New Zealand, Part 2

Fri, Aug  17, 2007 - By Pat Casey - TeamToday.org

The New Zealand training camp is coming to a close on Monday.  Last weekend a huge storm rolled through the Southern Island and center us with great skiing, epic scenery, and a high pressure that is just now weakening.  Weekly hours for the first week range from 18 to 27 hours when we are down here.  Our training doesn't differ too much when we are down here from when we are at home.  USST athletes treat this camp as an opportunity to get in a good block of summer skiing.   Staying in contact with the feel of snow is a huge benefit for many of these athletes.  It slips a little differently than our rollerskis do, thus we can stay close to the real feeling for a bigger part of the year.

Team Physiologist Justin Carlstrom taking lactate from Torin during a workout here in New Zealand. 

 

Justin came down for the first 10 days this trip.  He arrived with the first group of athletes to monitor how well they are acclimating from the travel.  The homeostasis numbers that he checks for include: lactate, heart-rate, blood glucose, and O2 saturation.  These numbers are graphed along with sleep hours, diet rating, physical rating, mental rating, and soreness rating that the athletes assess from the day before.  The numbers are then used to indicate when the athlete has reached homeostasis and is ready to train full bore. The numbers help us see trends from camp to camp and year to year. 

Zach Weatherford, USOC Strength Coach, also joined us for the first 10 days of the camp.  He is pictured here taking lactate from Leif Zimmerman during intervals.

Zach is here to help assess the strength gains and needs of our skiers.  He is writing individual plans for the athletes that cover individual needs based on his observations during camps like this.

Our sprinters are working hard and going faster...  Chris Cook lunging for the line during a speed workout. 4 x 5 x 100 M (timing lights and starting gate included.)

 

Our Continental Cup Team skiers are working hard and getting faster...  Rosie Brennan during an interval workout. (4x4min 90%of Max HR)

The skiing has been really good since the last storm.

Andy Newell, Chris Cook, Leif Zimmerman, Torin Koos, and Kevin Hochtl ran a full sprint simulation down here.  Since they are together at camps like this it is a good time to run sprints from Qualifying to A finals.  In Andy's words, "It is like Nascar on toothpicks out there." (Torin, Andy, and Leif from front to back.)

The scenery here in New Zealand is great...  Some Pics from the last week...

Leif during the sprint...

Chris, Andy, and Torin during intervals 3x8x30sec...

Alexa Turzian out for a morning walk...

Photos taken by Pat Casey