Alexandra Gabor will have to kick-start her training over the next month.

The 17-year-old Whitehorse native was chosen by Swimming Canada earlier this week to represent the country at the 2010 World Aquatic SC Championships in Dubai from Dec. 8-20.

"I'm super excited for it,” the Whitehorse Glacier Bears Swim Club member said.

"It's another meet that will add up to some great experiences, learning how to race on the international stage, and it really gives me something to shoot for for this cycle in the season, it really gives me something to train hard for, and hopefully I'll just race fast.”

Gabor also recently received news from Swimming Canada she had been carded for the second straight year at the senior international level.

Gabor was hesitant to reveal her expectations for the high-profile Dubai races so early in the game.

"It's hard to put a number on my goal – I don't want to put my foot in my mouth or anything – but if all goes according to plan with my training, I wouldn't mind getting a second swim,” she said of making the semi-finals (top 16). "That would be really good.”

Consistent training has been hard to come by lately, she said.

The F.H. Collins Secondary School grade 12 student has gone on recruiting trips to U.S. and Canadian universities to see which university she'll represent in the pool.

There have been scholarship offers, but these recruiting trips are aimed to get a feel for the different universities, she said, noting that the signing period is mid-November.

"It's kind of hard to just pick a university off of stats and pictures without getting a feel for the team and everything else,” she said, adding that these trips have taken a toll on her training.

"It'll be like four days gone and you only get one or two workouts instead of the usual five or six that I would get up here at home, so right now I'm kind of backtracking and trying to get back in shape to where I should have been three or four weeks ago. I have to work three times as hard right now and for the next month to get ready (for Dubai).”

Training in Whitehorse can be a challenge, she said, since she is the only Glacier Bear with a national qualifying time.

"I'm constantly racing against the clock and trying to pretend that the really fast swimmers that train down in Victoria are training with me,” she said. "I've actually had some training camps with them and it helped so much, just actually swimming beside someone that's even a little faster than me and trying to race them and beat them.”

But Gabor has experience preparing herself for major competitions.

In 2009, she placed eighth as part of the 4x200 freestyle relay team – which set a Canadian record – at the LC World Championships in Rome.

She also placed 20th individually in the 200m freestyle during that competition.

"I was close to making the semi-finals, but just not close enough,” Gabor said.

"That was huge for experience. In my first big international meet, to make the final is crazy,” she added of the relay team's eighth place finish.

Rome gave her experience and motivation for Dubai in December.

Getting a glimpse of the world's top swimmers, rather than reading about them or seeing them on television, added to building experience, she said.

"Just racing against such a strong field – the best in the world – really opened my eyes as far as how hard to train, where I could still go and how fast people are going and how hard they're training.

Who in particular?

"Well, Michael Phelps,” Gabor said of the 16-time Olympic medal winner.

"Obviously, seeing him in person is kind of crazy. Swimmers like that you just see on TV all the time winning Olympic gold, and then to actually be 20 feet away from them, it's a whole different ball game.”

But rather than be intimidated by world-class competition, Gabor uses the stature of swimming greats as motivation.

She called those experiences more exciting than intimidating.

"It depends on how you deal with the pressure,” she said. "If you start thinking, ‘Oh my God, there's a world record holder in the lane beside me, I could never keep up with them,' you're not going to keep up with them. But if you think, ‘Oh my God, there's a world record holder beside me, what if I keep up with them, imagine how fast I'll go.' That's how I try and look at it, is to use them as motivation to make myself faster.”

After returning to Canada from Rome, Gabor competed in the 2009 Canada Summer Games in Prince Edward Island, where she became the first Yukoner to win gold at the summer games. Overall, she finished with two gold and two bronze.

Rome, Charlottetown and now Dubai are just a few of the places Gabor's sport has taken her.

In 2009, she was a leading force for the Canadian Junior National swim team that competed in Guam at the 2009 Junior Pan Pacific Championships, where she collected a bronze medal as part of the 4x200m freestyle team.

In 2008, she was a member of Canada's Senior B Team for the 2008 Tri-Nations Cup against France and Great Britain in Quebec City.

She currently holds the Canadian age group records in the 11-12-year-old short course category in the 200m, 400m and 1,500m freestyle events, and also holds

the Canadian age group record in the 13-14-year-old short course 100m and 200m freestyle.

Not to mention being named the Yukon National Female Athlete of the Year in both 2005 and 2006.

With all those credentials, however, Gabor still knows what it takes to compete internationally.

Training.

Although it hasn't been consistent since PEI, Gabor is poised to undergo intense training in the lead up to Dubai.

"For the first two months (after the Canada Summer Games) it was going really well, I was training hard, racing well, and then after that it kind of fell off a little bit, and the racing wasn't quite at the same level,” she said.

"So right now I'm just working at getting back up there.”