May 25, 2013 – It’s Wednesday. Wednesday, May 22^nd to be exact and I’m down here in Central Oregon. Read: south; latitudinal-south anyway – especially for a kid from Sudbury, ON. And it’s snowing. Not just that “Christmas special on tv, lightly falling on the picture perfect pines” snow either, as we were greeted this morning to 7 inches of new snow on the Mt. Bachelor trails ahead of our planned intensity! Crazytown. But as a cross-country skier it was a serious blessing in disguise, as the snowpack up at Bachelor this season prior to the snowstorm had been the lowest I’ve ever seen it for our annual Bend camp.

As you’ve gathered – or if you read my previous Wednesday’s selection – I am indeed down here in Bend, Oregon for our first official training camp of the year. I absolutely love being down here and although there’s a good chance I will write this about every training camp of the year, I am a pretty sure that Bend is my favourite camp we do. The variety of great training we are able to bang out is unparalleled and the skiing up at Mt. Bachelor for late May in my experience has always been stellar. The terrain is perfect, there are a lot of kilometers groomed – so variety and congestion isn’t an issue and everyone is so excited to be back into the groove of training and preparing for the upcoming racing season meaning the stoke is high on all the faces you see out there – rain or shine.

On the training side of things, since Saturday I’ve already enjoyed four “on snow” workouts up at Bachelor, done some crushing strength sessions, some rollerskiing and a great run. Also, as is tradition down here in Bend, we’ve hit up some lunch-stop musts already too. The Victorian, Jackson’s Corner, and a new stop for us – “Chow” have all been enjoyed. A Canadian xc fav’ – Spork – isn’t open in their new location yet – so we are doing our best to do daily psychotherapy with Joel to keep him going. Along with great training opportunities, there’s no shortage of great little cafes/lunch zones down here and along with the lunch hits, Thump has been hit almost daily to enjoy some well-pulled espresso. Ok, I’ll admit it – we also even had ice cream one evening downtown, and yes – it was delicious. Perhaps not the nutritional A+ choice to get me up the immensely enormous climbs in Sochi, but on a warm evening with great friends after a couple decent workouts I challenge you to turn down a waffle cone.

The #1 focus of this Bend camp is obviously maximizing our on-snow time and more specifically defining and working on some technical goals we’ve addressed for the upcoming year. We’ve been doing a lot of that already and my body’s muscular and myofascial systems are what I’d imagine contestants on “the biggest loser” must feel like after their first workout in 27 years with a personal trainer. If you filmed me waking up in the morning and then slow-mo’ed it I’m pretty sure there would not be much discernable difference between me and an actual African hippo fighting his way out of the deepest/suckiest mud in an African river bank – with similar amounts of noise and volume accompanied. I’m sore.

Also, in some depressing news, it turns out I don’t know how to ski. Like at all. Justin has addressed some changes that are the priority – most notably a completely re-vamped double pole and one-skate – and I’ve been working really hard on it already. That explains the epic soreness, as I am using muscles that apparently I have never once used in all my 30 years on earth. I feel like a newborn foal taking their first shaky steps after birth, a lot of the movements’ feel foreign, forced and just plain bizarre. My abs and back are blasted and I’m trying my best not to just fall onto either the a) snow or b) pavement (depending if we are rollerskiing or on snow) in a pile of tears, alternating between pounding the surface and/or my head with my fists sobbing and saying “I suck, I’ll never get it, this is so hard” as snot and sadness roll down my face. If it was easy, everyone would ski beautifully, is the moral of the story. Doesn’t sound half-bad actually when put that simply… Still – these are changes I want and am committed to make, so (for now), I’m doing my best to suck it up.

Aside from napping, skyping Kristin, therapy, lunches out, coffee in, Stanley Cup playoff watching, meetings with coaches and other staff – I’ve also been reading a decent amount. I’m currently flying through “Indian Horse” by Richard Wagamese – which was one of the five selections in this year’s “CBC Canada Reads” contest. It’s an easy read, but definitely enjoyable with about 50 pages remaining. I am still trying my best to keep up with weekly New Yorker reading, and some great reads the last couple weeks are:

– Inherit the Wind, by Michael Specter
– Every Disease on Earth by Rivka Galchen
– Odd Ball by Ben McGrath
– The River Martyrs by Luke Mogelson

Just to name a few. The diversity and quality of writing really is so enjoyable and something I look forward to weekly.

The musical scene ticks along, although I don’t have much to report on as far as “new” goes other than does anybody else notice just how completely and exactly the same “The Royal Concept” sounds to “Pheonix” ?? I know right?!

One last thing – Kristin was involved in a bit of an accident with a car back in Oslo on rollerskis (she was hit by a car running a red light). She’s doing ok, two broken ribs, some stitches and pretty sore – but it could have been WAY worse. Let’s all remember when we are driving that bikes, runners, walkers, rollerskiers etc… are out using the roads and drive “heads up” out there. A lot of this stuff is avoidable if we aren’t distracted and drive with care.

That’s this Wednesday’s news – thanks for stopping by.