I am very excited to share with you our training from the past three weeks. Everyone is now primed for the winter season after some great summer and fall training. It’s been a highlight being able to spend the majority of our training time on snow since mid October.

Prior to our first real snow skiing on November 8th, we have been training primarily on “frozen thunder” for our #frozenfantisies training camp in Canmore. Frozen Thunder is a 1.5km loop of stored snow from last year. Although the track is shorter then previous years, the terrain is great for training. We are lucky to have had a dump of snow at Lake Louise during our time in Canmore. This was our first day of the season skiing on real fresh snow (as opposed to the stored snow made last winter).

Our time in Canmore also included a couple of pre season races. The first, a kings court format sprint race on October 26th. The highlight for the team was Julien Locke’s 4th place finish, closely behind national ski team athletes Len Valjas, Jess Cockney, and Ivan Babikov.

The following week we raced an invitational 10km/8km distance race for males and females respectively. These were both highly successful races, indicating good shape with every athlete, as well as plenty of room for easy improvement for the next few weeks. As always the team is strong and very cohesive. We continue to challenge each other and push each other to a new level.

~ David Palmer