HURT Camp 2015 was a blast. This annual training camp put on by Dave Paarlberg-Kvam of the Hudson United Racing Team (hence H.U.R.T) was hot, humid and sunny as always. It was also filled with great training, fun workouts, challenging timetrials and new experiences for all involved.
Training with others opens up so much potential. The ideas that float around from coach-to-coach, coach-to-athlete and athlete-to-coach are almost non-stop. Everyone does things a little differently, but everyone also understands the general concepts that make a successful season and a fun career in the sport. It was great to see so much of what we do in VT affirmed and echoed by other coaches and athletes. It was also great to not only add in some of our concepts, drills and workouts but to take away some new training tips, games and practices.
Warming up for strength circuits. So many on the ladders at once!
Discussion of college skiing and the steps to get there from SLU coach Ethan and VT Easterns coach Cally
We began the week with a session centered around bounding and various techniques and benefits of it. From there we spent two days on the Lake George bike path rollerskiing in groups and working on lots of drills as well as easy distance. I think we were on skis for 4 hours on Sunday! The bike path is a bit opposite of the Range: lacking in turns and corners but favoring gradual terrain and wide open sections perfect for group work. Temps were in the 90s on the first few days, but luckily the camp facility is equipped with the “Splash Pad”, a perfect water feature for cooling down…and occasionally showering in:
Cooling off under the Splash Pad
For the second half of the camp the intensity wrapped up with some tough sessions and timetrials. With Rudy Project glasses on the line there was a lot of hype surrounding three testing events: an on-ski agility course, an uphill run at the local alpine area West Mountain, and an uphill skate rollerski prologue.
Warming up for agility with some rollerski hopscotch
Aaron Huneck goes big and comes up short at the 180…don’t worry, he laughed it off!
Enjoying some watermelon after the conclusion of the West Mtn TT. The summit is actually beyond the hill in the picture. It took most 16-20 minutes…just like Bolton!
All in all it was an epic week of training and a great group of skiers who learned a ton, got pushed and challenges by themselves and the coaches, and will head into the rest of the summer stronger than before. I was pretty bummed no MNC athletes made the trek down with me (I was the sole representative of this “Joint Camp”) but I think I will be putting it on the table again next year in addition to working on our own summer camp.
While we did not have any athletes in attendance, I took some video of two presentations to bring back and share with MNC. The first is a talk with Brian Halligan, an athlete chosen 2 seasons ago to be a part of the US Biathlon Team. Brian is from the Queensbury and he gave a great talk about training, racing and his time with the team.
The second video is Coach Dave giving a little talk about finding paths to success in high school skiing and beyond. Where do you want to go in the sport? How can you get there? What are some important things to keep in mind?
Finally, to see the HURT page recap of the camp with some more photos, click HERE!
What’s on tap for this week with MNC? Volume! We will kick off the week with a Rollerski Pursuit TT at the Range with skiers from around the area tomorrow, and then put in some solid training hours in on the roads and trails…based on the forecast, it looks like the HEAT from HURT camp followed me back to VT!
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