since then I have been dealing with the fallout of not qualifying for something that I had spent everyday of the last four years working towards. For the first couple nights, I had alot of trouble sleeping as thoughts swirled through my mind about this and that. I had expected a let down after trials no matter the outcome, good or bad, just because there is such a build-up to a competition that is as important as Olympic Trials. What I didn't expect though, was that I would feel so free at moments and then so crushed in others only minutes after. Its basically been like a big rollercoaster with plans of doing stuff that I have been putting off because it conflicts with training occupying the highpoints and then having something like a news story, that triggers a memory of a close call at trials bringing everything crashing down. Its tough to say the least, but there are many people in worse situations that me, so life goes on.

Coming back to Yellowknife has been good for me too. I haven't been home for a year and a half, and to be back in a familiar situation is very comforting. Everyone here has been so supportive and really seem to understand the sacrifices I have made to get to this point. The support I have gotten from this town has been truly amazing.

So whats next for me? Well I am still on vacation until Friday when I head back to Calgary. After that I am not exactly sure. I plan to get back into training slowly as I feel ready. There are no competitions for non-Olympic skaters that have any serious meaning until December, so there is no need to train at a super intense level right away. My coach Jon mentioned to me that I shouldn't just jump back in with my brain set on the next Olympic right away, lest I risk completely burning myself out. After failures at major competitions, I often tend to become hyper motivated. This time, I would like to take a couple months of easing back in and making sure that I have good variation in my training and life so that I can be 100% sure that I want to commit myself again at the level that is needed to be one of the top skaters in the world. I will be back in school after a year and a half hiatus this fall, something that will be tough, but is necessary too.

This next season will be tough because there will be so much attention put on the an Olympic Games that I wanted so badly to be at, but I can still make it a good year. Look for new posts that will move away slightly from the norm that you see on this blog coming up in the future.

So close...

2009-08-17T20:31:00.003-06:00

I brought it all today. Two second places. I raced the best I could in the 1500 and was inches from pulling it off. It came down to a mano a mano race between myself and one other and I just lost out in the last lap and a half. As it looks now, I won't be on the Olympic team. More to come in the next few days probably, I just can't bring myself to write anything now. Thanks to everyone for your support, I know it gave me the legs I had today.

No regrets.

2 more days

2009-08-17T09:48:00.002-06:00

"Men or Women don’t decide of their future, they decide about their habits… and their habits dictate their future."

My first coach at the Oval, Yvon Deblois, sent out this quote. I think it makes alot of sense and goes along well with my personal philosophy to training.

Day 2

2009-08-12T22:19:00.003-06:00

Today was a day. Nothing special, but nothing terrible. Two 5th places in the 500m and 1000m. In the 500m this was my best placing ever at a National Trials, but I was left wanting more after winning the start in my semi final then proceeding to butcher the rest of the race to finish third. The thousand was a bit of the same. I made a couple of smallish mistakes and had one twist of bad luck that cost me dearly. Winning the two B finals provided a bit of consolation but definitely left me unfulfilled for the day. But this is a long competition. We aren't even half-way yet. There are still lots of opportunities to get some revenge. Going into the competition I wrote that I had no regrets and was confident about my form. None of this has changed. I still know that I have great form and it will carry me through this competition. I can do this!

Props to Liam and Jess for their big wins today! and thanks to everyone who has sent their best to me the last few days. It is much appreciated and gives me confidence.

And now, two days of fun!

Day 1

2009-08-10T12:12:00.002-06:00

For those who are interested, here is a summary of the selection criteria for this years Olympic Trials.

Short Track Speed Skating Olympic Selection Criteria and Procedure
Olympic Selection: August 9-18, 2009, Pacific Coliseum, Vancouver, BC

Pre-Qualification

Athletes had a chance to pre-qualify by finishing in the top-3 overall, prior to the 3000m, at the 2009 World Short Track Championships. Pre-qualified athletes do not have to skate at the Olympic Selection event.
Pre-qualified athlete: Charles Hamelin

Olympic Selection Format

16 men and 16 women were invited to skate in the Olympic Selection. The list is enclosed. Each distance (500m, 1000m, 1500m) will be raced three times. The best two results of each athlete will be used for the ranking per distance.
A maximum of 5 male and 5 female skaters can be selected for the Olympic Team. One position for each gender will be selected at the discretion of the High Performance Short Track Committee, leaving four female and three male positions to be selected at the Olympic Selection event.

Ladies：
As there are no pre-qualified women, selection will be done as follows:
A If the same athlete is ranked first in all three distances, she will be selected, along with the next best ranked athlete in the 500m and the next two best athletes based on overall classification in the 500m and 1000m.
B If two athletes are ranked first in the three distances, they will both be selected, along with the next best ranked athlete in the 500m and the next best athlete based on overall classification in the 500m and 1000m.
C If three different athletes are ranked first in each distance, they will all be selected, along with the next best ranked athlete in the 500m.

Men：
As there is one pre-qualified man, selection will be done as follows:
A If the same athlete is ranked first in all three distances, he will be selected, along with the next best ranked athlete based on overall classification in the 500m and 1000m, and the next best ranked athlete based on overall classification in all three distances
B If two athletes are ranked first in the three distances, they will both be selected, along with the next best ranked athlete based on overall classification in the 500m and 1000m.
C If three different athletes are ranked first in each distance, they will all be selected.

Day one went well. I won the 1500m and was 7th in the 500m. Definitely a good start, but there is lots of racing to go though and I will be taking it day by day.

Video of the finals is already up and youtube and can be found here.

I am Canadian!

2009-08-09T12:13:00.001-06:00

Ain't nothing to it but to do it!!!!!!

its the fi-nal count-downnnn

2009-08-08T21:51:00.003-06:00

One more practice to feel confident. The 2010 Canadian Olympic Team Trials start tomorrow afternoon. I am ready. I know that I can be confident that I have put all the necessary work, focus and sacrifice in. I think that I am lucky because I am able to say that no matter what happens at trials, I have no regrets with my preparation and training leading up to these trials. I have made sure to try new things in order to improve and have made the necessary adjustments to get the most out of each day. Nothing left to do but execute, let my body do what I have trained it to do and have FUN.

its the fi-nal count-downnnn

2009-08-08T21:51:00.001-06:00

Vancouver Olympic Trials

2009-08-06T15:34:00.003-06:00

Van Van Van Van Van. We are back in Vancouver. Trials start on sunday but first heres a shout-out to J-Gregg, who has been blogging occasionally for CBC sports over the past few months.

You can find her latest here.

Another General Mills plug...but its worth reading!

2009-08-02T18:26:00.008-06:00

My living room is slightly more cramped than normal this week. The reason for this is that I received a large (20 boxes!) shipment of cereal from General Mills this week (thanks guys!). Ten boxes of each of the two types of cereal my picture is on, Golden Grahams, and Multi-Grain Cheerios. Of course they have been there for a few days and not moved except for the removal of a box to be consumed. The other day Liam, one of my teammates, was over and as he was leaving he asked if he could have a box. Being the generous person that I am, I said 'ya no problem' but made him promise to put the code in. Well he did and he even wrote a hilarious blog about it which can be found here. After laughing about it, I realized the photos he took demonstrate exactly the steps that are required to support an aspiring Olympian. And so I present Liam McFarlane in "how to donate $1 to Michael Gilday"

Step #1

Buy a delicious and nutritious (p.s these two words are a hint for an amzing post coming up later this week, check back for it!) box of either Golden Grahams or Multi-Grain Cheerios from your facourite local grocery.

Step #2
Arrive home and promptly pour yourself a bowl because you know you can't wait to have some. Note Liam's serious face here. Making a serious face is important if you want to get the most out of your cereal.

Step #3
Riding the wave of energy you have received from your meal, proceed to www.everdaycelebrations.ca/aspiringolympians. If this is your first time entering a code, you will have to create an account. This only takes seconds. Find out how on the website!

Step #4
Select Michael Gilday from the list of athletes and enter the code provided on the inside of the box. Also, for added fun, check the box at the bottom to enter a monthly draw for some Aspiring Olympians swag.

Step #5

Good Job! You have just supported an aspiring Olympian. Smile and enjoy, just like Liam!

Thanks to Liam for the pics. He also blogs and recently has been updating daily. Check it!

By popular demand and continuing with a trend

2009-07-29T13:26:00.005-06:00

After receiving a rather straightforward comment this morning from an anonymous poster asking me to update more often, I have decided to oblige Mr./Mrs. Anonymous and write a another blog update. Now since I just updated yesterday about the goings on of training, today will have nothing to do with skating and will somewhat continue my cycling trend.

Todays post will focus on two ads I came across on two different, but topic related blogs that I read from time to time. The two blogs are BikeSnobNYC and Fatcyclist. Both of these sites are cycling sites and I find them to be quite entertaining. But that isn't the point. I honestly doubt you care about hearing what types of blogs I find interesting. The point is that yesterday I was reading BikeSnobNYC (who happened to have posted about Fatcyclist that day) and noticed a World of Warcraft ad along the side bar.

For those of you who don't know what World of Warcraft (WOW) is, it is an online role playing game that requires paid monthly subscription and is (in my opinion and the opinion of several of my friends who play it) highly addictive and never ending. It is my opinion that this game consumes people and causes them to disappear into this alter-world for long periods of time with no communication with the real world. But I digress. After finishing with BikeSnobNYC, I checked out Fatcyclist and noticed a similar trend. As I scrolled down the page to read, I noticed another WOW ad, and then later, another ad that pushed an online gaming site called Perfect World International. This is another site that offers online role playing games.

What surprised me when I read this was the fact that WOW and others like it were being advertised on a blog that was primarily aimed towards those that are cycling enthusiasts, who I would think, are fairly active people that don't spend there lives in front of a computer screens. For me, this can be explained a few different ways. First, it could be that WOW is losing subscribers and is reaching long and far for new players. Or it could just be that these are randomly generated Google ads, although I was under the impression that Google matched up the type of ads with content, none of which involved online gaming. Or, I guess it could just be that my view is just plain wrong and that more cycling enthusiasts that I thought lead secret double lives online courtesy of one of these games...

Things that are awesome day #4

2009-07-28T11:45:00.002-06:00

Summer.

No big long post today, just a list of accomplishments since my last post, which was written while I had a big fever.

- Kicked the flu
- finished the last few days of the camp well, all health problems considered.
- recovery
- Two weekends of riding Highwood with Liam and also with Pate Neumann and Phil Wood the second time. (Pate you didn't get your legs ripped off, you were riding with a fruit-to-go wrapper keeping your tire inflated!)
- two sets of mock races (including a nice little 41.2- ya handtimed but still)
- a ton of Tour de France watching hours logged
- beat a case of "Tour withdrawl" (sort of...)
- couple of good mountain bike rides
- enjoyed some nice weather on a couple patios
- and oh ya...train train train

does this feel like a cycling blog right now?

I wish I wasn't writing this post...

2009-06-30T10:51:00.003-06:00

because the reason that I am writing this post sucks. I am sick at our training camp in Vancouver. The rest of my Calgary teammates got to head out to the Richmond Oval to do their morning session at the new Olympic venue there, but I am stuck in bed nursing head and body ache and probable fever, as well as a good old cough that probably kept my roommate Cory up half the night. Anyways this will be a short one because of that. The camp was going great up until today. It's great to be back on good ice. Highlights so far include Rick Hansen speech at the SSC awards banquet (seriously see him if you get a chance) and putting in some solid training. Thats about all I can write. I thought this would cure boredom but its just making my head hurt more...

What a deal! 3 in 1 blog post

2009-06-20T06:59:00.007-06:00

Lots has been happening lately so today is a special three in one edition of mgilday.blogpost.com. It's going to be a longy...(pronounced long-eee)

Part 1:

First up is our second week of cycling at Highwood Pass. As all of you dedicated readers will know, our first weekend was good but left something to be desired in the weather department. Well if the first weekend was a bust in the weather department, the second weekend could be considered a boom (hurray for economic terms!). We really hit the jackpot for weather. Sunny everyday with temps climbing into the twenties made for much more comfortable riding since we weren't bundled up under 5 layers.

Short sleeves and legs on Highwood?!? noooooo

This time we were out for three rides, two of which were on the weekend. With the nice weather and the road closed until the 15th, the Highwood Pass area was probably the most popular place to be if you are a cyclist. Literally hundreds of people were out on Saturday and Sunday enjoying the chance to bike in beautiful scenery and not have to dodge traffic (except of course for the odd bear, mountain sheep or moose).

Mother black bear and cub that we saw in the same place on different days...

After two weekend of going up and over the pass, Liam, Tyler, Dustin and I were a little bored of riding back and forth over the same bit of road. Of course the only sensible thing to do in that situation is to go exploring. After passing by a dirt road that we thought went up to Elpoca falls numerous times over our two weekends of riding, on Sunday we decided that even though it was a gravel road we would ride up it and see what we could find. Gravel didn't seem so bad for the 2km that was posted on the sign. Well it turns out you can't ride to the falls, despite our best efforts, but the road did continue. And since the road was there we figured we had better go down it because "there could be something sweet down there". Well, turns out there was. After another 2km of bumping along the gravel we ended up at a bridge we had spotted from the highway. There was a sort of falls under it and we walked, in full bike gear (inculding slippery road shoes) up this little trail to see what we could see. We found what would be a sweet spot for a whirlpool, if the water wasn't glacial and a trail that would be worth exploring farther in the future. We went down the road a ways longer, but didn't find anything else noteworthy. Luckily we all made it out of the gravel road without puncturing or wrecking our road bikes in anyway which was a nice plus!

Hanging out on the bridge on the road to nowhere...at least as far as we went...

Looking over the rail of the bridge down to the falls

We climbed under the bridge for a better look...

Whirlpool anyone?

Group shot on the bridge.

So another good year of Highwood is over. Heading out there is a good change of pace for us and lets us have some fun while putting in some good volume. If you have the chance to check out the Highwood area on bike, I highly recommend doing so especially if you go when the gates are closed. Lots of wildlife and beautiful scenery. Of course its mostly up-hill...

Topic 2:

On Tuesday this past week I went down to Vulcan, Ab for the annual County Central High School sports award banquet. The owner of the local grocery store, Scott Mitchell had asked General Mills if one the aspiring Olympians that are on various General Mills cereal boxes would come down and speak at the banquet. So off I went. It was very cool to go down and attend an event like this. Everyone seemed to know everyone at the banquet and this reminded me of home. This really was a community event and a lot of kudos has to be given to Scott and his team at Market Street Grocery. They sponsored all of the food at the event (200 plus people!). Everyone in Vulcan was very nice and I would like to thank Scott for having me down and makig sure everyone there knew how to go online and get General Mills to donate to an aspiring Olympian (If you want to find out how, click on the red Aspiring Olympians banner on the right had side of this page). I was hoping to have some pictures to post up so if you are reading this Scott, could you send some to me so that I can post them up?

Topic 3:

Last but not least today is the day that we are off to Vancouver for our annual training camp. Just like last year, we will be taking advantage of being able to skate at the Olympic Short Track facility and get as much home ice advantage as we can. I really like training camps because your life becomes eat, sleep, train. I find I get the most out of training in these situations. Everyone will be looking to figure out the last little details that will be needed when we have out Olympics selections in August. We'll be skating lots, but we will have some time to explore the west coast and I'm looking forward in particular to doing some fishing. Olivier Jean organized a salmon fishing trip for our rest day. Should be fun.

Alright thats it for now. Hope you made it this far. Look for some updates during the camp, and from the Speedskating Canada Awards Banquet that is happening tonight, and hopefully a good fishing story!

Things that are awesome day #3

2009-06-10T17:52:00.002-06:00

Today's thing that is awesome is a website:

http://speedskateworld.com/

This site is run by Peter Doucet from Ontario. While it is primarily an inline site, he also covers short and long track. Nobody has a more up to date site than Peter, so check it out once and a while. You might even find a link to the blog of yours truly!

Peter also post skating videos on youtube on his channel shaloheat.

Check it!

Highwood, Highwood, Highwood

2009-06-08T17:30:00.009-06:00

So if you check out the last post, you'll see that I was hoping to avoid a repeat of last years gorgeous weather. Well, no dice. It seems heading out to the highest (elevation wise) highway in Canada, which is conveniently nestled in the rockies at the start of June doesn't come with a guarantee of warm weather. Who would have guessed (read: sarcasm, in case you didn't get it).

As you can see from the pic above, this year didn't look a whole lot different from one year ago (see pic in post below). Anyways, a little snow wasn't going to stop us from getting in some solid volume in. Day one we woke up to this:

To be honest it wasn't a huge surprise seeing as there were close to white out conditions the night before. (It was a bummer though because only the week before I was hiking in +25C weather only 15km down the road from where we were this past weekend) Anyways we bundled up and after three hours of riding up and over the pass we got back to the campground soaking wet, cold and thankful that we were staying RVs and not tents. Of course as soon as we got back the sun decided to make a quick appearance.

Drying gear while the sun was out for a few minutes (notice the volume of clothing - this is just my gear).

Day two dawned with more promise as it was sunny and it looked like we might get a dry, but coldish, day. I got a nice surprise though when I went to get my stuff out of shower (I had been storing it there because we didn't have alot of space, and since it was house rules to not use the shower inside the camper when there were showers down the street it seemed like a good storage space). Well one thing you should know about campers that I didn't is that the grey water tanks aren't very big. In fact they don't even hold as much water as the camper can carry when full of clean water. And so the grey water tank had backed up into the shower. With all my stuff in it. After proceeding to throw things out of the camper (just to get them outside) and borrowing a jacket we got our second day underway. After a good start weather wise, things started to turn mid way through and the ride ended in another whiteout snowstorm. No worries though just another (fun!) day on the bike. I say fun because I saw two grizzlies. And not together but just two different sightings. Pretty cool.

Bear 1

Bear 2

Seeing two bears in a day makes up for everything else. It was a good weekend and its a good thing it was good too, because we get to do it all over again this weekend. Cross your fingers for bad weather.

Off to Highwood Pass

2009-06-05T07:40:00.003-06:00

We are off to Highwood pass this afternoon to do some long biking volume in the mountains. We'll be camping (in RV's...ya highrolling! haha) for the weekend and hoping that we don't get a repeat of weather conditions from last year (see pic below)

The forecast is not looking promising though (after 10 days of summer). Cross your fingers for us!

Things that are awesome day #2

2009-05-29T18:09:00.002-06:00

I know I had a thing that was awesome only a few days ago but....

Things that are awesome day #2: Days like today.

Aerobic relays in the morning, 2hour36min bike ride in the afternoon on a new route in 27C without a cloud in the sky.

Awesome.

General Mills Aspiring Olympians Update

2009-05-27T18:26:00.002-06:00

Alright so first off a big thanks to anyone who reads the blog and has bought a box of specially marked General Mills cereal and entered the code online! Your support much appreciated. Right now we are at $311. But now that the ferry is open the boxes should be flowing into Yellowknife and hopefully lots of people will get out and enter a code! Just think, if each person in Yellowknife bought just one box of cereal and entered the code that would be almost $19000. Most everybody eats cereal and you have all the way until the end of February 2010 to get out and support Canada's Amateur athletes (and hopefully be slightly biased towards yours truly haha!) Also, starting in June, General Mills is running a special bonus. There will be Gold boxes of original Cheerios on the shelves of grocery stores. These special gold boxes will have $5 donation codes on them instead of the usual $1 codes. Of course you still submit the code the same way as before but the bonus is that the code is found on General Mills' best cereal, Original Cheerios and the codes are obviously worth five times as much. If you are wondering to yourself "where can I find info on which boxes to buy, or how to put in a code?", just click on the link that I have put on the right had side of my blog, just below my amazing sponsors logos.

Alright enough shameless self promotion. Keep watching the blog!

Things that are awesome day #1 UPDATED

2009-05-25T17:40:00.005-06:00

I'm starting a new "feature" on the blog. It will be called things that are awesome day. I'll put a new one up whenever I find something that I think is awesome or that I might think would be awesome to pass along.

Today, for the first installment I give you the short highlights package on Carlos Sastre's epic win in the 16th stage of the Giro D'Italia. Today's stage was 237km long but had a TON of climbing and took the leaders just over seven hours to complete. Seven hours is crazy enough with all of the climbing they did but to be able to attack like Sastre did on the last climb of the day to Monte Petrano is awesome.

Here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9Gt2-uLb6Y

I would embed it but embedding has been disabled for this video.

**Update** Check out a riders description of stage 16. This article is written by Michael Barry, a Canadian who rides for the Columbia Highroad Team. He is a very good writer and gives a very descriptive view of what he called one of the hardest days he has ever had on the bike.

The article can be found here.

You can watch the full Giro live everyday at universalsports.com

The Quest for 8.9

2009-05-22T12:32:00.004-06:00

A barrier was broken yesterday. The first lap under nine seconds of the season. Now I know for those of you who read this and are skaters you are going to think "are you kidding me???" or "good, those guys must be skating terribly" or something along those lines. But heres the catch. We aren't skating at the Oval right now. We have been on ice at another Calgary rink for the past two months. Its a quite cold rink with ice that has next to no glide when compared to the Oval. So when Wim de Deyne of Belgium went 8.98 seconds in a flyer (a single lap full out) yesterday it was a big moment. There had been alot of 9.0's and 9.1's but no one could break the 9.0 barrier (this is kind of ridiculous because on normal ice we would do somewhere in the 8.2-8.5 region). The ice was always too brittle, with too many ruts and too little glide.But finally the Quest for 8.9 was complete! Anyways in all seriousness it might be hard on the mind to not be anywhere close to a half decent lap time, but as long as we keep it in perspective as to why we aren't going super fast and look at the positives of being able to skate through the worst ice conditions we will see all year, we can be confident we are on the right track.

Also check out a new blog. Liam McFarlane is a teammate of mine and he started a blog earlier this week. You can find it here or on the side bar.

Pain season!

2009-04-25T09:50:00.004-06:00

Its that time of year again!! The time of year when you get out of bed in the morning, stand up and stretch and feel like you have been in a street brawl the night before. Yes its pain season again. No its not bad pain, in fact its the type of pain that is good. The type of pain that comes from knowing that you are doing your workouts properly. Despite the fact that we are still a little over three months away from starting our competitive season, this is the time of year where the biggest gains can be made physically and technically. During this time, we put it in what I will call "quality" training. Its not that we don't train with quality all year round, its just that at this time of year we don't have competitions and travel getting in the way of putting in big blocks of solid training and smart recovery. Its actually a fun time of year (if you enjoy breaking down your body and then trying to find the best way to repair it quickly before the next workout, that is). I also find it to be a very rewarding part of the season as well. Rewarding because you notice that you a training session is easier than it was last week, or you can lift more in the weight room than you could a few sessions ago, or you notice that all of a sudden you aren't thinking about a technical point you were working on, but you are still doing it.

And now for something completely off the above topic....

If you are looking for some great listening while you are doing your spring cleaning, or if you are lucky, enjoying then sun out on the deck, check out CBC Radio 3. They play all Canadian, all independent music. There are a ton of podcasts available for free too so check it out and expose yourself to some great Canadian music!

Kidcasters

2009-04-14T15:16:00.003-06:00

Today I had the opportunity to participate in a program that is put on by Lisa Bowes of CTV, Equity Transfer and Trust, Big Chief Beef Jerky and the Calgary Board of Education. I went out to COP to meet a class of Grade 7 students who had been learning what it is like to be a reporter. I was brought in so that they could have a mock up press conference. Each group of students had questions about the life of an athlete that ranged from the issues surrounding funding for amateur athletes, to more personal questions about university and what I do outside of sport, growing up etc. I was really impressed with the amount of thought and research that had gone into the questions that they had. After the “press conference” the students will be writing reports that are filmed by CTV to present to the class. This was a very cool experience for me and a lot of fun too! Thanks to Lisa Bowes for asking me to do this and to the whole class for all of your amazing questions!!

Lots of questions!!

With the class

Trailer

2009-04-12T18:25:00.002-06:00

Below is a trailer for a a video called A Ride with George Hincapie. Hincapie is one of the best American road cyclists of all time. He was Lance Armstrong's right hand man for many (not sure how many but could be all) of his 7 tour de france wins. This guy is a beast on the bike.

Today was the day that the Hell of the North Bike race went off. Most would know it as Paris-Roubaix. George Hincapie is a perennial favourite to win this race but this year, like several in the past, he ran into some bad luck that ended his chances of winning. On his twitter site he wrote "Rough day for me today. Bad luck again. Not going out like that!!! Back next year." What a cool attitude. While I was watching Paris-Roubaix thi morning, I saw some similarities to short track. When Hincapie flatted, he calmly started taking off his flat wheel while waiting for the support car to come. Even though this put a major dent in his chances of winning, instead of freaking out, he calmly did what he could then got on a rode hard again. It was out of his control and he could only help the situation by recomposing himself. Alot like Short Track. Later, towards the end of the race, there were only six riders left in contention for the win. Coming around a corner on the slippery cobblestones, Juan Antonio Flecha went down taking several riders with him and ultimately ending their chances. Again out of their control and again like what can happen in Short Track. But all the riders jumped back up and keep riding. Today, none of them would come back and win, but it could happen another day. And thats why they got up and kept riding.

For those who have been there, this story is hilarious!

2009-04-10T08:53:00.002-06:00

I ran across this story while checking out the Amateur Sport section at cbc.ca/sports. Any athlete that has had to do a doping test will find this blog written by Kevin Light, a member of the the gold medal winning Men's 8 rowing team from the Beijing Olympics, comical.

http://www.cbc.ca/sports/blogs/2009/03/going_to_the_bathroom_with_my.html

While you are checking that out, look also for blogs that my teammate Jessica Gregg has been writing for the CBC leading up to the games next year.

We're Back!! (In more ways than one...)

2009-04-07T19:26:00.003-06:00

Welcome to the 2010 Olympic season! While most winter sports are just wrapping up their seasons and thinking about some well deserved downtime, Short Track is back at it in preparation for the all important Olympic trials in August. After three weeks off, we started up our season on ice last week. But before I go more into how we are back to training, I’ll start with the “off-season” (can a season be three weeks long???).

After trials it was time to relax. Of course, after a few days of doing nothing, the body starts to get restless. Luckily for us, we had Oval finale (a season-ending long track meet) to practice for. Never having done long track myself, I decided to sign up for the 1500m. Most wondered why I would sign up for this as it is considered one of the hardest races (similar to the 800 in track, its not a sprint but its not an endurance race either). But I had some rationale. Being a rookie on claps, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to go full out or start that well (hence no 500) but didn’t want to go extra hard and be in extreme pain (hence no 5000m or 10000m). So the 1500 it was. I managed to finish in a respectable (so I was told) 1.49.01. It was really fun to do something a little different but man did I gain a respect for the type of pain long trackers experience. It’s a lot different than a short track burn but you are totally wasted after going full out for that long.

After finale, it was off to Arizona for a little vacation. My Dad and I took our bikes down to the Flagstaff/Sedona area to do some hiking and biking. Bikes turned out to be a great way to check out the local scenery at our own pace. What a cool part of the world that is. There are endless hiking and mountain biking possibilities in a really temperate climate. The road biking is pretty good as well, although some of the highways don’t have much of a shoulder and are quite busy in the tourist seasons. It wasn’t exactly the typical athlete vacation of sitting on a beach and doing nothing, but I don’t get the oppoutunity to just hike and bike as much as I want very often because I should be resting instead so it was nice to take advantage of some time off to get in an activity I really enjoy.

Big Wall!!
At the top of a 13km climb to Sunset Crater
How do these not fall down????
The Grand Canyon in all its splendor
In the words of Bubbles "Deeeeeeeeecent"

Arizona wrapped up my off-season and we were back on the ice the day after I got back. It hasn’t been that hard to get back into the groove of things because we weren’t off for very long and because I did some long track which is nice. In a normal year we would spend at least a week or more just getting used to being back on skates, but this year we can really just get back into it comfortably and we are still in relatively (not really-but better than a normal year) good shape. So that’s pretty much it for the last few weeks. Like the title says, we are back in more ways than one. The first is that we are back on the ice, the second way is that I should be updating the blog a lot more often now that the season is getting into full swing. I’ll try to have some quality content for you each week. Remember to buy your Whole Grain Cheerios and Golden Grahams and put the code in online! There is a new link on the right had side where you can get all the information about this!

2009-03-17T11:31:00.003-06:00

Our last trials came and went last week. Not a great weekend for me but it was overall a pretty solid weekend for the men’s Oval program. We toke 6 out of 9 podiums and Cory Rasmussen won the competition. For me it was not a very good weekend. I had to rely on a good last day and some luck to cement my position on the National Team (pending the High Performance Committee meetings next month). Not the way I wanted to finish the season, but at least my last day was solid (2nd in the 1000). I’m not going to bore you with all the ups and downs of the weekend so I’ll just leave it at that. Instead, below is a slideshow of some of the things our team did this past season.

A Rant

2009-02-27T11:52:00.004-07:00

It was cold yesterday in Calgary. It wasn’t ridiculously cold, only about –25 or so, but it was cold enough that the good old van wouldn’t start. Now don’t get me wrong, I love that van. It has been a great vehicle for a long time, and still is a great vehicle. The fact that it wouldn’t start wasn’t an enormous surprise as I had neglected to plug it in the night before not realizing it would be so cold the next day.

So as I sat in the car running the battery down and praying it would start so that I wouldn’t have to miss my physio appointment (I did by the way), and being mad that I would miss physio, a thought occurred to me. I wished that I wouldn’t have to use a car anymore. Earlier that morning I had used my bike. I just walked outside, jumped on and rode away. The bike didn’t care that it was –25. In fact I doubt that would have changed if it was –50 or +50 even. My bike works no matter what the conditions outside. Sure it was cold outside but if you dress for the weather its not that bad at all. I personally find it very enjoyable and it costs me almost nothing. I bought my commuting bike for 50 bucks. Since then I have put ZERO dollars into it in three years. The car on the other hand (again its great and I realize cars have taken me to a lot of cool things/places) cost me (in the last year, according to my CO-OP membership annual thingy) almost $800 in gas. That number is probably more if you count the other stations I have filled at. We barely use the car. Maybe once or twice a week each between my sister and I. Imagine if you drive every day for 30 mins to work and back!! When I have to plug it in, there is an unknown amount of power just flowing away for hours on end. I’m sure its more than if you just left your lights on in the living room all day and night. Those are only two examples and I didn’t even include the invisible cost of emissions. I guess what I’m trying to say is wouldn’t it be great if everyone lived in a place where you could ride to work/school/the store/other stuff easily and quickly. I recognize that cities and urban sprawl have made this almost completely impossible for the vast majority of the North American population, but imagine the individual savings. In today’s society, where eco-friendly is trendy would it be that tough to tell people that they could save thousands of dollars, get in shape and help the environment all at the same time?? People pay big money to join gyms and get in shape. By riding a bike to work, you pay nothing, get in shape and get the satisfaction of knowing you are doing good. Somebody should package that up in a fancy ad campaign and call it the Velo Diet. Take that Atkins, South Beach and Jenny Craig. Anyways, I know I’m not going to change the world here, and that the car is not going away. I even know I will use a car probably thousands of times more before I die. The car is not going away, it would just be great if we didn’t have to depend on it so much. That’s just my two cents anyways.

On the skating front, we had our last on ice workout at the Oval of the season today. We are off to Montreal for trials on Sunday while Jon and the Jesses head to Vienna on Saturday for Worlds. Expect some updates next week and during trials.

General Mills Aspiring Olympians Program

2009-02-18T12:48:00.003-07:00

General Mills has recently launched their Aspiring Olympians program website. You can visit it at www.everydaycelebrations.ca/aspiringolympians or www.generalmillsathletes.ca. You can also join the facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54029287372#/group.php?gid=54029287372. I will have more details coming up in the following weeks about how this website will work. But here is a sneek peek summary: Watch for specially marked boxes of General Mills cereal to appear in your favorite grocery store starting in March. Purchase one of these fine products and then go to the website. Once there, you can enter the donation code and pick which athlete you would like General Mills to donate $1 to. This is where I need your help. When you enter the donation code would be great if you could pick me! I know, I know shameless plug, but lets face it I'm not writing this so that I can ask you to pick someone else. Thanks in advance for your support and watch this blog for more info about the Aspiring Olympians program coming soon.

Dresden is Awesome!

2009-02-17T13:35:00.004-07:00

Even though I obviously won’t be posting this from the plane (although soon I might be able too), I am writing it on the plane back to Calgary from Dresden. According to the map on the plane, we just passed over Reykjavik and are traveling towards Greenland. But do you even care about where I won’t be when you are reading this? I doubt it. So on to the stuff that you might care about, or at least be interested in (at least I would assume so if you take the time to check this blog out…).

So World Cup #6. I didn’t update each racing day because we had to pay for the internet and it was a bit of a precious resource. So I’ll summarize. This weekend was a bit different, as the top three men and top two women weren’t with us. The racing on Friday was average ending with a trip to the repechage for me, Laurie Marceau, Marc-Andre Monette and Alex Boisvert-Lacroix in one of our distances. Everyone else qualified in both of their distances. Saturday was another up and down day. The obvious high was the fact that we had three men in the 1500m A final (myself (5th), Remi Beaulieu (3rd) and M-A Monette (DQ)). Unfortunately the race didn’t play out as well as we would have liked and we only came away with one medal, a bronze for Remi. The other high for the day was our relay. Our team consisted of Guillaume Bastille, Alex, Remi and myself. None of us are going to World Championships, but we still managed to stay right with the Koreans in one of the faster races this season. This was an excellent semi final for us as none of the four had much experience in bigger relays. The lows for the day included, Francois Hamelin being involved in a brutal crash with an American skater. He ended up with a lot bruising on his left thigh, a totalled suit and also had his bell rung a bit. He felt a lot better the next day and should be back soon. M-A Monette also went down in the A final in a bit of a cluster between myself and the Korean skater Park Jin-Hwan and ended with an ankle injury that also kept him out of the rest of the weekend. The other low was the women being DQed in their relay semi. Sunday was a new day, but didn’t really bring much in the way of good skating. I went out in the repechage final of the 500m. We only had one skater in the semis and none in a final (minus our relay final). This was Marie-Andree Mendes-Campeau and she ended off with an excellent 5th place considering the 500 is not her specialty. We had a good opportunity to redeem the day with a good relay, but we fell early in the race and spent the rest of the time playing catch-up only to finish 4th by about 5m. We did secure the overall World Cup title in the relay though by making the final so this was a small consolation.

Freiberger Arena in Dresden

Sunday night we had the season ending banquet. I had to be a bit late though because I was selected for doping control. After a disappointing relay, the last thing I wanted to do was go and pee in a cup, especially after I had just gone to the bathroom right before the relay. But you gotta do what you gotta do so off I went. What could have been a ten minute procedure turned into a two hour waiting game in a small room in the very back of the arena. But luckily for me I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t pee on demand so it wasn’t that boring. I finally made it to the banquet only about a half an hour late, After a quick dinner and some awards, we tried to get a dance party going. It turned out to be pretty hard but we managed to haul a few people up.

View from my hotel room window in the early evening.

All in all, Dresden was awesome (the results weren’t stellar so I mean this in a non results based way). The food was great (in my opinion!!), the hotel was comfortable and the arena was phenomenal. This was the first short track World Cup that Germany had hosted and they did an excellent job. Everything ran on time, transportation was amazing and it is also a very beautiful city. I also found everyone to be very hospitable and nice. They would help you with anything. I hope that they will bid again so that we can return there again someday soon! The other thing that made a big difference in this being a very successful world cup was the crowd. Even though there weren't a ton of them (about 1000) they made it for lack of size in volume. These were the most vocal fans I've seen at a world cup. There were tons of Germany flags, microphones, and big groups of the crowd even lit up some sparklers for the relay final. Germans love their sport!

Biking around Dresden on an afternoon off

The countdown is on...365 days to go!

2009-02-12T09:27:00.002-07:00

One year until the Olympic games. And I'm in Dresden, Germany for the final World Cup of the season with beautiful and intelligent Jessica and Laurie typing out a blog before racing gets underway tomorrow morning. Is there a better place to be?

The top three men and top two women went home on Monday to prepare and 5 of us travelled over. Everyone is over jet lag now and training has been going well. The rink here is brand spanking new, and the ice is in really good shape. Ridiculous amounts of grip, but its better to have more grip than less. Minus the fact that the hotel room are extremely small, Alex Boisvert can almost touch both walls at the same time, everything is really good here. Remi, myself and Katherine Reutter from the US rented some bikes the other day and did a little tour of Dresden, checking out some of the famous old buildings that were destroyed during the fire bombing in world war II but have since been rebuilt. I would post up some photos, but I forgot the cord to connect my camera to the computer.

Distances for this weekend:

Women:

Jesscia Hewitt: 500m 1000m

Val Lambert: 500m 1000m

Anne Maltais: 500m 1000m

Marie-Eve Drolet: 1500m 500m

Laurie Marceau: 1500m 500m

Marie-Andree Mendes-Campeau: 1500m 500m

Men

Michael Gilday 1500m 500m

Alex Boisvert-Lacroix: 500m 500m

Remi Beaulieu: 1500m 1000m

Guillaume Bastille: 500m 1000m

Marc-Andre Monette 1500m 500m

Francois Hamelin: 1000m 500m

365 days to go, the countdown is down.

Lightweight baby!!

One month left...

2009-02-07T11:00:00.003-07:00

The world cup circuit resumed this weekend. Unfortunately, due to events outlined in previous posts, I'm not there. But that doesn't mean I'm doing nothing. I have been in Calgary with the rest of the team preparing for the final push through the last month of the racing season. Starting last week, our team will be splitting up faster than a couple married at a Las Vegas casino and hopping around the world for different competitions. Last weekend, Jess H, Jess G, Marie Eve and Jon took off for World Cup 5 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Tomorrow, I will be flying to Dresden, Germany to join them for World Cup 6 while Jess G flies home to prepare for individual glory at the World Championships. While Jess H, Marie, Jon and I are on our way home in a week and a bit, Liam, Richard, Tyler and Gabby will arriving in Harbin, China for World University Games. Once they return, we will have one week together for final tune-ups before the Euros, plus the Jesses and Jon head to World Champs and the rest of us head to Montreal for the final National Team selections. A crazy month of travel when you look at it from everyones schedule, but its a good amount of racing for each person and a good way to finish the season. I'll update next from Dresden, hopefully with some good pics and also a good story about my flight over in first class (hopefully!!). If anyone has any good strategies for getting upgraded my back would greatly appreciate them if you could share them with me!

Trials Recap

2009-01-24T12:02:00.004-07:00

Its taken me a week to get to this trials recap. The truth is that I was pretty disappointed with how trials went ad didn’t really feel like blogging. After Fridays good day, I had two not very good days in a row in a competition where you have almost no room for mistakes. Despite the fact that I am disappointed in not fulfilling one of my main goals for the year, I have to realistic. I was forced to sit out three and a half weeks of training beginning at the start of December in Japan and stretching until just after Christmas. I was also unable to lift weights for almost two months prior to trials, and I had done almost zero starts or high intensity accelerations since my return to ice. All of this was due to my back injury. This would not be an ideal lead up to the biggest competition of the year by any stretch of the imagination. I am not one to make excuses, but in my mind this was a determining factor in my poor showing at the trials. The positives though are that despite a way less than ideal lead up, I was still able to put together a 7th overall, a result I would have been ecstatic about only a little more than a season ago. Now that result is hardly enough to satisfy. A second positive is that I will be able to compete in one more world cup this year. The top three, Charles Hamelin, Olivier Jean and Francois-Louis Tremblay, who will be competing individually at the World Championships will all come home for extra rest and preparation after World Cup 5. Speedskating Canada is sending the next three skaters, myself, Remi Beaulieu and Alex Boisvert-Lacroix to World Cup 6 in Dresden, Germany. Following the trials, I was also qualified for the World University Games in Harbin China. I decided to turn down my spot for this competition for a couple reasons. The first is that I want to allow my back ample time to heal and put in some really solid training before the last team trials in March, and also because I have decided not to take classes this semester in order to have a chance to have a between season break as our new season will be starting a month before the winter university semester ends.

For the rest of the team, there were some good and not so good results. The highlights were definitely Jess Gregg, who was second overall and is the top ranked female in the country this year and will compete individually at world champs. Jessica Hewitt also qualified to skate the relay at worlds as well as the rest of the World Cups. Marie-Eve Drolet also impressed in her return to trials and will skate World Cups 5 and 6. The men didn’t have the greatest weekend, but one highlight was Gilmore Junio, a junior who was 15th overall in his first senior trials. Below is my best race of the weekend, the 1500m semi-final.

Day 1 racing

2009-01-17T07:48:00.002-07:00

Day one of racing is in the books. It was a solid day for me with a 4th place finish. I executed my race plans well and had good legs all day. Our team had some other very good results. Jessica Gregg finished third in a wild women's final that saw three women go down and two of those get disqualified. The only skater to go down and not get dqed was the newest member of our team, Marie-Eve Drolet. Marie-Eve is making a comeback after retiring at the ripe old age of 20 following the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics. She was skating very strongly all day and had herself in 1st place with 2 laps to go. Unfortunately, Ivanie Blondin made a tight pass and they both went down. Marie-Eve had to settle for 4th. Disappointing for sure, but still a very solid race in only her second race in almost 7 years. 500’s today. We are lucky this weekend as the FPVQ will be live webcasting the races starting at 1:30pm EST. You can find the races at http://www.tvgo.ca/fpvq/. This is the first time they will be doing this so check it out and support Canadian short track so that they will continue to do it in the future!

Canadian Championships

2009-01-15T13:17:00.001-07:00

Well I managed to go another few weeks without updating the blog. I’m starting to sound like Kirsten Sweetland when I start a blog. So instead of boring you with all the excuses I don’t have, I’ll just jump right in. Alright, 2009 Canadian Open Championships. That’s what its all about right now. All of the top skaters in Canada are in Montreal this week for our second set of selection races. The overall results of this weekend combined with the overall results from our selection races in the fall will determine the members of the winter World Cup teams as well as who will compete at World Championships individually (top three overall male and female) and the members of the relay team at world Championships (4 and 5 overall combined with the top three). Needless to say, its one of the bigger weekends on the racing calendar. Its obviously really easy to look at this weekend and get nervous because the stakes are high. I mean peoples goals for the entire season could be on the line here! But there are other ways, some would say better ways, to look at a weekend like this. Some would say that it is better to look at this weekend as a reward. A reward for the hard work and dedication you have put in. A reward for the patience you have had with yourself when things weren’t going perfectly right. Or being rewarded with an opportunity to prove to yourself something that might not even necessarily have anything to do with racing but can be proven through racing. But there is one thing though that I think that rewards always bring. They bring fun. And that’s the best part.

I will do updates each day on the results of racing and how our team is doing. Also I've linked to a new blog in the side bar. Its the blog of my good buddy Andrew Matthews.

Get Some!!

Home and Family

2008-12-27T13:29:00.004-07:00

One of the tough things about moving away to pursue Olympic dreams is having to move away from your family and friends. This is something that everyone that is part of our team in Calgary knows. None of us are from Calgary. We all made the choice at some point (most of us after high school) to move away from all things familiar to train full time. Its something that is tough to do. For most of the year we don’t really notice how much we miss home. All of our friends are also away at school or spread around the country (or world!) doing their own thing, not unlike what we ourselves are doing. But at times like Christmas we really notice the things we miss about home. Around the middle to end of December, most of our friends from school start to trickle home for Christmas. They will get to attend various Christmas parties and go out and see people that they haven’t seen for months or even a year or more. For most of the group in Calgary though, we miss out on these activities. Training keeps us in Calgary until right before Christmas and has us racing back right after. The Europeans that train with us don’t even get to go home and see their families due to the sheer length and cost of travel halfway around the world. The funny thing is though, if you ask any of us if we regret the decision to miss out on stuff like this I’m willing to bet just about everyone will say “no way”! They almost certainly have some part saying they wish that they could go home for two weeks or more, but everyone realizes the sacrifices that must be made in order to become a world class athlete. Sure everyone misses their family and friends but thats where we have some luck with our team. We are a very close group and we are not unlike a family. We unite around what we have in common and by the time we all retire, we will have spent more time together than we will spend with our immediate family over the period of time we are in Calgary. So while it may be tough to be away from immediate family, how many people can say that they are able to go hang out with their other family the rest of time? Pretty cool I say.

Our Calgary "family"

Also, if you would like to check out an amazing piece of music, check out the video below. The artist is John Butler of the John Butler Trio playing the song Ocean. He rarely plays this piece the same way twice but it always sounds amazing.

Ouf...

2008-12-22T10:26:00.004-07:00

Oops. So I let my blogging slip lately. The good thing is that I think that this is the first time that this has happened since I started blogging and I will try not to make it a regular occurrence. Alright so last two weeks not a lot has happened really which is probably the main reason for the lack of blogging. The biggest event that has happened since then was a weekend trip to Canmore for some snowshoe training in the spray valley area. The idea was to finish up a recovery week with a fun activity that would provide some aerobic activity and what better way to do this that to trudge through knee deep snow (we got a 20 cm dump the night before we went out!!!) in snowshoes up the side of a mountain. The only hitch was that the temperature dropped to between -25C and -30C the night before and stayed there the whole weekend. But since our team kicks a$$, this didn’t stop us. We bundled up and headed out on a three hour snowshoe up and back to Chester Lake. We stayed the night in Canmore and spent some much enjoyed time in the hot tub and sauna. The next day we headed out again in chilly temps but with less wind and bluebird skies. The second day we were at Mt. Shark. Things started out with Liam and I and a couple others leading us straight into a trail that slowly diminished in to no trail. So we made our own trail! Later in the day we were lucky to see two moose, a mum and a baby. This was a highlight, but we would get lucky one more time as a lone moose was waiting for us back in the parking lot. He was enjoying licking slat off the tires of the cars. Three moose in one day is pretty cool!

Liam and Harolds from Latvia on the way up to Chester Lakes.

End of the first day with Commonwealth Peak in the background.

The Spray Valley. Mount Nestor is the peak just left of center.

Whats happening??

Last week was all about physio and doing as much training as possible. I felt like I spent half the week doing physio alone but my back is now starting to really get ready to go hard so that is a good point. We will take a couple days off for Christmas, as most of the group, except the Euros, will head home for Christmas. I am hoping to get out to the cabin at home and enjoy some more winter. Happy Holidays everyone!

Asia Recap

2008-12-09T16:37:00.006-07:00

The Canadian Short Track team returned from a two week two in Asia last night. This was a very successful trip for the team, especially the men’s side who finished off with a big victory against the Koreans in the relay. For me, the second half of the trip took on a different focus. Normally the second weekend of a world cup trip is a good chance to build on some things that you may have learned, or correct a few things that you may have done wrong the previous weekend. Unfortunately for me, I was still nursing the injury to my back and didn’t get the chance to build on the 1500m A final I had in Beijing or try and redeem my performance in the A final of the relay (my first one!) where I skated well but botched my last exchange (that combined with a botched exchange a lap later cost us the win). Obviously sitting on the sidelines can be a bit depressing but I think that I handled it well knowing that I was doing the right thing for my back. I also took solace in the fact that I skated well the weekend before while in quite a bit of pain and I looked forward to how well I will skate once I am 100%. So with that in mind I looked to try and take advantage of my situation and learn as much as I could from watching the best in the world. I was able to take a bunch of points on everything from track patterns, to strategy and the way the best skaters act and the vibe they give off during warm-ups and races. This is all stuff that is right there and obvious but I always miss it when I am competing as I am absorbed in my own race prep.

The highlight of the weekend was definitely our win in the relay. We have been close to winning at every World Cup but have come up short three times. It was nice to be on the top of the podium even though I didn’t actually get to be on the podium because I didn’t skate. Another highlight of the trip was our dinner on the last night. We went out to this very small family owned Japanese restaurant. Everyone say around knee high tables with grills in the middle while plates of food are brought out to grill. They bring everything from veggies to meat to seafood and you just grill it up and enjoy. Everything was delicious and the meal was topped off with sake shots all around. We all headed over to a karaoke bar after. Check out the video below. Martin (the women’s coach is playing the air piano and drums while the Jess’s and Annick sing)

The restaurant we went to the last night...

This wasn't supposed to go up here...

2008-12-04T01:52:00.002-07:00

But I do whatever I want so here it is for you viewing pleasure...

Sorry Jess...

No skating for me

2008-12-04T01:36:00.003-07:00

The title pretty much says it all. After three days of rest my back is still not healed enough that we can say I should skate. I have seen some improvement for sure, and am getting back to normal bit by bit, but I just didn’t have enough time. Today I was able to do some exerices in order to help activate some of my deep core muscles that aren’t working and putting the extra strain on my back. But this still doesn’t change the fact that I won’t skate this weekend. Although a World Cup is important, it isn’t as important as say World Championships Trials, which are in 5 weeks. I could push through the pain this week and maybe put up some good results and then spend another week off when we get back, or I can do the smart thing and rest it fully over this weekend and hopefully be close to 100% and ready to train once we get back to Calgary on Monday and be in top shape come January. I obviously chose the latter with the support of my coach, our physiotherapist and doctor. It just doesn’t make sense to risk further injury. Needless to say I am pretty disappointed to not be racing but that’s the way it goes sometimes and the best thing for me is to rest. As an athlete we are used to pushing through pain. But there is good pain and bad pain and this is bad pain. Athletes have to do the right things for their bodies as well and in this case I will gain the most by doing nothing (well not nothing, I still have to do my physio exercises religiously!) It sucks for sure but it is what it is.

But this isn’t stopping me from all activity. Today our physio, Rebecca, suggested that I try some swimming so that I can at least keep active and try to help with a bit more stimulation of my core muscles. Now, I don’t swim very often (more like close to never) so I knew this would be an adventure. Lets just say I was not even as good as Michael Phelps at age 2. Under Reb’s watchful eye though I did improve a bit over the hour or so I was in the water, but was still getting killed by Rebecca at the end and she was only using her legs! So my swimming needs some improvement but as long as I don’t have any pain from it I will try to go back a couple more times this weekend.

Racing starts tomorrow for everyone else. I will be in the stands trying to keep my boredom levels to a minimum (you can only watch so many races when you know you should be in them). I’ll try to film a couple races and throw them up here after racing is over for the day.

Sayonara!!

This one is for CVD. He requested a picture of a beer vending machine. There is one right outside of our hotel room by the elevator. Beer in the vending machine costs $4.75 Canadian

Japan!

2008-12-03T00:38:00.003-07:00

Konichiwa from Japan! The trip here was actually pretty long. The day started at 4:45am. We were at the airport by 6:30 and on to a 4 hour flight to Tokyo. Once in Tokyo, we had a 6 hour bus trip to look forward to. All in all it was a pretty long day. We had practice the next morning, but this practice was going to have to happen without me. The past few weeks I’ve had some back pain building up. Unfortunately I probably didn’t deal with it fast enough and this compounded the problem. After training and racing through pain last week, and combined with the long day of travel, my back decided it had had enough of suffering. I had been doing a lot of physio, but after seeing the doctor I was told that I should take at least 48 hours rest and see how it was after that. He also said it was unlikely that I will race this weekend. I was definitely a little bummed out, but I was in quite a bit of pain so I agreed. We will see how it improves each day and make a decision right before the races on Friday. After one day of rest I am seeing some improvement but not a ton. It sucks for sure but I have to be positive and hey, I am in Japan which is pretty cool…

View from my hotel room in late afternoon

Nagano is a very nice city. Almost 400 000 people live here but you would never know it. Everything is very neat and tidy. There are a lot of small houses and everyone seems very friendly. Nagano is also surrounded by mountains and the sunset every night is gorgeous. Today, we visited the Zenkoji temple that houses the oldest statue of Buddha in Japan. Very cool. The thing that struck me most about our first real foray into the city was how clean everything is. There isn’t any garbage anywhere and everything is in its place. And this is everywhere, not just on the tourist streets but even in the back alleys that we cut through to get back to the hotel. Now you might expect that the reason that there isn’t any garbage is because there a garbage can on every corner but this is not the case. Its almost impossible to find a trash bin. After buying some gelato, I had to walk almost ten minutes without seeing a garbage can and finally gave up and went in a store to throw out my trash. I found it amazing that there can be no garbage cans and no garbage. If only it could be like this is North America.

At the Zenkoji Temple

2008-11-29T20:08:00.001-07:00

Today was the World Cup rounds for the 500s and 1500s. It was another good day for the Canadian men. Charles Hamelin and Francois-Louis Tremblay finished 1-2 in the 500m and showed that we are the dominate force in this distance. In the 1500m Olivier Jean was second by .005 after leading from 6 to go. I was last in the A final for 6th place. Today this was a disappointment, but only a month a go this would have been a big accomplishment for me. Now that I have made A finals, I am no longer satisfied with just being in the A final. I know that I can medal and medaling is now the expected result. Today is the last day of racing in China. I will be doing the 500m (it is raced twice this weekend). It should be fun. We are also in the final for the relay and will be looking to get some revenge on the Americans and Koreans from beating us in the first two stops.

Next post will either be from Japan or on the trip to Japan!

Below is the video of the 1500m A final

Result:
1. Sung Si-Bak Korea
2. Olivier Jean Canada
3. Park Jin-Hwan Korea
4. Lee Jung-Su Korea
5. Sui Boaku China
6. Michael Gilday Canada

A Good Day

2008-11-28T19:21:00.003-07:00

Fridays qualification rounds went well for the majority of the team. All of the men went through to the World Cup rounds with the exception of Francois Hamelin in the 1000m. He was Dqed. On the girls side, Jessica Hewitt was Dqed in her 1500m heat while Val Lambert and Annik Plamondon will have to skate the repechage in the 500m. For me it was a good day and I will try to build on that today with the semis and finals of the 1500m. Both mens and womens relay teams also passed through to the next round with wins in their heats.

Below is about half of my 1500m Quarter final from yesterday.

Ni Hao from Beijing

2008-11-27T04:33:00.005-07:00

We’ve been in Beijing for three full days now and everything is going well. We have practiced each day. The ice here is really nice. Its quite fast and has a lot of grip too which is nice. The arena is the same facility that was used for Volleyball at the Olympics. The rink was covered with a floor during the games. Because of the Oympics, the building has been renovated and is in nice condition complete with an upgraded gym that we have used for weights. Apparently it wasn’t always this nice so we are lucky. Today (Thursday) is our last day of training before the competition starts.

We have also had the chance to get out and experience Beijing a bit as well over the last couple of days. Tuesday, we headed over to the silk market to do some shopping for knock off designer goods. In the ever exciting world of the marketplace, you have to bargain with over zealous vendors who will grab, pull, hit and yell at you in order to get you to come to there booth. Everyone is selling almost the same thing and there are more English speaking Chinese people at the markets than anywhere else is China I’m sure. They see a tourist and immediately try to grab your attention and get a huge mark up out of you. The best way to get your price is to make them think you are interested and then walk away. This alone often brings the price down by about 100 yuan (20 cdn). If you ever find yourself in Beijing and at the market, the rule of thumb is to never pay more than half of the initial offer and 90% of the time you should play less than that.

Tuesday night we went out for dinner to a local hot pot restaurant. A hot pot is a basically a cauldron with fire in it surrounded by a ring of boiling water. You are brought big plates of uncooked meat and greens that you submerge in the boiling water until cooked and then remove them, dip them in a dipping sauce and enjoy. It was actually really good although the sauces were a bit weird. Our waitress was also hilarious. She was really concerned that we do it the proper way and found it hilarious every time a group of hungry athletes would throw a ton of meat in and then devour it in seconds.

the hot pot

mmmmm shrimp

Wednesday we had a the last practice time of the day (7pm) so we took advantage of the chance to go over to the Birds Nest and the Water Cube. After seeing these impressive structures on TV this summer, it was really cool to see them in person. They are truly spectacular up close. We were able to go in and walk on the field and see the enormity of the stadium from the middle. It is surprising how personal a stadium with 91000 seats can feel given the right architecture. The water cube was pretty neat too although we were told it is way cooler at night when they have a light show with the walls.

Usain Bolt's view during the Olympics

This thing is huge!!

It was nice to get to experience some touristy things while we were here. To often we travel into a country, compete and then leave. Even though what we did was very like any typical tourist it is still nice to experience what we can. But after a couple days of that, its back to competition mode. World Cup #3 starts tomorrow. I will be skating a 500m and a 1500m. I haven’t skated a 500m on the world cup since 2006 so I am happy to be doing one. I will try to do a summary of racing after each day. I have also posted a bunch more photos in addition to the ones here in my picasa account which can be accessed by the link on the right hand bar.

Lastly, good luck to everyone racing in Calgary this weekend.

Travel day to Asia Timeline

2008-11-23T04:51:00.004-07:00

The following is a loose timeline of our travel day to Beijing. I wrote random things down at random times so you can see how it goes. All times in Mountain (calgary) time.

6:44am: Aisle seat!! Checked in and got an aisle set for trans-pacific flight. Good start to the day!

8:53am: Board flight to Vancouver.

8:54am: Giggling and annoying noises coming from two rows in front of me (the Jesses). One person changes seats immediately.

9:57am: Shoei discovers that EPO was discovered in 50 BC while watching the Asterix movie. (EPO=Elixir Pro Olympics)

11:49am: Hewitt shows off a picture of J Gregg picking her nose on the plane

11:54am: Blake and Jess G pick over Hewitts scalp for grey hairs. They find MANY. Jess G says that she thinks Hewitt is still growing browns thankfully for her.

12:46pm: Reid sends a "special message" to everyone via Skype video.

1:09pm: Olivier Jean "I hope the seat beside me is either empty or has a beautiful Chinese woman in it"

1:14pm: Boarded flight to Beijing. Estimated flight time 11 hours 2 minutes.

1:49pm: 6.5 hours since I walked out my front door this morning.

1:50pm: Takeoff to Beijing!

2:14pm: First movie: Tropical Thunder

4:16pm: Sleep time. Two gravol and "the chicken" later and I'm out for a couple hours.

6:37pm: Wake Up. Dang, only slept 2.5 hours. Might not be a bad thing though since it will be easier to get a full nights sleep in China.

6:47pm: Second movie: The Dark Knight. I told Liam I wouldn't see it but here I am...

7:03pm: "Anybody want to see a magic trick? I'll make this pencil disappear" Sweet line by the Joker.

9:20pm: Jesses come to visit. They want to know "are you excited??"

11:31pm: Walking around the cabin again. Doing some streches and up-downs to keep the blood flowing. Should be only another 1.5 hours or so.

12:02am: Pilot announces descent in 25 mins and on the ground in 58 mins, 15 hours since leaving my front door.

12:59am: Touch down in Beijing! 11 hour 9 min flight. Good prediction by the pilot.

1:15am: Waiting in Customs line. New international terminal in Beijing is INSANE.

1:24am: Through customs and waiting for the monorail train.

1:55am: Waiting for bus to hotel.

2am: Hewitt and Gregg fight over the picture of Gregg picking her nose. Will it end up on Facebook?

2:11am: Picture deleted after the battle. Jess G booed for deleting.

2:13am: Bus driver yells at Hewitt for having her feet up on the seats. A national disgrace.

2:15 am: Hewitt warned a second time for putting her feet up on the seat.

2:49am: Roll into the hotel. Day ends at just over a 19 hour travel day.

Two pictures from the day. The first is the smog descending into Beijing. The second is the Jesses fighting over Hewitts bad which contains the camera with the picture of Jess G picking her nose.

Off to Asia

2008-11-21T20:28:00.002-07:00

We are off to Asia tomorrow for the second set of World Cups. Tomorrow we will travel from Calgary to Vancouver and then on to Beijing for the first week of racing. Then its off to Nagano, Japan for the second weekend and back home after that. Our Calgary group has five members traveling. The Jess's (Hewitt and Gregg), Richard Shoebridge, myself and our coach Jon Cavar will represent with the rest of the team being made up of Montreal based skaters. They are Charles Hamelin, Olivier Jean, Francois Hamelin and Francois-Louis Tremblay for men and Kalyna Roberge (coming back from an injury), Anne Maltais, Annick Plamondon and Valerie Lambert on the womens side. We will all be looking to build on strong performances from the first two world cups and step up on to the podium a few times. I will try to blog as much as possible this time, but it may be tough due to some of the internet policies in China. We will see but hopefully I will be able to get some sweet updates with pics up.

A website to check out

2008-11-17T12:19:00.004-07:00

One of my teammates, Richard Shoebridge has created a site for our team. The address is http://homepages.ucalgary.ca/~rpshoebr/. He made the site for a project at school, but plans to keep updating the site with new news of our team. You can find short profiles of each skater in our team as well as some photos from competitions and practices.

L to R: Liam Mcfarlane, Jessica Gregg, Richard Shoebridge, Jessica Hewitt,Michael Gilday

Testing and an Interesting Interview...

2008-11-15T09:51:00.002-07:00

On Wednesday we did some testing to see where we are physically. But first of all let me set this up a bit. The testing we do is done on the bike. We do this because doing the test on the bike is closer in terms of muscles and systems used to skating than the other way of doing the tests we did, which is running on a treadmill. We haven’t been on the bike much lately, obviously because we have been on ice training and competing, and I wouldn’t say we do a lot of biking except for at the beginning of the season, but we do a lot more biking than running. It’s obviously not a perfect situation, but as long as we do the same thing each time, we should get accurate results.

The tests that we did were an incremental bike test and a maximum aerobic power (MAP) test. The incremental bike test works like this. You jump on the bike (no ordinary bike, this is a teched out exercise bike called the velotron) and start spinning. Before any resistance is put on, your finger is pricked and your blood lactate levels are checked. As long as your blood lactate is under 2mmol, you are ready to go. A load is then dropped on (resistance). For myself, I start this test at 200 watts. Each three minutes, the resistance is increased by 25 watts and blood lactates are checked. When your blood lactate level reaches 6mmol, the test is over. This normally takes about 20 minutes give or take a couple minutes depending on the person.

The MAP test works as follows. On the same bike you start spinning. A load is put on. The difference here is that the load goes up 25W each minute instead of each three minutes. After about 8 minutes of this your are hurting really badly. This is where you try to push through. The test is done when you can’t finish a minute at a load. So for example if you start at 200W after 8 minutes you will have completed the 375W stage. The wattage is then upped to 400, and if you can’t complete a minute at this load, your test is over and you will have finished at 375W.

These tests have various applications to our training and the results are analyzed by our coach and our strength coach. They are then able to make inferences about our target heart rates for different aspects of training such as recovery and the development of our aerobic systems.

This round of tests was done at a time when we were in a fairly hard training block and as such we would have expected our results to be down a bit. But some people increased and most were similar to previous testing results. This is a good sign for everyone and shows that we are doing the right things even though the training we have been doing lately isn’t specific to the method in which the tests were performed (biking).

After finishing that hard training block yesterday, we are now heading in to a recovery week before we head off to the next set of World Cups in Asia a week from today. I will have more on that later this week, but I know that everyone is looking forward to competing again.

On a completely unrelated note, I watch an interview on the news the other day with Melissa Fung, a CBC journalist who was held captive in Afghanistan for three weeks. As I watched this interview, I was really amazed with the way Fung answered all of the questions. Despite the fact that she had been held in a hole in the ground for three weeks, she didn’t ever speak badly of her captors. She was calm and composed the whole time and answered all the questions in a very introspective way. The way she spoke about knowing she would survive and the mental fortitude she had really blew me away. It was an amazing interview and if you have the time I suggest you check it out. You can find it here. If the link doesn’t work, you should be able to find it on the CBC website.

New Gear Day!

2008-11-06T11:54:00.003-07:00

Well its been a bit since I’ve had a new update. This past week has been pretty regular, hence the lack of blog updates. We have just been doing a lot of training and subsequently recovering from the tough training. Yesterday though was one day that I know all of the National Team members look forward to, even if some might not admit it! It was the day that we received our new suitcase full of HBC outer, training and casual wear. Everyone knows its coming and when a whole bunch of boxes show up on the track at the Oval everyone gets excited to check out what the new clothing will look like. This sometimes involves clothing being tried on right on the track and packaging getting spread everywhere while comments fly about the fit or colour or style. The highlight of this year seems to be the white sweater that is extremely comfortable.

Its like Christmas in November!!!

We are very lucky in Canadian speedskating to have number of great sponsors. Bell, ING, Cheerios, LinkIT, HBC, Timex and USANA have all been excellent supporters of speedskating in Canada over the years and we are grateful to have them on our team. If you have a choice of which company to use when buying in any of these companies product ranges, pick a company that supports speedskating and reward them for their support!

World Cup Short Track on CBC

2008-10-30T11:22:00.002-06:00

This Saturday, November 1st, CBC will be airing a highlights show of the Vancouver World Cup. It will be on a 3pm EST, So 1pm for all of you in Alberta and NWT. Make sure to check it out. We need to watch these shows so that the CBC sees that amateur sport is worth supporting and can draw good ratings. If you can't be at a TV they will also be streaming it on their website.

1000m A final - Thanks to Coach Shaner for finding this!

2008-10-29T08:59:00.003-06:00

Back from World Cups

2008-10-28T15:45:00.005-06:00

Everyone is now back from the first two World Cups. The Vancouver stop was a very successful one for Canada. We got our first world cup win of the season courtesy of Charles Hamelin and his amazing pass in the first 1000m. Frank Hamelin was also third in that race. Sunday was another big day. We had 4 athletes in finals and came away with 4 medals. Francois-Louis Tremblay showed his consistency as one of the best 500m skaters and had a silver, Marianne St-Gelais was second in the womens 500 for her first World Cup medal and myself and Remi Beaulieu finished 2-3 in the other 1000m for our first world cup medals in our first World Cup Final. The mens relay had what we would consider a disappointing second to the US and the girls put in a consistent third. I think overall it was a good weekend for Canadian skaters.

After the competition it was time to unwind a bit. A banquet was hosted by the organizing committee at a restaurant near to the hotel. The girls all decided to pay tribute to the greatest moustache in speed skating (owned and worn proudly by Canada’s Remi Beaulieu) by wearing fake moustaches all night.

We are now back in Calgary and will begin preparing for the next set of World Cups at the end of November. There is a lot to be refined and learned before then. Many of the members of this World Cup team are new to the international circuit and these World Cups served as a good learning experience for all of us. In fact there were 7 rookies or relative rookies on this World Cup team. Even though we may not have a lot of experience on the World Cups, we do have experience internationally and this is thanks in large part to Doug Smith of Conematic Heating Systems. Last year Doug organized a series of competitions that took place here in Calgary and also in Harbin, China. The idea was to gain valuable international experience so that when we did get to the World Cup, it wasn’t a huge shock. Seven of this fall’s World Cup team participated in some or all of those Conematic competitions and all came away from these World Cups with either individual or relay medals. It is clear that Doug’s initiative worked and I’m sure it can work again in the future. Thanks to Doug and Conematic Heating for supporting and developing Short Track in Canada and around the World.

Remi and I on the Podium

Early in the Final

I am trying to get a video of the final up. In the mean time you can check out one video of the race that Pate Neumann posted on his blog.

Enjoy!

The Best DQ I`ve ever had (in a sense)

2008-10-25T21:22:00.002-06:00

Sorry for the lack of updates about racing the last few days. We have had really long days (12 plus hours at the rink!!!!!!) that don`t leave a lot of time for blog updates. Yesterday we had the qualifying rounds. All of the guys skated really well and into the first round. For me, it was really an up and down day. After doing alot of media type activities outside of training this week, I felt really tired. This combined with a 6 am wake up made me feel quite tired on race day. This showed in my first race the 1500m heat. I raced a strong tactical race, leading right to the end, but didn`t have the legs to do the lap times I needed towards the end. I was passed twice in the last lap and had to go to the repechage. The 1000 went better, I was still a little shaky but managed to pull it together and get through to the quarters which will go tomorrow.

Today was another early morning to skate the repechage. I skated smoothly and won each of my three races to advance to the World Cup rounds. Skating the repechage isn`t the best thing for the legs, but its kind of fun to do since all of the guys are having fun it seems. The atmosphere is quite a bit more relaxed than when there are alot of people watching and the pressure is on. In my semi I was up against six guys that hadn`t had the luxury (not!) of skating three rounds in the morning. I had set a race plan that I normally wouldn`t do, but was the best for the situation. I followed it to a T and was very close to advancing to the final. Unfortunately, my last pass that would have put me in a qualifying position wasn`t clean and I was DQed. Now this is why I call it the best DQ I have ever had. It wasn`t that I was dqed that made me happy, it was that I was able to follow a race plan that put me outside my comfort level and do almost all the right things. This is really a positive step for me.

As a mens team today we had some tough luck today, but Charles Hamelin topped the day off with superb win in the 1000m. What an amazing race and great for the home crowd. Frank Hamelin also managed to slide in for third so it was a positive day all things said.

Tomorrow is the 500`s and 1000 (2). We will be hunting for A finals and medals all day! Both Canadian teams are also in the A final for the relay.

Rock n Roll

Ready to Rock and Roll in Vancouver

2008-10-23T16:55:00.002-06:00

World Cup 2 starts tomorrow with qualifying. We`ve all had a busy, but good week of training. There has been a lot of media to do and hype around the rink which is a huge difference from normal, but it has been exactly the experience we will all need when the Olympics roll around. We are being warned that what we are going to see this weekend is only a fraction of what we will see at the Olympics. As for whos skating what this weekend, this is what I think it looks like for men.

Charles Hamelin: 1000,1000
Francois-Louis Tremblay: 500,1000
Remi Beaulieu: 1500, 1000
Olivier Jean: 500,1500
Francois Hamelin: 500, 1000
Michael Gilday: 1500, 1000

I am not sure who is racing what on the womens side. With all the hype this week staying relaxed will be key. We have our own change room that lets us get away from it all and hopefully this will give us the chilled out atmosphere we need to take on the world this weekend! Again results will be streaming live at www.isu.org.

The thing about sport...

2008-10-21T17:09:00.002-06:00

Sport is a funny thing. There are millions of people who do different sports all over the world. Some people are really good , others are really bad. But no one is perfect. I think that is what makes sport so popular. There is always an aspect that can be improved. This is the lesson that I am taking from this past weekend. In my 1500m semi final on Sunday, I raced what I thought was a seemless race for 13 laps of the 13.5 lap race. The passes I made were efficient and quick, I was well postitioned in the pack and hadn`t made any glaring errors. But with half a lap to go, I just sort of shut down, went to tight to the blocks and didn`t pay attention to what was going on around me. This allowed the American skater to get back in the race and out shoot me at the line by only 2 hundreths of a second and send me to the B final instead of the A final and a shot at the medals. I was very disappointed after the race, but after I had cooled off, I realized that this was why I like speedskating and sport in general. You can always find something to improve on. It never gets boring.

That basically sums up my weekend. Some good racing, some not so good but lots learned. This weekend we are in Vancouver for stop 2 on the World Cup circuit. We are at home here and there are lots of media requests to fill. Its all good publicity for the sport in Canada and hopefully it brings out a few more people this weekend. If you are reading this and plan on coming out this weekend, know this: When a Canadian steps on the ice and is introduced, listen for the slow-clap to start. When you hear it join in. The more noise the better and it will get all of us pumped up even more!!

A disapointing 8th

2008-10-19T10:39:00.004-06:00

Racing continued yesterday with the World Cup rounds in Salt Lake. I had a good quarter final in which I executed my race plan exactly how I needed to. Getting to the semis though I came up against two Koreans and for some reason changed the way I saw the race. Instead of the agressive style I had raced in earlier rounds I became preoccupied with trying to beat one of the Koreans and it cost me. I ended up in the B final where I crashed out trying to outside pass up to the front. I'm not exactly sure what happened, but Frank and I both went down pretty hard but are lucky to not be hurt.

On the mens side, I think that there was some disappointment for sure. We only had one person in the A final (Charles Hamelin) and I'm pretty sure we were expecting more than that. Remi was also in the B final and Olivier was DQed in his semi. Definitely not the best day but today will be better I'm sure.

Sorry for the short post, but hopefully I'll have something better to say tomorrow.

World Cup Qualification

2008-10-18T10:33:00.002-06:00

Day one is now in the books. Overall it was a solid day for Team Canada. We really showed that we are a strong team and will be one to look for during the finals today and tomorrow. On the mens side everyone qualified straight to the final rounds tonight in each of their distances except for Francois-Louis Tremblay who had a tough heat and was disqualified. In the relay, Olivier Jean, Remi Beaulieu, Francois Hamelin and myself represented and looked to be qualifying easily when Francois stepped on a stray puck and went down with three to go. Luckily though we were able to still finish second and qualify for the semis tonight.

On the womens side it was also a successful day with the majority of the girls qualifying directly through to the evening sessions. Jess Hewitt had a couple tough races in her first world cup and will have to do the repechage to advance to the finals in both of her distances. Marianne St-Gelais also had a tough heat in the 500m and will have to go through the repechage. The women also qualified for the semis in the relay behind the Italians.

Yesterday was a marathon at the rink. We were there for almost 12 hours. Luckily though, we can rest all day today as we don't compete until 6pm. It should be a really good show tonight. They are expecting a sold out crowd. Yesterday the rink was about half full, which is awesome for a work day and the crowd is quite loud. In my 1000m heat, I had one of the Americans with me and every move he made was loudly cheered. The crowd is also right at ice level and are very close to the skaters so you really feel the energy. I think everyone is really looking forward to tonight as it will be broadcast on NBC. I don't think it will be live, but its awesome that short track is getting the exposure and that people are coming out to watch. I know our whole team is really hoping that we have amazing crowds next weekend in Vancouver. It is great to have people come and watch and when the crowd is cheering for you as the home team its even better!

As I put in the last post, results are being posted in real time along with lap times on the ISU site. The link to that is below.

Who is Racing What

2008-10-16T13:44:00.002-06:00

World Cup 1 gets underway tomorrow with the qualifying heats in all distances. This weekend the 1500 is repeated, so the distances that are skated are 500m, 1000m, 1500x2 and relays for men and women. These are the lists of the distances that each athlete is skating.

Men:
Charles Hamelin: 500m 1500m
Olivier Jean: 1500m, 1500m
Francois Hamelin: 500m,1000m
Francois Louis Tremblay: 500m,1000m
Michael Gilday: 1000m,1500m
Remi Beaulieu: 1500m,1500m

Women:
Jessica Gregg: 500m,1000m
Anne Maltais: 500m,1000m
Jessica Hewitt: 1000m,1500m
Marie Andree Mendes-Campeau: 1500m,1500m
Marianne St-Gelais: 500m,1500m
Valerie Maltais: 1500m,1500m

Hopefully there will be results posted live, or close to live on the ISU site. You can get to that link here. Also check for daily updates on this blog and at ohnozone.net.

Michael Gilday

Experience Pays

Update Time!

Video Tuesday

Video Tuesday

Industry Sunday

Update time!

5 Reasons Why Font-Romeu is Awesome

Jet-Lag

Moving Mega Post

Three months in 25 lines

Pre Road Trip 15 (sort of) Random Thoughts

Since Christmas...

Big Cheques are Fun!!

20 Thoughts from the last month

Montreal World Cup Wrap-Up

Montreal World Cup

Nascar Nutrition

2 Year Anniversary Post

World Cup Trials recap

Press Release from this weekend...

Competitiveness in Short Track Speedskating

Why not relive?

Jessica Gregg

An Article- No more Hero Worship

>Insert Stereotypical holiday greeting here<

National Team Trials WrapUp

National Team Trials

making a global impact on the local level?

So whats been going on anyways? (updated)

After practice... (video)

Olympic Blogging Opportunity

Opportunity of Olympic Proportions

Day 3, Charles' Day

Day 2...a bit delayed

Day 1 over.....finally!

Live!

World Cup #3 update

Observing a World Cup

20 Questions with Jess Gregg

Hewitticious

Things that are REALLY awesome day

Nouvelle Blogue - Laurie Marceau

Old Age

Olympic Trials recap

So close...

2 more days

Day 2

Day 1

I am Canadian!

its the fi-nal count-downnnn

its the fi-nal count-downnnn

Vancouver Olympic Trials

Another General Mills plug...but its worth reading!

By popular demand and continuing with a trend

Things that are awesome day #4

I wish I wasn't writing this post...

What a deal! 3 in 1 blog post

Things that are awesome day #3

Highwood, Highwood, Highwood

Off to Highwood Pass

Things that are awesome day #2

General Mills Aspiring Olympians Update

Things that are awesome day #1 **UPDATED**

The Quest for 8.9

Pain season!

Kidcasters

Trailer

For those who have been there, this story is hilarious!

We're Back!! (In more ways than one...)

A Rant

General Mills Aspiring Olympians Program

Dresden is Awesome!

The countdown is on...365 days to go!

One month left...

Trials Recap

Day 1 racing

Canadian Championships

Home and Family

Ouf...

Things that are awesome day #1 UPDATED