August 14, 2010 (Haig Glacier, AB) – Wow, where to start…this past spring was a crazy one. As it is with the conclusion of any four year Olympic cycle, the 2009/10 season ended with a lot of uncertainty. Many athletes contemplate retirement and have to decide if they have the drive to get back in the saddle for yet another season of hard training. Before the start of the 09/10 race season, I had made up my mind that I would compete for at least one more year after the Olympic Games.

This was largely due to the fact that my ankle injury had not allowed me to get in a full year of training and I know that if I were to retire after a sub standard season of training I would certainly be left wondering what might have been. As well, the 2011 World Championships in Oslo, Norway are sure to be one of the biggest events of my ski career and this is not something I want to miss out on. I still remember the images from the Trondheim World Champs in ’97 and hope to race in front of a similar spectacle this season. At this point I’d say that I’m taking things year by year but am certainly not against the possibility of being on the start line in Russia in 2014…

With a new season has come a new team for me for the first time in over eight years! I am still a part of the Canadian National Ski Team but am training full time now with the Alberta World Cup Academy under head coach Mike Cavaliere. While still maintaining its core program, The Academy added National Training Centre to its status this spring and is able to offer an outstanding lineup of coaches, athletes and training opportunities. I weighed a lot of options in the spring and the World Cup Academy was definitely the right fit for me.

I have already had an outstanding spring and summer of training with a camp on snow in Silver Star, a great dry land camp in New Denver, BC and most recently a week of skiing up at the Haig Glacier…Oh The Haig, it’s almost impossible to describe my feelings about the Haig Glacier Camp. On paper it seems like it should be paradise but as many of the veterans on the team will tell you, the novelty has worn off long ago. If you’ve never been to the Haig you’re probably thinking to yourself ‘How can this be?’ Well I have one statement for you: The smell of burning, human, feces!

Being from Alberta and having the luxury of the Haig Glacier in my own backyard, I think that there are very few who have logged more days training at the Haig than I have. Last week, on one of my morning hikes up to the glacier from the camp, I tried to tally how many days I have spent at the Haig in my career. I couldn’t come up with an exact number but suffice to say that it is well over 150 days! It has been a long time since I have done a week long stretch at the Haig and I wasn’t thrilled about prospect of being there for an extended period of time, but with a young energetic team to keep the entertainment going it ended up being a pretty decent week. The highlight of the camp’s recreational activities was the highly anticipated 3rd Annual Haig Glacier Disc Golf Championship. This four day affair saw some intense competition and I’m proud to say that I came out on top, winning the coveted AWCA trophy. {ADD LINK, <More about the tournament here>}

The camp wasn’t all fun and games though, of course there was a little training to be done too! One of my pet peeves is the approach many coaches and athletes take to training at the Haig, so here are a few recommendations from a guy who has logged some serious time at the Haig Glacier Camp:

1. You are there to ski and ski well. Leave the ‘look how many hours I can do’ attitude at home and focus on good quality skiing and technique. If this means only skiing 1 or 2 hours a day then so be it, avoid turning into the ‘Glacier Yeti’ as some of the AWCA team have coined the term for someone who shuffles around the loop, head down and technique the furthest thing from their mind.
2. Keep the afternoon training to a minimum or cut it completely, afternoon workouts are mediocre at best at the Haig and in my opinion are largely a waste of time and energy.
3. Unless you do elaborate hour long core/strength circuit exercises with little oxygen and no rest at home as part of your regular routine, the Haig is no place to start! Stick with some very simple and short strength maintenance and fill the rest of your time with some balance work and/or stretching.
4. You are living at 2400m and skiing at over 2600m so train accordingly, this means keeping the heart rate at the low end of zone 1, especially on the run in to the camp and the morning hike. For some reason, both the run in and the hike tend to turn into strong man competitions and will only speed your transformation into the ‘Glacier Yeti’. If you run into the camp in less than 2h15min you are going faster than 95% of the National Ski Team and more importantly, YOU ARE RUNNIG TOO HARD!
5. The words ‘Training Camp’ tend to invoke thoughts of huge hours and hard workouts, but in my opinion, this shouldn’t be the case for the glacier camp. Although it’s very easy to crank out the hours at the Haig, this is the best training camp of the year to worry about quality and forget about quantity. If you’re doing hours for the sake of trying to match a number on a piece of paper then you may be missing the whole point of the Haig Glacier Camp!
6. Have fun and enjoy the incredible setting of the glacier camp, and yes, that smell is in fact burning poo, spend as much time up wind from it as you can!

In the tape deck:
Artist: The White Panda, Track: Drake & Diane
Artist: Stromae, Track: Alors on Danse
Artist: Mike Posner, Track: Cooler Than Me(Gigamesh Remix)
Artist: Hoddie Allen, Track: You Are Not a Robot(feat. Marina & The Diamonds)

On the tube:



Overheard:
“No helmet on da bike? My mom would lose it!” – Alex Harvey

This article as well as other blogs and photos can also be found at drewgoldsack.ca

Thanks for reading!

Drew Goldsack