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Time to start building up to the Games

November 4, 2009 02:15 PM | Posted by   Britt Janyk  

Wow, 100 days to the Games. The snow is starting to fall, temperatures are cooling and winter is just around the corner.

People are getting excited for the ski season but there is something new to be excited for this winter – the Olympic Games are coming to Canada, to Vancouver and Whistler in only 100 days.

So what is it like for a World Cup Alpine racer leading into the Games and what are my next 100 days going to be like? All of my preparation for this season is essentially done - the hard work and the sweat, the pre-season technical training. It is all in the bank, and now it’s time to start racing and to start building up to the Games.

I have just returned from Austria where my teammates and I had two weeks of on snow training and we also had the first World Cup race of the season.

The World Cup season started with a men and women’s giant slalom race. I started and it was great to get the season going.

Now, I’m at home, just briefly, and then it’s back on the road. I will be on the away from home from now until the Olympic Games.

Crazy, I know.

However, most of our seasons are exactly like this. Last season, I did make it home for Christmas but that hasn’t happened very often in the pat 10 years.

I will leave for Calgary next week and we will do our final run of fitness testing at the University of Calgary, and then it’s back on snow. We will do the last of our pre-season training in Nakiska (Alberta) and Panorama (B.C.). Both resorts are making snow day and night so that conditions are good enough for us to start training in early November.

Next on the World Cup schedule is a Slalom race in Finland. Our slalom racers will be heading there this week and will be racing on the 14th and 15th of November. My next race will be a giant slalom in Aspen, Colorado on the 28th and from that point forward I will have a race almost every weekend leading to the Games.

I will have six downhill races before Feb. 5 – five super G events and one giant slalom competition.

From the race in Aspen, to my last World Cup one before the Games, I will have only two weekends where I won’t be competing. So that means you need to be ready, you need to be focused and you have to want it, every weekend and every race. Because, if you don’t, somebody else will want it.

In the next 100 days leading up to the Games I will travel to eight different countries, from right here at home in Lake Louise, Alta., to Are, Sweden and into middle Europe. Our schedule requires a lot of travel and it will be a focus of mine to stay healthy, to rest whenever I can, to stay recovered so that when February comes I am in my top form.

I am excited right now. I have trained hard and I feel ready to race. I cannot predict what will happen but I feel ready to adapt and move with any changes that I may encounter between now and February. Schedules change, weather changes, we are travelling and we are away from home. Adaptability is my No. 1 friend when I am running around and competing on the World Cup.

I hope to see everyone cheering us on come February 2010, from home or from the stands. But from now until then, you can tract your athletes and keep an eye on how we are doing leading into the Games.

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