Andrea Dupont

A big part of racing fast is training hard and then backing off of training right before racing so you feel amazing when you get to the start line. So as soon as Olympic trials were over and my focus shifted to racing fast at the Canmore World Cups in Feb, I started training again. The plan was, lots of volume, followed by lots of intensity, followed by a taper week and then race.

These past few weeks have been a refreshing change of pace from the continuous travel that ski racers live most winters. Living in the location of the Feb 6th World Cup race has allowed me to live at home and train on the course. I have now skied this course an innumerably amount of times and I think there is a huge home course advantage to be had on this course.

Don’t get me wrong, this course is still the toughest sprint course I have ever raced, but I now know my weaknesses and have had a couple of weeks to work on them. I think this course will definitely shake up the World cup field and I predict that we will see some World cup distance skiers excel on this grueling sprint course.

For me, I feel like I am back in the days when I was juggling racing and school. When I was strong enough to be fast, but not in good enough shape to last an entire sprint course. Back then it was all about, going out hard and just holding on for dear life. This is the course that is pretty much up hill for the first 2:30, with the last 30 seconds of this being exceptionally steep. So now once again it is all about, going out hard and just holding on for dear life on the last climb, only this time I’m in just as good shape as everyone else.

I love quotes, and there are so many great ‘suffer through it’ quotes out there, so I will leave you with 2 of my favorites.

‘You can always go harder; because you won’t die, even when you feel like you will.’

-Floyd Landis

“You’re not slowing down because you’re tired, you’re slowing down because you’re slowing down.”

-Trudy Gardner

Although it is disappointing narrowly missing an Olympic spot, I can not be disappointed with my season thus far as I’ve had better Noram races this year than I ever have. This past weekend was my second Noram sprint podium of the season. Dasha dominated the qualifier as usual, but to my surprise I qualified second ahead of Perri, one of our National team members that races more on the World Cup circuit than she does domestically. The course was 1.2 km but the snow was so incredibly fast that the top girls had qualifying times of less than 2 minutes. The fast narrow twisty turny nature of the trail made for a fun day of racing. In the end I was 3rd behind Dasha and Perri, but not at all disappointed as this is the first year I truly feel I can keep pace with these girls.

And now after dominating the domestic circuit Dasha is heading over to Europe to do some pre-Olympic World Cups. I can’t wait to see what this girl will do!

Here is are photos of the podium from the first day of trials and from the sprint day in Val Cartier.

Until next time.