The Injury Chronicles were written and illustrated by
Marie-Catherine Bruno, BScPT, Cped(C)

Marie-Catherine grew up in rural Quebec in the hills of the Laurentians. By the age of 5 she was already on cross-country skis. “I remember trying to keep up to my dad on my little plastic skis! It didn’t take much time for him to buy me real skis!” I skied (both downhill and Nordic) and played volleyball until the age of 20 where repetitive shoulder injuries kept me out of both sports. That’s when I discovered orienteering. I had always loved maps, so that seemed like the best sport for me! The only problem was that although I could ski, I could not run at all. I worked on my running religiously, but it took forever to even get decent at it (I was born with a congenital defect of the hips, so running is very painful). It is probably because of all those health problems that she decided to study in the medical field.

At age 22 she graduates from McGill University (Montreal, Quebec) in Physiotherapy. Soon after graduation she starts specialising in Sports Medicine and Manual Therapy techniques.  “I have always liked the pressure from trying to heal an athlete fast when there is an important competition coming up” says Bruno. As a student, Bruno worked as a bootfitter in a ski shop. After years of physiotherapy she started missing her old bootfitting job and went back to it part time. “That’s when I realised that I could combine both my expertise as a physio and my years of training as a bootfitter”. “I started doing a lot of realignment of the skeleton using proper orthotics.” Marie-Catherine went back to school and came out with a certification in Pedorthics and is now a Certified Pedorthist as well as a Registered Physical Therapist.

Now when she is not working in her own orthotic laboratory (The Sole Mate – Custom Orthotics & Footbeds in the mountains of British-Columbia) she designs training programs for other orienteers (she has an unfinished Masters Degree in Exercise Physiology), nordic skis and orienteers. She has represented Canada on many WOC teams and WC Teams but her true love remains ski-orienteering.