Sunday, January 31, 2010

We Must be the Only Athletes in the World...





... preparing for the Olympics by ski touring in the mountains.

This was Sara Renner's comment to Devon and I as we reached our high point for the day at 2700 meters on a unique high altitude training session last week.

Devon and Sara had both just recently returned from the Tour de Ski race and we were all keen to do our long and high workout in the most energy-giving manner possible: backcountry ski touring.

My Dad, Glen and Sara's husband Thomas Grandi joined us for what was an incredible 5-hour tour from 1900 to 2700 meters. The great company sweetened the deal of getting all the physiological benefits of such a workout and on top of that we were rewarded with phenomenal views and a refreshed connection with the mountain environment that in so many ways defines us.

Photos by Devon "D-200" Kershaw.

Monday, January 25, 2010

Sara Renner doing some "Aria training"

Sharing her grandmother Barb's birthday of February 1st, Aria Grandi is an incredible little girl who brings big smiles to the ski team whenever she hangs with us. Sara tones her buns of steel by towing Aria around on occasion while the half pint ski-star-in-training works Sara harder than any coach, yelling: "Faster!" Already fluent in Italian and refusing to snowplow while charging downhills, she is a hilarious and adorable addition to the Bow Valley's favorite family. Keep up with their news as Sara and Thomas crusade for climate change HERE.






Thursday, January 21, 2010

My snazzy New Toshiba Satellite with crazy cool features!




As my friends at Best Buy like to say about the new laptops they are rockin': "You spoke. We listened. Laptops with the features you asked for."

What a great idea!

Best Buy surveyed consumers to find out the features they most want in their computing experience. Then they partnered with top laptop manufacturers to create laptops with all these requested features and the result is a Best Buy exclusive program called Blue Label.

The features on this thing are bananas. Aside from the aesthetics of the backlit keyboard and sleek blue design and weighing under 5lbs it has everything you want in a laptop. I just enjoyed my unboxing and with my first training session already done for today it's time to wirelessly stream ski technique videos to my HDTV. Sweet!

Check it out for yourself.

Thanks for stopping by,

Chandra

Monday, January 18, 2010

Hangin' with Canmore Nordic





Here are some photos from the training I did with some of the Canmore Nordic Ski Club Girls... helping them warm up for their stellar 3km race on Saturday. The podium shot shows them proudly sporting their Fast and Female gear. These kids inspire me so much and keep me in touch with la joie de ski.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

Racing in Canmore






Today I raced in a "Bow Corridor Regional Race" here in Canmore. It was an amazing perfect day for racing with beautiful blue skies, warm temps and great tracks. The local ski community was out and loving it. My Swedish friend, recently retired racer Peter Larsson, who is a 6 x World Cup winner has been here these week to help me with my classic technique. I've had an incredible week of super hard super focused work on my technique and am feeling really good about the progress.

Thanks to Peter for all the great skiing!

Cheers,

Chandra

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Yea Rosanna!

The countdown is on and I am gearing up for the much-anticipated opportunity of a lifetime: the home Olympics! As if that wasn't incredible enough, my sister will now be joining me at the Olympics.

Everywhere I go in town people congratulate me on my sister's recent qualification and the main they ask is "Are you so excited?" or "Are you ready?" Yes, I am very excited. I'm looking forward to racing in the Callaghan Valley with so many people I know out cheering. I'm looking forward to walking in the opening ceremonies. I'm looking forward to my sister and I racing in stadiums that are separated by a mere few hundreds meters of ski trail.

That's right, my 21-year old little sister Rosanna qualified for the Olympics in biathlon in the recent final trials race. We once dreamed of being "2010 sisters." Through the past few years of setbacks and more downs than ups we've propped each other up and got through it all thanks to our amazing family who've been positive and optimistic enough to fill in our doubts whenever we suffered new injuries or medical problems.

Just as family is part of what I call "The Team Behind the Dream," the amazing people in our hometown of Canmore, Alberta and beyond have played a huge role in getting all us athletes to this point. The preparation and training has been possible thanks to the encouragement and support of so many Canadians... and we athletes don't tell you enough but we really, really appreciate all that you do for us!

As for Rosanna and I, we will both be doing training camps at Mt. Washington on Vancouver Island in preparation as both our respective teams have chosen that place for the final prep because of it's similar snow conditions to the Callaghan Valley.

In the meantime training in Canmore where it's at for me and Rosanna is doing World Cup races in Europe.




**Here are some photos of me cheering for my sister during her trials race. In the second one I actually had to take off my big jacket to be able to run fast enough to keep up with her while yelling "You can do it!! Focus! Ski hard!" In the end if she'd gone 15 seconds slower she wouldn't have made the Olympic team - every second counts and I was glad to be there to cheer her on.

Thank-you for reading,

Chandra

Friday, January 8, 2010

Video Blog - A Fast and Female song for you


My Dad is a professional video producer and helped me make this. Thanks Glenner!

Monday, January 4, 2010

Ahhh the holidays... :)

I came home from Rogla fully intending to return for the Tour de Ski. But I was so totally bagged from being away and on the go for over 2 months that my coaches and I decided the best thing would be to stay home in Canmore and do some excellent training. And that is what I'm doing. Luckily my teammates Sara, Devon, George, Alex and Ivan are all rocking out at the tour and doing Canada proud.

After a week of getting my energy back and enjoying the Christmas celebrations with my family and extended family I did a good week of volume training. It will be my last week of training big hours likely til the spring and I enjoyed doing tours on Cascade Fire Road in Banff, up at Mt. Shark in Kananaskis Country as well as a super fun ski tour on Christmas Eve at Black Prince.

Here are a few photos from what I consider the highlights of my last two weeks here in wonderful Canmore...


My dad Glen's nickname changed from Glenner to Glen-gnar because of the way he "shreds the gnar." Go Dad!



Playing guitars at the family sing-a-long with my uncles. My cousin Emily wowed us all when she busted out not only some great renditions of Taylor Swift songs but some she wrote herself. Impressive stuff for a 15 year old!



Ski touring in the mountains is one of my all-time favorite things to do. Great people, powder and good times. Me and my solid gold friend, Natalie.

Best of luck to everyone in the New Year...

-Chandra