The Carleton Ravens Nordic Ski team finished the season strong at the Canadian College and University Nordic Championships at Canmore, Alta. from March 18-25.
The Ravens men’s team finished second with 388 points for a second-place finish, while the women’s team finished fourth with 314 points for fourth place.
Chris Weller and Carrington Pomeroy finished third in the men’s relay cross.
Rookie Aidan Kirkham earned a bronze medal in the 10km interval race and a silver in the 15km interval.
“The first day was really good. I was pretty surprised,” Kirkham said of the 10 km race. “Even though I didn’t have the highest result . . . I still had a very good race.”
“It was definitely about pacing. That was the most important part of both those races because it’s at altitude,” he said.
Kirkham praised coach Nicholas Clifford and the training program.
“Nick structured the Carleton program . . . in kind of a similar way to a club program,” he said. “We would do intervals, we would do long skis, we would do minicamps . . . That’s really what put us over the edge.”
Kirkham said he’s good at distance skiing, but he wanted to improve on his strength and “pure” speed with strength and conditioning coach Nick Westcott.
“I never was a gym guy, but [Westcott] made it really easy to like strength,” he said and added he lifted “a lot more” weights this year.
Zoë Williams won a bronze in the 5 km interval race as well the 20 km race, and finished seventh in the 1.3 km race and sixth in the 10km.
“This year I was hoping to come in the top six and top three as many times as I could,” she said, and added she also achieved her goal of being the top female in her birth year based on overall scores.
She said preparation and health were important after she was sick before last year’s nationals.
“My main priority was to stay healthy and enter nationals in peak form,” Williams said.
According to several Ravens skiers, the elevation and warm weather in Canmore made skiing more difficult.
“At altitude, it’s a lot easier to, in the middle of the race, to get super super exhausted because your body is not processing lactic acid as well and you’re not getting enough oxygen,” Williams said.
Williams said the team arrived in Canmore four days before the championships in order to acclimatize their bodies to the environment.
“You want to do some intensity [skiing] there before your races, actually to get the race feeling,” Kirkham said. “The first intensity—it hurts.”
“It was very warm,” he said. “Everyone’s skis were slow. You just had to go for it. You just had to say: ‘nothing’s stopping me from getting to that line.’”
“You’ve got to be ready to work hard when the conditions are like that,” Kirkham said.
Williams said she embraces the “challenge” of tough conditions.
“I tend to do my best when the conditions are the hardest just because I accept the fact that it’s a race, it’s going to be hard,” she said.
Both Kirkham and Williams said their teammates helped their performances.
“Our team—they’re really a part of it,” Kirkham said. “That’s how we got the [Ontario University Athletics] banner.”
– File photo
