FasterSkier.com did eight workouts in five days with Canadian National team skier and 2002 Olympic gold medalist Beckie Scott last week. We asked her some questions and included some photos from the workouts.
Beckie, can you give us an update as to how your summer has gone and where you are in your training right now?
– For the most part, things have gone really well. Spring was fairly typical for me with lots of travel and engagements/commitments, etcetera, but I tried to make sure I was back in to training by May, and had finished up the majority of the extraneous travel by early June. We then had a great camp in New Zealand with good skiing and snow in July, and since then, I've been training at home here in Bend.
Any time trials or local races I've done have all come out with good results. I always have a hard time gauging my shape exactly, but I would say things are going really well.
Any setbacks or obstacles?
– Well, I sustained a fairly major rotator cuff injury in early June that I ended up having to treat and take care of for a little over 6 weeks, but I also was really lucky in that I have access to some excellent physical therapy at the clinic my husband Justin works at (Rebound Physical Therapy) and a very dedicated therapist.
As well, Justin broke his neck in a mountain biking accident at the end of August, and we had to work around that in many different respects. He was my number one training partner so that was quite a blow, but our good friend Patrick Weaver dusted off his roller-skis and has been coming out for interval sessions with me, so that's helped quite a bit and I still have someone fast to train with.
What's next?
– Next week I will travel down to Mammoth, California for a 2-week altitude training camp with the team, and after that will follow the Fairbanks, Silver-Star circuit we do nearly every year. This year of course, there are Canadian world cups on the schedule in December, so that's going to be really fun, and a great opportunity I'm hoping to make the most of.