Hellooo BSF Pro Team family!
I want to pick up right where Graham left off taking you through the experience of our sole summer training camp this year in Sweden.
After a chill day on Monday where the team took a break from tunnel laps to do some lake swimming and exploring of downtown Torsby, it was back to the tunnel for more ski action on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Tuesday we got the engines running again with some focused skate speeds on snow in prep for our Wednesday morning skate intensity; each afternoon saw some easy hours skiing or rollerskiing classic style, logging volume and flushing out the mornings harder sessions. These were our last two days on snow, so the team was eager to get some quality work done and I thought our skate L3 interval session Wednesday morning was one of the most productive of the camp.
Since arrival, the camp had been going swimmingly well (despite some missing baggage @Delta @KLM smh). The team was in a great rhythm of logging high quality training, chowing, and recovering. As our time in Torsby was wrapping up and we were gearing up to head south to Trollhättan for some rollerski races, sickness finally caught up to the team. With travel, high energy expenditure, and living in close quarters, sickness is a common but irritating occurrence at training camps and races. It can also be a real strain on the vibe of the group, as people inevitably stress about their health and can be paranoid of one another, which is bad vibes and ultimately makes us more susceptible to illness. When a couple teammates came down with something on Tuesday, we got together as a group after the morning session to make a plan. I was impressed with the way the entire group valued transparency with one another, was willing to mask in common spaces, and worked together to try to optimize the outcome for the group. As a team that has experienced sickness at camps numerous times before, I can tell that we have gotten better at handling the circumstances with level heads and without panic.
So on Thursday the group masked up and bussed down the the city of Trollhättan where the Alliansloppet rollerski races would be contested from Friday-Sunday. We stayed in a hotel (featuring a legendary breakfast spread) with many of the weekend’s other competitors from various parts of Scandinavia, Europe, and Japan. Friday saw high winds and heavy rains for the skate sprint where healthy members of the team got some great experience racing in a competitive field at a large-scale rollerski event.
Saturday saw much milder conditions but even fewer healthy skiers; Jake Adicoff of the SVSEF Gold Team, who joined our camp alongside his teammate Peter, was the only one from our group to contest the 48km Alliansloppet classic. It was an excellent event to spectate with a number of world-class FIS and Visma Classics athletes going head to head. In the men’s race, Sweden’s Edvin Anger and the UK’s Andrew Musgrave formed a two-man breakaway from the 33km mark and built a 2+ minute gap over the rest of the field over the final 15km to go 1-2 in a spectacular feat.
That morning, Reid, Max, Emma, Erin and I previewed the winding, narrow climbs and exciting overspeed descents of Sunday’s 15km individual start course. Trollhättan is situated on a series of locks, canals, reservoirs, and dams that were brimming following Friday’s rain; the course parallels and crosses these waterways for several kilometers at the start and finish of the race, making for a uniquely scenic course.
The middle section of the course wound through idyllic Swedish residential neighborhoods where steep and narrow one-way streets climb past quaint red houses with Volvos in the driveway. Sunday’s race proved to be no better than decent for me– I may have jumped the gun on coming back from my cold. Nevertheless, it was quite an experience, and was the most legit-feeling rollerski race I’ve experienced to date. Fast competition, a deep field, road closures and TV coverage, vendors, fans, and more made for a great race experience. I got to practice my race process, feel the race nerves, and practice going hard – all things that will make the beginning of the season smoother when we get to winter!
Between the ski specific training we logged in Torsby and the memorable scene in Trollhättan at the Alliansloppet, this camp proved both fun and invaluable. We are all grateful to the race organizers for their support, and even more so to everyone in the Bozeman community and our greater BSF Pro Team bubble who supports each of us athletes. We are all working really hard to chase this ski dream, and camps like this one are paramount to our mission and only possible thanks to people who believe in us and support us. So a big thank you from all of us on the BSF Pro Team!
Until next time,
Willson
