what up peeps. As we’re getting close to the two week mark here at the Snow Farm in New Zealand I figured I’d give you an update on the type of training that we’ve been doing so far.

Despite our first week being cut a little short because of the long travel, we were still able to get in some decent volume… racking up somewhere around 18 or 19 hours with both a threshold and Vo2max interval session. The main goal of the first week of the camp is to make a smooth transition from roller skiing to snow and get used to the winter conditions without getting sick. The idea is to get in a good 4 or 5 days of solid training and then have an off day so that we can start our first full week of camp charging instead of in a hole.

I think the crew has done a good job of that and now we’ve really been hammering out the training so far this week. The main goal of this big week is to focus on volume and distance training. Right now I’m on track to log just over a 24 hour week. In addition to the distance training we take advantage of this on snow time to go fast too, and even with big hours we’ve put in 3 intensity session this week. We started off on monday with a classic sprint work out….. it was pretty brutal. I haven’t done anything all out basically since the end of the season. After the qualification run I was puking everywhere and continued to feel pretty crappy for a while after. Ski racing in July never feels that awesome.

With a day of easy distance in between we got after it again on Wednesday with some level 4 double pole intervals, followed by another 4 hour distance day on Thursday, and some level 3 intervals this morning. Todays work out was kind of an epic one. We woke up this morning to a snow storm and 50k and hour winds and it turned out to be virtually impossible to ski let alone do intervals. So the coaches loaded up the van and drove us to the bottom of the 14k access road and we charged up in the pouring rain. It was no joke. The intervals went pretty well…. I did a 5×6 minutes level 3 bounding. The only crappy part was that we were doing intervals in absolute pouring rain and by the time we finished the last one we were above the snow line in an all out blizzard with soaking wet clothes. I wish I had some pictures but I think everyone was too much in the survival zone to think about anything else but making it up the mountain. We had a rough 30 minutes to go after the last interval in order to make it back to the Farm… my hands are still thawing out 3 hours later.

We’ll finish off this big week with some running and strength this afternoon and a 4 hour OD ski tomorrow morning. The weather here is pretty incredible. Most days it’s beautiful up on the mountain but when a storm rolls in it can be gnarly. Even with a shit storm going on up here it just takes a 40 minute drive to Wanaka and it’s a whole different world.

                               Skiing up at the Farm……. sun down in Wanaka

                                                      With hard training comes the ice bath

                     Newell, Koos, Paul Murray of Australia, and Lars Flora

Video update from the Snowfarm in New Zealand.

Life at the snow farm can seam a little tedious sometimes but being in a place like New Zealand makes every day a bit of an adventure. It’s weird coming from the 80 degree sun of the Utah summer right into dark winter conditions but it’s worth it for the sick skiing conditions. The hardest part is waking up at 7:30 in the morning and having it still be dark as you walk to breakfast but the view out of our bedroom window isn’t so bad either.

                              the view of the parking lot from our window

Although we haven’t had any blue bird days of skiing yet the conditions for training have been pretty decent. The environment is so exposed here that it can get a little wind blown at times but considering we’ve had some stormy weather, and probably two feet of snow since we’ve been here, the skiing has been great. Getting a dump of new snow can make getting off the mountain a little bit harder though. I’m not really sure why but we always have such crappy vans when we’re here. Yesterday a group of use headed down to Wanaka to go for a jog and strength and he had to chain up our ghetto van in order to make the decent. We even had to roll start it once we got down there…. It was right out of Little Miss Sunshine with everyone behind the van pushing and then taking turns jumping in.  The most frustrating part is that the snow line is only a few k’s down the road but in order to make it those 5 minutes of driving we have to spend 20 minutes chaining up the van. The difference between the weather down in Wanaka and up here at the snow farm is pretty incredible though. We could have been running in a shorts and a t-shirt yesterday afternoon down in Wanaka while it was windy and cold up here. On the way back to the Farm we tried to make it up the last hill without chaining the van and we had to have all six of us pushing on the back while the girls sat inside to put weight on the back tires.

Regardless we had a hard strength session down in town. Most of us are still doing some kind of Max strength this time of year so even though we’re skiing a lot we’re also lifting pretty hard too.   Even with the pushing of the Van we made it back up the farm in time for dinner. So far the food has been amazing here. New Zealand food is kind of a fusion between Asian, Pacific Island, and English food and they’ve been doing a good job of hooking us up here at the Farm

                    good eats…… bird getting some lunch 

                      lamb curry….. kicks ass 

My last few days in Park City were kind of low key for training because of the travel to New Zealand, but it was a still a productive week with some testing thrown in. Vo2max testing isn’t a huge priority for us but since I spend a few blocks of time in Park City over the year we take the opportunity to hop on the treadmill to see where we’re at. Unfortunately right now the belt on the treadmill is kind of messed up and it starts to slip at a certain grade, so we weren’t able to max out. But we were able to use it as a good chance to dial in the heat rate zones and see how efficient we are becoming below threshold. So we ran half of a treadmill test on Thursday and it went pretty well. According to the test the longer intervals I’ve been doing over the first half of the summer have been paying off and it looks like I’m more efficient around threshold than ever before. So I was stoked about that. What I was more stoked about though is that I looks like my vertical is up too. Don’t ask me why I really care or how that effects my skiing, but it does give me bragging rights against my girlfriend Jess and I think I can just about beat here at a counter movement jump.

Saturday was also a big day at the US Ski Team headquarters with the public opening of the COE. It was actually pretty cool because it was a chance from anyone from the VIP donors of the Ski Team to local folks from town to come and take a tour of the new center. I had already gone for a two hour run in the morning but they called all the athletes into the training center anyway to show everyone how the equipment works. So some NCers and Hoff and I were stationed at the treadmill and even hooked up to the machine so people could see what kind of numbers were pumping away at. I even got to work the skatepark station for a little bit too and launch into the foam pit for the visitors.

Well today was a big travel day for us and after 26 hours of travel we finally made it to the Snow Farm here in New Zealand. It was a pretty uneventful travel other than a 45 minute time span where nobody in the Auckland airport knew where our ski bags were. We were tying to make our connection to the domestic terminal but all our ski bags where missing and the folks at the baggage desk didn’t really know what to do because it looked like the computers were telling them the bags had landed in New Zealand. After we had waited around and filed paper work for lost bags they finally appeared our of a side door. So it made our connection a little tight but other than that no problems. The days of chilling in a row all to yourself on and overseas flight is for sure over…they freaking pack those things full.

So we made it up the mountain just in time for lunch even though it was blowing and snowing outside and our van was loaded down with a bunch of gear. After lunch some even nastier weather rolled in making it a complete white out. We strapped the skate skis on anyway and went out for a ski but lost the trail at least twice because of the white out and had to backtrack so we didn’t get completely lost. It gets pretty wild out here when the weather moves in because there are no trees and it’s so exposed. So I didn’t get any pics of New Zealand yet but here are a few from the COE opening the other day.

                                                         the mayor of PC talking to the media outside the COE

                                                            Eric rocking the treadmill from some people

                                              We now can see all our data on a TV as we’re skiing on the treadmill. sick

with a little over a week left in my altitude training block here in  PC, things have been going pretty well. For the past few weeks and basically since the start of the summer I have been training a lot like a distance skier with a lot of volume and threshold training. Having Grover in town this past week was a good opportunity to get a lot of lactate testing in and make sure the pace I’m skiing my intervals is right on the money. Testing lactates is an extremely important part of our training and is some thing that can get put on the back burner when you have thoughts of the Olympics right around the corner. Sometimes it is easy for me to get too fired up and actually hammer too hard during an intervals session so one of the things we’re trying to focus on is keeping a lid on the intensity. So this means level three is a controlled 4-5 mmol and level 4 isn’t an all out effort but a controlled pace too. So far I think our plan has been paying off and even here at 6,000 feet I’m feeling more fit and efficient than ever. 

The road hasn’t been completely smooth over the past two weeks though. One of the risks of power lifting and working on max strength is the risk of a weight room injury. While doing power cleans last Saturday I somehow strained the muscles in between my ribs.  It’s not a particularly painful injury, just a bit of a pain in the ass. Roller skiing and most other distance training doesn’t bother it, but I’ve had to be a little bit careful in the gym the past week. It’s kind of funny because people at the training center have been giving me crap when they see me in the PT room getting worked on because I was in the COE skate park so much the first week here. So everyone’s like ‘hey did the skateboarding finally get you’. It’s pretty random how I skate so much without pads or anything and I end up getting hurt lifting weights. oh well, it’s healing up pretty fast and I should be back to normal weight lifting in a week or so. 

The training has been pretty serious over the past few weeks but we’ve been getting out for some good times too. The 4th was a little different than normal. I’m used to the Vermont 4th of July which involves shooting fireworks out of Fosters RV, going to mud bogs, and drinking Budweiser. But they do things a little differently here in PC. We did make it out to Alex’s Rugby game in the park, which was pretty cool. People were actually getting really rowdy in the down town PC park so that was good to see. I had double sessions on the 4th so it was kind of a normal day for me but we hit up the concert at the Canyons on Friday and Alpine skier Bryon Friedman’s concert at the Side Car that night. With so many people around even getting out of training can be a sweet time…. like yesterday when a bunch of us went biking. Out of all my years coming out to PC I’ve never had a chance to do much Mt. Biking until last week when I borrowed a friends bike. Turns out it pretty epic out here…. it was a lot of fun. 

                                                    Pete getting ready to ride 

                        Alex and liz looking all pro 

                                              PC has some of the best Mt. bike trails anywhere 

                           Liz charging it 

we’ve been getting in some serious training this past week in Park City. In addition to training with Liz and Hoff the National training group has been involved with most of our workouts. US Ski Team coach Chris Grover and Morgan Arritola have also driven down from Sun Valley to join us for a week of training. We started off the week with some level 4 skating intervals at SoHo and a Max strength session in the afternoon. This is the time of year where most of us transition from our general, base building strength routines to a Max strength phase. So we’re talking big weight around 4 to 5 reps. Lets just say there are a lot of sore cross country skiers walking around so we’re taking full advantage of the new ice tubs here at the training center. Yesterday we rolled out on a two hour double pole with an afternoon run from the training center on the round valley trails. Today we hit up one of the first ‘real’ speed session of the training season. Grover brought his custom  made sprint start gate so we all ripped out a few start speeds along with some up hill V2 power speeds. I have the afternoon off today so I think I’ll be heading back to the training center for a skate session in the new bowl and gear up for some more intervals and max strength tomorrow.

here are some pics of some nordies getting huge. 

   liz: big weight for a small girl

  Mo doing some dead lifts

   CLEAR! Mo and Alex, our strength coach 

                              Some blurry weighted pull ups

   no workout is complete without a sing star session afterword