Sunday, August 30, 2009

Training with Purpose

Since my last post I have traveled quite a bit! My last few days in Alaska brought me on yet another adventure. I traveled south of Anchorage, to Homer, and enjoyed some great camping, fun, food and play with my family. We took a water taxi across the bay to Halibut Cove and spent some time kayaking, hiking, and gallery walking; the small town is known for their amazing art talent. The weather was perfect and it reminded me why I love Alaska so much!

A view of Grewink Glacier

My mom and sisters, headed to Halibut Cove

A beautiful sunset, with Mt. Illiamna in the foreground

I returned to Ketchum for a short three days before I was on the road, headed to Whistler B.C. for a training camp. After 16 long hours of driving in the van, and pulling over for a 5 hour sleep, we arrived in Whistler! We are currently training with the U.S. ski team in this wonderful town, host of the 2010 Winter Olympics. As always, it is exciting to be here training at the venue, becoming more familiar with the town, and training with fellow competitors.

Part of the crew, lined up and ready to start intervals

The focus of the training camp is intensity...we have five interval sessions in a span of ten days! It is great to be training with some of the strongest athletes in the nation. We are focusing on improving our transitions, our speed and just becoming familiar and comfortable with the courses. Being here gives us the opportunity to visualize and imagine what it will be like to race the course and sprint the final 300 meters to the finish. Each workout is done with complete focus and purpose. The final countdown is on...every month, day, hour and minute counts!

Adele, working on her stand-starts

More from Whistler to come!

1 comment:

Kate Whitcomb said...

if you click on the last picture, you can see the HUGE smile on Dele's face... always happy, that one. Great to have her on board this year as a teammate!