End of Camp Season, Bring On Race Season

Ski season? Almost. That starts next week when Frozen Thunder gets rolled out at the Canmore Nordic Center. For the last few months we have been focused on dry-land training, roller skiing, running and cycling. Our second National Ski Team altitude camp has just wrapped up which means I’m now taking a few days of rest and recovery at home. Soon we will be shifting our focus to on snow training and final preparations for the upcoming race season.

In August we had an altitude camp in Park City, Utah. And for the past 3 weeks I have been in northern California doing our second high-altitude volume training camp of the summer. We were training between Mammoth Lakes and Bishop. The senior team did a 20-day yo-yo style camp where we would move between sleeping at 2400m and training up to 3800m focusing on long training session at an easier pace. Then we would transition down lower to Bishop for 4 days to do a couple harder interval sessions at 1300m where there is more oxygen and better ability to recover. After that block we would then go back up to higher altitude and repeat the process. This sort of training helps us get improved physiological adaptations that will stay with us going into the race season.

The Next Gen team was with us for the first two weeks of camp before they headed home and the senior team stayed for an extra week at altitude. It was great to have such a big crew of athletes to train with in one of my favourite camp locations. The camp went really well, we had perfect weather the entire time and my body responded very well to the training.

It’s hard to pick camp highlights because all the training around Mammoth is just so nice. There are so many really good roads with varying terrain for long roller skis, and running trails that lead to mountain lakes nestled between mountains and passes. I swam in at least 3 mountain lakes during our camp and we even got out to the natural hot springs one evening where we could enjoy the starry night sky and waxing moon.

Coming out of the camp, I am feeling a good amount of tired as it should be at the end of a big training block. The end of camp aligned perfectly with heading home for Thanksgiving. The last few days I’ve been enjoying some down time and easy training with my parents and friends at home. Dad made a delicious turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Monday and we even got out on the horses before the rain hit. I have a few more days to enjoy some easy training with friends at home before heading back to Alberta to scrape the summer wax off my skis and start spinning 2km loops on Frozen Thunder.

With just over a month until I depart for Europe and 6 weeks until the World Cup season kicks off, there’s still a lot to prepare and fine tune before the season is underway. Once we are back on snow in one week’s time we will be be working on top speed and getting that on snow feel back. Leading into our departure, the focus is on a couple time trials (simulation race efforts) here in Canada and then a few more once on the ground in Finland. My first World Cup race of the season will be November 24th. And then I will be racing a World Cup every weekend until Christmas. You can find the full calendar on the FIS website . I am really looking forward to this coming season. This training season has been a very positive one for me and I can’t wait to see how that translates to race speed. Mixed team events have also officially been added into the race calendar after a successful test event last spring, so watch out for Canada on those mixed relay start lines.

I am still in the process of trying to meet my target goal to fund my 2022/23 race season. If you or someone you know is interested in donating or becoming a sponsor, you can donate through the donation button on my website or reach out to me by email for more information or to request my sponsorship information package.

Thanks for reading. I hope everyone is just as excited as I am to get back on snow and enjoy a great ski season!

Dahria