Jam packed days

Our athletes are on the clock on the hill and off!

Our blog lacks content tonight because our schedules have been rammed. As mentioned before We are skiing super G and slalom combined days until the shoot-out. Boys have a blog post on the way. We have a lot of time on snow and the mountain essentially to ourselves - we are maximizing this opportunity!


DAILY GRIND:
6:30 - wakeup
6:45 - warm up exercises
7:45 - on snow warm up
8:30 - SG inspection
8:45 -  Begin SG runs
10:30 - mid morning break
10:45 - continue SG runs
12:00 - LUNCH
12:45 - Begin slalom training on show-off
3:00 - End slalom training
4:00 - Dry-land, Marty attends coaches meeting
5:00 - dinner preparation/ continue athlete       meetings
6:30 - DINNER w/ Trivia (Girls won tonight!)
7:00 - dishes and video
7:30 - Athletes tune/wax and athlete/coach meetings continue
9:00 - Electronics in for the evening
9:30 - Room checks, doors closed, lights OUT!

...REPEAT.

Rise and Grind!

The definition of ski in, ski out! With all the snow that has
accumulated our trek to the bottom of Pano is much easier.

The last little while the U16s have been in a GS block. We hammered out 3 more days of great GS training (Wednesday through Friday last week - which has the athletes on snow 7 days in a row with a significant level of intensity). We are extremely pleased with the changes that are being made GS'ing. Yesterday was a planned day off. We trekked into Invermere for a team breakfast at Huckleberries. Huckleberries fried up about 50 flapjacks for the team. Pancakes seemed to be the breakfast order of choice on Saturday.  A HUGE weekend in ski racing for Ottawa this weekend (This has made trivia a lot easier for us). Quebec team member Patrick Lynott and Raphael Quenneville racing in Norquay, AB. Our big brothers and sisters, the U18 gang racing in Sunday River, MA. And, the story of the week - Dustin Cook competing in Beaver Creek World Cup SG speeding to another top 15 finish in Super G and a 21st in GS (with a top 10 2nd run!). 

Pancakes are on... I believe Lake got out-pancaked by Hunter. Funny how everything with these boys is a competition.

I guess you don't have to be a boy to have competitiveness (we already knew this). Michael takes his colouring contests to another level - he had to be put in place. I think It's clear which Superman is mine. His effort and creativity should still be commended. 

Today we skied slalom and our plan is to transition into SG & SL combined sessions until the coveted "NCO shootout" on Thursday before we depart. Our dinner trivia went to solo responses; for the last little while the gang has moved to answering questions based on their individual knowledge. The last 3 athletes to answer a question correctly have been stuck in the kitchen. To round out the battle of the sexes we will return to the team format for the last week here. 

We are not without our battle wounds while here. I am battling a serious cold virus. I spared everyone by keeping Lake's frost bitten toe off the blog. Sophie is learning that tuning cuts are a right of passage. A few back injuries have been treated and a couple of freak sore ankles sprains as well. It's not easy but these athletes are grinding. 

We talked to the athletes today about making sure that they check all the boxes for success. That they do everything in their power to ensure that they are prepared for the day. And that any little bit extra that they might have then their opponent is the difference. It might be sleep, it might be warm up, it might be diet and it may be on their individual will alone that boosts them ahead. Everyone is motivated differently and the grind has begun (checkout the nike Ad for a little bit of 'rise and grind' motivation).

Look forward to a blog post from the boys tomorrow! Goodnight followers.

Comeback Queens!

MEET THE LADIES
OF THE
NCOST U16 TEAM:

Meet the ladies of the NCOST U16 team: Sophia (Calabogie), Jillian (MSM), Nicole (Camp Fortune) &, Sophie (Vorlage)

My name is Sophie Thomas and I am a rookie U16 that comes from Mont Vorlage. Although this is my first camp with the team it's awesome that I have made new friendships and share inside jokes with my teammates. The girls have already bonded so much that we break out into dance jam sessions when we need to expel some energy. I idolize local world cup skier Mikaela Tommy because for such a young alpine star she is an amazing competitor. My main goal for the season is to finish in the top 3 or top 5 locally when I obtain a race result. 

Hi! I'm Sophia Tan and I am also a U16 rookie. I come from Calabogie. I am really excited to be around such a competitive, concentrated and creative learning environment. I really relate well to Marie-Michele Gangnon because like her I am confident in my skiing because I work hard, but I have yet to achieve a result that affirms this competitiveness. That being said, my goal for this season is to qualify for both mid-winter CanAm's and CanAm Finals in Stowe, VT. We bought so much food at Costco before coming to Panorama That I accidentally demolished 21 eggs. We all laughed about it because we had 70 or so more left over. 

My name is Nicole Clarke and I am on the NCOST for the 2nd year as a U16. My home club is Camp Fortune. I have great relationship with both my coaches and they have helped me so much to improve my racing. My World Cup inspiration is Mikaela Shiffrin because like her, I love slalom and she absolutely dominated last season. My goal has recently become a little more challenging  as I am battling a few injuries right now but I am holding myself to qualifying for the Canada Games to be held in BC later on this season. "The squad" is awesome to hang with - when we got to Panorama we totally re-arranged our room to meet our spacial requirements.

My name is Jillian Lynott, I come from Mont Ste. Marie and it is my 2nd year on the NCOST as a U16. The best part about the NCO experience has been travelling to various ski areas within Quebec and Ontario and even training internationally. When I am skiing I try to emulate Kathrin Zettel. One of my tactical goals this year is to allow myself to ski freely, and when I watch Kathrin compete she "just goes". When this happens I will be able to achieve all my result oriented goals. I really miss my teammates from last year but this years group of girls is shaping up to be equally as awesome. *Jillian: "Remember that time Kat asked to come up with something funny to post on the blog..." girls break out laughing.*

4            -              4

The title "Comeback Queens" is fitting because the ladies are convinced they are on a roll back to the top of their trivia game. Tonight we asked questions about the NorAm Races in Aspen and Copper where local icon Mikaela Tommy competed and topped the Junior podium. We also themed World Cup questions about the history of the Super Combined event. MArty and I have noticed that the rookies (+ Hunter, the only time we've known him to be coy) are very shy when it comes to answering these questions so tomorrow night we are having a battle of the rookies + Hunter within the battle of the genders.

XY's take the lead

The rain and clouds from week one have cleared, the power has been restored, snow gun mist is lifting and we found blue bird :)
This photo was taken at the finish of our GS today.

3            -             4

The last two days have been very cold. The kind of cold that we are accustomed to when in Pano, however the kind of cold that no one ever really gets acclimatized to. It's just something as ski racers we do because the feeling of carving an energy rich turn in hard packed powder is completely worth the frost bite scars, the blue toes, and the chill you have for hours after the day is done. As planned we have extended our days here in Pano. Because a lot of teams have vacated for the week we have access to more terrain and for a longer period of time, making the training spectacular. We will very quickly catch up on what we missed.

We are very pleased with the improvement that the group is making. Athletes are responding very positively to feedback they are receiving and it is evident that their understanding of what we need them to accomplish is favourable. Fortunately for us the weather is on a constant increase in temperature through the remainder of the week with sunshine and negative single digits coming our way.

The boys have pulled ahead of the ladies answering questions pertaining to tuning last night, and the Winter Olympics tonight. I think our athletes have pulled some inspiration for their improvements from our local talent on the World Cup. Congratulations Dustin Cook on all your hard work in achieving a result that makes you smile when you cross the finish line!!

Both these photos were pulled from Alpine Canada's instagram account. Thank you for capturing such amazing moments! 

Still in the dark

In the satellite image above the 

base of Pano was lights out as well 

as most of the road leading out of 

the valley. Invermere however was

unaffected.

We woke up this morning with no electricity. This is not the first time we've lost power through the night in our stay here. It is however, the first time that power remained out from the evening through the day. Our power was restored around 1pm (MST) the operations administration decided not to run the lift for the day. Thankfully York had a deck of cards because we lost charge on electronic devices quickly through the morning. Some lost cell service, once power was restored our cable was down for a while so we all gathered around a laptop monitor and watched our Canadians race in both the Lake Louise DH and the GS in Aspen.

We put the athletes through the yoga ringer with a 90 minute session of P90X yoga with Tony Horton. The video [a 90 min time laps reduced to 23seconds] was uploaded earlier onto the NCOST FACEBOOK PAGE (If you are a Facebook user you can click the hyperlink and it should direct you to our page). And to keep our trivia tally going the ladies were back in the kitchen tonight. The boys took the "W"

The weather is very cold here, we have a later start tomorrow and will be skiing GS on old timer (the NorAM run).

Skiers are known for their beautiful feet (everyone can relate) - there was a lot of this
reaction today when I told the athletes you don't use socks in yoga.

"Without challenge there is no change"

There are a variety of things that can challenge a ski racer. There is weather, (which we encountered today - and everyday that it is not bluebird and hero snow). There is injury, which many of our racers are learning is inherent with the risk associated in our sport. There is fear, in many forms; fear of failure, fear of injury, fear of disappointment etc.. Everyday we go out on snow all we ask of our athletes is to challenge themselves to make a change - in this undertaking some challenges may be overcome and for others another obstacle may be established. This requires focus, it requires energy it requires patience and most importantly this process requires a lot of support.

"In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater then your fear of failure"

3      -      1 

Today the rain challenged our GS conditions, today injury plagued some athletes, today some demonstrated their weaknesses and others established new strengths and this is what makes working everyday with this group of athletes an exciting experience.

We watched a video tonight from youtube - many would think this video would intimidate viewers. It was cool to see our athletes associate with some of the world cup stars it was also refreshing to have their vulnerabilities exposed. If you wish to watch the video check it out hit the link: THE THIN LINE .

Boys were back in the kitchen tonight after a tough set of questions asking the athletes about powerhouse Nations and digging deep into some ski racing history.

Light's OUT!

Panorama was hit with a power outage around 815am this morning. Fortunately Kat, Marty and York who were hauling gates for our training session got off the lift before the outage happened. Mike, Jillian, Sophia, Sophie, Hunter, and Zac were stuck on the chairlift for about 40 minutes and Nicole and Lake were at the bottom having not got on the lift before the outage.

As it turned out the snow conditions were very challenging to begin with so our session with red & blues was already in question. It had snowed about 10-15cm of fresh stuff and was starting to rain so the fluffy white powder we love was quickly turning into concrete for our quads. When you have 40 minutes to spare, no where to go and no one to have a snowball fight with - BUILD A SNOWMAN! We were highly entertaining for a group of coaches and onlookers stuck on the chair. This handsome fellow was constructed in approximately 10minutes "With a pine cone grin and a basket nose and 2 eyes made out of gate tops?!"... (that's how our version of the song goes)

opening up the upper back with partners

The power came back on at 930am. Athletes have been doing homework since then and took a break between 1130 & 1230 for lunch. We had a PNF [proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation] session at 1:30 and the athletes continued on with their studies through the remainder of the day. With teams vacating at the end of the week the potential exists to have longer training sessions. We have assured the athletes this is the direction we want to go in confidently, but this confidence will only come if their homework efficiency is maxed on days like today.

We had a meeting through dinner and the later part of the afternoon where we talked to the athletes about our expectations for the season and some team rules to make the season run smoothly :)

1. proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) stretching, is a type of stretching technique that is used to improve active and passive ranges of motion in an attempt to increase motor performance and flexibility.   

We stumbled upon these gems just outside our door the other
day - there will be a lot more coming off the BBQ in the future.....

So we decided to throw some steaks with baked
potatoes and roasted peppers on the BBQ. 

2            -          1

Stay tuned for more from the gang after our GS training session tomorrow. The weather is suppose to get colder and with all the moisture from today that should provide for a solid base moving forward. And for those keeping score (check out our ongoing tally to the right) - the boys demolished the girls in trivia tonight 3-0. It's official they are on the board!

"You can't fix something you don't understand"

This is the terrain we have to work with for the next few days. The U16 athletes have been skiing slalom on the bottom portion of 'show off". Our lane allows us to set approx. 80 slalom turns if we so desired. 

2    -    0

Tonight we had a great chat with the athletes about understanding the process of ski racing and the importance of communication between coaches and athletes. We wanted them to understand a few things about being a U16 ski racer. We engaged this conversation in a very creative format that we like to call dinner trivia.  For those who are new to the team: dinner trivia is where we ask the athletes a variety of ski related questions in a competitive format [girls versus boys]. The first group to 3 correct responses to our questions gets out of doing the dishes, our current score can be viewed on the right. You are reading that correctly, the boys are enjoying their time in the kitchen.

We like to have themes to the questions so tonight we asked the athletes a variety of questions involving the rules of the game (ski racing being the game) and the qualification process for different events for both Ontario and Quebec affiliated athletes. Lets just say we had to dig deep into the rule book of items they should understand in order to get to a very tight score of 3-2. Lets just say that this may be one of the many circumstances where loosing is fun and the learning is quite evident.

We skied in sessions 1 & 3 today in stubbies. The athletes completed a circuit in the weight room after skiing today and they re-fuelled with pulled pork sandwiches on ciabatta buns with some broccoli slaw and raw veggies with hummus. We will move to full gates tomorrow if mother nature decides to let up on the accumulation out here. If not - we ski pow! In our books thats a win/win :)

We're BACK!!!

We're back on BLOGGER and we're BACK in PANO!!

There is certainly never a dull moment on the road with the NCO U16 gang. Even flights get exciting when we have a registered nurse, and EMR and a 'medlink' telephone line when athletes are sick mid flight. I feel its necessary to publicly thank WestJet for doing absolutely everything they could to make our sick athlete comfortable. She was moved to the front of the plane, given her own bathroom, they moved passengers so she could sleep across three seats, they moved a coach immediately across, so we could be close by, they paged the plane for any medical practitioners aboard. They made our on the road first aid kit look elementary with their injectable anti-nauseant serum (that happened) and they had our athlete(s) - yes, thats plural. We had another sick athlete during landing and they were both evaluated at the gate to make sure they were safe to continue travelling.

Thank you WestJet for doing your diligence in securing the safety and health of our athletes. 

If you look back to last years post, I'm sure our arrival says something about highway 93... again we were in and out of snow storms as the provincial parks in the area got dumped on through the evening. We checked in at 6pm so the athletes had plenty of time to rest up for our 745am start.

The athletes skied slalom today on showoff (the main run under the lift) from 8am-12pm. We had stubbies and brushes setup so that the athletes could challenge themselves to maximize their edge angle staying in forward active position. The athletes are already working hard on homework and completing tests and quizzes on the road. We had an amazing yoga session post-ski, and enjoyed a pasta casserole for dinner.

...still frozen

We are skiing on the West (Ouest) Mountain. The race run for the U16 provincials is Le Point du mier

It seems as though it is impossible for us Eastern skiers to dodge the cold. Our group headed out today in Val St Come, QC in what was another frigid -25 with windchills of -35. After yesterdays pouring rain you would think that the conditions would be absolutely bulletproof - Mother nature proved otherwise. We got on the race track this morning to find a top layer of what the rapid increase in wind speed completely dried out. This crust broke quite easily and we discovered a firmer base underneath. Our first session was very indicative of those who are willing to push themselves when weather and snow conditions are not ideal. The athletes battled mother natures frozen tendancies for 2 hours with no breaks and 2 full skin suit runs. After lunch we free-skied superG. The mountain is fairly large and quite deserted during the week - giving the athletes an opportunity to tuck and ski high speed turns top to bottom without interruption. The ground remained firm as long as a designated track was not setup.

A beautiful evening shot of the Auberge VSC

The Val St Come auberge will host the Outaouais delegation for their U16 provincial championships. We really felt strongly about exposing our Quebec athletes to the race environment they will encounter later in the season. The Auberge has been very accommodating with a great tuning setup, slopeside exit & entrance as well as delicious food and spacious rooms. The Auberge is situated immediately at the bottom of the Ouest mountain.

We will head back out tomorrow into what the athletes refer to as 'the frozen abyss' with the same schedule planned. We are on track for a a later return on Thursday night as we have adjusted out plan to ski the full day Thursday.