Austria/Dachstein

SO!

I just got to Austria a couple days ago. The trip down was very long – we had to take a bus to get to Montreal, then wait 5 hours for our flight, then do the 8 hour flight, then wait another 3 hours for the rest of the team to get here. Then we had to get the rental vans, and drive for 3 hours before getting to our hotels. In order to reduce jetlag, we had to stay awake for another 7 hours. That means that for 31 hours, the only sleep I got was 2 one hour naps I managed to sneak in on the bus in the morning and at the airport. I slept pretty well that night.

The next day we took the Gondola up to the Dakstein. We’re sleeping at 1200 metres, we drive up to about 1800 m, then we take the gondola up another kilometre or so to the altitude we’ll actually be training at. A short 10 minute walk from the gondola takes us to the ski area, a 10 km loop of switchbacks over the top of this glacier, which, according to my watch has about 140 metres of climbing per lap.

The glacier

The skiing at first was very bizarre… skis are a lot longer than rollerskis. After about 20 minutes however you get used to it and it’s just awesome. The skiing is pretty good (relative to winter skiing). The conditions are a lot like spring skiing. The first day the skiing was OK, the second and third days the skiing was great. Here are some pictures:

Graph of my workout on the first day. It was pretty tiring due to the altitude, and because the snow slowed down as it warmed up. The start and end altitude aren’t the same because I started my watch halfway through the drive up. There are a couple of dips in the heart rate where I stopped to take pictures/drink.

On our downtime I’ve been eating, napping, writing blog updates. Yesterday we golfed for a bit. Most of the holes were par 3’s... we did 4 holes, I personally lost about 3 balls (and that was pretty good compared to the others), and most my scores averaged from 8 strokes to 20 strokes to “did not finish because we ran out balls”.

There are a lot of people up here right now. There are us, the entire CNEPH team, as well as the Russian and Swedish national teams, which are staying at the same place as us. Also up on the glacier were the Slovakian and Danish national teams, and NTDC. It’s pretty cool to be training at the same time as these guys.

Ok so I’ll probably post something else soon… stay tuned.

Here are some other pictures:

Me at the top of the gondola

Picture from top of the Gondola

Picture from bottom of gondola, up to the top

Petra Majdic was here

Ola Vigen Hattestad as well (right behind me)

A Bit of Catchup

Hey!

So again it has been quite a bit since I’ve posted a blog update. For a bit I wasn’t that busy, but didn’t post, then recently I’ve been pretty busy so I just haven’t had the time. Right now I’m sitting in an airport in Montreal, I’ve got about 4 hours to kill, so I’m taking this opportunity to write an update.

So this is going to be pretty concise, I’m in Austria and I want to write about the trip in Austria. Since my last update, I’ve gone to a couple camps, they were pretty fun. NCD camp was pretty regular training, but pretty awesome all you can eat food. Malbaie camp, with the Quebec team and the CNEPH B team was also fun. There are a lot of hills out there. Did a couple time trials out at the camp as well, they went pretty well as well, time trials are always so much fun in the summer because you don’t get many opportunities to race.

Malbaie camp, with Raphael and Ben

After that was just some regular training. I managed to give myself elbow tendinitis about 3 weeks ago, right before a pretty difficult intensity block. I did most of the intervals legs only, and that was pretty difficult. Tired myself out quite a bit, and had to rest up lots during the rest week afterwards.

Also did a couple other fitness tests, the Luskville time trial, and a 4000 m track run. The Luskville time trial – a 2 km race that takes us about 14 minutes to do, because the whole thing is uphill - took place right at the end of the intensity block, so I didn’t feel super good for it. I still managed to beat my personal best by 4 seconds, but would have like to have been a bit faster, and closer to the winner, Aidan, who clocked in a good 10 seconds ahead of me.

View Larger Map

Map of the Luskville time trial's course.

The 4000 m went pretty well as well. Better than the luskville time trial for sure. I felt good and was able to push really hard (set a new max heart rate). I beat my previous personal best by 46 seconds, set in the spring, with a time of 13:14.

Other than that, I tried bungee jumping, it was completely awesome. School started, so now I’m studying mechanical engineering at Carleton University. Lastly, I was just selected to be an Olympic Forerunner for the 2010 olympics – i.e. I go out there and preski the courses and stuff for the athletes. I’m really excited for this… it’s going to be a ton of fun.

Ok so that brings me up to the present, which was the point of this update. It may not have been quite as informative as previous posts, but I just want to get around to talking about more recent stuff. Right now I’m in Austria, flew in yesterday/today, not really sure, because I haven’t slept since. Tomorrow I’m going to be skiing, and I’ll be sure to post another update pretty soon with pictures and info.

Also, here's something you should be afraid of:

BEARSHARKTOPUS!!

A Summary of Midsummer Training

Hey there!

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything here - exactly a month actually, and though the usual trend on blogs seems to be to apologize for this kind of thing, I'm not going to. I've just been very busy, haven't seemed to have the time. If you feel really sore, tell me about it and I'll try and see what I can do.

So I've been pretty busy the last month. I've been training like crazy. After the OWL camp, I took a bit of rest, then went directly into a 10 day intensity block which was… hard. A bit of rest, then another high volume and high intensity week, which I completed up at mont saint anne, with the CNEPH folk. Also a hard week.

Here are the highlights of the month:

The second beaver chase:

So as I mentioned in an earlier blog post, every year Nakkertok does 3 or 4 beaver chases - a low key 3.75 mile semi off-road running race out in Kanata. So around the end of the first week of july, I did the second beaver chase of this year. The first one I had done had been fairly good, I had beaten my personal best from last year, but I didn't feel great, and Nansen Weber had set a new course record. So going into this race, I really wanted to have a good race, as well as beat that time, which was 20:57 I believe.

I started the race feeling pretty good, sticking in behind Mike, who always leads out races very fast. Around 2 km in, I felt the pace was fairly easy, so I broke. With the tour in full swing, I did a true road biker's break - I sprinted as fast as I could for as long as I could to get the biggest gap possible, then I tried to hold it. And thats exactly what happened. I got about 30 seconds on Mike and Aidan, and held it till the end, gaining a bit more time and finishing with a time of 20:31. This felt great, because I had bested my previous best by a good 45 seconds. I felt great during the race, it was a lot of fun.

The grand prix bike race:

5 or so days after the beaver chase, Aidan and I went in the Grand Prix bike race. It's an 86 km bike race around the gatineau park, and I was pumped. I had never done a bike race before, and didn't really know what to expect. Turned out to be the most fun I'd had in a race in a long time. Right off the bat I got dropped by a lead breakaway group, and had to bridge the gap. After that, I played around at the front of the pack - maybe not the smartest move but definitely the funnest. The tactics and little sprints made it so much fun. Very rarely was I every out of breath in this race - what was slowing me down was the lactic acid in my legs. Near the end, I would tell them to push down and they simply wouldn't respond. A group ended up getting away on the last lap, and Aidan and I finished within feet of each other in a very tired sprint to the finish (but he won). All in all, completely awesome race.

Aidan and I in the final uphill in the Grand Prix. Aidan is hidden by another biker, but he's 3rd wheel in this picture. Nice hurt face, eh?

Training with CNEPH:

Louis invited Andrew and I up to CNEPH to train with them for a week, and see how they train and such. We had each been offered a position on CNEPH, but decided to train with Nakkertok instead, so this was offered to us to at least give us a taste of what its like on a training centre. All in all, its very similar to what we do here. They train "officially" together as a group a bit more, but the training was practically the same, doing my training with them worked out famously. The guys up on the centre are fast, and its going be a blast competing with them this winter.

Andrew and I on our way up to MSA. With our glasses and compression socks, are we cool or what?

Training with them did make me appreciate how lucky we are in the gatineau area for rollerskiing - whereas I can go out any time I like and rollerski on any of the probably 60 + km of pathways, plus the 30 km of parkways we have, they have to either ski on the main roads, or drive 40 some minutes to a relatively short pathway. Not that it was that bad, but it is very easy to rollerski here.

A pretty fun downhill up in St-Ferrol Des Neiges. The B team guys say they don't go down it, but when I was skiing solo down the road nobody told me there was a sketchy corner at the bottom of it, so I just bombed it. The second and third times down weren't as bad, I knew what to expect, so I filmed this. Notice near then bottom theres a car in the other lane - you gotta make sure you don't go into the other lane, that could hurt.

Fitness tests with CNEPH:

Obviously this fits in with the week with CNEPH, but it stands out a little. CNEPH do fitness tests on rollerskis, more or less standardized, using the same skis to skate ski and double pole up an uphill and see how they're times compare over time. It was interesting because stars like Alex, Fred and the other senior members of CNEPH have done these tests for a number of years now, so you can compare your times to theirs. The skate test went pretty well, I clocked in 5 seconds behind Étienne Richard, and 10 seconds behind where Julien Nury and David Greer were last year.

The double pole test was a little unreal. I felt really good in it, I was able to push as hard as I could the whole time without feeling aerobically tired, and it was my surprise when I got to the top that I had set a new course record for CNEPH, beating the previous record set by Phil Widmer (3:49) by a good 6 seconds. Now the senior guys on CNEPH are the guys I strive to be like - Alex is a huge idol to me. Just to be near them would have be great, but to actually surpass them in something, even if its something like double poling uphill (I'll do great next time there's a race that involves double poling up steep slopes) - it felt really good, if not a little unreal.

So that brings me to the end of last weekend. Immediately after getting back from that, I set out on a sea kayaking trip with my wonderful mother, and also had a blast.

This last month has been really busy, but it has been a ton of fun. It was definitely one of the better summer months I can remember. Until next time!

OWL Camp

Last week our entire team went up to OWL rafting for 5 days, for our yearly OWL camp. We don't usually end up going rafting, we just use the premises as a training base for our camp, as the owners, Dirk and Claudia Van Wijk, are members of Nakkertok.

I came into this camp fully rested - I had just come off an off week and I was feeling (really) good. Good thing, because this camp was probably the most intense, high volume, high intensity and most awesome training camp I've been to in… ever. Tuesday we biked down to OWL rafting, about a 100 km ride away, then finished the day off with some rollerski strength on skis for an hour and a half or so. From there until Saturday, we trained usually about 4 hours each day, with either 1 or 2 interval sets every day (and not easy ones either). Saturday we did a "triathlon", then biked home, before doing one last hard workout Sunday. Today, monday, I'm writing this entry tired, taking the day off, and recovering with my compression socks.

I'm not going to go through every day of the camp and say every training we did… to be honest I kind of forget the order. I do know we did do the following over the 6 days:

• 2 100 km bike rides
• A 7 minute running race
• 4 x 4 minutes running z3 high
• 2 strength on skis hill repeats
• 2 or 3 strength/core routines
• z3 combo (skate/classic) intervals (see below for video!)
• 2 speed workouts (2 x 15 x 10 seconds with 20 seconds rest)
• A 30 minute rollerski tempo workout
• A scavenger hunt
• A rollerski/running/swimming triathlon (more details below)
• An epic stream run
• Around 22 - 23 hours of training
• Maybe I forgot some stuff

I guess a different approach than Thomsen - but I feel pretty fit as well (albeit a bit tired come the end of the week). Let me go into detail on a couple of those workouts.

The combo intervals were done up a hill, down the other side, then back up it, the resting down the original hill and then swapping gear from Classic to Skate or Skate to classic as fast as possible before starting again. These were done at high zone 3 pace, and were a lot of fun. My dad got it all on tape, so now you get to watch! On the classic sections, I was feeling strong and was able to pull away from the others, but in skate it was the opposite, and they would reel me back in.

Video of the combo intervals. With music.

Saturday we did a triathlon, which is somewhat of a tradition at the OWL camp. It started with 3-4 km of rollerskiing, followed by about a kilometre of running, then a swim out to a raft and back.

Right off the start Andrew broke his tip, which was unfortunate, and he dropped off in the rollerski. Mike, Aidan and I broke away from the rest and arrived together from the rollerski. Aidan was quick out of the transition, and started the run right away. Mike and I were (considerably) slower and lost about 30 metres on him in the transition. However Aidan was also pretty out of breath from the rollerski and, running with his eyes closed, ended up going off the road a bit once or twice. I'm pretty sure I caught a bit of time on Aidan during the run, but it wasn't significant for sure. However, in the swim my triathlon training from when I was young payed off and I was able overtake Aidan quite quickly. Having the swim at the end of the race probably wasn't the best idea, I don't think I have ever swam that much out of breath, it was difficult to say the least. After Aidan and I finished, there was a pretty epic sprint between Andrew and Mike, Andrew having ran (very) fast to catch up to Mike during the run, and sprinted by him to the finish on the beach.

My dad tried to film the whole thing, but failed. He wasn't actually filming when he thought he was. Our loss.

Throughout the whole week, it rained. Every day. This may sound bad, but it was actually a lot of fun. It kept you cool when you were training, and there is nothing more intense than doing core in a thunderstorm.

Kirstin, Leslie's and Jessica's drowned tent

However it also meant that the area where our tents were ended up being flooded, and many tents ended up being flooded as well. Which sucked for the people in those tents. I kind of lucked out on that front.

Friday we had to do an hour or so of easy jogging, so we went out on some trails. The trails were soaked from the rain which made for a really fun run. On the way out we crossed a really fast moving brook/stream. Further up the trail, we crossed this same stream again. Assuming that the stream would go down to the ottawa river, which we could then take back to OWL, some of us decided to, instead of running back home on the trail, to float down this stream. Those people were Aidan Lennie, Andrew Stewart-Jones, James Taylor, Mike Vieira, my father, Michelle Workun-Hill, Kirstin Besemann, Kaisa Lindfors and myself.

At the beginning the stream was relatively small, about need deep, really dark brown dirty color and really fast moving. Just deep enough that you could let yourself float and drift down it.There were obstacles, trees, branches that cleverly hid in the dark water and tripped you, unseen rocks, and it was so much fun. As we went down, the stream got bigger, deeper, and there were rapids and dams that we could just let ourselves get pulled down. It was pretty much the ultimate water slide. This lasted maybe 20 minutes of intense fun, then the the stream got even bigger, and the current died a bit, and it got so deep you couldn't even touch the bottom.

This is where talk turned from "God this is so much fun" to "where the hell is the Ottawa river, I'm getting hungry". Every turn of this windy stream offered false hope that the river would be around the next bend. Eventually we ran off the stream, and lo and behold, we ran into the backyard of Wilderness Tours, another nearby rafting company. A few men dressed in big raincoats (it was raining) watched us run, soaking wet and dirty, in T-shirts, shorts and running shoes, out of the woods. They looked just a little confused.

From there we ran along the side of the river/swam back to OWL rafting, and our 1 hour short run ended up being a 2 hour run/awesome. Unfortunately I don't have pictures, I don't think a camera would have survived the trip down there anyways. But trust me. It was awesome.

So that's pretty much what OWL camp consisted of. It was a blast, the whole time. I'm going to be taking a little bit of recovery now, to rest up and soak in all the benefits from that camp. Then I think the plan is for another intensity block, which I'll be sure to keep you updated on when it comes up. Bye for now, here's some more photos.

Sunset on the Ottawa River

A skunk I encountered during a night-time bathroom break

One of the items on our scavenger hunt was having one of the team members do a 3 minute 3 inch hold - this is 2:30 in.

Our epic game of risk. I'm yellow. I was perhaps overly aggressive at the beginning of the game and was eliminated at that point

Intensity and Rest

Hey everybody, I’m back again with yet another blog post. As I’m writing this I’m just finishing a well-needed off-ish week. At the end of last weekend, and after some particularly tiring intervals on Saturday and Sunday, I, and many other of my teammates, were feeling pretty tired, so we turned our semi-off week into a kind of full off week. Saturday we had a tempo workout going up a hill, and, at the risk of being shown up by the new addition to our team, Ben, I may have gone slightly over zone. Fortunately, I have a crazy new watch that can graph out my workouts, so here’s a picture of exactly how much over zone I went! Dark red is altitude, and light red is my HR, and the zones are overlaid in the back. Zone 3 A was the zone I was aiming for. We also finished that workout off with a good 2 hours of high zone 1 running.

(Click to enlarge)

We did do some easy training to, here’s a video of myself doing some technique work with Aidan and Andrew.

Sunday was also pretty hard, we did some zone 5 work, starting with a 6 minute rollerski race up Fortune Hill, then some head to head sprints, full body and double poling, around a loop we had set up.

So, tired from that, I took 2 full days off (excluding some easy biking), and then did some really hard intervals on Wednesday. It was really hot out and my heart rate was skyrocketing way out of zone as we did the striding intervals up our local downhill ski resort. Below is another graph of that training. It was hard, but I’m pleased to say that myself, Mike, Aidan and Guillaume can all run up that hill faster than the downhill bikers on the chairlift. We finished that training off with some good Saint-Jean late night celebration, and some additional celebration for our teammate Leif Lennie, who headed off to thunder bay last Friday to train with NTDC.

(Click to enlarge)

A couple more easy days, then Saturday we started training again, and Sunday (today) we did a rollerski time trial. We do this same time trial twice every year, so as long as your rollerskis don’t change, you can compare your times quite well. I was still feeling pretty tired, and physically didn’t feel great, but I did have a good race nonetheless. Last spring I did it in 26:12 minutes, then in the fall I did it in 23:59 (with new wheels), then today I did in 23:57. Not a huge gain, but it felt good, and I’m happy to be just as fast so early in the summer compared to last fall.

On the schedule next week is the OWL camp. Hosted by our friends the Van Wjiks at OWL rafting, it’ll be a 5-day long camp of high volume and intensity and awesome. We’ll be heading down there Tuesday, so tomorrow I’m going to take yet another recovery day to be in top shape for that camp.

Lastly, as promised, here is some video of the course we used for those cornery intervals. I took a video of myself rollerskiing and sped it up for your viewing pleasure. Have fun, 'till next time.

And June Begins

So I’m relatively new to this whole “blog” thing. My friend, Patrick Stewart-Jones, also started a blog around the same time (here), we’ve each got hit counters installed, so we’re seeing who’s going to have the more popular blog. So in an effort to make my blog more interesting, I’ll be trying to post more pictures and be more interesting. Also, don’t click on the link to his blog.

I’m just going to start off by posting a video – some of you may have already seen it, others not. We’ve been trying a bunch of new training here at Nakkertok, here’s a snapshot of it.

Edited by Peter Lloyd, my dad. Fun Fun Fun.

This last week has been pretty tiring. It included the beaver chase – a 3.75 mile, very low key, local running race that takes place 4 or so times a year. The name comes from one year, where a beaver came onto the trail and, scared, ran away from the runners, thus leading the race for a bit. All of use are definitely getting faster, personal bests were falling all round. Even with a mediocre race on my part, I beat my best time by a good 10 or so seconds.

Leif and I in a painful sprint to the finish last year. Whether I beat him or he beat me is still up to debate.

Wednesday we went for a rollerski on the pathways through Ottawa. On a particularly steep downhill, I decided to see what kind of reaction I could get from the other people walking and biking on the hill. Going down the hill, I started waving my hands in the air and screaming loudly: “NO BRAKES! NO BRAKES!!” while swerving and cutting people off (cutting a person off). It’s win-win – we have a good time, and they get a story to tell. Good times.

Saturday we did a really fun workout. Our coach, Mike, discovered this “network” of bike pathways at the intersection of two perpendicular roads. These pathways, a little under 2 metres wide, looped constantly around, up and down, 90 and 180 degree corners, for a good minute and a half of intense rollerskiing.

We did 2 by 4 times 4 minutes out and back on this track, high zone 3, mass start. It would start on a slight downhill for about a hundred metres, before going straight into an almost 180 degree turn with a big and slippery puddle at the apex. Accelerate out of the corner, then turn, then downhill, then another sharp 90-degree corner, then an uphill 180 before looping up and turning onto a bridge. Go out a bit, then turn around and come back the other way. The corners were sharp enough that, at least in one case, you needed to shave speed to avoid being shot into a fence. All through the interval you would be either cornering, accelerating or resting/decelerating, as well as fighting for positions. Photos to follow, next time I pass by there.

Though staying in zone was difficult during the very technical parts, and a couple crashes did happen, the intervals were great for working on keeping your speed through corners, as well as being efficient through technical sections of races. Not to mention they were extremely fun to do. Definitely would recommend these, I’m really looking forward to doing them again.

Other than that, I’m now officially graduated from CEGEP, and am a diploma-carrying graduate from the science program. So don’t mess with me. I’m also, with the help of the rest of the team, building a nice little website for our Continental Cup Team. Hopefully we’ll have it up and running midway through the summer, stay tuned.

Me all grad'ed up with the gowns and all. Yes, I do have running shoes on. Just to show I'm an athlete at heart.

May's Training

Another month's gone by, its june already! What a month. My goals for this month were to get back into training consistently, get to the gym a lot to improve my strength, and overall just train myself into shape for training harder.

So I was quite surprised as I was viewing my training log and May turned out to the be the month that I'd trained the most... ever. I'd clocked in just over 74 h of training - and almost a quarter of that was done in the strength room. It would appear to have been a hard month, but it didn't seem that intense at all, which is what surprised me. Even with final exams in my CEGEP program, a couple really late nights studying, I'm feeling pretty good.

The highlight of the month would definitely be the Kingston Camp I did with Nakkertok. A 4 day camp, which began with the 145 km bike down to kingston, then 4 days of high volume and intensity, then a 190 km bike home. The camp included a lot of road biking, and although it rained... every time we went riding, it was still a blast.

On the ride down, we left a bit out of town to avoid traffic, with a couple of the older guys from Nakkertok: Myself, Aidan and Leif Lennie, Andrew and Patrick Stewart Jones, Riel Allain, Guillaume Ethier and Seb Townsend. Of course no ride is complete without some form of racing, so with about 50 km left Aidan and I broke away and hammered out the last 50 km as fast as we could. So much fun.

After we had all arrived, we went straight to the strength room and got an hour and a bit or so of strength in to finish off the day. The next days were equally intense, always double days, with intervals, strength on skis, rollerskiing, running, biking, sprints, etc... The ride home, though only Aidan, Riel and myself did it, was also a lot of fun. There wasn't much wind, but we managed to maintain a 35 km/h average for the whole 190 km.

Another thing we did this month was enter an adventure race. It was a 5 ish hour event, up in plaisance. Also a lot of fun. I entered with Aidan Lennie, but Andrew and Patrick, Noémi and Michelle, and Mike and Gabe also entered. We had some setbacks early on in the race, during the canoe section, which put us back about 50 minutes from Andrew and Pat who ended up winning. It was really fun - the best part was the orienteering, some parts of which we were up to our necks in water. Last was the bike section, and it was raining so hard the trail was all mud, any time you torqued the pedals at all your tires would just spin. Very fun event all in all.

Other highlights of the month include my running to much and getting shin-splints, going to the gym very often, in an attempt to be a bit stronger a skier, something I need to work on, and a 10 km race I did by myself. I wanted to sign up for the race, but didn't want to pay the money, then decided to race, but then the registration was full, so I took a 10 km course around my house, and ran it as fast as I could solo. Running a race all by yourself is weird, if you've ever tried it. In any case, I finished it in 35:50, which was a personal best for me, so I was pretty stoked to do that so early in the season.

All in all, a really fun month of training, lots of gains, and lots of fun. Looking forward to June.