September 3rd, 2008
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
