April 15, 2009 (Barrie, ON) – For Team Hardwood, the several weeks leading up to the Canadian Championships were an exciting time. These were the biggest races of the year, just a one hour drive from our home facilities and many of the athletes were coming into form at just the right time. After a cautious approach to the first half of the race season, in hopes that the heavy racing schedule would bring about the desired fitness later in the year, our weekend training was beginning to incorporate a few more competitive workouts on our race trails in one final attempt to sharpen the knife. Our results at the Canadian Championships were some of the best that this club has seen; seven podium finishes and twenty top ten were the highlights. This was something we were very proud of.

The preparation and planning for next year has already began, and our summer training schedule is starting to take shape. The official start to the 2009/2010 season will begin on April 18th with our annual planning camp. This is a day where the team will gather and discuss our plan for the upcoming summer, review what worked and what didn’t work this past season, and establish our new goals for the coming training year. In addition to the execution of their individualized training programs, each athlete on our Gold Squad will be run through a set of four physiological tests every eighth weekend. These tests will measure non-specific ski strength, specific double poling strength, establish training zones and determine fundamental weaknesses in the athletes’ physiology. The intent of this testing is not to necessarily see how fit or strong our athletes are or aren’t, but to give us the opportunity to better plan the next training period. This testing, therefore, looks for relative weaknesses within each athlete, which has the possibility to give us an idea of how they would respond to certain types of training.

Two week-long training camps during the summer will be where the training priority is placed, one dry-land out of Hardwood Ski and Bike, and the other on-snow at the Haig Glacier in partnership with our rival club, Big Thunder. Most other summer training will be planned around these two camps, where the emphasis will be on team-building and heavy training loads.

In the mean time, regeneration and recovery from a hectic racing season is in order, because it won’t be too long until we are back in full swing of things in less than a month’s time!

I would like to take this opportunity to thank AltaGas and Cross Country Canada for the generous support that Team Hardwood has received this past season! The decreased financial burden that you have given to our club has helped each and every one of our athletes achieve the results and, in many cases, the goals that had been set almost exactly one year ago!