My summer training season is in full swing, and after a month's rest in April, it's nice to get back into the groove of training. Things started off summer with a short three night-camp to Kaslo, BC, with the Alberta World Cup Academy. Similar to my last camp a year ago in New Denver, training here encompassed the long 216km Silver Triangle road ride. This route starts from Kaslo, over the pass to New Denver, then on to Nelson and finally back to where we started. This sort of workout makes you really appreciate the support given by the coaches who where there to fill up bottles, feed us some gels and be there incase of the odd mechanical problem. With the help of a couple extra guys to spread out the pulls, this year's ride was 30 minutes quicker than last time around, and my legs were thankful for that!
Myself at the far side starting off our ride. Only six and half hours to go!
The watch says it all: it doesn't take much to fall asleep after a workout like this.
Other than riding, we did a couple roller ski workouts out towards New Denver on some of the quietest and smoothest roads around (which is a rare occurrence for roller skiing). After some serious training hours clocked in, the camp was over as soon as it started.
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| Beautiful British Columbia as usual. This was the destination on my roller ski workouts. |
Training didn't really slow down after that. Marking my second year on the National Ski Team, the World Cup and Senior Development teams joined together in a short, two night camp up on the Haig Glacier. Because of the more than usual amounts of snow in the mountains, we flew up in a helicopter rather than running in. Here the camp focus was some long on-snow workouts to keep the technique tuned up and using the 2650m elevation to our bodies advantage. It was pretty incredible how noticeable the change in altitude was, going from the parking lot at 1600m to jumping on skis more than 1000m higher took a couple minutes getting used to.
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| No complaints! The 8 minute flight from the road saved us from doing a snowy and slow three hour + run/hike into camp. |
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| Not much in the way of clouds as we flew into the glacier. The view from the helicopter shows the 4.25km track groomed out in the distance. |
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| This is the most snow I've ever seen up here in the summer. Taken right outside the camp huts, there normally wouldn't be snow in the lower half of this photo... |
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| ...but that made for some awesome skiing, which made long workouts like this one fly-by. |
After a couple days of perfect weather, our luck ran out and we were greeted with hail and an absurd amount of wind on our last day. Because of the wind gusts and poor visibility, the helicopter that had planned to pick us up couldn't take off from Canmore, leaving us with the run out as our only option to return to civilization. After a snowy trek back to the parking lot, and the misfortune of our team van running out of gas (nothing was really going for us that day) we finally made it back home, and I successfully ended a five-week training block alive.
Things are slowing down a bit now, with a week to rest up and then back into a long block of training. The new 2011/2012 line up of CamelBaks looks pretty badass and I can't wait to get a hold of some. When would be a good time to email a wish list in regards to winter budgets and such?
Enjoy the summer!
Kevin Sandau
Canadian National Development Team
Alberta World Cup Academy
Canmore, Alberta
www.sandau.ca
Canadian National Development Team
Alberta World Cup Academy
Canmore, Alberta
www.sandau.ca
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| sponsored athlete |
