August 20, 2010 (Wanaka, NZ) – It’s been a couple of years now that I’ve made the trip down South during our summer in order to find snow. Along with being one of the friendliest countries I’ve ever visited, New Zealand offers the best summer skiing conditions in the world – no wonder, it’s winter down there!

What I like about this deep South training camp is the focus it allows us to put on our physical and technical preparation. We lived on top of a mountain – literally! The place is called the Snow Farm, and is located right next to the ski trails allowing us to train a lot but at the same time, to spend a lot of time on recovery as well and maybe some Monopoly too.

The other cool thing about this place as that whenever we feel like we’ve had enough with the whole isolation deal, we are only 30 min from Wanaka, a sweet – very, very sweet – little town, surrounding a lake and overtaken by ski bums and coffee shops in winter. It’s lower altitude allows the temperature to rise enough for us to run in shorts and to spend some quality time wandering around.

As in the past, we use those 2-3 weeks on snow to put in some very high quality intensity training and keep working on improving our technique. Some days were sprint workouts, others were long distance ski days, and sometimes it was back to the basics. What we like most, is just putting a bib on and hammering!

With Justin Wadsworth now commanding our ship, I see a lot of positive changes, whether big or small, which bring a refreshing and progressive environment for us to train in. Having been on the coaching staff with the US XC Ski Team, Justin still has a good relationship with them allowing us to train with new partners. It’s kind of ironic that we never got to do this before but working together and sharing our weaknesses and strengths will definitely make us all faster xc skiers when winter comes.

With all of this and some of the best ski conditions I’ve seen at the Farm, it just felt easy to head out the door and put in the K’s. Our first week was spent on extra blue kick wax and we got to work on our tans at the same time which is always a bonus!

With some good planning and a couple key decisions, I am coming out of this camp not being too tired. We had some time to recharge our batteries when needed and it made the whole camp feel like a warm knife through butter.

We also got to spend a whole day in Queenstown, which is just over and an hour away from the Snow Farm. The town is nestled on the shores of Lake Wakatipu, surrounded

by mountains. After a much needed lunch at Furgburger – the self proclaimed “Best Burger in New Zealand” – we hopped on a gondola that would bring us to the highest summit of the area and went lugging. Big ups to Joel, our wax tech, for winning three of the six runs! And a special mention to Kershaw who braved all of his demons just to make his way down the track! It’s hard to choose between Furgburger and lugging for the highlight of the day, or perhaps it was the last 15 minutes of our drive back to Farm, with the exhaust fumes coming straight into our so-called “Subaru habitacle”.

I’m now on my way home, somewhere between San Francisco and Toronto. It’s only a matter of weeks now before Fall arrives, and with it, the beginning of University but more exciting – the first World Cup of the season!

Coming up next is the Mont-Sainte-Anne training camp. It’s now up to me to put up for my teammates and show them a good time!

Ciao
Alex