Winter Camp - The Summary

With the OCUP#1 being held at the same time as this year’s winter camp, it created a slightly different atmosphere to the camp and its activities. Most years, as is typical with ski camps in general, the camp is about getting in volume and working on technique. However, since there were two races going on for the weekend, it meant that the volume training needed to be more or less cut out so that the races could at least be a useful experience. However, other than this change from volume to racing and a slight decrease in the amount of time spent skiing, this was a typical ski camp.
The camp got going on Friday, (December 17th) with people showing up at various times throughout the day. The first crew up was Colin and Alison who were bringing all of the food with them. Since there is a copious amount of food consumed at a ski camp, this resulted in a significant amount of food to pack into a not so significantly large car, along with skiing gear and waxing gear. As a result, there was a good game of Tetris that got to be played by Colin and Alison in order to fit all of the food. However, unlike Tetris they had the distinct advantage of being able to resize the pieces to make things work. This included going to the extreme of packing groceries items inside of the wax bench, under seats and wherever else they could find to fit the food in. They were successful in managing to fit all of the food in the car without having to resort to packing food in the engine compartment; however if this had been the case, time could have been saved on the cooking of some of the food ala Red Green style of cooking in his van engine compartment.
While those two managed to get up to Highlands earlier in the day and as a result get some skiing in and some wax testing, most of the rest of the crew strangled in at various points throughout the afternoon and evening. The cast of characters that arrived included: Derek, Glenn, Katie, Nathaniel, Ryan, Tim Rhodes and Nolan, who was down from Ottawa for the occasion. Also, there were a few none ski team guest with Heather (Ryan’s gf), Chrissy (Tim R’s gf) and Ian (Derek/Glenn’s brother) also making an appearance to have some time away and enjoy a bit of skiing on the weekend.
With the various arrival times for all of the skiers, the Friday night did not entail too much in the way of activities with waxing skis for the next day being the only defined task. The decks of cards got brought out and the game of Euchre was attempted to be taught to some of the members of the team. Nolan appeared to be over thinking the game, perhaps trying to determine the race results for each of the cards in his hand, which lead to a few mentions that he should hurry up and play.
The Saturday morning dawned as usually at 7am, with some oatmeal to line the stomachs of all and fuel them for the sprint races ahead. The qualifying sprint got going at 10am, so it left ample time for everyone to test their skis, warm up at their pace and get ready for the sprint. With the races being literally 200m out the front door of the farmhouse, it made for a very relaxed environment as everyone could come and go at their own pace and no sitting on the bus waiting for it to get closer to your start as either the men’s/women’s race got going, as is typically the case at team races.
The sprint qualifier is exactly that, a quick 3 min of racing and you are done. Along with some cool down and getting changed into some dry clothes; everyone was ready to go by about 11:30 for some classic technique work. With the sprint heats not going off until the 2:30 range, this left for an hour and a half or so for technique time and then lunch. With many of the Waterloo skiers being less experienced with classic skiing, Coach Rhodes was tasked with trying to help out everyone with this. Unfortunately, with the limited timeframe available, he could not get into any technique games or drills, just mostly focusing on looking at and suggesting technique improvements.
A major advantage to having some other guest with the ski team was that with proper planning, lunch could be prepared by these other guests and that the skiers could come right in and enjoy lunch, without the normal delay associated with making it after the workout or activity. The ever delicious tuna melts were on the menu for lunch and the thought of tuna melts, almost made alumni Kieran Jones, who was at the OCUP in his capacity as coach at Nakkertok, abandon the kids he was in charge of out on the course as they raced etc and come and join the team for lunch. Surprisingly, his stomach did not win the battle this time and was unable to enjoy the savoury taste of tuna melts.
After lunch was the sprint heats, with some decent results turned in from the Waterloo skiers as was described previously in the race report. After these heats concluded and associated cool down, most headed back to the farmhouse for some downtime or napping as deemed appropriate.
Dinner helped no surprises as the veteran members of the team had learnt their lesson from the Fall camp and did not let team rookie cook the dinner solo and as a result, no smoked spaghetti was experienced this time.
Saturday evening brought the arrival of assistant coach Justin, along with his three year old daughter Natalie. Of course, anytime a kid is brought into the company of those who aren’t regularly around them, they are the life of the party and Natalie was no exception, providing a great deal of entertainment. And of course Justin got the benefit of having a dozen babysitters to watch out for Natalie as well.
The rest of Saturday evening brought a night ski, and then followed by the annual gift exchange, where a $5 limit is placed on purchasing items, but other items which you did not purchase are fair game. As a result, the type of gifts can vary from items that are gifted because they were not needed in a household as they were a duplicate, to random items that have no practical use but are re-gifted through the gift exchange every year to random items that have accumulated in the barn over the years and our gifted in order pass them on to other skiers, or potential return them to the owner who originally left them there.
This year some of the items in the gift exchange included (Sorry, you should have been there) and (Can’t tell you or UWNN would have to kill you) and a really neat item, (You are invited to come next year and experience the festivities for yourself). With that, Saturday night came to a close as everyone headed off to rest up for the race the next day.
Sunday morning was prep time for the race and the luxury of being able to step out the front door for warm-up being enjoyed yet again. With the race being multiple loops, including Racer Out as the major hill, everyone was pretty tired coming out of the race. However, seeing as it was a camp, there was no time to be wasted, and so after some lunch, it was back out on skis to work on skate technique. With some more time to work with, there was a number of drills working on body position and improving skate technique all around. When it came time to work on hill climbing technique, the tired legs started to show as those who had raced struggled a little bit at the sight of Racer Out yet again. The final activity in the skate technique work was downhill balance and for this it involves going down some gradually inclines well working on balancing on one ski up with various levels of complexity. The top end of this complexity is the Zorra, where you are going down the hill on one ski and you take your other ski off and perform some tricks and then attempt to get your ski back on. There will be some video posted of this feat in a future post.
Sunday night brought Lasanga for dinner and not much else of substance as most of the skiers were pretty tired from the day and disappeared for bed at various times. As well, a few of the skiers also began to head back to Waterloo as there were some exams to be written the next day.
Unfortunately Sunday night brought some unpleasant news to a few in the farmhouse, as Glenn and Ian both had rough nights, coming down with some sort of sickness, possibly a bit of food poisoning.
Come Monday, with a bunch of the skiers having headed home and more being sick, Derek, Colin, Justin, Katie and Ryan were the ones left to head out and enjoy some more skiing and just put in some kms and enjoy the skiing. With the final clean out of the house, the camp was concluded and everyone headed back to Waterloo to enjoy the beginning of their winter holidays.