Day one of the Swedish National Team/US Ski Team training camp in Salen, Sweden: a 3 hour adventure run through mud, rocks, streams and a bog, followed by a 2 hour classic with speed work in the afternoon! YAHTZEE! This camp is so totally awesome. Not only are all the Swedish girls fun to train with and nice, but they’re tough, too. We’ve been putting in some good hours and quality training no matter the weather.
Kikk, Chandra and Holly posing in front of the Vasa map...we went and checked out the start of the famous 90km race
Last night we went bowling as a team, and it was very funny because our arms were so tired from strength that we could barely lift the bowling balls! Also, although there were some truly talented people there, for most of us it was fairly clear that we don’t go bowling often, which made for some good laughs.
Liz and the Swedes getting their bowl on!
Housemates and bowling buddies - Holly, me, Liz and Ida
Lisa and Magda - some of our new Swedish friends!
I apologize to those of you who do not read this blog to hear about the nitty-gritty-down-and-dirty training details. However, I have been accused of sounding too happy go lucky in my writing and not reporting the gory details of The Job. Ridiculous, I know! Ahem. But for those of you who DO want to know what really goes down at camp, here’s the quick training log preview for the week.
Day 1: 3 hour run in the am, 2 hour classic with double-pole sprints in the pm
Day 2: 2.5 hour skate with 5 sprint heats in race format (each heat was a little over 4 minutes long), 1.5 hour classic with double-pole and single-stick only after 20 minutes of core
Day 3: 2.5 hour run in the am, 1.5 hour skate in the pm
Day 4: 2 hour classic with 5×10 min L3 intervals in the am, 2 hour run in the pm
Then we’ll drive to Torsby on our rest day, and do the last 4 days of camp skiing in the tunnel.
If it sounds a little intense, that’s because it is! But the camp is only two sets of 4 days, so when it’s short like that you can cram in a lot of quality training and then go home and REST. If you don’t let your body recover in-between training and after camp, as well as eat lots of good food, your body just won’t soak up the training as well and you’ve been wasting your time. Lucky for us, we’ve been staying in these sweet condos in groups of 4 (I’m with Liz, Ida and Holly) and all our meals are cooked for us just a short walk down the road in a restaurant. It’s the best feeling ever in the middle of a cold and rainy workout to know that a hot meal is waiting for you! While it’s fun to cook for ourselves most times, during intense camps it’s often much better to have good food prepared ahead of time so that the athletes can focus on rest and recovery.
On today’s run I had a blast learning some new Swedish words and trying to remember the correct phrases. My goal? To remember enough so that when we come back to Sweden in the winter, I can meet even more of the Swedish team and be able to finally speak to them in their own language, which sounds so beautiful to American ears.
Also, we owe a HUUUGE thank-you to NNF, the National Nordic Foundation, which has helped raise money to fund part of our trip here and make it possible for us to come learn from the Swedes and have such a great training experience here. Thanks NNF and all contributors to Nordic fundraising!!
Ok, I need to go rest up for the afternoon session now…more training stories and pictures to come soon!
