July 02, 2011 – Just returned from an amazing Maui, Hawaii training camp. Yes you’ve heard that right, the Canadian Cross Country ski team had a training camp in Maui. We tried to combine some fun with hard altitude training and I’ll tell you – it was great.

During past ten days we surfed two days at sea/ocean level, camped four nights at 7,000ft/2,200m, and pretty much everyday rollerskied/biked/ran up the 1,0000ft/3,000m high volcano. Now we all wish we had more “surfing and relaxing at the beach” days, but training, as always, was our priority.

Good sweat boys...let's do it again tomorrow! © courtesy of Ivan Babikov

It was our first time in Hawaii – my wife and son came along – and we loved it. We checked out a few awesome places and I’m sure we’ll be back to see more sometime in future.

Training in Maui was very hot as you can imagine, but after about 6,500-7,000ft of climbing it wasn’t so bad. At the top of the volcano I would say the temperature was similar to Canmore right now. I had my best ever biking and rollersking sessions there.

The road that goes to the “TOP” is in great condition and we didn’t have any problems with traffic. Quite a few tourists and locals were amazed with those funny things that we simply call ROLLESKIS. 🙂

I also must point out that my good friend, Lenny Valjas, joined the team for his first summer training camp – this young and talented skier is a great addition to our squad.

Overall we all worked at 100% during this camp and the coaches and all of the support stuff did an outstanding job. Only because of them was this camp possible – a huge thanks to all of them…Justin, Eric, Joel, Scott, Louis.

Lots of training ahead, and quite a few camps to go, but Maui was a great way to start our summer training. In the next little bit we’ll ski at Sunshine and keep training in Canmore, till the next camp in New Zealand that starts at the end of the July.

SHAKA everybody!!!

More photos HERE.