For two and a half weeks of August its been summer camp time in
Scotland, in three different locations with a collection of the best cross
country skiers Britain has to offer. The first week started with the senior
team in Stirling at the institute of sport for a week of testing and planning
for the upcoming Olympic season. Unfortunately after a good couple of weeks
training I managed to pull my hamstring the day before the camp doing a sprint
session with the junior athletes. Although it was bad timing it did mean I got
excellent physio support every day from Kelly at the institute and that helped
speed up the healing process. The only testing I managed to do was a double
pole test on the treadmill where the treadmill is set at 5% gradient and
gradually gets faster and faster until you almost fall off the back.
Whilst in Stirling we got to have a go on the Sir Chris Hoy velodrome which was epic! Pretty dam scary to start with but after about 15 minutes it became a lot of fun. Pretty sure we won't become a team of track cyclist any time soon but I won't forget it for a while.
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| Simon getting his guns out for testing. |
With 5 days completed in Stirling we moved North to Aviemore where I was
able to gradually do more and more of the training including a
couple of interval session. However on one of the evenings we had a football
tournament with all the senior and junior athletes taking part. It took one run
to discover that my hamstring wasn't really better. I should know better by
now....
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| Beth storming up the Suie |
After having a Day to slightly recovery from my own training camp it was
time to switch into Coach mode and take charge of 8 BNDS athletes for the Huntly summer camp. I
was slightly worried about how motivated and tired the athletes would be after the
previous weeks training camp and there were quite a few bleary eyed people on
Sunday morning. With a slightly smaller group to work with we focused on
working through different technique pointers and looking at video of themselves
compared to the world’s best.
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| The four amigos doing level 3 intervals |
The camp included two interval sessions with a long threshold session up
the Rhynie to Clash road and we finished the camp with max intervals up the
Suie hill. I was pretty happy with those two sessions in particular because the
work rate and concentration was excellent The athletes all have things to work
on and I believe if they can put those into practise along with continues
training they can all make big steps forward this season. All in all a very good couple of weeks but hopefully next time without
the pulled hamstring.
Alex
