Days Go By

Hi everyone!  Sorry for the horrible lack of blog posts for the past month.  I know I said I would post something every week, but Days Go By and it was harder to motivate myself to do this than one would think.  I have also been quite busy with respect to training...

Found Figgy sleeping in the car today

The part of the ski training year that is defined by big volume zone1 workouts starts up midway through the month of June for me.  To help keep these long zone1 workouts interesting, I have attended a couple training camps over the last number of weeks.

To kick things off, me and my two friends/teammates Do Moncion-Groulx and Kat Stewart-Jones represented the Nakkertok contingent at the first Quebec Team training camp of the year, held in Lake Placid NY.  

Lake Placid is definitely one of favourite places--if not my favourite place--to train in the East.  It has awesome mountains to hike/run on (Do commented midway on both of our two hikes that “we’re on top of the world!”), it has great scenery, it has roads that are amazingly paved for the amount of traffic they get--great for rollerskiing (and probably for the huge U.S. deficit too...)--and it has lots of water to jump into after workouts.  For those who have not experienced it, it is hard to describe how awesome it feels to jump into an ice cold stream-fed lake after climbing a mountain.  

Unfortunately, Do and I could not stick around for the whole training camp (apparently I didn’t even have time to take any pictures :p ); after two solid hike/runs and three good rollerski workouts, it was time to head home for a rest day... and then go back out the door for Training Camp II: RELOADED.  This time in Tremblant with the rest of the home team.

Last year I had a great time, and got in some really good quality training at the Nakkertok camp in Tremblant, so I was really looking forward to the camp this year.  Here’s how this year’s Tremblant training camp went down:

On Saturday June 30th Do and I returned from Lake Placid.

Canada day was spent watching the DH world cup in Windham NY on my computer, and going to bed early after watching Sherlock Holmes 2!!!  I am so patriotic.

Monday is travel day!  I pulled on my cut off Blue Jeans, and Nakkertok peace’d out en mass for Tremblant just after lunch time.  We manged to squeeze in a short hour forty-five minute hike/run up and down Tremblant upon arrival.

The Boys at the top of Tremblant (note that Ryan is floating and Do is really tiny looking)

Every ski hill worth its salt seems to have one of these cell phone towers...

Tuesday I realized that I should’ve done a better job recovering between Tremblant and Lake Placid, when I elected not to finish a zone4 interval set.  We also happened to get kicked off a private road in the ritzy subdivision where we were planning on doing said zone4 intervals.  Annoying.  After lunch a napped away my sorrows and then proceeded to go for a 2hr bike ride.

Wednesday we threw down a really fun Classic sprint workout and managed to not get kicked out of any ritzy subdivisions (probably because we avoided them).  In the P.M. coach K-dogg and assistant(?) coach MC-Gui put together a fun strength workout for us.

My awesome supper on Wednesday--I am such a chef

Thursday was getting lost day  It consisted of....well... getting lost.  And hiking.  And getting lost.  Today the girls got lost on the way to the hike, and Bryana and I got lost on our afternoon bike ride to the beach.

Friday we did an awesome tempo zone3 workout at Domaine Saint Bernard.  In the afternoon I climbed up and down a hill near our chalet with Colin, as we tried to hit 80kph on our road bikes.  We reached 79.5.

Saturday we went for a 3:30 ski before we embarked on the short drive home.  More importantly, on the way home we stopped twice: once for slush puppies and once for poutine.  It was damn good poutine.

Sunday I returned home and finished playing Portal2, and was then depressed to be not at a training camp, and not playing Portal2.

So that sums up my life for the past two weeks.  Again, apologies for not posting in awhile... I have hidden TWO songs in this blog by ways of an apology.

In passing, I would suggest that everybody reading this do two things:  watch Sherlock Holmes 2 (Robert Downey Jr. is a boss), and play Portal2 (but only after playing Portal).

Dream big, people!