There is also an article on Faster Skier here.

Wrapping up my biathlon career, there are so many people that have contributed so much to it. In no particular order, I’d like to give a special thanks to:

-All my coaches over the years:  Roddy Ward, Matthias Ahrens, Richard Boruta, Jacqueline Akerman, Geret Coyne, Kathy Davies, Petr Zidek,  Alain Parent, and the many more who’ve helped me along the way;

-All the great wax technicians, support staff and IST team for all their work in getting athletes to the start line;

-All the amazing teammates and training partners who I’ve had who’ve spent countless hours with and have provided much company, support and entertainment;

-Rancho Vignola for filling up my cabinets with delicious dried fruit and nuts;

-Sponsors Fischer, Swix, Apogee, Lapua, Kama, Casco, USANA, Adidas, and Roeckl for providing me with great equipment;

-Biathlon Canada, Biathlon Alberta, Alberta Sport Recreation Parks & Wildlife Foundation, Sport Canada, Augustana University, Canmore Nordic Ski Club, Camrose Ski Club for funding and programming, and all the dedicated staff and volunteers that run these organizations;

-The many financial supporters over the years, including my parents; Auntie Chris & Uncle Tony; Grandma; Scott & Wanda; Brian Mitchell and all the guys from Collins Barrow across Canada; Wendy, Dale, Haley & Lillian; Sheldon & Marilyn; all the people who stepped forward when I was fundraising to pay my way to the Winter Universiade; and more!

-My sister Michelle for making me this awesome website;

-My family and friends who have stood by me in good times and bad times throughout the years;

-The communities of Canmore and Camrose for all the support they’ve provided;

-The many many volunteers who work so hard to give athletes like me a chance to participate in sport;

-Andrew & Christine at Hicks Intellectual Property Law for being so accommodating with my job over the last 4 1/2 years;

-Annik Levesque for recruiting me from the Smitty’s kitchen to the biathlon range;

-the F.A.C.T. class at Camrose Composite High School for putting me on my first pair of skis;

and the many many others who have helped me along the way!

THANK YOU!

The beginning of the season back in November and December was a bit of a struggle for me to find some energy and some ski speed. This wasn’t surprising after a sub-par training season, due to a variety of reasons, many of which my coaches and I still don’t completely understand.  I had been having some health issues that seemed to start last February. Mostly I struggled to get my heart rate up during training, and my body felt like a sack of bricks when I tried to make it move fast. Some days I would feel fine and others I couldn’t get my heart rate above 160, whereas I would typically race around 180 or higher. I tried to pinpoint the cause, and eventually decided it was food-related. I eliminated what little sugar I still had in my diet (being reactive hypoglycemic I don’t really tolerate sugar or high-glycemic foods well to begin with) to keep my insulin and blood sugar levels more stable. This seemed to help a bit but there were still days I struggled to feel good and I still wasn’t making many gains in training. For the first few months of training I actually took a step backwards in fitness and then I spent the next few months trying to get back to my previous fitness level.

When I started racing on the IBU Cup in November, my body still didn’t feel normal in races and I wasn’t recovering between races. When I came home for Christmas, I started seeking out further medical opinions. There were several possible causes thrown around: hypothyroidism, Celiacs, adrenal fatigue, etc. But after several blood tests there was still no certain diagnosis.

I decided I just needed to give my body and mind a much-needed rest and I booked a flight to Bangkok instead of going back to Europe to race. I spent a month in Asia, trekking in the jungle of northern Laos, relaxing on a quiet island in southern Thailand, and eating my way through the myriad of street food in Malaysia. I came home feeling rejuvenated and excited to start training and racing again. However when I went to Canadian National Championships in Whistler, it was apparent my body was still in the same situation as earlier in the year. After nine years of focused training and racing where I continually pushed myself to my limit and beyond, it was apparent my body and mind were saying, “Enough!”.

Listening to my intuition, I decided it was time to hang up my skis and rifle for good and give myself a much needed and much deserved rest. I definitely have mixed feelings about my decision, as I imagine most athletes do when they retire from sport. However I’m mostly excited to explore other aspects of life that don’t revolve around competitive sport.

As I’m transitioning into the life of a non-athlete, you can find me working full-time in the patent business at Hicks Intellectual Property Law in Canmore where I’ve been part-time for the last 4½ years. Other than that I am cooking up a storm in my kitchen and brainstorming how I can raise goats and chickens in my backyard without attracting unwanted attention from bears, cougars and wildlife officers . Stop by for a visit and I’ll use you as a guinea pig for my latest culinary adventure!

I want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to all my sponsors, coaches, teammates, support staff, family, friends and fans of my biathlon career for the last nine years.  I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish all I have without all of you!

Dinner in Laos beside the Mekong River

Village in Laos where I started trekking from

Cooking course at a farm near Chiang Mai, Thailand

Press Release from Biathlon Canada

News Article from Local Canmore Leader

Video News Clip from CTV News

Video News Clip from Calgary Global TV

This fall we’ve been taking full advantage of having the treadmill in Canmore by doing several days of testing on it, plus a couple race simulations and several “Max Interval” workouts where we do 6 intervals going uphill at the fastest speed we can maintain for 2.5 minutes. The Max Interval workouts are some of the hardest and most painful workouts I’ve done. When we do intervals outside, there are usually some slight downhills or rolling terrain where we can rest for a second, but on the treadmill there is NO letting up, not even for one ski stride! Outside our coaches can cheer us on and yell at us to go faster, and we can try our best to, but inside we HAVE to go faster or we go flying off the treadmill. Suspended in a harness of course to avoid injury They are challenging workouts, but very satisfying afterwards.

Here  are a couple clips of me on the treadmill this fall.

For those of you interested in what else we specifically do for testing on the treadmill, we usually do an Incremental and a Sustainability Test. An Incremental Test starts at a fairly low speed of about 7km/hr and 5% grade, with 1km/hr speed increases every 3 minutes. Throughout the test, our sports physiologist Jess Kryski records our blood lactate level and heart rate, and continues to increase the speed until we are above threshold, meaning we are no longer clearing all the lactic acid from our muscles that we are producing.  Then comes the hard part where the speed increases every minute until we can no longer keep up with the treadmill and are forced to let go and dangle in the air from the harness, which is pretty fun in itself.

In the Sustainability Test, we ski at speed that is just above threshold for as long as we can up to a maximum of 30 minutes.

The racing season will start in Sweden with IBU Cup races in Idre on November 24 & 25, and then Beitostolen, Norway the following weekend. From there I will make my way down to Central Europe to Austria, Slovenia and/or Italy for more World Cup or IBU Cup races for the month of December. I’ll spend Christmas back in Canmore with my family, then return to either the World Cup or IBU Cup, depending on results. You can check out my calendar here for the potential races I will be at.

At the end of the season, National Championships are being held in Whistler/Callaghan Valley, B.C. from March 16-20, 2012.  Come out and cheer if you are in the area!

Check out my coach Roddy Ward’s awesome video compilation of me training and racing. It’s the first one he’s made and hopefully there will be more to come!

Some pics from the event, courtesy of Ric Rowan.

I made two trips up to the glacier this summer, one in July and one in September. This was the first year I had the luxury of being flown to and from the glacier. However the first instance wasn’t voluntary… In July I tweaked my knee during a rollerski sprint workout one morning that I aggravated further by running that afternoon. After taking a couple weeks off from running it seemed like it could hold up to the 18km run/hike into the glacier… I was wrong. I made the hike in okay, but on our second day of skiing I could barely walk down from the glacier to base camp without a searing pain in my knee. What should have taken me 30 minutes took over an hour and a half. This was particularly worrisome as I somehow had to make the 18km hike down the mountain to get home from the glacier at some point, which seemed like it would be the longest and most painful 18km of my life. However, with luck on my side, it just so happened that a couple days later a helicopter was flying into the glacier to bring in the manager for some repair work, meaning I could score a free helicopter ride directly from base camp to Canmore, which took a whole whopping 20 minutes! Lucky me!

In other exciting news from the Haig Glacier, in September we had a full-on snowstorm with 50km/hr winds and -20⁰C temperatures with the windchill. This may be a mild exaggeration, but that is what it felt like to me coming directly from blue-bird sunny days for the whole summer! We decided to attempt to ski anyway, and just as we arrived on the glacier after a 45 minute hike up from base camp, a huge thunderstorm blew in and sent us fleeing down the glacier back to basecamp as lightning crackled around us. Being on a glacier is not a good idea during a lightning storm, as we are easily the tallest things around for miles. So we called it a day and curled up in our puffy down jackets and sleeping bags, sipping tea and trying to warm up.

Flying in a helicopter to the Haig Glacier with Kathy Davies and Pate Neumann

U.S. Biathlete Bill Bowler excited for his first trip to the Haig!

Helicopter slinging our gear into the glacier

Coach Roddy Ward

Me hiking up to the glacier from base camp

Pate Neuman & Roddy Ward enjoying(?) the snowstorm

I have had a very busy summer, training and working, and it will only get busier this winter, as I head to Europe for races! I will do my best to update you on everything I am doing, and try to take photos with my fancy new phone, but in the meantime, check out the gallery on this site, where I have uploaded a bunch of older photos, some of which have never been seen.

As always, a big thank you to my friends, family and fans for all of your support – my goal this year is to train harder than ever before with the Sochi 2014 Olympics in mind!