October 08, 2010 (Park City, UT) – It’s like clockwork. The leaves turn, the days get shorter, the mornings turn nippy and our Canadian xc ski crew make our yearly move south in search of the perfect lung searing low oxygen environment to continue our preparation for the winter race season.

This year the latest Canadian ski team boss, Justin Wadsworth, chose Park City, Utah as our three-week base camp to get the red blood cell production revved up and the hours pumping. It was a welcome change, as the past five seasons we’ve been doing our fall altitude camp down in Mammoth Lakes, California. While Park City/Deer Valley is a little lower and a bit more “driving intensive” than Mammoth, most felt as though the training in and around the sleepy Sierra Nevada pseudo-town seemed to be getting a little monotonous. Personally, I love the training down in Cali, but I also realize (and was totally cool with a change of venue) it’s great to change it up a bit and keep it fresh.

If Mammoth was starting to feel like an autumn house after a cool half decade there, Park City would be akin to a second/vacation home. Mammoth aside, the place that I’ve spent the second most time at training/exploring/living at altitude is Park City. This is my 3rd or 4th time down here (George and I must be getting old – we can’t remember exactly how many times we’ve been here) for a three-week training stint, so it’s not exactly “new” – but it’s been three years since I’ve ran on the good old “mid mountain trail” or suffered around Soldier Hollow’s (the site of the 2002 Olympic Winter Games) difficult, leg-busting and absurdly steep rollerski loop.

I’m really excited to be here. The training is fantastic, and along with some old classics’ (loops/trails), it’s been awesome to be shown some new stuff by the American athletes and coaches who were around and trained with us during the first 11 days of this year’s camp. Thanks to the Hoff (Noah Hoffman), the dude has this place cased out pretty well! They (the Americans) are off to Lake Placid for their yearly fall hammer fest at sea level, so we are on our own now for the last 10 days.

It’s the biggest training camp (number of athlete-wise) I think I’ve ever done as along with most of the National Ski Team, Louis Bouchard’s CNEPH crew has joined us, a couple athletes from the Rocky Mountain Racers and the one and only “kikkanimal” Kikkan Randall rounding off our crewzilla. It’s huge for our women’s team that Kikkan chose to join our altitude camp because not only is she a World Champs medalist and World Cup winner, she’s also the most positive person I know, has an enviable and bad-ass double pole, and is just a great team player all around. Needless to say she’s a welcome addition.

Aside from some a game of baseball one afternoon, an evening of tennis and a couple trips to the cinema training camp life is fairly standard. We train, sleep, eat, still play more than a few games of Monopoly (it’s actually getting embarrassing to report on this…), get awesome therapy from Shayne, Scott and Wolfman, talk smack, play a little guitar (a few of us – although it’s hard to quantify it as “playing guitar”) have fun and just focusing on doing the best job we can.

Another aspect of fall training is getting that last big dry land training block in. We are pushing hard and working well together. It’s so great to be on a team that is so fired up and believes in one another. We are almost ready. Another 10 days remain down here under the Utah sun (hopefully anyway, it’s been a little wet the last three days) to hone our skills, push the limits as we make our final big push before the snow flies.

It’s real. Just this morning Stef reminded me that in exactly one month from today we’ll be boarding a flight leaving Canada to blast up to Northern Scandinavia to begin the season. It’s ever so close to being game-on.

I can’t wait.

D.