The BSF Pro team made the trip across the pond to Norway for a two week training camp, consisting of one week based in Sjusjoen, near Lillehammer, and the other up at Sognefjellet on snow. Our goals for the camp were to take advantage of the low altitude and ideal roller skiing in sjusjoen, skiing and learning from some Norwegian professional skiers, and then to obviously maximize our technique work on snow at Sognefjellet. Due to the short duration of the camp it's been imperative to prioritize minimizing stress in and around travel and to maintain our energy levels, especially early on in the camp. Luckily after some long travel days this was aided by our incredible housing, location to training opportunities, and cooking by Andy’s mother Caroll who graciously offered her time to prepare and cook food for our entire team while we were in Sjusjoen.
Our first few days we explored the local roads and roller ski tracks, with an emphasis on easy skiing and learning from some of our Norwegian compatriots. We had the opportunity to ski with Team Elon Innlandet and the Skinstad brothers who Andy has developed a relationship with over his career. It’s humbling and exciting to work with such technicians of the sport, and really confirms the benefits of skiing and learning from those better than you. Even in the few sessions we did with these skiers and through mimicking their movements, I felt I discovered some timing improvements.
Our first intensity session took place on our third day, as the local birken 7 mile running race. After struggling with sleep the prior days I felt surprisingly great during the race, which unbeknownst to us was primarily downhill, starting at the Birken rollerski track and finishing down in Lillehammer. It was really fun to put on a bib again and compete with both my teammates and a few local runners. Reid won the race, Wilson (an ex BSF collegiate athlete) finished 2nd, and I was third. On the girls side, Mariah took the w with Hannah and Sarah taking a close second and third. The following day we performed L3 double pole intervals with the Skinstad brothers on a road up from Lillehamer to our housing in Sjusjoen. There were two workouts I was really excited for on the training schedule, this being one of them and the other also an L3 session, but skating, and on snow the following week. I believe training in this sub threshold to threshold level for large volumes of time, is imperative to becoming a fast skier, and one of the areas where one can make massive improvements with aerobic capacity, technique, and perhaps most importantly, efficiency while performing lots of work and moving fast. The session I executed was 6, 10 minute intervals exclusively in the double pole technique. I felt pretty good, started out pretty conservatively and ramped my way up until I felt like my lactate was between 2.5-3.5 mmol (ideally we would test this).
At low altitude these sessions are a very different experience than in Bozeman. With more oxygen we are essentially able to maintain a higher pace or higher amount of work at the same effort level compared to at altitude. This is beneficial, as we are getting the same training of primarily the aerobic system as we would doing this workout at altitude, but also get to practice movements at higher velocity and force, ultimately training a muscular stimulus as well and learning to move and use our muscles at a higher effort and pace. Overall, I believe this week was very productive, and I look forward to incorporating the technique and knowledge that I gained during this week into my training. Stay tuned for an update from the on snow portion of this camp.
