Snow is in the Air

Snow is in the air. Our September intensity block is far behind us and the colourful leaves have been replaced by frosty mornings. After a solid block of time trails and multiple intensity session a week, the team switched gears to long slow distance and lots of it. My past few weeks have been spent in the lovely Park City area. This year was my third time doing a fall training camp in Park City and for once I didn’t bring enough warm clothes. Our first week was typical bluebird skies, long roller skis up the many mountain passes and a z3/4 interval session down in North Salt Lake. It was great to have a big training group again with the three National Training Centres coming together for the camp. Just like in Mt. Tremblant this summer I was able to  ski and run with different people almost every session. On our rest day we played our annual football game since we were in American and all and I managed to get a minor sunburn before the winter weather moved in. 

The second week treated us to a drop in temperature and lots of precipitation. One hour into our planned 4hr roller ski up big cottonwood canyon we were skiing through ankle deep snow/slush. Our ski may have been cut short but the mountain run through the snow-covered forest that followed might just have been my favourite workout of the camp. There wasn’t anything special about this run except for the fact that running through the snow thinking about how soon winter will be here go me so amped for the race season. And of course snowy conifers and bright yellow aspens look so beautiful together.

Maya and I pumped on the snow

It’s only two weeks until our first official time trials in Canmore and just over a month until my first race of the season in Europe and I can’t wait. All the hard work has been put in and now it is time to rest a bit, refine my race speed and make sure my body is ready for the busy winter schedule. After our snow day the sun came back out and we finished the camp with some more awesome roller skis and runs. We capped off the camp with a classic sprint time trail at Soldier Hollow on a course similar to the one we will race at the Junior/U23 World Championships which they are hosting this winter. All in all Park City was a very positive camp, I was able to get in one last big volume block before the race season, refine my striding technique on all the long mountain passes and get myself super excited for the race season.

If you are in Calgary or the Bow Valley on the 28^th please come out and join us in celebrating the start of a new ski season! Today marks one month until I leave for Europe, so bring on winter.