New Blog Site

Wondering why there haven't been posts in a while? Fear not! I have still been blogging, but on my brand new site, http://steffanlloyd.com/.

I've got quite a few new blog posts, quite a lot of content and quite a bit of info on how to support me as an athlete.

From here on in, this blog here will no longer be updated, and my blog at http://steffanlloyd.com will be updated quite frequently.

Thanks, and check out the new site!

Back to Training

Hey!

So obviously the frequency of my blog posts has died down a bit since World Juniors, but I’m still alive!

So after World Juniors my results took a little hit for a bit, for the 3 weeks that I was in Germany my regular training got a bit interrupted and my performances thereafter were a bit compromised because of this. Nonetheless, I still managed to get quite a few good races in during the later part of the season. My classic races never seemed to go quite as well as I would have liked, but my skate races were all pretty good. At Nationals, the skate individual start race went very well. Similarly, the hill climb race at Fort Kent went really well, and I managed to finish just 8 seconds behind Andy Newell. Other races, like the skate race at Stowe, the skate and classic races at the Orford, and the races at Rimouski, were good races as well.

I also had the opportunity to be a forerunner at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic games. This was a really awesome experience, to be able to be so close to the athletes, watching the races so close, it was awesome.

So now the season is over, I took a bit of downtime and I’m back up and training again. I applied to go to CNEPH, and I was accepted, but I decided to stay here to train. I was already being coached in a way I knew worked for me, I had school here, and I have a home and a girlfriend here, so I decided to stay.

So I’ve slowly gotten back into training. In April, I took it easy for a bit then started trying to get a nice strong base in strength, so I would go to the gym 4 times a week, all the while getting my biking and running legs back. Starting in May, I began my training back in full, lowered my gym workouts to 3 times a week and started getting some longer zone 1 in, with a couple tempos from time to time.

I’m also planning on doing some pretty intense things in the near future. I’ll probably end up going on a canoe trip soon, as well as going on a 24 h adventure race, funds permitting.

I'll probably be updating a bit more often than I have in the last little bit, so stay posted!

If I get the time in the next little bit, I'll post some pictures of my exploits!

World Junior Championships: The Races

So this last part of my World Juniors trip didn’t go as well as the first two. We arrived back in Hinterzarten after a particularly uncomfortable ride over. We trained here for a couple days, skiing the courses and relaxing. Life was good.

On Thursday, 4 days before the sprint, I was part of the sample group for drug testing. I have never had a blood test before, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Turns out its quite a lot shorter than a pee test, all they do is take a bit of blood, super quick. After all of our 6 person sample group had been tested, we were waiting around to be cleared to leave. After a bit, the only people who had not been cleared were Jess Cockney and I.

Then the bad news came. It turned out, both Jess and myself had hemoglobin levels over the racing limit. And while Jess was just a little bit over, I had gone quite a bit over.

For those who don’t know, here’s a little exerpt to explain what hemoglobins are. Hemoglobin are the little proteins that chill on your red blood cells and allow them to carry oxygen to your cells. Obviously having high hemoglobin levels is advantageous as you can get more oxygen to your cells faster. Your hemoglobin levels can vary quite a bit as well. Things that can make your body produce more hemoglobin include high volume training, being and training at altitude, dehydration, and, of course, performance enhancing drugs like EPO. In our case, our previous altitude training in Livigno, along with my being insufficiently hydrated before the test, probably contributed. However my hemoglobin levels are probably also quite elevated naturally.

So what are the consequences of having high hemoglobin levels while still having clean, normal blood? Well it isn’t considered a doping infraction, but what you do get is a 5 day ban from racing. At the end of those 5 days, you can retest and if your hemoglobin levels have gone back down, you can race. Otherwise, you can’t race for another 5 days. This kind of thing happens relatively often – 10 other juniors at this race also received this ban. If you have Hgb levels that are naturally high, then you can be exempted from this rule by showing, with multiple tests, that your Hgb levels are high. But I had never had my blood tested before, so there was nothing I could do.

Something I'd never thought I'd see on my FIS biography page

So this sucked quite a bit. I would for sure miss the sprint, and possibly the rest of my races as well. None of the people I spoke to were very optimistic that I would be able to lower my Hgb enough, as I was quite a bit over. For Jess it must have been horrible – he had been brought on this trip to only one race – the sprint. Unfortunately the sprint was the first race, and his 5 day ban would not allow him to race.

I’ve always thought that if you don’t dope, if you don’t cheat, then you have nothing to worry about. Apparently not.

So then I had 5 days to lower my Hgb levels before I get retested, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to race. The fact that I was no longer at altitude would lower them for sure, but not by enough. Short of donating blood, the only thing you can do to lower your hemoglobin levels is to stay extremely well hydrated. So that’s what I did. For the 5 days following my test, I was drinking so much water that I was uncomfortably hydrated most of the time. I was peeing about 4 or 5 times an hour. It wasn’t too much fun. Meanwhile, I also prepped for my other races, assuming I would be able to race them.

This sprint race came and went, and my teammates did fairly well. It sucked not being able to race.

Finally the day came when I could be tested again. They took the blood, and then I had to wait a couple hours for the results of the test. Those were some long hours, waiting. Finally, the results came in – both Jess and I had retested under the limit, and were cleared to race. Not all the news was good, however, as the results of the test had come in too late, and I wouldn’t be able to register myself in time for the individual classic race the next day. So once again, I had to sit out a race, and once again, it really sucked. I did take some pictures however, you can see them here: http://picasaweb.google.com/steffanis/WJCClassicIndividual#

Patrick and Zach hammering in the Classic race. Both performed extremely well, with Patrick in 31st, and Zach in 24th.

Joey also did outstanding, coming in 25th

Andy in his first lap.

Finally the day of the Pursuit came around. 10 km of classic skiing, followed by 10 km of skate. I was really psyched for this race. It was the race that I had won at Trials, and I felt that if I performed well I could really post a good result.

However, things didn’t go as well as I planned. The race started off well, I moved up in the pack, and I was fighting for positions. Then my body started slowing down on me. It was a horrible feeling. This was probably the most important race I’d ever done, and my fitness was just not there for me when I needed it. While my cardio felt fine, my muscles were just feeling really tired. This is the worst type of fatigue, because no matter how hard you focus, your muscles just don’t respond in the way you know they can.

People would pass me, and there would be nothing I could do about it. Usually you can pick up the pace for a bit, but I didn’t have any power in my body to do things like that. Before the classic was even over, I was just racing to finish. By the skate leg, my muscle were seizing up on me while I was skiing. It was really not a good race, and I know I can do a lot better. I finished 70^th out of 81 people who finished, and out of 102 people who started (one fifth of the field dropped out!)

Andy Shields took pictures of that race, you can see them here: http://picasaweb.google.com/steffanis/WJCPursuit#

Zach, Joey and just hidden behind, myself, after the first lap.

Holding on in the classic leg

Patrick in the skate leg.

Unfortunately for me, this also meant that I would not be racing in the team relay. So for me, World Juniors was over.

The team relays were a lot of fun to watch, although we didn’t do quite as well as expected. In the women’s, we got to see an amazing finish by the anchor from Finland, passing 3^rd place with 200 m to go, and almost catching Norway for the win. In the men’s, Norway and Russia were battling it out for the majority of the race, with Finland in 3^rd and Germany in 4^th. On the last leg, the Finnish anchor did an amazing first lap, catching up a good quarter minute or so on Norway and Russia, then gapping them by that again. After this, however, he hit the wall and, unfortunately, moved all the way back to 7^th. Norway outsprinted Russia very definitely at the end for the win, and Germany got 3^rd. Quite an exciting race.

You can see pictures of that race here: http://picasaweb.google.com/steffanis/WJCTeamSprint#

The start of the women's relay, with Daria Beatty starting for Canada

The men's relay start, with Joey Burton starting for Canada

Joey Burton (front, left) in the men's relay after one lap

Andy Shields, anchor for the men's relay, after his finish. He was pretty dead.

Some other points of interest:

The following video was the theme song to the World Junior Championships this year. It's in German, but I find it to be such an awesome representation of the skiing lifestyle.

I found this video to be completely awesome. I even got a picture with the guy who made it at the last race!

World Junior Championships: Part 2 - Livigno

So where I left off we were travelling to Livigno. That trip ended up being a bit more complicated than we had originally thought. We almost got lost in Zurich, then we went 15 minutes up the top gears best road in the world (not so when it was that snowy, only to find out that it was blocked off and not used in the winter. Finally we arrived, tired and sore from the 5 hour drive.

We went straight to the restaurant, where we were greeted with an amazing meal. Like very amazing. We then went back to our hotel, and had a good night’s sleep.

The next morning, we woke up, went for a ski, and realized just how awesome Livigno was. If I could describe it, I’d say it was like a combination of Canmore’s mountains with Silverstar’s ski network with awesome food. We went for a nice easy ski, as we were just getting used to Livigno’s 1800 metres of altitude. The sun was shining, the grooming was great and the scenery was beautiful.

The panorama from my hotel balconey

Patrick and Andy skiing

Yay!

Perfect grooming

There was steam coming off the stream. Looked pretty cool.

So this is where we stayed for 4 days. Every day was beautiful conditions, and always the awesome food. It was a lot of fun.

On the third day, we went down to Bormio, Italy, which is a 40 minute drive away, in order to do some intervals. We couldn’t do the intervals at Livigno’s high altitude, but Bormio’s altitude was just fine. There we hammered out some intense descending intervals, then went back to Italy for one last day.

One final ski, one fine final meal, and then we headed straight back up to Hinterzarten.

Livigno & I

Panorama of Bormio

Panorama of Livigno

Andy, unable to eat wheat or milk, got a special meal, just for him

Me and my cake. All I wanted was a piece of cake, and they gave me a piece of cake... and wipped cream, gelato, and custard... awesome

World Junior Championships - Part 1

Hey people!

Yeh, yeh yeh, I know I haven't posted in a little bit. Since my last post, really not that much has happened. I trained, I made it home from Austria alright, I went to Silverstar, I raced there, I trained some more, I raced at Val Cartier then... BOOM! I was on the plane to Zurich. Which is where my story begin...

As I’m writing this we’re heading over to Livigno, Italy.

We arrived here 3 days ago, or perhaps 4, my sense of time got all messed up by the jetlag. The first day was very difficult. Our flight from Ottawa to Frankfurt was delayed by almost 2 hours. This meant that we missed our connecting flight to Zurich, and had to take another one almost 3 hours later than the original connecting flight. Finally, upon arriving to Zurich, we realized that our skis had not made it to Zurich on the same flight as us, and they wouldn’t be arriving for another 3 hours.

It all worked out in the end, however. We met up with the rest of the crew and had to wait for a bit for them to get all the cars together and such, and Eric Bailey, who was a bit later because he had originally arrived to the airport with an expired passport, was able to pick up our skis.

So we drove over to a little town near Hinterzarten, where we would be staying for most of the trip. We ate, watched a bit of a movie, then finally got some needed sleep after this 30 hour day.The next day we went up to the ski venue to ski on the trails. The trails there are very nice. The course had a good amount of climbing and descent, and they were real fun to ski on.

The Stadium

The snow-making artillery

Pat and Andy in they're fancy new suits

Me

The next day, we went straight into my very first international FIS race. It was a skate sprint, and although a great number of the world junior teams weren’t there, the competition was still very stiff, albeit the jetlag was still affecting me quite a bit, and I was tired.

I qualified 27th, 7 seconds back from the winner. Compared to the other Canadians, I was more or less where I should have been in a sprint, perhaps even better than usual. However, compared to the rest of the field I felt like I was sprinting a couple years ago, before I could sprint properly. In the quarter finals I finished 5th in my heat (last, one of the guys didn’t start), and that was the end of that day. I wasn’t super happy with my race, I felt like I could have possibly done better in the heats, but overall that day I felt pretty tired so I didn’t worry overly about it.

The second day we did a classic 10 km individual start race. I felt like my race went pretty well. My grip was good, and I sure was tired by the end. Once again, however, well still performing decent compared to the other Canadians, I found myself all the way back in 21st place when the results came out, a full 2:34 behind the winner. Again, I was not up to my full potential yet, but still, stiff competition! Hopefully, come World Juniors, I’ll be able to perform a bit better.

So that was this morning. Right after getting back from the race, we ate, showered, packed up and then left. We’re making our way over to Livigno, Italy to do a bit of an altitude training camp (although we won’t be training very hard). The area is supposed to be extremely nice, the food and lodging exceptional, so I’m looking forward to it.

A few members of our team, namely Zach, Fred and Jesse all came down with some form of a flu, and will be staying in Hinterzarten until we get back in 4 days. We’re all hoping that no one else got infected. Spending World Juniors in bed, sick, would suck. Quite a bit.

That’s all for now, with any luck I’ll get another report out in a little bit.

P.S. I'm posting pictures as I take them to http://picasaweb.google.ca/steffanis/WJC#