Tuesday 13 August 2013

Summer training camps as Athlete and Coach

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. 
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....
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. 
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 


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