September 18, 2013 – We kicked off the summer with REG camp at Stratton (SMS), reuniting with all of our New England friends. This was our first of many camps for the summer. We survived the infamous Canadian Strength Test and the burley Stratton Hill Climb, with a really fun agility test as well.

Katharine Ogden © Bryan Fish

These were amongst other great workouts with other REG athletes as well as the SMS T2 Team. One evening, the USST athletes generously offered to have answer any questions we had about professional skiing. We learned about their experiences traveling with the USST have its ups and downs but all and all when you spend an entire season together as a team you become a family. One fun team bonding activity we did were group skits, where REG athletes combined with T2 Team athletes were formed into groups and created skits to perform in front of everyone at camp. This night was entertaining to say the least.

Julia Kern © Bryan Fish

A few weeks later, we flew out to the Upper Peninsula and stayed at NMU in Marquette, Michigan. Being right on the Lake Superior shore was very convenient and allowed us to go Cliff Jumping often and for cold recovery swims. We made tons of new friends from all over the country and we were able to get to know some really cool coaches too. One of our favorite workouts was an OD double pole along the beautiful lakeshore. Another really pretty workout we did was an OD run in the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on the last day. Some nights we got together and watched world cup video and learned tons of cool stuff from presentations by Rick Kapala and Bryan Fish.

Shortly after, we hopped on another plane, but this time it was headed west to Utah. When we walked into the Center of Excellence (COE) in Park City, we saw a huge strength room, a roller ski treadmill, Olympic athletes, and much more. We were super psyched to be spending the next week at such an awesome place. We met Kikkan Randall for the first time there, and she sat down and ate dinner with us.

Julia Kern © Pepa Miloucheva

Between Kikkan, Matt Whitcomb and Jason Cork, we heard many funny and inspiring stories from the world cup! Matt told us a story about how Kikkan won a massive geode in a World Cup in Poland. Turns out Matt is also very good at cheering you on when you’re deep in the pain cave. This quality came in handy during the VO2max roller skiing treadmill test. The camp definitely tired us out by the end but we had a blast!

Our last stop on the tour of the pipeline for the summer was NEG camp in Lake Placid, NY at the Olympic Training Center (OTC). This camp included USST, Craftsbury Green Team and SMS T2 team athletes. Here we lived  alongside elite bobsledders and rhythmic gymnasts and got to see firsthand how athletes in other sports train.

Julia Kern © Bryan Fish

The team sprint brought out some competitive and exciting racing and we were especially psyched to be paired up with USST athletes. On one of our workouts was a hike up Algonquin Peak where we entered the “Artic Zone” and witness full on mid-winter weather. Throughout the camp, we encountered weather from 90 degrees and super humid to freezing temperatures with rain. They were able to get a lot of video of us, allowing us to get a lot of technique feedback from various coaches.

We had an amazing summer at all of these training camps! A big thank you to Bryan Fish and everyone else who made these camps happen! Above all, THANK YOU NNF!