Sam 20 year old Canadian speed skater
neverthoughtidseeit: Multitasking: ice bath, recovery drink and homework (Taken with instagram) It’s been a tough week..

neverthoughtidseeit:

Multitasking: ice bath, recovery drink and homework (Taken with instagram)

It’s been a tough week..


Click through if you're interested in watching the Canadian Championship in Saguenay (live stream)

(Everyone should watch because my cousin/roommate is skating)

The schedule looks something like this for today: 

Vendredi, le 13 janvier / January 13th

13:00 Échauffement / Warm up Femmes / Ladies: A-B-C

Échauffement / Warm up Femmes / Ladies: D-E-F

Glace / Ice resurfacing

Échauffement / Warm up Hommes / Men; A-B-C

Échauffement / Warm up Hommes / Men; D-E-F

Glace / Ice resurfacing

14:10 Qualification / Heat   1500m Femmes / Ladies 

Qualification / Heat   1500m Hommes / Men

Glace / Ice resurfacing

Demi-finale / Semi final  1500m Femmes / Ladies  Top

Demi-finale / Semi final  1500m Femmes / Ladies  Bottom

Demi-finale / Semi final  1500m Hommes / Men  Top

Demi-finale / Semi final  1500m Hommes / Men  Bottom

Glace / Ice resurfacing

Finale / Final   1500m Femmes / Ladies 

Finale / Final   1500m Hommes / Men 

17:00 FIN / END approximatif

I did some long track this past weekend! If you know me or have been following either of my blogs you might know that last season I focused mostly on long track as I had been doing for a couple season by that point.  Last season, unfortunately, was probably the worst season of my life.  It seemed like every thing that could have gone wrong did.   I had some issues at the beginning of the season where I might have been over trained, I would get so tired in races that I would completely lose my technique and I had a hard time getting it back.  When Canada Games trials rolled around I thought I had recovered enough to pull off making the team since I had easily been in the top 3 of Ontario the season before, no such luck, I ended up 6th which wasn’t even good for an alternate spot. By the last competition of the season I was finally feeling good and I was preparing myself to go into it putting no pressure on results.  I then got extremely sick on the plane ride over and spent most of the week at the doctors and on antibiotics so I was unable to skate anything except for the 500’s and even those were not skated very well because I felt like I was dying. Even at this point I was just trying to focus on the next season.  Next season I was going to move to Calgary, I was going to train long track and every thing was going to be better.  Then, just to kick me while I was down, they changed the time standards to get into the Oval program in Calgary and I no longer had my qualifying times.  I did however, have my short track qualifying times so so far this year I have been training short track and it has actually been going really well, I have made huge improvements which is something I’m very happy about. The week I returned to Calgary from Christmas marked my first week of the season really training on the long track ice.  Our short track group skated long track every day and those of us with qualifying times were encouraged to skate  Canada Cup 2.  The competition was this past Thursday-Sunday and overall it went pretty well.  Some races were better than others and I didn’t hit any of my personal bests but all my times were better than last season’s times at least.  I still love long track but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t happy to get back on the short track ice this week.  I’m hoping our group will skate some more long track though and then hopefully I can aim for some new pb’s by the end of the season.

I did some long track this past weekend!

If you know me or have been following either of my blogs you might know that last season I focused mostly on long track as I had been doing for a couple season by that point.  Last season, unfortunately, was probably the worst season of my life.  It seemed like every thing that could have gone wrong did.  

I had some issues at the beginning of the season where I might have been over trained, I would get so tired in races that I would completely lose my technique and I had a hard time getting it back.  When Canada Games trials rolled around I thought I had recovered enough to pull off making the team since I had easily been in the top 3 of Ontario the season before, no such luck, I ended up 6th which wasn’t even good for an alternate spot.

By the last competition of the season I was finally feeling good and I was preparing myself to go into it putting no pressure on results.  I then got extremely sick on the plane ride over and spent most of the week at the doctors and on antibiotics so I was unable to skate anything except for the 500’s and even those were not skated very well because I felt like I was dying.

Even at this point I was just trying to focus on the next season.  Next season I was going to move to Calgary, I was going to train long track and every thing was going to be better.  Then, just to kick me while I was down, they changed the time standards to get into the Oval program in Calgary and I no longer had my qualifying times.  I did however, have my short track qualifying times so so far this year I have been training short track and it has actually been going really well, I have made huge improvements which is something I’m very happy about.

The week I returned to Calgary from Christmas marked my first week of the season really training on the long track ice.  Our short track group skated long track every day and those of us with qualifying times were encouraged to skate  Canada Cup 2.  The competition was this past Thursday-Sunday and overall it went pretty well.  Some races were better than others and I didn’t hit any of my personal bests but all my times were better than last season’s times at least. 

I still love long track but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t happy to get back on the short track ice this week.  I’m hoping our group will skate some more long track though and then hopefully I can aim for some new pb’s by the end of the season.




Skating at the national qualifier

Skating at the national qualifier


Racing, racing and more racing.

National qualifier is this weekend! Raced from 1:30-9:00 yesterday and racing again from 1:30-6:00(ish) today. Managed to get a 1 second personal best in my 500 yesterday so things are going pretty good so far. 


I made the list for National Qualifier!

I’m ranked like 22 out of 32 but still.

Nesbitt wins gold in the 1000m, Team Pursuit at Chelyabinsk (RUS) World Cup

Nesbitt wins gold in the 1000m, Team Pursuit at Chelyabinsk (RUS) World Cup


Morrison wins bronze in the 1000m at Chelyabinsk (RUS) World Cup

Morrison wins bronze in the 1000m at Chelyabinsk (RUS) World Cup


American Cup

This weekend me and the rest of my training group traveled to Cleveland Ohio to skate in American Cup 2 and to say things did not go as planned would be an understatement.  First our flight out of Calgary was delayed so we missed our connecting flight and ended up arriving 4-5 hours later than anticipated and things kind of went from there; people missed busses, taxies were late, because the taxies were late half the team was late for the flight this morning but thankfully we all made it back safe and sound.

I’m not going to lie to you, I was fully planning on making this post about how bad this competition was because the first day did not go very well for me.  I was disqualified in my first distance and made some bad decision in my second and all in all I was not executing things very well, I thought I should have been skating a lot better and this upset me but as my coach told me I still had time to turn it around.  On the second day my first distance was okay, but not great, so I thought that the weekend was kind of a write-off.  In my last race however I did turn the weekend around, I executed passes and my strategies like I wanted and came out with a pretty good race and that’s all it took to turn the weekend from a bad one to a good one.

All in all it was good to go to the US and race against people we don’t usually race against, you learn a lot more and have to think faster on your feet.  In Canada we always race against the same people so you know how people race, who you can beat and who you can’t and what they’re going to do in their races so it was kind of interesting to not know what was coming and we got some good race experience because of it. 

So I’ve been doing mostly short track since I’ve been out here (other than one long track race that did not go well at all) and it’s been going really well.  Since I haven’t done much short track in the past two years I improved all my times at the first competition a couple weekends ago.  This does not mean that things have been coming easily though.  I managed to come down with a cold last week that I haven’t been able to kick and it is slowly but surely wearing me down.  I took yesterday afternoon off training and still I was so tired this morning it was a struggle to get myself around the rink.

Let’s just say I’m not excited for the second training session followed by class this afternoon but I’m just going to suck it up and get it done and then try not to fall asleep in class.