August 4, 2005 – There is no better way to inaugurate a new ski team than with a summer training camp! After spending the spring training solo in our respective hometowns, members of the newly formed Exel Racing Team congregated in Duntroon, Ontario for a week of dryland training and team building. Gord and I traveled from rain soaked Alberta to the hot and humid climate of Southern Ontario to join our eastern teammates Karla, Jeff and Adam for our weeklong training camp. Missing in action was Tara, who unfortunately had to spend the week studying neuroscience at summer school! In her absence however, we were fortunate enough to temporarily replace Tara’s company with four members of the XC Ottawa racing team: Karl Saidla, Meghan McTavish, Gavin Hamilton and Ed McCartney.

Larry Sinclair of Highlands Nordic was generous enough to sponsor our camp with free accommodation for the week in the “new” farmhouse. I use the term “new” loosely, as a one hundred year old farmhouse is hardly new, however it is the newest addition to the Highlands Nordic Empire. New or old, it didn’t take long for the Exel Racing Team to take over the house and make it home. Moments after our arrival Gord and Jeff were up on the roof trying to set up a satellite dish; the Tour de France was in full swing and none of us wanted Gord to have to go through Tour withdrawal. Unfortunately, we were never able to find the satellite signal and as Gord stated, we “missed one of the most historically significant Tours ever.” It wasn’t until our return home that we found that the reason for the failed satellite signal wasn’t our limited compass reading skills, but rather the old and faulty 100m long TV cable loaned to us by Gord’s dad (nothing that a trip to Canadian Tire couldn’t have fixed!)

Even if we had been able to set up the satellite to watch the Tour, we really wouldn’t have had much time to sit down and watch it. Most of our spare time was spent organizing the logistics of our new team and meeting with our sponsors. The team had dinner with Dave Michael of Exel North America Inc. our title sponsor, and discussed our goals for the season. We also had a very successful trip into Toronto to have a tour of the Brooks Canada headquarters and warehouse and to have dinner with a friend of Gord’s. Dinner was great and we were all very surprised and pleased to be presented with a cheque from our first bronze sponsor! In between workouts and meetings, we were able to fit in a few teambuilding exercises, including tractor driving, rock picking and firewood stacking for Highlands Nordic, learning the words to Adam’s favorite song and our new team song “Feel Good Inc” by the Gorillaz and attending the world famous 9th Annual Elvis Festival in Collingwood.

There wasn’t a dull moment at our training camp and there were many highlights. Our three-hour run along the Bruce trail was a definite high point. Tour guides Karla and Jeff took us pass the ruins of Castle Glen, a two hundred year old stone mansion that now stands in ruins, and through the Standing Rock and Caves, which are a series of small deep canyons that have natural air conditioning and were a pleasant surprise on a hot humid day! After doing most of my intensity solo in the spring, our midweek duathlon time trial was a great way to get some ski specific intensity in and fight it out to the line with my teammates. Rollerski speed aside, Karla took the win on the women’s side and Gord edged out Karl for the men’s title. The Exel Racing Team was also very fortunate to have Ulf Kleppe, an expert on ski technique, join us for two days of training. Ulf took everyone back to the basics of ski technique and helped us pick out the little things in our need to change and im prove on. I was very impressed with how well Ulf worked with the team and how he helped us all improve our technique! Since working with him, I have had a constant voice in my head repeating the various technique tips that I need to work on!

The week ended with the Brooks Bala Falls Triathlon. With the help of Team Hardwood’s Amanda Holdsworth, the Exel Racing Team was able to enter two teams into the relay category of the triathlon. We wanted to stack the teams so that we would be duking it out all the way to the finish, so we decided to have Amanda, Jeff and Adam as Exel Racing Team 2 and Karla, Gord and I as Exel Racing Team 1. Karla came out of the water with a small lead over Amanda after the swim leg. Gord then added to the lead over Jeff in the bike, setting up for a cat and mouse chase as Adam tried to make up five and a half minutes on me in 7km of running. I was able to hold off Adam until 50 m to the finish, when he hurdled a two foot bolder to pass me and take the inside corner into the finish stretch! In the end Exel Racing Team 2 took first place over Exel Racing Team 1 by only a few seconds.

Members of the Exel Racing Team are now heading home after a very successful camp. We are all very excited with the progress our team has made in the last few months since its debut. However, we still have lots of work to do in order to ensure that our team has all the resources required to achieve our goals this winter. Stay tuned for our weekly Exel Racing Team Updates!