Welcome to my new website! It is now much easier for you to follow my training and racing journey! If you have any suggestions, questions, etc, please don’t hesitate to send me an email, I am always open to feedback.
With the first training camp of the season is in the books I can say that the beginning of my training season has been a huge success! The biggest success of all being that I have stayed injury and sickness free (knock on wood!) which puts me a full 18 hours of training ahead compared to this time last year. Yay! The training camp in Tremblant was short but sweet. The focus of the 9 day training block was on regaining general fitness so most of the training consisted of long roller skis and runs.
Here are the top 3 “things” (for lack of a better word) from the camp:
Great Support
In my last blog post Reaching Further, Needing More, I highlighted the fact that this training season was all about working on the little things. The support that I received in Tremblant allowed me to do just that. Having two coaches with only 9 athletes meant I could get a lot feedback during all my workouts. We were also lucky to have 2 other staff members, a massage therapist and a physio which meant that if ever I had a slight problem, I had someone to help me with it.
Team Bonding
This camp was also a great opportunity to get to know the team outside of racing . One evening we decided to go mini-putting but because the course was closed and we could not rent putters, we put our creativity to the test. With a range of items found in our hotel rooms including ski walking poles, a milk carton, a spatula, butter knives and a classic rollerski we each crafted our own. We had fun testing each other’s putter’s out and completed all 18 holes highlighted by a couple of hole in ones.
Learning Opportunities galore!
With a huge variety of workouts including ski walking intensity, skate intensity, classic sprints and skate sprints, I had the chance to work on many different aspects of my skiing technique. I not only had the opportunity to learn from my coaches, but also from my teammates. For instance, during the skate rollerkski intensity we each took turns leading which meant we could ski behind someone different every interval and observe their technique.
I am now back in Thunder Bay preparing for my testing week which starts tomorrow. The testing week will include a Incremental Workload test on the running treadmill, the 3km uphill running test, and a uphill rollerski test, wish me luck!
Katherine
Katherine Stewart-Jones 