Recent Fall Training Adventures: Rollerskiing and Riding your Mountain Bike
By:  Alana Thomas   (2008/10/07)

I had lacked a bit of inspiration on what exactly to write an article about this week. But, as always, there's a few certain kinds of training that I'm stoked about right now and pictures are always popular, so I figured I'd put those things together and see what I ended up with.

A couple weeks ago I decided it had been too long since I went home for a visit so I jetted home to Mississauga on a Thursday to see my parents and hit up Team Hardwood training on Saturday and Sunday.  Much to my delight, the already incredible rollerskiing around Hardwood Ski and Bike (Newly re-named and under new ownership!) had been improved even further. The southern section of Line 3 had been repaved along with the entire 2nd Line, think Velvet! I actually questioned whether or not I could count Saturday's Z3 intervals and Sunday's 3h15 min Z1 rollerskis as real training because it felt so easy to ski on such nice roads!

Sunday ended up being a girls only ski where we did sprints and sprint starts, on smooth, quiet roads this was very fun! Below is Myself with Hardwood girls Anna Geiger Whitlock, Terry Korzenowski and Erin Tribe on Line 2.

Another recent training adventure was a trip to Kanata Lakes to mountain bike. As someone who originally got into Nordic skiing as a means to cross-train through the winter so I could mountain bike race in the summer, mountain biking was a summer training staple for me while living in the Hardwood area during the summer. After just over a year of living in Ottawa with barely any riding (pathetic, I know) I finally made the trip out to Kanata Lakes to test out the trails last Friday. All I can say is that I CANNOT believe I didn't do this sooner! The riding is incredible with lots of rocky, flowing singletrack, short, steep climbs and some fun bridges. I didn't get any pictures last week but am going back on Friday for more so I'll try and get some and update this article. (For now here's a random from Boler Mountain in London, last fall)

Fall is a fun time of year, with pleasantly cooler temperatures and changing leaves, its a great time to get out and do all sorts of activities you won't be able to do when you're busy skiing all winter, so get out and enjoy!