The Haig Glacier

A beautiful Day crust skiing

Brent at the end of his classic ski

Perri, Sara, Chandra, and Shayla enjoying a run and photo op at the Haig!

It’s the start of a new training block- three weeks long, lots of hours, strength and intensity. Oh… and the “finally” is the great and pretentious “CANMORE TRIATHLON”. You’ve got to understand the depth of this event in the eyes of our National team. In May Devon mentioned we should all register. Without much thought, we all flocked to the registration website and put our names down. As the date nears, more and more of us are starting to freak out. None of us really know how to swim (except maybe Ivan), especially in open water. None of us have the tri gear (although apparently Devon is making a fine inventory for himself), and none of us have raced a triathlon (oh- except that it slipped out one night at supper that Devon has done a few over the years). Our coach, Eric DeNys, has officially signed up for the event under peer pressure from his athletes. Eric adamantly sent an email to the race organizers pleading to get in (even though it was full) so he could prove to his athletes that he could beat some of them…. we’ll see when the time comes Eric. Then there’s the under the table bets about me possibly beating Brent. This conversation started to take place once they saw him swim.  To put it simply, Brent better find some flippers and a wetsuit quick. I put an end to this when I switched to the sprint distance instead of the Olympic distance. Racing for 2.5 hours is just not appealing to me. I figured it would be better to go out and hammer for an hour and a half. Are you getting the idea yet? In short, a day is not fulfilled if the subject of the triathlon doesn’t come up at least once.

Brent at the end of his classic ski

So back to the ski training… the first week took place on the Haig glacier with a focus on long slow volume and technique work. I came in one week ago feeling fresh and exuberant- well rested from my 2 week rest period. After piling in some 20 plus hours, I will now officially say I’m satisfyingly tired. One more 4 hour day (a hike, ski, and 2 hour run down) and the week will be done. One rest day, and then you put this little summary on repeat mode for another 2 weeks.

The Haig is an awesome place to do lots of training. The isolation makes it pretty easy to train hard. You wake up and start your hike at 7:45 and finish your workout around noon. Then you’ve got lunch (pre-made by the awesome glacier staff) and a killer nap followed by 2 or 3 hours of absolutely nothing (this is when the Monopoly board or the scrabble comes out). By the time you’re ready for your 2^nd workout you’re just itching to run around.

We’ve been pretty lucky with the weather. It froze almost every morning and we were even able to cruise around the crust for the first few days. Here’s a little blurb from me, and some pics to summarize our awesome training camp that’s now come to a close.