Bruksvallarna Camp: Day 2

The only plan for the 2nd day of camp was to travel from Lillehammer to Bruksvallarna which was supposed to be a 6 hour journey, so as scheduled, we left at 9am after breakfast and hauling 12 ski bags up on the roof of the squad van. I soon fell asleep in the back of the van and didn't wake up until our first petrol station stop, and then I pretty much went back to sleep however the next time I woke up, expecting to be well into Sweden by now, I found we'd ended up about 500m further than the last stop. It turns out every road we tried to go down to get into Sweden had been closed off! At this stop, as I was half asleep, I didn't bother getting out and therefore missed spotting Swedens #1 XCSkier Marcus Hellner in the service station- much to my disappointment! We finally set off again, this time finding a route where we could actually get to our destination (and once more the headphone went on and i went sleep)!
      We arrived at our cute wood cabins in Bruksvallarna at 8pm, my team-mate Katy and I got the upstairs bedroom of the 'girls cabin', and there's a sauna in the bathroom which will definately be getting used (but not till after Sundays race)! And we have a nice big, warm wax room for all our race prep which is good.
        After settling in I joined a few of the boys for a stretch and run down to the stadium before dinner and then back to bed shortly after!

Bruksvallarna Camp: Day 1

I set off yesterday from my house at 7.30am, my mum drove me and one of the coaches to Manchester airport where we then caught a flight to Oslo. From there we then hired a car and drove for a couple of hours to Lillehammer where we would stay with the rest of the athletes and coaches for two nights. Driving into Lillehammer was really good, you could see the large ski jump in the middle of the city as we got closer and we drove for 2 hours alongside the largest lake in Norway. Once at our accomadation we had dinner and a briefing on the weeks plan and then a well deserved sleep!
       Today we started off our training in Natrudstilen stadium near Sjusjoen with a Skate session which consisted of an easy Level 1ski including some Level 3 pick-up sprints, it was really nice getting out on proper snow for the first time this season! It went well and I burnt 1000calories, so I was really looking forward to lunch!
      Then in the afternoon we went to the Sjusjoen stadium for some classic training, although we will only be racing in skate technique competitions this weekend, it was still good to go and practise double poling and weight transfer. We went out at 2.30pm and within an hour of our session it was getting dark which was testing our balance as we could no longer see the track surface. Once we'd finish we quickly got in the van for some food and a change of clothes!
      This evening we had to re-pack all of our kit up ready to leave for our 6hr drive to Bruksvallarna (Sweden) in the morning and make a packed lunch for the journey, I also took a Vitamin C effervescent as one of the athletes on camp is feeling a bit ill and i DO NOT want to catch anything before my first European Youth Olympic qualification race on Saturday!

Torsby snow tunnel

A few weeks ago I went to Torsby in Sweden with the British Nordic Development Squad European Youth Olympic group for a week of pre-season training on snow at an indoor snow tunnel! The camp was really useful to get a good week on snow before we go to the European Youth Olympic qualification races in November!
The tunnel's a 1.2km loop suitable for classic and skate with some good climbs and decents and it's full of other national teams who are great for training alongside with.
I flew out to Oslo (after a boring, lonely 6hr delay in Paris) where I met my coach and team mates in the squad van, when I got there I found a very big box down the side of the van saying 'ferns skis' which had my 5 new pairs of race skis inside, I was soo excited to try them out! When we arrived at our apartment I was pleased to find my own room as for the first time I was the only girl on the camp, our coach's wife also had to come to meet squad policy of a female having to attend for any u18 girls but she made some really good meals keeping our energy levels up to train hard all week!
Overall the week was a success and I could really feel a difference in my technique after a long summer of trying to improve general body positions, balance and weight transfer!