Blog 1-Whistler Testing Camp
AH, WE ARE BACK
(Even though this is my first blog post)
Welcome to the kick off of my spring training this year and my new website. After lying around for about 4 weeks in April and getting some much needed physical recovery and a mental restart, I spent the week of May 13th in Whistler BC for the first training camp of the 2024/25 training season with the BC Ski Team. I had just started training a week before on the 6th, doing some light transition and lactate threshold work with some strength and overall low volume hours.
TRAVELING
To the dismay of my much younger self I think I may be starting to dislike planes. Off of the top of my head I can say that I have been on about 30 flights in the last year, usually with about 80 pounds of gear and I am never travelling to the Mediterranean to lay on a beach in Italy. So when I boarded the flight to from Cranbrook to Vancouver I honestly could not wait get off the plane and get on with my drive up to Whistler. Thankfully, for one of the first times this year my trip went very smoothly, and after an hour flight and a 2 and a half hour bus ride I made it to the Whistler Athletes Center (or WAC) just in time to start the first session of the camp.
TRAINING IN WHISTLER (the land of bears and rain)
One of the main ideas of this camp is that it is a testing camp, therefore we are tested at the start of the season when our strength and fitness should be at its lowest, and then we test again in the fall before the first races of the season, where we will hopefully see improvement. These tests include a 2km uphill double pole time trial, lactate threshold testing on a treadmill, (This is to figure out what heart rate your body can handle before it starts to produce more lactate than it can recycle, and therefore it becomes a pace that no matter what, you will not be able to hold for very long. Or at least this is my basic and probably not very scientifically correct explanation) we also do strength and movement testing and finally some very brutal critical speed testing. This consists of 3, 800m uphill time trials, back to back to back, at 100 percent effort. The first one being regular skate skiing, the second is upper body only by double polling but with skate poles, and the third being just your using your legs and no poles. The goal of this test is to be within 10 percent of your regular skate ski time with the just upper body and just lower body runs as well. I did not hit this mark in the slightest and I think I may have thrown up around 5 times during this session. Love it. As a side note, the whole reason I mention bears and rain the subtitle is because while this is all going down there is usually a black bear or grizzly bear on the side of the road questioning what in the world is going on in front of him, and it is usually pouring rain and in mid May is it also about 5 degrees.
OILERS IN 7 (unfortunately no riots this year)
After a week of hard testing, training and sleeping I made the trip down to Vancouver to spend the night before flying out the next morning. This also happened to be the same night as game 7 of the Oilers and Canucks series, which was in Vancouver. The last time there was a game 7 loss in Vancouver there was a ton of action downtown and me and a couple others decided to go down and check it out, only to find everything absolutely dead quiet. We eventually found a viewing party in a family park and sat back and watched all the fans see their hometown team lose another game 7. Sorta disappointed, we went home and went to bed because the next morning I got up bright and early to catch a flight back to Kimberley.
Thank you for following along, and I will try to make sure this becomes active blog, that highlights the more interesting days of my journey to the top.
SEE YA SOON
