August 24, 2011 - Alaska Update

I had a great month of training in Alaska and really enjoyed having such fabulous females for incredibly high quality workouts. Don't get me wrong, I love my team and missed hanging with Devon, Babs, Alex and Lenny but it can be fairly chill with just Peri and I for the training part of the day. A million huge thanks to our coaches especially Eric De Nys who went up to AK with us, as well as Justin Wadsworth, Chris Grover, Matt Whitcomb and Erik Flora for making the first ever female-only camp possible... The North American Women's Training Alliance.

Here are some photos from the excellent times had by all and all the best to all my new training partners cranking it out all over North America working to Spread the Love with their Fast and Female events and Dominate the World on the snow this winter.

Front row makes this stuff possible: Matt Whitcomb, Chris Grover, Erik Flora, Eric De Nys, Lauren Loberg, Brian Fish.

Good times on the Eagle Glacier. Our second week up there was on snow and I made the transition to American training on this beauty of a glacier at 1600m by upgrading from my typical 3 hour training days to solid 4 hour days.

Kikkan leading the charge. It's the first time anything like this has been done. Pretty cool to be there for the start of something amazing. Not to mention the fresh double classic track every afternoon was just awesome. Congrats APU on the new Pisten Bully, it rocks!

Peri and I kept connected as the only two Canadians rep'ing at the camp and always started our intensity with some quality "building through the zones" together.

Great lookin' glacier.

Loving it.

On the easy week after the glacier a bunch of us went camping in Seward on a gravel bar on Exit Glacier Road. Really really fun times, awesome eats and cozy camping. Got some real insight into the Kikkanimal and the freaking amazing fit Holly Brooks as well as Alaska in general when we went up the Mt Marathon race course. We only made half way but we seriously thought it was a joke when we were climbing up slippery muddy slopes using our fingernails and grabbing vegetation not to slide to our deaths. That is some really crazy action!

Liz Stephen and I did some Sea Kayaking and stayed at a boat-access hostel called Kayaker's Cove. A great sauna, swim in the ocean and fun exploring.

So much kicking ass to do and so little time for the American babes. Here we are following Rebecca Rorbaugh during a 6 km classic rollerski time trial. Impressive cranking especially by Jessie Diggins, Holly Brooks and Liz Stephen who captured the 'podium' that day.

On my last day in Alaska our friend's at Alpine Alaska called us up for a heli-ridge run. Unbelievably awesome.

I almost can't express how impressed I am with Kikkan Randall. A class act and awesome leader, I'm pretty sure it's extremely rare to find an international superskier who has a crystal globe at home from the World Cup overall standings, World Champs medal and multiple World Cup wins and still cares so so much about selflessly supporting and encouraging her competition and fellow skiers. I know she's been pushing for many years to get a camp going up in AK and it was really cool of her and the APU gang to host us; what a great team. In answer to the question Liz and I often got from the general public "What's Kikkan really like?" I say:
"She is an incredibly talented and hard-working professional skier and truly great and generous person." Plus I like how in this photo she's giving not only a thumbs up but also a Shaka.

Thanks for checking in. I tweet so much I almost run out of update mojo for the 'ol website. I'll be training in Canmore until the team's September 12-25 camp in Park City, Utah. Always a great place to train, and this time we'll do our Canadian thing with the yo-yo training alternating between time in Deer Valley at 2469m and Salt Lake City at 1288m. There will still be lots of time after that to sharpen up for a 5 month race season of world cups with no world champs this year. Perfect year to really go for it and test my limits to the max and beyond if you ask me!

Train hard!

Chandra