Christmas Camp

Every year between Christmas and New Years the Labrador Mountain Ski Club runs a 4 or 5 day camp for its athletes. This is always a fun week. Many recent "alumni" (college students) return and help coach or train if they are racing for a college team. So, I spent the week skiing with the 13 and 14 year old ski racers at Labrador. This year there are 11 athletes in our group. We had a good week. The skiing has been great, the weather... so so. The week started pretty cold and Monday we seemed to get nothing done. Every three runs we had to come in for a quick warm up. When athletes are freezing focus is a problem and learning becomes difficult. We are working hard on getting athletes to drive their bodies forward as they turn using ankle flex as the primary means of accomplishing this. We were on GS (giant slalom) skis and did not ski in any racing gates but did run a brush drill. Brushes are a training tool looks basically like a bunch of astro turf gone rasta attached to a rubber base about size and shape of a decent sized carrot. The base is inserted into a hole drilled into the snow and the turf sticks out the top giving the athlete a reference of where to turn (or be). The brushes were set to help the athletes perform a series of rounded shaped turns to help develop a better turn entry. While this was working well most of the kids were starting to whine a bit about not getting into race gates. Tuesday was slightly warmer but really overcast and drab. The high temp at the top said about 20 but it was so damp it felt much colder. There was this sort of freezing mist that iced everything. This makes the trees beautiful but it also makes goggles impossible to see through. We were on GS gear again and set courses both in the morning and afternoon sessions. In the morning we used a tight and difficult training course in the afternoon we set it easier to end the day with the athletes feeling good about their skiing. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday were slalom. We set training courses all three days. The weather was warming and Thursday was a fantastic sunny day. This brought out many skiers. There is a group of pass-holders that can't stand the fact that there are ski racers training on the mountain. They seem to love to complain vehemently to not only the race coaches but to the management of the mountain because our training courses are always in their favorite places to ski. What management always seems to forget is that all our athletes are season pass-holders too and we come and ski no matter what the weather... which translates into some sales even if it is only french fries and hot chocolate. We are sometimes asked to pull out training courses but luckily not Thursday. Anyway, it was complainer Thursday at Labrador... but it did not spoil our fun. As I said, it was a fantastic day and the skiing was great. Friday we found most of the kids were physically tired and we quit at lunchtime. All in all a pretty good Christmas Camp.