Pre-Season Post
Hello from West Yellowstone! Well, it’s been a long summer of training and finally we are one day away from my first race of the season! I’m feeling preped, fit and ready to race! We’re in Montana for the start of the SuperTour series. It’s been cold and wintery since we got here on Monday - so cold the race start has been delayed for tomorrow’s skate sprints. Anyway, since I haven’t updated you all on how things have been going for me in a while, here’s how my offseason training went over the past months: May: Bootcamp: Thunder Bay I started my 6th season on the National Development Centre - Thunder Bay in the same way we always do: with Bootcamp. Bootcamp is a week and a bit of physiological testing, time trials, and a lot of meetings. It hasn’t changed much since I first joined the team so it was like settling into a comfortable routine. My testing results were the same if not slightly better than last year, so the extra rest I took in April payed off. June/July: Canmore Alignment Camp
Our first out-of-town camp was in Canmore this season. It was an alignment camp, meaning all the training centres across Canada and the National team joined up to run a massive camp. There were over 60 of Canada’s best athletes in attendance over the two weeks including Alex Harvey, Devon Kershaw, Ivan Babikov, and Len Valjas. It was my second alignment camp (we did one last year) and I found it a little easier to train with Alex, Devon and Ivan than before. We did a lot of roller skiing up the Highwood pass and intensity on the Nordic Centre’s roller skiing paths. August: Boy’s Camp: Hayward, WI
Thunder Bay isn’t too far from from the States, so we head down to Minneapolis cottage country to take advantage of the endless paved cottage roads around Hayward, Wisconsin from year to year. The girls on the team had a Women’s camp in Quebec City, and we’d been training in Thunder Bay for quite a while so the guys make the drive down for a volume camp in a different setting. We did some pretty big hours: a 30 hour week which included a 100km rollerski midweek. It was a tiring camp but it will make the Ski Tour Canada much easier. Sept/October: Park City, Utah
One of the best places in the world for drylands training at altitude is around Park City, Utah. A 30min drive from Salt Lake City, and close to Solider Hollow (the cross country venue for the 2002 olympics), the endless paved mountain passes are amazing for roller skiing. Some of the mountain passes go above 3200 meters above sea level which is a really big blast of thin air for the body to adapt to. This camp was also an alignment camp with the National team and the other training centres so it was great to train with Alex, Devon & Co for three weeks. Again, I found it much easier to ski or run with the World Cup guys, but I had to be carful not to cook the body because of the altitude. This was one of the hardest camps I’ve ever done, but I came out of it still healthy and much stronger. November: Québec City, Forêt Montmorency
About an hour north of Québec City the University of Laval operates a forest research station called Forêt Montmorency. The facility is pretty big - over 80 rooms, a cafeteria, a games room, and best of all, lots of snow saved from last winter. They spread out 2.3km of trail in the same way they do in Canmore at ‘Frozen Thunder’, but because of Canmore’s poor winter last year, they weren’t able to save as much snow as normal, so we decided to head to Froêt instead. Forét was very nice, the accommodations were right beside the trails so it was easy ski twice a day. I managed to ski exactly 500km over 10 days of skiing. It was a lot of laps! It got boring at times, but knowing racing was just around the corner was more than enough to keep me into it. We have two races this weekend, I’ll keep you up to date on how they go. Updates from me will be much more regular now that racing is happening and things are much more exciting. We also race in Canmore from the 5th to the 8th of December, and near Vernon BC on the 12th and 13th. Every race this year is essentially selection for http://skitourcanada.com/en/. Hopefully I can earn my spot for these races! Here’s a video I made for our NordicFest fundraiser dinner: https://youtu.be/U8FI2TcrN24 Stay tuned! Andy
