Portfolio: Adventura, “Devon Kershaw”

Magazine: Adventura, Fall 2009

“TRAIN LIKE A PRO”

NAME: Devon Kershaw

WEBSITE: www.devonkershaw.com

SPORT: Cross-country skiing

OLYMPIC HISTORY: 2006 Winter Games: 4×10 km relay, classic ski relay, 15 km classic, skate sprint. Pre-qualified into 2010 Games on Canadian National Team.

FAVOURITE OUTDOOR SPOT TO TRAIN: The first one that would come to mind would be Mt. Assiniboine. It’s a provincial park in BC, and there’s a lodge there that the family of a teammate of mine, Sara Renner, has run for the last 20 years. The majesty of Mt. Assiniboine is unparalleled. You can wake up just bagged after a couple days of four-hour skis and look up, and if it’s sunny and there’s some snow glinting off the summit, it’s like ‘oh yeah. I don’t mind. I’ll get up and go skiing again.’

PRO ADVICE: I think a common mistake in most endurance sports, and that includes cross-country skiing, is not allowing enough time for recovery. The hard work is the easy part. Going out there and putting in a lot of kilometers, or hours, can be tough but there’s a lot of people in the world that can do that well, professional and recreational athletes alike. The biggest difference between a high-level athlete and an aspiring athlete is hitting the wall and not being able to break through — they are not so much over-trained as under-recovered. For example, if you’re going out for a four-hour ski, make sure that you’re keeping your pace in check. If it’s a four-hour ski, there’s no need to go out and drive yourself into the ground. If you want to perform at a high level, you can’t keep taking and never putting anything back in.

GOTTA HAVE GEAR: A pair of running shoes that fit your feet and are tailored to your running style. It’s one thing to go to the store and get whatever’s on sale and in your size, but if you take just five minutes to make sure they are tailored to your running style, you’ll get so much more enjoyment out of it and your joints will thank you.

You, in three words: High-energy. Determined. Terrible-multi-tasker.

Playlist:

• Great Lake Swimmers “Pulling on the lines”

• Wilco “You and I”

• David Myles “Something I can feel”

• Lupe Fiasco “Hip hop saved my life”

• Neil Young “On the way home” (live)