Tour de Ski 2023

Coming up on one month post Tour de Ski I am finally feeling fully recovered from this grueling 7-day stage event. By the time I made it to the top of Alpe Cermis on the final stage of the Tour, I was feeling proud of myself for just finishing, which is not a feeling you get very often as a professional athlete. Racing the Tour de Ski all the way through was an awesome experience, and something I’ve wanted to do since I did the first 3 stages back in 2019. Overall, I didn’t have the personal performances I was hoping for. Despite that, it was a great atmosphere and exhilarating race period to be part of with teammates reaching personal bests and fighting for the podium.  Racing in 3 different countries within the same week made for lots of packing and unpacking and moving parts but we sure got a lot of beautiful views and landscapes. Val Mustair, Oberstdorf, and Val di Fiemme are all very beautiful venues. I hadn’t raced in Val di Fiemme since my last World Junior Championships back in 2014, so it was very special to finally get to race there again.

Since the Tour de Ski started on December 31^st, we stayed in Davos, Switzerland over Christmas after the first period of World Cup races ended before Christmas. I always love training and racing in Davos, and I had my best race of the season there so far with a 23^rd place finish in the skate sprint. It was made extra special by having my partner, Michael, cheering. Michael came over for the Davos World Cup weekend and then stayed for Christmas break. This was his first time seeing me race on the international stage, it meant a lot for me to be able to show him my life on World Cup.

Christmas training camp in Davos was full of lots of great moments and memories highlighted by a winter solstice proposal, to which I said yes! Michael has been living and working in Yellowknife for the past year. I have been spending a lot of my free training and rest time there and have gotten to know the city and community quite well. We feel very fortunate to have been able to work with a local company, Diamonds de Canada, to make my dream engagement ring come to life with the entire process, unearthing, cutting, polishing, and setting happening locally in the Northwest Territories.

After the Tour de Ski, the team came back to Canada for a rest and training period. I spent my week of exhausting post-tour in Yellowknife sleeping, eating, napping, lying by the fire and trying to find a few ounces of brain energy to catch up on all the email and computer work I had neglected over the 9 days of racing. Yellowknife had a warmer than normal start to the winter with lots of snow, so I was able to enjoy some easy skis and walks outside while recovering.

As I mentioned above, the Tour de Ski didn’t go as well as I had anticipated results wise so a week after flying back to Canada, I was on a plane again to Prince George for the World Championships trials. With my body not yet fully recovered, the race was a big test of mental strength to push through and ski as smart as possible. With a bit of extra luck on my side I was able to win the first race there, the classic sprint, and go back to recovering to be ready and strong for World Championships. A few more days of rest and easy skiing and I was feeling excited to train and energized just in time for an altitude camp at Nickel Plate Nordic in BC.

Nickel Plate has the highest altitude groomed ski trails in Canada so it’s a great place to do a volume prep camp before a championship. A huge thank you to the Penticton community for their hospitality in making our team camp so great. That bring us to this week. After 10 days at altitude, I came home to Whitehorse and some lower elevation to get in some intensity sessions and family and friend time before we depart for Austria on Saturday. Austria will be our final staging area in preparing for my fourth World Championships that kick off February 23^rd with a Classic Sprint in Planica, Slovenia. The championships run until March 5^th and we are hoping they will be broadcast on CBC sports, so make sure to check in with my social media accounts for updates closer to the date!!

Thanks for reading and supporting. Here’s to a wonderful second half of the ski season!!

Dahria