Training Camp

The first week of June the Olympic Oval where we train put together an in-town training camp for all the skaters short and long track.  This meant that we got to train with people we don't usually train with and we also got to do a lot of different activities that we don't do in our day to day training aka we got to have some fun!

Day 1's fun activity of the day was training with the U of C Dinos football coaches.  A lot of the exercises did translate because like football speed skating is a very power driven sport and especially in short track there's a lot of sprinting, reacting, and changes is speed.  Unfortunately for my group though there is not a lot of catching in speed skating and every time we missed or dropped the ball we had to do pushups.

Getting instruction from Dinos head coach Blake Nill
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Doing our pushups
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One of the most fun activities was when we did Muay Thai with UFC fighter Nick Ring. We got to kick and hit each other and I now feel completely confident in actually fighting all the people I jokingly ask to fight on a daily basis (just kidding I'm still under 120lbs of skinny white girl).

Classic cheesy fighter stance picture
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Runner up for most fun activity was when the coaches organized a version of The Amazing Race for us.  This might not sound like a training activity but we spent the whole morning sprinting across the University of Calgary campus (and I mean sprinting) and by the time we were done we were probably more tired than we'd been after doing our structured running intervals.  All our sprinting was rewarded because my team ended up being the winners!

The winning team!
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Continuing our fun week of trying new things and working with new coaches we had a session with a National track and field coach where we found out just how uncoordinated and not flexible some of us are.

Working out in the fancy WinSport Under Armour gym
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We then finished off the week with a nice long bike ride.  If you've read this post you might know that I am prone to fun stuff like panic attacks whenever anybody puts me on a bike.  I had a bit of a rocky start because I was having problems with one of my pedals and I talked myself down from one tiny little freak-out mid ride but I managed to ride for over two hours tear free.  It helped that it was a really nice day and also the last training session for the week.

A rare picture of me on a bike
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It was a fun training camp (even though I had to get on a bike) and I had a really great time doing some different styles of training and training with some new people.  Sometimes training can get a little monotonous as we tend to do the same kind of thing every week but this was a great way to change things up and refocus going into the new season.

All pictures are courtesy of the Olympic Oval Calgary facebook page and DayDream Images 

(except for the one from my instagram of course)