August 28th, 2008
Recently I have been evicted from my home and, with nowhere else to go, I have decided to make the jump and start living and training at the world famous Camp Gray Olympic Training Center.
Here is all my stuff outside my house, after the authorities came and forced me out. They tried to move some of my belongings, but naturally I took advantage of the strength training opportunity and did it all myself. Both of those refrigerators are mine. A skier’s gotta eat a lot, right?
Okay well, actually that isn’t all my stuff. And, I didn’t really get evicted. I live in the basement of this house at Camp Gray and the carpet needed to be professionally cleaned, so I am only 
temporarily homeless. All my stuff is here in the corner, everything else just belongs to camp.
You’ll notice that I don’t own much. Two stuffed bears, a mini trampoline (circa 1982), some drumsticks, and assorted skiing equipment. Which brings me to my next topic of discussion. The Camp Gray Olympic Training Center (which will now be referred to as CGOTC) is beautiful, and spacious (225 acres), but the equipment I am training leaves a little bit to be desired.
Here are the roller skis I use: They are homemade and have served me pretty well so far. But they are made
of wood. The bindings are startin
g to fall off because the screw holes are stripped, and every time I ski, I wear them down even more. It’s getting harder to use them because, as a result of my ever-improving technique, I tend to bottom out on them quite often when skating or double poling. Speaking of poles, I actually roller ski with a pair of alpina touring poles that I got for $10. Hey, I have to be careful where I spend my money or I won’t have enough to get quality equipment to race with.
The question, however, is which poles are better, the Alpina touring or the Exel poles I run with. I got these at a garage with a pair of Fischer waxless skis and some boots. All for $25. I eagerly await training on these skis when it snows. They are in decent condition, and I have never classic skied before.
Last year, in my first year of skiing, I only learned how to skate. Since then, however, I have learned to classic ski on CATskis. They are pretty sweet and I’m pretty sure I’ve picked up some nice technique training on them. I also eagerly await being asked to be part of Team CATskier.com because of all my promotional work, both here and by mouth. These are the catskis I use. I actually bought the first pair of this model, intended to work in wet conditions.
Other than that, I do some creative strength training. I don’t have much except this homemade roller board I recently inherited, the aforementioned mini trampoline, a medicine ball and some rubber tubing. But I make due.
I make due a lot. There is a small (about 75 yards) stretch of pavement I use for my roller skiing. Back and forth. Back and forth. For days at a time. I occasionally have some sick wipeouts when I hit rough spots…
All in all the CGOTC has a lot to offer. Among those things are great food — I am the head cook after all. Also on the list would be great trails to 
train on and this field, where I do many of my shorter intervals to track my progress. This is also the site of the Capture the Flag games I wrote about this summer.
You may have guessed that Camp Gray is not actually an Olympic Training Center, but perhaps they will change the name after I ski in the 2018 Olympics. With that cat out of the bag, you may realize that much of this post was fabricated. Perhaps you are asking yourself if any of it was truthful. So here is the truth:
1)Camp Gray is the place where I work as head cook and have the opportunity to work with kids.
2)I do train here.
3)I do live in the basement of that house, and the carpet did get cleaned.
4)That really is the equipment that I train on.
5)I really do jump on that mini trampoline.
6)I will keep you updated when somebody reads this, feels sorry for me, admires my pertinacity and buys me some sweet equipment.
7)Camp Gray is the place where I want to be…
