The Fall Doldrums Are Here!

Wow! The days are passing by so quickly that I am starting to have a hard time keeping up. I was reading an email this morning that mentioned how a meeting I had coming up in a couple of days would have to be delayed a week... until November! I had to re-read my email twice and double check my calendar and I could not believe that it is already the end of October. There is no mistaken that time does fly by when you are busy!

It seems that fall is usually the busiest time of year for me, and this year is no exception. I thought that by having graduated from University last spring, I would have a bit more time on my hands, but no, everything else on my plate has easily expanded into my 'free time'. Training has definitely been taking up the majority of my time this fall, which is a good thing, as keeping my training load high through to the end of the fall has been my plan all along. In previous years, I had little choice but to reduce my training load in the fall in order to accommodate my school schedule. Now that school is a thing of the past, I am able to use 20+ hours/week I spent at school (and commuting to school!) to focus on training! Of course, training alone can't account for all of the hours of my day, as recovery sessions (ie- massages, hot/cold baths, stretching and even the occasional nap), organizing and filling all of our fall Sauce orders, along with house work seem help the days fly by.

While the fall season is likely the busiest season, it is also one of the hardest periods of training, mentally. After five long months of dryland training, the body and mind starts to get a little bored of all the running, rollerskiing and weight training. We skiers start going through snow withdrawal. To add to the mental fatigue, the weather usually takes a turn for the worse, including cooler temperatures, less daylight, more precipitation and just enough gravel on the roads to make rollerskiing difficult. All of these factors contribute to what we call the 'fall doldrums'.

I had a pretty strong case of the fall doldrums a few weeks ago. The weather had turned cold and grey, my legs were starting to ache from all the running I had been doing and all of a sudden it was dark when I woke up in the morning. The fall doldrums were in full effect as I dragged myself out of bed to go out and train on my own for 2.5 hours in the cold and dreary weather. The first hour of my ski went by so slowly that it was painful and I wasn't sure how I was going to survive my entire workout. I was cold, my body was sore and my mind was bored. It was then that I got the tune of Johnny Cash's 'I've Been Everwhere' stuck in my head, only instead of the normal lyrics of 'Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota, Buffalo, Toronto...', my version went something along the lines of 'Canmore, Calgary, Kananaskis, Fernie, Whistler, Cash Creek, Kamloops, Revelstoke, Lake Louise, Pemberton, Vancouver, Silver Star, Vernon, Haig Glacier...' as I recited all of the different place I had trained over the last few months. As odd as it may sound, this new rendition of an old classic got me through the rest of my workout, as I continued skiing with the iterative beat of the song in my head. It also confirmed how much traveling we do as athletes!

It was on this same rollerski that I saw a couple of other sights that made me smile and remember that my 2.5h rollerski wasn't too bad. The first was a homemade sign along one of the quiet streets of Harvie Heights (a small community just outside of Canmore). The sign read 'Canada's Olympians We Believe In You' and I couldn't help but smile and appreciate the support. The second sight was of a small, half melted snow man, made with the snow that had fallen the night before. While the snowman seemed to be melting quickly, it was another reminded that winter is just around the corner and I will not have to put up with my fall doldrums much longer!

It is great to know that you have supporters, especially in the middle of a tough workout!	My fellow AWCA teammates and I enjoying our Cold Tub at our fall training camp in Silver Star, one of the many places I have been over the past few months. Yes, we are toasting with large ice cubes.
Winter had an early arrival over the Thanksgiving weekend in Alberta. I was pleasantly surprised to find over a foot of fresh snow up near Elk Pass, Kananaskis. I should have brough my skis!	Even the bears thought that winter arrived early this year! It looked like a rather LARGE bear was still hanging out on the hiking trails in Kananaskis.
I thought that I would add this photo for family bragging rights. With only two turns into my family's Thanksgiving Scrabble game I broke 100, largely due to my 7 letter word 'rounded' landing on a triple word score.