8 Days in West Yellowstone:

The majority of the J2+ skiers and I just finished am 8 day training camp in West Yellowstone, MT. Here’s a brief recap of how it all went down.

Whoever thought it would be a great idea to stick 12 junior Nordic skiers plus a coach in a condo that is meant to sleep 8 would be a good idea? Well, it was. Sure, our space might have been a bit cramped, especially around lunch and dinner time when 8 Crested Butte athletes would show up to scrounge for food, but it all worked out well enough. The main goal of our 8 days spent in West Yellowstone was time on skis, and of that we got plenty. Over 20hrs of training, plus up to 3 races and still no one wanted to go to bed early by the end of the week. I’m not sure where all the energy came from, but heck, it was contagious!

From the coaching aspect, our team more than accomplished their goals.

Ski Related Goal:

1. Lots of volume training

2. Technique work, especially in classic

3. Intervals to get used to absolutely flying over snow

4. And racing. That’s what we do.

General Goals

1. DNSC Team bonding

2. Learning all the words to “Big Green Tractor”

3. Official forming of South West Colorado Nordic Alliance

The skiing goals were easy. “We are here to ski, that’s what we are going to do” was a quote often heard within our cabin. The level of commitment to the “plan” often amazes me. Of course it didn’t hurt that we had totally amazing ski conditions for the whole week of our trip. Every practice we were able to walk right out the door of our condo, put on our skis and ski down the middle of the road for about 5 minutes to the main trail head of the Rendezvous Trail System. From that trail head we had over 30km of groomed and classic tracked ski trails at our disposal. It’s great to have that type of terrain to choose from when doing a 3 hour distance ski.

Outside of all the distance training, we were also able to mix in some racing. The SuperTour series was in town so West Yellowstone was host to a Classic Sprint Qualifier, 10/15k Skate, and 5/10k Classic. These races were a great opportunity for athletes on our team to go head to head with some of the best skiers in the country, both juniors and seniors. The US Ski team was in attendance, as were many professional and college ski teams. There were also many junior teams from within our region there for training and racing. Early season races are always good because it reminds us all (yes, coaches too) what it’s all about. Over the summer we forget how to wax skis and ski fast, so this series was a great “wake up call” for all of us. Race #1, classic sprint: after waxing late into the night, I woke up early to head to the race venue to test kick wax. After getting everything all set up, it finally dawned on me why I was feeling that I was forgetting something. Yep, left all my test skis back at the wax room. Very smooth. From the racers point of view, everything was great! Alicia, Hannah, Gino, Sepp, and Haakon all raced their first 10km, and all of our healthy/non-injured athletes were able to race at least one. Success.

I’m not saying it was all smooth sailing. We had a clothes fire (no, you should not dry ski clothes over a lamp), couch fires (heat guns are hot, even after you turn them off), and an overflowing dishwasher (dish soap and dishwasher detergent are two different things). Lucky for us, with all the parents cooking food and bringing it over at dinner time, there were no kitchen fires.

More to come….