For the past week I have been back in Vermont enjoying some killer fall weather and one of the easiest training weeks of the year. Our two weeks in whistler was a hard start to the intensity phase of my summer training program, followed by a testing week in Park City, so it was really important to make this past week one of the easiest recovery weeks of the year. Once you’re used to putting some big hour weeks training only 11 hours in a week is a pretty big cut back, but it gave me chance to hang out in VT and get some work done and skateboard a lot. Gus Kaeding of the CXC team came down for the weekend so we got a chance to train together a little bit hang out with the Foster’s and some other fellow SMSers. It was a good VT weekend with a hammer fest in the SMS gym, followed by a some good times in Manchester at the ‘wife’. A Sunday of football and some wicked sauna weather on sunday night. With the recovery week over it’s right back into the hard training for this week. I’ll have three intensity sessions this week before heading into our big Lake Placid camp next week for the start of two weeks with some TT’s and level 4 training…. Whap it!! 

on our day off in Whistler we went to visit the construction of the Olympic Village… then we jumped off a bridge. 

What up from Whistler!

We arrived here a few days ago for our first intensity camp of the fall. Both the National team and the D team will be training together for the next 10 days while getting in some hard work outs along the way. Aside from a few gaps in the black top, a large portion of the cross-country stadium and the biathlon stadium have been paved for roller skiing. The access road to the Olympic venue is also really good for training. It takes about an hour of easy skiing to get up the whole thing.

So far we’ve had a good sprint work out with a solid crew. We had Bird skiing with us for that workout, which was cool, along with some guest appearances by ‘Chambo’ and the Maine Winter Sports guys. It was pretty rad. Alex, our strength coach, is here from Park City too and he’s been kicking our ass in the gym. I think I was the sorest I’ve been all year yesterday after a hard roller ski in the morning and some ’super sets’ in the gym that afternoon. 

Today we all did a speed work out on the sprint course. Although all the pavement isn’t down on it yet it was still great for some speeds on specific sections. A big part of this camp is to get used to the Olympic venue. Everything from how long it takes to drive up from Whislter, to visualizing the stadium, to actually skiing on some of the race courses all goes into our preparation for the Games. We are going to hammer out a sprint relay work out tomorrow and then we have a day off Friday. There’s some talk to doing a little bungie jumping that day so I’ll have to get a video up. 

                                        Working on some sprint starts in the Olympic Stadium