Rookie Camp

I got back last night from a 6 day camp in Park City, Utah. The camp was called "Rookie Camp". A camp where all the new athletes on the U.S National Ski Team, U.S. National Snowboarding Team, and U.S. National Freeskiing Team got together for a introduction to the team.

The first 3 days the cross country team spent doing many different types of tests. They tried to get a baseline collection of data. Some of the categories of tests were strength, balance, ventilation, blood, and reaction time. The tests were very informative, it pointed out some of my strengths and weaknesses. Now I will be able to try critiquing some things to my training and then when I do these same test next year I will be able to see If I have made improvements.

The last three days were spent with all the other new nominees to the National Team. We got introduced to all the different staff members at the U.S. Ski team building. Most of them spoke to us and let us know how they can help us. There is a lot more to skiing then just training, and they let us know they are here to help me through all the other stuff. The staffs goal is for us athletes to be so well taken care of that all we have to worry about is our training. Obviously that is not possible with the limited money the team has but they want to do there best. Thank you coaches and staff for all your help! I look forward to going back to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard headquarters in October for another camp.

Back to Anchorage

I got back to Anchorage last night from my 10 day camp in Bend, Oregon. The camp was hosted by the US Ski Team, and was my first camp with the team. Five guys from the seven man team where there; Kris Freeman, Andy Newell, Simi Hamilton, Skyler Davis, and myself.

One of these guys is ranked in the top 1o in the World for sprinting and one of these guys is ranked in the top 20 in the world for distance skiing. So my goal last week was to take advantage of every chance I got to ski with these guys. You learn from the best.

Every morning we would try to be up to Bachelor to ski by 9:00. As you can maybe tell from the pictures above, we had a wide variety of conditions. Everything from hard corduroy tracks and blue skies to February blizzard snow fall. Luckily only one day we had rain. In the afternoon we would try to either run, lift weights, bike, or the occasional afternoon off.

It was a full camp of training though. I'm tired, so for now it is rest untill Sunday. Then I go up onto Eagle Glacier for my first camp with my new college team, Alaska Pacific University. Psyched!