A New Beginning
Skiing in SilverStar!
Even though this may be a very corny title it is also sort of fitting at this time. Not only have I just finished my first training camp of the season I am also writing my first update for my new website brentmcmurtry.com . My website will be a great way for me to share stories and information about my skiing career. Ill be updating frequently about training, racing, and normal life so make sure you check in!
With that out of the way I can get to the interesting stuff. For the first camp of the season we piled into the team vans and made the 5 hour drive to Vernon. We stayed at a condo down by the lake and drove up the mountain for our workouts.
Our first day of skiing was a bit of a shock to the system. Wake up time came at an early 6:30 and we were skiing shortly after 8:00. The painful awakening was quickly forgotten however as we drove up the mountain and saw the transformation from spring to winter. It was unbelievable to be skiing on hardwax the second week of May. The first ski flew by on the 10kms of perfectly groomed trails. The rest of the afternoon was spent eating and sleeping before heading out the door for a strength workout. We had to laugh because the Vernon gym certainly attracted a different crowd than the athletes that went to the Canmore’s Bill Warren Training Centre. We were walking around seeing guys who had arms the size of our legs. One guy was wearing a shirt that said “No, I’m not on STEROIDS” but I wasn’t really that convinced. Once we got past the sights and sounds of a typical BC gym we were able to have a great workout and just focused on lifting our tiny weights.
The trail from our wax room in SilverStar.
I was rooming with Phil, Drew, and Stefan in an awesome condo next to a pool. With the three of us sharing the cooking duties we decided to play a fun game each day to decide who was doing the cleanup. The game involved bouncing a plastic “wiffle ball” on the plastic “wiffel bat” to see who could get the most bounces in row. The person with the least hits had to do the supper cleanup for the night. This meant that lots of our downtime was spent practicing the bouncing game to try to avoid dish duty. Stef was without a doubt the champion with a personal record of 140 hits. I was lucky enough to never have to do the cleanup, always able to just enough hits to avoid the chore.
The Wiffle ball and bat
All days followed a typical design with skiing in the morning between 2 and 3 hours and afternoon workouts of running, rollerskiing, or gym workouts. The skiing workouts that I was looking forward to the most were on the last two days of the camp. First was a classic sprint race and then an uphill time trial the following day. On the morning of the sprint race we were welcomed by warm and soft conditions and had some hairie skis ready to race on. On the plan it had said that the race would be around 400m but it turned out to be more like a normal sprint with qualifying taking almost three minutes. Devon was by far the strongest throughout the day and so we all knew that we were likely racing for second place in the final. With only the final hill to go Stef, Alex, Ivan and myself were all equal, after my attempt to push Alex into the trees failed. I was left running out of the track and was not able to match the speed of Alex and Ivan. We skied into the finish in a line exhausted but satisfied from a fun workout.
The last hard day of the camp was the uphill skate race, which was about 700m long and mostly offset. We all knew it would be hard, but no matter how much you prepare for the pain, it still always seems to come as a huge shock when you start. My lungs and legs were burning and it was hard to stay on my feet. It was nice to get back to the sensations of racing, which had not been felt in a couple of months. 30 minutes later we were doing the three-minute time trial again in a pursuit start format. I was the rabbit being chased down. I skied up the steep parts as fast as I could. I took a good, panic-stricken look behind me when I neared the top and was relieved to see I still had a good lead. A fun workout with lots of pain was a great way to finish up the camp.
