Burke Mountain Academy’s Nordic squad is settling back into the routine of school after returning from ten days of training and the season’s first race in Torsby and Mora, Sweden.
Burke’s schedule is laid out in blocks of academic time interspersed with periods of training time that are long enough to take advantage of training opportunities in other parts of the country or the world. The Fortum Tunnel in Torsby had been getting great reviews by national teams from Scandinavia and Europe. A training block was on the schedule for October this year, so we designed a 12-day camp that centered around time in the tunnel and dry-land training on the roller ski track and in the woods and bogs near Torsby, finishing with the season opening October Sprint in Mora.
We lost two days at the beginning due to delayed flights and lost luggage, but then settled into a comfortable training regimen and balanced tunnel time with time in the outdoors. We shared a private hour and a half in the tunnel with the Norwegian Junior National Team on one morning and enjoyed watching the US sprinters, Andy Newell and Torin Koos, go through their paces as they tuned up for this coming weekend’s race in Dusseldorf. The overall quality of the skiers that are training in the tunnel is inspirational in itself; mostly young, and from clubs and ski gymnasiums, these kids are focused on going fast, and on making the most out of their time on snow.
We found it good to spend time out-of-doors. We were lucky to have a couple of Swedish kids offer to guide a trail run, and for the chance to do one of the favorite roller ski time trials of the local gang…a route laid out by the Fredriksson brothers when they were students at Torsby. A favorite (dry-land? Not.) training session of our gang was a game of “Bog Ballâ€; speed ball played in a peat bog. Spongy, wet and deep in places, the bogs are the location of choice for intervals in Scandinavia. Two thirty-minute halves of “Bog Ball,†and then a relay race that sucked people into the muck just out of reach of the tag, made for a fun and tough workout.
Our quarters were in the new and very pleasant Valbergsangen Sporthotell which lies in walking distance from the tunnel and in easy reach of the trails and the roller ski loops. Two-a-day workouts were the rule, and it was nice to be right on scene. Waxing for the tunnel was easy, but the snow is abrasive so one has to wax more often than expected. We rented a wax cabin for the week just outside the tunnel and it was good to have that convenience for storing gear. The tunnel’s terrain is remarkably good, with two 10-meter vertical climbs and some twisting high-speed corners. The whole thing is two-way traffic with parallel skate lanes in the middle and well-cut single tracks down each side. It is a wonderful facility for technique and video work, and for short interval training. All in all a terrific tool.
