It’s January 2nd, and the cold weather is officially behind us.
Warmer than average seasonal temperatures and decent weather coming our way. Check out the text and images below for a breakdown on the last few weeks.
Rabbit Hill North Zone Open races
Shinae, Chiara, Lucy, Maddie & Kitzi travelled to Rabbit Hill in Edmonton for a 2 day sprint slalom series. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this format, a sprint works like this…
4 race runs per day
- 2 runs on the 1st course (best run counts)
- 2 runs on the 2nd course (best run counts)
- Fastest run from course 1 + fastest run from course 2 = result
This is a very cool format, particularly for the first race of the season. This format allows for good competitive volume and encourages intensity & risk. The girls had a great time…
- Chiara : first u14 races are now under the belt…valuable early season benchmarking opportunity. 13th on Saturday / DNF on Sunday.
- Shinae : solid series…5th u14 on Saturday / 6th u14 on Sunday.
- Lucy : great intensity and consistency…16th on Saturday / 17th on Sunday.
- Maddie : these were Maddie’s first starts in 20 months (2016.17 season lost due to an injury sustained at Kabdalis, SWE in November 2017). The consistency was lacking in the first couple of runs, but she got it going on Sunday, highlighted by a 3rd on Sunday afternoon (8th overall for the day)
Panorama FIS races
Rose, Georgia & Tommy Z (along with Markus & Luc) were in action at Panorama for 2x GS’s & 2x SL’s. The fields were deep, and conditions excellent.
- Rose had solid days in GS…taking big steps in relation to her peer group from last year, and nabbing her first 2 top 30 results (from bibs 72 & 77…not a bad jump). On both days, Rose was inside the top 10 for Canadian 01 borns…solid Rose.
- Georgia had an up and down series with some illness and a bit of a stack on the last day. 7th in the first SL, and good moments in the 1st GS (DNS 2nd GS due to sickness). Georgia is currently out of action due to concussive symptoms – we are expecting to see her back in action shortly.
- Tommy Z had an encouraging start to the season…solid performance in both GS’s and good lessons learned in a couple of tough SL’s.
Pre-Christmas training
We had a sweet block of GS, with the primary focus on;
- Depth
- Arcing
- Level
- Movement – power
The weather turned cold on December 23rd (& stayed cold until December 31st)…although the cold weather affected volume, and forced us to adjust our schedule, we didn’t lose any days and had good productivity over the holiday period despite the cold.
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| Tess warming up Maddie's toes...great teammates make great teams (quote by Duane) |
Christmas day
We moved from our annual tradition of brunch at the Banff Springs to Christmas dinner at the Banff Park Lodge – although the spread at Banff Park Lodge wasn’t quite as extravagant as the Springs (the difference between 5& 4 star), the food was excellent and the environment just right.
Boxing day
We were welcomed at the Capture the Flag paintball ranch with a temp of -24c, and we left on a high of -18c…it was ccccoold out there, but as paintball requires a good amount of moving around, we all stayed pretty warm (well pretty warm may be a bit of a stretch, but certainly warm enough to have epic games and a really good time). Paintball…this is always such a cool outing…team building, new challenges & loads of fun (+ a great tool for active recovery)…we always love it.
December 28-January 1 training for the u14.u16 groups…
- December 28 : SL technical skiing & drill courses
- December 29 : SL technical skiing & drill courses
- December 30 : off due to cold
- December 31 : SL technical skiing & drill courses
- January 1 : all mountain ripping @ Sunshine (replacement for December 30 lost day)
December 28-January 1 training for the FIS group
- December 28 : SL technical skiing & drill courses
- December 29 : SL technical skiing & drill courses
- December 30 : physical training (strength & power)
- December 31 : rest
- January 1 : SL drill courses
The groups did a great job in the colder temps…they focussed on being purposeful and making the most of every turn on every run. The cold absolutely impacted the amount of volume that we were able to ski, but we still got in plenty of turns. Average session volume in SL was between 700& 1000 gates per athlete, dependent on how much warming up the individual required). We must say that the heated socks were a huge help…thank you Michael Cater from Lenz for the always great support.
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| Nick, Elise and Mathieu en route to Canmore from the airport |
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| Lucy happy with the new boot...thank you Sporting Life & Sandy Webster for the great service |
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| Chiara doing some boot work with boot guru Sandy Webster |
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| u16's enjoying a day of all mountain ripping @ Sunshine |
On behalf of the coaching, operational and teaching teams...we hope that you have a great start to the new year. Out for now…the next update will follow in mid January. Please refer to the updates sent via e mail for January monthly planning for all groups.
Walker, Astrid, Cathy, Jennifer, Markus, Martin, Duane, Luc, Jeff & Justi
Walker, Astrid, Cathy, Jennifer, Markus, Martin, Duane, Luc, Jeff & Justi
