Moving, Injury & Chasing My Dreams
April and last year’s race season feel like distant, far off
memories with everything I’ve crammed into the past few months. To make it official, I am racing one more
season in pursuit of the 2018 Winter Olympic Games. It’s a little scary to think this is my last
chance to fulfill a childhood dream I have chased for years, however, my
journey in skiing has been absolutely incredible and qualifying to represent
Canada would only be a cherry on top. I
have grown and matured through sport, learned to live an active and healthy
lifestyle, travelled all over North America and Europe, and developed lasting
friendships. I even met my amazing
partner of 11 years through skiing! I
feel lucky to be so engrained in the Canadian cross-country skiing
community. It’s full of good people who
support each other and share a real passion for skiing. All that said, I’m hungry to compete!
I spent April and May in Thunder Bay, keeping it low key and
beginning the training season with consistency.
No fancy trips, no mountain crust skiing adventures, just a simple
gradual build into offseason training routines.
I worked for LPL Painters whenever the weather and my schedule
permitted. There were a couple busy
weeks in May balancing training and work.
Britt and I moved out of the Marler/Martel home and back into my
parent’s home. Thank you to the
Marler/Martel family for the opportunity to house sit! It was the perfect scenario for us this past
year.
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| Coffee break at Metropolitan Moose with the boys midway through a 157km road ride. |
A new aspect for me this season is I’m going for it
solo. After 10 years of life as a
training center athlete (7 years NTDC Thunder Bay + 3 years AWCA) I feel I am
qualified to be the captain of my own ship.
As such, I spent a good amount of time this spring planning and
organizing my season ahead. Part of my
reasoning for taking this path is due to another big change… I moved to
Kelowna, BC!
Britt graduated from Thunder Bay’s Northern Ontario Medical
School this spring and begins her 5-year residency in Emergency Medicine in
July through UBCO and the Kelowna General Hospital. So proud!!!
We made the move on June 19th, taking 4 days to complete the
drive and enjoyed a few stops at our favourite bakeries and hiking spots along
the way.
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| Dr. Britt Bailey! |
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| Our favourite bakery in Revelstoke. Definitely worth checking out if you're in the neighbourhood! |
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| We love Lake O'hara! Cold temps, hail and snow won't stop us! We ran 11km into Lake O'hara and post-holed through the snow to Shaffer Lake. Will have to go back when the snow has melted to make it to Lake McArthur. |
Let’s rewind for a minute.
The title of this blog post reads, “Moving, Injury & Chasing My
Dreams”. We’ve covered moving and
chasing my dreams… so…what’s the injury part?
Ok, let me give you a quick recap to build the emotion into it because
amateur sport is a passionate pursuit.
In April I focused on recovery and maintaining fitness by
easing into offseason training. In May I
followed my training plan to a T; building the hours, strength training, and
amount of intensity up gradually. I was
happy with how my fitness felt and confident in my plan. I joined NTDC Thunder Bay for two of the
normal testing workouts to gauge my fitness.
I ran a solid time in the 3km uphill running time trial and beat my
previous year’s May time by 10 seconds in the 13.5km skate rollerski time trial
in spite of strong head winds.
Confirmation: my shape was good.
I felt ready to build on a quality month of May.
Chatting with Andy (Shields) in my cool down from the
rollerski time trial I caught a rock in my ski’s wheel and it stopped
dead. Maybe my reaction speed was slower
because of fatigue. Maybe I made the
wrong decision trying to hop on my right ski while I was fully weight
transferred in hopes the rock would dislodge and my wheel would roll freely
when I landed. I hit the pavement heavy
on my left hand and right elbow. I began
to pull myself up and immediately looked at my left hand. My stomach turned as
I saw my thumb was clearly out of place, and I said to Andy, “I think I broke
my thumb”.
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| My ogre hand before my thumb was put back in place. |
The long and short of it is I dislocated my thumb at the MCP
joint. I received a full cast at the
outset because the emergency doctor said there was a chance I tore ligaments
badly enough to require surgery. I saw a
specialist a few days later and was extremely relieved to hear I would not need
surgery. I had the cast removed and
switched to a brace at the Hand & Limb Clinic. After spending June wearing a brace and doing
modified training, I’m itching to get back to using my left arm for
rollerskiing. If my legs had a voice,
they’d be screaming at my thumb to heal faster after many hours of single pole
skate skiing and running.
Now that we have the injury story out of the way, let’s look
ahead. After a sneak peak of living in
Kelowna, I flew back to Thunder Bay yesterday for a good friend’s wedding,
further assessment and therapy for my injured thumb, and the alignment training
camp (all 3 of Canada’s training center teams converging in Thunder Bay for the
first time to do a 2-week training camp! ‘Bout time!).
July 12th I will travel back to Kelowna,
hopefully with a more functional thumb, and really begin my BC life! I’m looking forward to joining up with the
Telemark Ski Team and AWCA for some awesome training! I already had the opportunity to join the
Telemark crew for a 1000m climb on rollerskis to the Telemark Ski area. What an incredible training location in
Kelowna’s backyard!
Thanks for reading! I
feel incredibly fortunate to be able to chase my dreams and have so much
support in my athletic pursuits!
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| Exploring Kelowna's trails on a 31km run with my new roomie, Greg Kilroy! |
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