Haig Camp

 

 

The week started off with a strength session Monday morning and the about 20km run into camp. We ran into some pretty big snow pockets which you would sink in mid shin deep, which made the last half of the running slower and colder than usual. Since the World Cup team had run in the morning when me and the rest of the B team arrived we knew that there would not be bottom bunks for all of us. Much to the disappointment of the guys who were already there waiting to watch the sprint for beds, we had decided that we would choose beds in a more civilized manor than usual. With the final rock pitches not serving as a race track to claim first choose in beds, we pulled cards instead in which I was relegated to the dreaded top bunk.

The top bunk caused me little grief, just a cold awakening the first night after my sleeping bag had fallen to the floor while I was stirring in the middle of the night. With a good night’s sleep I was excited once I woke up to head up skiing under perfect blue skies. After the short 35 minute hike to the Glacier I knew it was going to be a great day of skiing with a nice crust having formed over the night and making the entire glacier system a giant ski track. After about an hour of crust skiing in the bowls above the Haig track, it was starting to soften up so I headed back to the track and worked with Louis on technique. After my two hours of skiing for the day were the complete I headed down for a fun boot ski back to the camp.

Even with the main focus of the camp being the hard training, we had lots of time to kill between workouts. The way we passed the time was a wide array of games, such as Monopoly, poker, Frisbee golf, catch, and Wiffle Ball. Lots of fun was had between workouts which left us energized to train hard when it was needed. Days followed a pretty similar routine of early mornings of skiing, afternoon naps and games in the afternoon before pm training. We were lucky to have a great week of skiing with good weather, grooming and teammates to make the camp fly by.

The Haig camp wrapped up the third week of a big block for me with a much deserved rest week coming up. On the rest week I enjoyed some relaxing mornings and a few easy sessions. For the weekend I went on a great camping trip with my family which I will write another update about.