Friday late afternoon we started our 3 days of training in the Hayward/Cable Area. Those of us who got up to 00 by 4:30pm that day did a 2 1/2 hour pole hike on the Birkie trail, mostly north of 00. It was warm and the trail was full of leaves making a lot of noise as we hiked through them. We finished our pole hike in the dark, hungry and thirsty. Next stop, the Sawmill Saloon in Seeley for dinner. The rest of the team met us there, giving us a total of 17 members for the camp. The food was great, although they ran out of Dark Beer on Tap. A bar in Wisconsin on a Friday night running out of any kind of tap beer? What is the world coming to?! But the Spotted Cow on tap was still a very good alternative.
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Pole Hiking on the Birkie Trail
Saturday morning was classic rollerskiing near Hayward. We started with a warm up and video taped striding and double pole kick. We then moved on to some specific strength, single stick poling up a slight hill, and double pole starts up a larger hill. We finished with a cool down, then it was time for lunch. We ate lunch and watched our videos while Dave and Mark critiqued our technique. That afternoon, it was up to Cable to do some classic intervals. After warming up on the interval course, it was time for some hard work! We did 4 intervals of 2.25 K on a hilly section of road. Our team had an average time of about 7 1/2 minutes per interval. We cooled down then went for a dip in a local lake before heading to The Rivers Eatery in Downtown Cable. We enjoyed some of their pizza and micro brews on the outdoor patio to finish off the beautiful day.
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Sunday morning we donned our new safety orange Vakava Racing shirts and did a 50k+ skate rollerski on the rolling hills of Cable. This was a hard workout because many of us were tired from the amount of training we did on Friday and Saturday. After a little over 3 hours, we finished our rollerski, packed up and headed home.
