CCBC Hosts Visiting Team from Sweden - Final Instalment
Cross Country BC recently hosted a junior team from the Gällivare Skidgymnasium, which is one of five national ski academies in Sweden. The team visited as part of an exchange program that includes Cross Country BC sending a team to Sweden later this winter. Below is a report on their visit to Canada.
September 17-22, 2024: CCBC Fall Training Camp, Whistler, BC. 70 athletes (44 BC Ski Team/BC Development Squad; 15 from Sweden; 9 Alberta Ski Team; 2 BC Para Nordic Team)
DAY 8 (Sept 17th, 2024)
Tuesday morning started with most of our group doing our first long run in Whistler. As always, we were running uphill and this resulted in many nice views and spots on the way up. The downhill was also really nice and beautiful, but we needed to push very hard on the way down because we hadn't left enough time get to get back in time for our lunch. In the afternoon the whole group participated in a 2 km double poling test with BC Ski Team. After the test we did some more intervals, this time we double poled up a mountain.
DAY 9 (Sept 18th, 2024)
The morning started with a great breakfast made by the one and only Johnny. With a great breakfast behind us, we took the buss to the paved rollerski track at Whistler Olympic Park WOP). Today the training was 2.5 hours of rollerski technique. Every lap we focussed on something different like skiing without our poles, or something like that. After the training we were hungry so we got a nice lunch. The next training session was in the gym. We were the only team in the gym, and the gym was quite small, so all the athletes did their own training program. After the gym workout some of us took a short run, and then we went back to eat some very delicious dinner. In the evening we had a very exciting activity together with the whole camp (70 athletes; 15 coaches). We were divided into some smaller groups and those groups were competing against each other in some funny games.
DAY 10 (Sept 19th, 2024)
The plan for today was a sprint. The Canadians joined our training and it ended up being a good competition. Between training sessions we walked to Purebread (a bakery) with our new found Canadian friends. We tried different pastries but we all came to the conclusion that Swedish fika is better. In the afternoon some of us were up at the roller ski track at WOP, and we saw two bears. Everyone on our team who wasn’t on the track was really jealous when they heard about the bears. But they got a nice run in instead.
DAY 11 (Sept 20th, 2024)
We woke up excited for another hike in Canada. The conditions were amazing. It was sunny and the sky was blue so we had a fantastic view. We stopped at least every five minutes to take pictures. We were out for 3.5 hours and then we took the gondola down. When we came back to the camp (Whistler Athlete Lodge) we were served delicious sandwiches and tomato soup. In the evening we played volleyball and it was so much fun that we missed our team meeting. This day was a perfect end of our traveling and we were so happy that our last day ended up this good.
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