Ember Large is running indoor track this season for the MacEwan Griffins while also preparing to represent Canada at the Winter Universiade in Russia in March.

January 25, 2019

Large focused on home track debut before representing Canada in XC skiing at Winter Universiade

Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics

EDMONTON – In a little over a month, MacEwan Griffins indoor track athlete Ember Large will be boarding a plane bound for Siberia.

Siberia in March isn't usually the first destination that comes to mind for those travelling in spring break season.

For Large, though, waiting on the other end of a 21-hour long day of flights from Edmonton to Krasnoyarsk, Russia is the chance to don the Red and White in representing Canada in cross-country skiing at the 29th Winter Universiade.

"I'm super stoked about it," said the Edmontonian, who will be among 12 student-athletes from across Canada representing Canada in several cross-country skiing disciplines during the March 2-12 event. "I'm really excited about going to Russia and seeing what it's like there.

"I went to Canada Games in 2015, so I'm kind of thinking this is going to be a really big (version) of that," she added. "I think it would be super cool to see people from all over the world. I've never been able to race with people from outside North America, so I'm really excited."

As for how she might do there against an international field?

"My expectations aren't super high just because I haven't been training for skiing so much," she said. "I've been focusing on track a lot more. All my skiing right now is really just coming from coaching. I coach three days a week."

Between coaching kids for the Edmonton Nordic Ski Club, her academic pursuit of a Social Work degree at MacEwan and training for the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference indoor track season, Large's schedule is full.

There's no doubt she's staying in shape through indoor track workouts, though, as she and the rest of the Griffins are set for the first ACAC Grand Prix of the season – Saturday's MacEwan Invitational at the Kinsmen Fieldhouse (events start at 9 a.m., full schedule below).

"It's actually been really fun," she said of taking up indoor track for the first time. "To be honest, if you asked me last year if I wanted to run indoor track, I would have said 'no, I don't want to run in circles inside.' That didn't sound very fun. But I started doing it this year and I really liked it. It's been a total learning curve."

Large did run a year of outdoor track in high school, but her endurance skills have mostly been honed by growing up on icy trails. She then ran a year of U SPORTS cross country for the University of Alberta Pandas in 2017 before transferring to MacEwan this season for her degree.

Even if indoor track has several new concepts to embrace, a lot of the same skills are transferrable.

"(For cross-country skiing) it's the same concept, but for track, there's a lot less volume," said Large. "For skiing, we'd be doing quite a few more hours every week. Track, it's mostly intensity workouts."

The Griffins will enter a women's team into ACAC competition this weekend that's full of first-year student-athletes, but with four banners in the past five seasons under their belts, the goal doesn't change for a program used to high standards. They're after it again.

Head coach Drew Carver admits that results in Saturday's competition, however, are not as important as setting the table for future success, such as the March 15-16 ACAC Championship in Calgary.

"We're still in the training phase because our provincial championship is a little less than two months away," he said. "The goals for this weekend will be just running pace. Most of them are doing three events in one day, so we're trying to get used to the idea of competing and recovering. That's the biggest goal is learning how to do that.

"We're going to go in have them run, not at their fullest," he continued. "The idea is to run a good race, stay on pace, finish it. I'm not worried about having the fastest time or the victory. It's get yourself ready for the next race."

As for MacEwan's men's team, they return a strong group of sprinters, who will get the added challenge of a new exhibition event on Saturday – the 60 metres. Both men and women will run the distance at the end of the MacEwan Invitational (currently set for 3 p.m.).

"It's still an exhibition event for the ACAC. They haven't put it in as part of their season," said Carver. "But we do have some excellent sprint guys. We are going to be very strong sprint-wise

"Some of them are stretching their distance going up to 600 metres. That will take pressure off of the two guys I have for middle distance work and hopefully we'll be able to punch out a pretty good performance."