2013 training season

This year’s training season was the most focused and goal orientated I've ever had. Very little training missed due to sickness or injury and was loaded with amazing ski camps and training sessions.

We started off the season this year a little differently to the last few with 3 days on Hornby Island, 2 hrs north of Victoria, just off Vancouver Island. This was the first outing of the year so we had our new team psychologist come and talk to us and we also got in a few relaxing runs around the island. Not long after, we were lucky enough to get two weeks of skiing on Madeley road, above Whistler Olympic Park. They groomed every day for us, working hard to made it as good as was possible. We had about 4km each way to start with but that slowly shrank over time till we were down to about 2k. Despite the warm conditions, I still got in some solid hours and worked a huge amount on classic technique.

 In July the team loaded up the trailer and headed south to Park City for a month of altitude work. Park City is an amazing place to train. It was unbelievably hot pretty much the whole time we were there so workouts were early in the morning or late afternoon/evening. We would head down to Salt Lake City for roller ski intensity days so that we could get the lower altitude. The rest of the workouts were either running on the 100’s of miles of trails or exploring the area by road bike. I got sick in the middle and missed a few days of training but was back at it quickly. After two long days of driving we had a few hard intensity sessions with some light biking in between for recovery days. I put in some huge hours of training but it was focused and the down time was well used and much appreciated.

August, I joined my family in the Okanagan for a few days of biking the Kettle Valley Railway. Loads of fun and a good rest after the hard training in the States. The rest of the month was spent in and around Whistler, including runs at the top of Whistler, hikes in new areas around the local mountains, lots of time spent out building a trail linking function junction to the rest of the trail network. I volunteered for the Whistler Ironman, what an amazing inspiration to see some dedicated and driven athletes. At the end of the month I headed up to Kamloops with my girlfriend to be the Best-man at my brothers wedding. Lots of fun and nice to catch up with some old friends.

Fall training camp this year was different to usual. For the first time I went to Haig in September. We had clear skies every day. Unfortunately though, the groomer broke down after 4 days so we skied for another two days on unpacked. On the up side, we had the opportunity to hike up one of the surrounding mountains which was really cool and interesting to see things from a different perspective. It was a bit of a shock on the body spending the whole week up on the glacier instead of yo-yoing like we have done for the last three year. We ran out one day early and stayed an extra night in Canmore which wasn’t so bad because it meant we got most of a day to rest before we drove to Rossland for the next part of the camp. The team was split up in Rossland with three of us staying at my parents place and the rest in a condo at Red mtn. We ran the epic 7 summits trail again, which is 31km and took us 4hrs. Roller skied a few times near the US boarder (20m drive from Rossland) And of course some long bike rides on the mountain roads.

Next stop was Revelstoke and one last week of hard hours. The weather in Revelstoke was the worst of the trip. We woke up to fresh snow on the mountain tops many mornings. We joined up with the BC team later in the week for a roller ski up Mt Revelstoke in thick fog and snow, and a run on the xc trails. We ended off the three long weeks with a 7km running race amongst our team, I ended up pulling out a second place after an overtake in the last kilometre. BC is an amazing province to live and train in, there is just so much potential for spectacular workouts and unbelievable training camps.

I was picked up the last day of the camp by my girlfriend and we headed over to kimberley to visit her parents and work for them for a few days. We did a couple of fun mountain bikes and runs around there. From Kimberly we drove over to Rossland to visit my parents because they were away when I was there for the camp a few weeks before. I ended up getting sick after working too much in Kimberley and for a friend in Rossland. I don’t think I took enough rest after all the training of the previous month. We decided to stay in Rossland for thanksgiving after my girlfriends car had some issues and besides, I couldn’t do testing because of my cold.

Back to Whistler. We had the chance to enjoying some unusually dry fall training and getting in lots of hours at work. The start of November brought the usual snow fever, unfortunately this year we were stuck in Whistler with no chance to go any where to find early snow. This year though for the first time CVTC decided to head over to frozen thunder for a week and partook in the classic sprint. None of us qualified but it was a good wake up for where we need to be performing for the coming season. We returned to Whistler only to find we still had no snow. So the roller skis were pulled out and poll tips changed and back at it. We were roller skiing in colder and wetter conditions each day till finally we got enough snow on the upper race trails for a rather rocky loop. The short loop never really expanded (except for were the coaches shoveled) before we left for the first races in Canmore, Sovereign Lake and Rossland

 With many great camps and training sessions under my belt, at the end of this training season I feel more prepared then I ever have and I'm excited and ready for whatever the winter has in stock for me. I am looking forward to a great season of racing, traveling and training with the team.

Pre-season

October... Got sick from one of the team mates and travel at the end of the September camp so i missed V02 testing the week before thanksgiving. Went home to Rossland with Alan and Kaitlyn for thanksgiving. Spent 10 days there and brought my mountain bike home so I got the opportunity to hit up some new trails and only had one little crash riding with Peter Locke (who fared a lot worse then I)

Flew back to Whistler and spend a couple of weeks enjoying some unusually dry fall training and getting in some good work time. Start of November brought the usually snow fever. Luckily this year we had already planned to head up to Whitehorse for a week to get out of Whis and onto snow before almost anywhere. Ex-CVTC team member Colin Abbott was kind enough to let us all stay at his place. We had a few days of skiing up high on their early season trails and then after a couple of days of snow fall we were ripping up their main trail system.

Even got out one afternoon for a friendly game between YES and CVTC. CBC TV came out at the end of the week to do some interviews and film a few of our sprint heats.

September (BC Tour)

We spent the next few weeks in Whistler, enjoying some hot sunny weather. Start of September we were lucky to get free entry to do the Grand Fondo. A race from downtown Vancouver to Whistler, 122km. I managed to get my dad's carbon Davinci from Rossland to use, thanks to a couple of his coworkers who came down to race as well. It was an amazing experience being able to ride with almost 8000 riders. Note to self for next time: maybe do a little more road riding of a similar distance more then just two days before.

Two days after the Fondo we started our September team camp which entailed a few 4hr(100km) road rides to get across BC. In Revelstoke we met up with the BC Team and spent 5 days there training with them and relaxing in the sun. After their camp was done we packed up headed down to Rossland for another 5 days. We ran the epic 7 summits trail, 4hrs and 31kms, as well as a 4hr loop from Rossland, through the States and back. Next stop was Kelowna for 2 days to train with the BC talent squad and wind down what was an awesome camp and some high quality training in some unbelievable areas of BC.

Rest Week(Europe)

I haven't updated my blog in quite a while so I'll break things up into a few more photo bassed posts so its a little more exciting.

August... after some flight issues I eventually made it to Paris only a few hours behind schedule.

Met up with my brother and after stopping off at the apartment we had in the heart of Paris, we checked out a few of the popular sights in the dark. Also heard the news that Alan and Kaitlyn got engaged a few nights before right in front of the Eiffel tower!

We rented some bikes from their super cheep rental program (you pay about 1 euro and you get to take out a bike for free for the first 30mins and you can drop it at any of their many docking points around the city. You can do this as often as you want throughout the day!)

Took the chunnel for the first time, not too exciting, just a 20 minutes of tunnel but super convenient, direct from the heart of Paris to London.

We had a few hours in London so seeing as Kaitlyn had never been, we saw as many of the famous sites around the city as we could.

Three of us then spent the next few days seeing all the family, doing some cahj hiking and even got in some awesome running and road biking.

And that's a little summary of my rest week spent in Europe

Yoyo month

The past month of training has been awesome. We started out with a few light days in Canmore before we traded with the academy and ran in to Haig glacier. This was my first time up with such a small group and only having guys so we had tons of room to spread out. We only had one nice bluebird day on the glacier the first time. I put in some solid hours and made some big progressions with technique. For the first time some of us skied in the morning before running out which made for a long workout but I've come to find that mixing up the activities for long sessions makes it much less mentally taxing.
After a zone 3  session a a little more light training we headed back up. The day ran in, a few of us hike to the glacier and skied as well, this proved to be a little scary. A we we're putting boots on, a big thunder storm came in and lead to an all out sprint off the glacier and back to the safety of the huts. We had pretty massive hours this time up but training was done well and r+r was well needed.
Upon running out we headed for Golden to get lower altitude and easier resting. After 3 days of rollerskiing and more z3 intensity we kicked it back into Sunshine resort to hike into assiniboine.
We hiked the 30k in to lake Magog in 6hrs and set up for the next 3 nights, we got a couple amazing Rike's(run/hike) in before we headed out a different way (mt shark) and drove to Kamloops and then Whis.
The last few days we had two hard intensities and some light biking to recover in between.
Well it's time for me to board my delayed flight to Montreal and I'll hopefully not miss my connection to paris this afternoon.

Ps pics will follow next week

Hello there fellow skiers, supporters and random people who stumbled across me.

Hopefully I'll be better at writing post more often these days. I'm in Canmore right now with the team, we got here a few days ago and sent all our bags up to the Haig glacier yesterday. We've had a nice easy few days here in the hot sun before we head up on Thursday to join our bags and switch out with the Academy.

Last week was a "rest" week, so I headed home to Rossland to have a break from the team and have some good old home cooking. While I was there I got to watch/listen to them ripping up the main street, do some odd jobs for the parents and a family friend and most importantly got in some fun workouts. One of which was a road ride from Rossland to Wanita boarder and back up, about 1800m of total climb over 70km and 2.5hrs.

Just before I flew home to Rossland we had 2 days of testing, one day in Van in the lab doing lactate testing. Day 2 turned out to be a very wet rollerski TT up to the Olympic park. Improved about 20 seconds in the Double pole and pretty similar time to last time in the 4.6km TT.

Start of the season 2012

Haven't written a post in quite a while so my apologies if it gets to be a little long.

Recap of the end of last season. Nationals went better then I was expecting with a top 6 finishing in every race and one 1st place in Canada finish. This resulted in second place overall for Junior Men. I'm really happy with my finish to an awesome season. Showed that I can still go out and throw down in a Skate distance but also that I'm now able to hold my own in a classic race.

Now, with my last Junior season wrapped up and a good solid rest month behind me. I'm back on the west coast now enjoying the beautiful wet weather. The team has been on snow a few times recently, two weeks ago we had the chance to spend a week up at the Olympic park skiing on about 5k of decent hard pack snow. We're about to start 5 days of skiing up at the Callaghan Valley Back country Lodge.

I just got home a few days ago from Vancouver Island where I spent 7 days with the rest of the family, along with an old friend of my dad's. as a 50th birthday trip for my mom this year and something my dad wanted to do when he turned 50 a few years ago. We planned on doing it in 5 nights, 6 days but with how the tides and everything worked we ended up coming out a day earlier then planned and only had one night and morning of rain luckily.

Well I'd best be off to finish packing and hit the hay before we head up to the lodge tomorrow morning.