U.S. Ski Team Camp in SV

The first week of camp with the U.S. Ski Team just finished up today. The week was filled with intensity, distance, speed, strength and over-distance work-outs.

The week began with a speed workout where we focused on good technique at high speeds. This entailed 3 sets of 6×15 sec speeds focusing on our starts in the first set, skiing smooth transitions around corners in the second set, and over-speed drop-ins in the third set. It is a very focused workout that sees improvements each time it is done.

Much to almost everyone’s dismay, it poured rain for our 2 hour run! Now, I know this is Sun Valley, but it does rain occasionally. Everyone was a good sport and we had a great muddy and wet run!

Friday we had a tough workout…a skate sprint time trial. It was set up to simulate a real skate sprint race. Because of the limited number of areas to roller-ski here, we were not able to ski the rounds in heats. Instead, each round was started individually with 15 second intervals. Ultimately, it was a race against yourself each time.

Without much rest, we had a hard double-pole interval workout the next day. 5x3min double-pole up a gradual hill. I was pretty tired from the previous days workout, but it was good to get another hard effort in. Later that afternoon, the SV ODT and the U.S. Ski Team were invited to play field games with the Sun Valley devo and prep team, ages 6-12. We played flag tag and had fun with relays.

Today we went on a great run in the Sawtooth Mountains, at Redfish Lake. The weather was beautiful and the workout was fun. To top off our three hour run, we stopped at Mikey’s cabin at Petite Lake and enjoyed a barbecue of great food, thanks to Carol Sinnott, swam in the lake, played bochi and horse shoes, and enjoyed hanging in the sun! Thanks you Sinnotts!

We have a day off scheduled for tomorrow before we head into another week of full-on training. Definitely looking forward to it!