XC Spring National Camp

From the 8^th to the 13^th September, a group of athletes from the Australian Senior and U23 XC ski teams gathered in Mount Beauty, Victoria for their annual Spring training camp.

While the Spring camp has traditionally featured crust-skiing and on-snow technique work, poor snow conditions this year meant that the athletes had to rely on dry-land training. Nevertheless, it was a successful and motivating camp with up to 25 hours of running, roller skiing, strength and on one occasion, netball, logged. The camp was led by National Team Head Coach Alexei Sotskov and Falls Creek Training Centre Coach Jacob Huseby, while the Kiewa Valley provided an amazing training base with quiet roller-skiing roads and stunning views for trail running in the foothills.

Beginning with a long pole-bounding threshold workout on the Monday morning, Mount Beauty’s Mountain Gym was the setting for ski-erg intervals in the afternoon. Tuesday featured classical roller skiing, video analysis, running, core strength and ice baths in the Kiewa River. On Wednesday, we racked up over 1000m of elevation across 25km, running and hiking up and back to the Bright Gap. Thursday was ‘recovery’ - athletes played some hotly contested Netball (with coaches joining in very enthusiastically) and strength trained (again, at Mountain Gym). Finally, the camp wrapped up with a long-distance skate roller-ski before athletes headed back to their respective hometowns.

The camp was a valuable opportunity for athletes to build up training volume and work on their technique before commencing final preparations for their competition seasons in the Northern Hemisphere. As the national team is usually spread across many locations in Victoria, NSW and the ACT, it was also wonderful to socialise, team-build and learn from each other outside of our regular training environments. Thanks to the excellent coaches for making it such a success.

The camp was also a great opportunity to present the team with funding from the Kangaroo Hoppet and AGL, provided in lieu of scholarships awarded as part of the Hoppet presentations.