Frozen Thunder lived up to its name on Friday, with temperatures hovering below the legal race limit prior to the start of the second competition series of the week: the women’s 7.5- and men’s 10-kilometer freestyle individual starts. An hour delay was enough time to see temperatures rise to -10 degrees Celsius (14 Fahrenheit), and many skiers bundled in Buffs in prep for the five to six laps of racing. Overcast skies were a celestial...
Clouds heavy with building snow and a winter-storm warning already in effect cast a second anticipatory shadow over a jittery group of racers gathered on Wednesday for the first Frozen Thunder race of the season at the Canmore Nordic Centre in Canmore, Alberta. At stake for some of the top Canadians participating in the day’s classic sprint was the opportunity to secure the final spot on the men’s World Cup team for the first period...
This week’s featured articles are made possible thanks to the generous support of Masters World Cup 2018. The Canadian AQI is based on particulate matter 2.5 microns or smaller, but uses a 1-10+ scale with “1” being low health risk and “+” very high.) Gareth Williams, a member of Canada’s national U25 Team and a native of Kelowna, B.C., wrote in an email that the smoke was a near-constant companion this summer. “Summer has been...
A year ago, Canada’s breakthrough at the Ski Tour Canada classic sprint in Canmore, Alberta. Beatty lives and trains in Canmore as a member of both the Alberta World Cup Academy (AWCA) and Canadian National U25 Team. She led the NorAm (Continental Cup) standings at the end of last season, reiterating her position as freestyle sprint prologue at U.S. nationals at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah. Then on Tuesday, on the same 1.3-kilometer sprint course...
In an effort to showcase the North Americans competing at this week’s International Ski Federation (FIS) 2017 USANA Nordic Junior World Championships and U23 Cross Country World Championships at Soldier Hollow in Midway, Utah, we asked those qualifying athletes several questions about themselves — actually, we had them fill in the blanks. Here we have 21-year-old Maya MacIsaac-Jones, of the Alberta World Cup Academy, Rocky Mountain Racers and the Canadian U25 Team, who’s representing Canada at...
Welcome to “17 Questions for 2017”, where we are catching up with American and Canadian national-team members before the beginning of the winter season. *** The day after her 22nd birthday last March, Dahria Beatty made the case that she could be Cross Country Canada’s next star. Not only did she score her first World Cup top 30, but she nabbed a remedying some back troubles and building strength, Beatty says she looks like a...
Scott Perras didn't know that this would be his last season as a professional biathlete, but he's not stepping away from skiing as the new high-performance coach at the Alberta World Cup Academy. "The last seven years, I kind of got to live like I won the lottery," he reflected.
It was a tight race for Canada's Continental Skier of the Year, with Andy Shields edging out Kevin Sandau by a single point in the overall NorAm standings. Dahria Beatty took her second win of the 2016 FS awards after topping both the NorAm overall and sprint standings.
The Alberta World Cup Academy (AWCA) has a current opening for a High Performance Coach for the 2016/17 training year.
The Sovereign Lake NorAm wrapped up on Sunday with the women's 10 k and men's 15 k freestyle distance races. Both race winners, Dahria Beatty and Kevin Sandau said it was a good way to end 2015.
The NorAm opened with three races in four days in Canmore, Alberta, with two distance races on short loops -- one of which the men double poled. Kevin Sandau won the first two men's races, and another Alberta World Cup Academy skier, Dahria Beatty won the women's skate mass start and classic sprint on days 2 and 3.
The first SuperTour races of the season have come and gone in West Yellowstone, but this photo gallery captures the essence of much of the racing -- including some shots that didn't make it into the race recaps.
After several years on Canada's Senior Development Team, Alysson Marshall, 27, has decided to put down her skis and pursue her next dream: a career in family medicine.
Double pole technique is essential, and getting it right early in the year is even more important. Coach Pavlina Sudrich of the Alberta World Cup Academy demonstrates her steps to double pole rehabilitation and why we can't ski like Beyonce in this Wednesday Workout.
When Brittany Webster’s name appeared atop a list of results this past weekend, it wasn’t for Canmore’s Frozen Thunder. Instead, Webster replaced snow with sand and finished as the first amateur female in the 2014 XTerra Off-Road World Championships on the north shores of Maui, Hawaii Oct. 26.
This week's workout comes from Ezekiel Williams, FasterSkier's newest intern and an athlete at the Alberta World Cup Academy. This time last season, Williams said he really enjoyed doing what his team called, the Agility Sprint Track Workout. "Combine the agility work and lactate threshold building into the short 1:30 hour workout time and it makes for a solid early training-season session," he says.
Registration is Open for The Masters XC Ski Camps December 19-22, 2013 at the Canmore Nordic Centre REGISTER REGISTER REGISTER Optimize your technique and learn from the best at the Canmore Masters XC Ski Camp. This Masters Camp is for all levels and ages of skiers – catering to novice, intermediate and advanced cross-country skiers. three Masters XC Ski Camps at the Canmore Nordic Centre – December 19-22, 2013. Coaching ratio is eight skiers per...
With almost the same number of athletes as last year, the AWCA in Canmore, Alberta, has fewer women this season, but coach Chris Jeffries is pleased with the team's training quality despite some injuries. "The group is very focused this year and more mature," he says.
At 22, Heidi Widmer's suffered three concussions in the last four years, with her most recent resulting from a rollerski crash this fall. "I’m super lucky,” the Canadian NST member says. “There’s no internal bleeding, I’m functioning, I’m fine, but I just have to be able to take care of this and come out of it with some lessons learned for sure.”
Since nordic skiing is a lactate-tolerable sport, it's important to know how to get that stuff out of your system and deal with it on race day. That's why AWCA assistant coach Stefan Kuhn loves this lactate clearance workout: "It's super simple to do, but it really makes you have to dig deep," he says.