Mt. Washington Camp Recap
Finding a new training location is always exciting, and Mt. Washington, British Columbia did not disappoint! I find it so nice and refreshing, both for training adaptation and motivation, to break away slightly from my usual summer training schedule every few months for a training camp. At the end of last month, I flew to Mt. Washington on Vancouver Island for a week long training camp with my team from Canmore, the Alberta World Cup Academy.
Training camps allow cross country skiers to have slightly specialized blocks of training within their normal training year. Oftentimes, we pick training camp location based off of the season, geography, elevation, and access to infrastructure like ski trials for skiing or smooth roads for roller skiing. In Mt Washington, our focus was high quality uphill interval sessions.
One type of terrain that we struggle to find in Canmore is long, steady uphills for roller skiing. We have some options, but have to be shuttled down the hill every few minutes, which makes for a logistically complicated workout. The road leading up to Mt. Washington Ski Resort, on the other hand, is perfect for long uphill workouts! It’s about 18 km long with 1000 m of elevation gain throughout.
Another highlight of training camps is being able to get to know new teammates! There are a lot of new faces on the Alberta World Cup Academy this year and it was great to get to know some of them before I move to Utah this fall.
The focus of this camp was to complete several quality intensity sessions, with less emphasis on overall volume, although I did train about 23 hours that week (which is quite a bit for me). We did 4 intensity sessions in 6 days. 2 of the sessions were on the same day, but I wouldn't consider it a double threshold day, because the second workout was a brutal 6 x 1 min and 6 x 30 seconds of sprint qualifier pace. More like double torture than double threshold haha.
We mostly skied up the road leading to the ski resort, to focus on long, sustained climbing. I truly enjoy climbing and find it to be one of my strengths, so these workouts suited me well! 😉
In the afternoons, we explored the many running trails and boardwalks in Strathcona provincial park, and always stopped to swim at one of the lakes on the way home.
Outside of training, we spent the week swimming (nearly every day!) in alpine lakes and hidden gem rivers, cheering on Team Canada in the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and reviewing technique videos from previous training. On our afternoon off, we explored downtown Cumberland, ate fried chicken sandwiches and New Zealand-style fruit ice cream, and played beach volleyball.
Sadly, this was my one and only training camp with the Alberta World Cup Academy for this season. 😢 I’ll miss the daily training environment and training camps with this team, but I’m excited for new adventures and my plan is to be in Canmore next summer.
My next training camp will be with the Canadian National Ski Team in Mammoth Lakes, California. It will be my first training camp as a member of the Senior National Ski Team and also my first altitude training camp, and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to put in another volume training block before I head to school in about a month!
My next blog post will be a recap of the Mammoth training camp, so stay tuned!
Until next time,
Alison :)