October Camp 2017 - Hintertux, Austria
At the beginning of October I started my second year at university, and only 2 weeks in I was flying over to Austria for a preseason camp on the glacier in Hintertux. After nearly missing my flight due to engineering works on the Bath to London line, I arrived in Mayerhofen - the town we were staying in just down the valley from Hintertux. The last time I trained here was in May 2012 and had forgotten how stunning this area of the Alps is! The only downside to being here at this time of the year was the smell from the manure that the farmers were spreading on their fields...
This camp was our first opportunity to meet our new head FIS girls coach, Doug Elsey, who came from the Vail Ski Club in the US where he was also head of the FIS girls program there, as well as new coaches Detra and Simon. They have a wealth of experience and knowledge, as well as being super friendly and funny.
We had lots of interesting courses set for us by the coaches with different rhythms and distances, which challenged us to apply the technical improvements we made in free-skiing to different courses, and required us to think tactically about our line. On top of this we had every type of weather condition thrown at us: bright sunshine and flat light, warm temperatures down to -20 degrees, rock hard snow, soft snow, powder, and 40 mph winds. Training in Hintertux also meant we could train on some steep terrain, which weren't always able to do in Chile in the summer. This was great training to help us adapt to different conditions we might experiences in the races this winter.
Minus 20 degrees, 40 mph wind, snow, flat light - and we still want to train!
During the camp we trained a mixture of GS and slalom gates, and I also trained Super G for the first time in well over 2 may be even 3 years. It was set on one of the flatter rolling pistes in Hintertux, which was a nice gentle introduction for me to get back into speed. Nevertheless I really enjoyed it! I was planning on just skiing slalom and GS this season but I've now reconsidered and also plan on racing some Super G as well.
Our resident S&C coach, Stevo Cooper, gave us some useful tips on recovery; often we finish training and go straight in for lunch, completely skipping out recovery that we would normally do after a training session in the gym. So he gave us some practical exercises to make use of the dead time whilst travelling down in the gondola to kick start recovery and get our blood lactate down before the next day training.
Mid way through the camp, we took a day off to recover and, since we don't often train in Austria, it was a good opportunity to do some sightseeing and eat some traditional Austria food. For lunch we had tiroler gröstl (Austria-style bubble and squeak), which I will definitely be cooking when I get back to uni, and apple strudel for pudding.
My biggest challenge at the moment is competing in my first full season of racing in 4 years, studying a full-time degree and being successful in both. On this camp I was waking up a 6:30, skiing all morning until 12:30, had lunch and got back to Mayerhofen by 14:00, study for 2 hours, fitness for 1.5 hours, ski prep for 1.5 hours, dinner, video for 1 hour, study until bed at 22:30, sleep and repeat for 2 weeks. Whilst studying did give my body an opportunity for my body to recover, my mind was constantly on overdrive, so by the end of the camp I was completely mentally exhausted, which makes it really difficult to keep pushing your limits in training. If I'm going to make it to April without burning out, I need to schedule in a little bit of time every day to really relax.
Sadly on the way back from my camp in Hintertux to Aosta, our team's kit van was broken into and all of my tech skis and poles were stolen, including 2 pairs of slalom skis, 2 pairs of GS skis, 1 pair each of GS and slalom poles, and the ski bags they were contained in. After building up so much confidence skiing on them over summer and having put so much work into them every day to get them as fast as possible, it really does suck to have them stolen. I have however, been overwhelmed by the amount of support I have received. Thank you to everyone who has offered to help. I have fortunately been able to source all my replacement equipment before the start of my race season on 3rd December.
Overall, despite having all my poles and tech skis stolen, it was a very productive camp. We trained in a all kinds of challenging conditions (ice, soft snow, gale force winds, flat light, freezing temperatures). I learnt that I need to manage my studying, training and rest more effectively. I rekindled my love of Super G. And it was a great opportunity for me to meet my new coach Doug, before the start of the race season.
