Sarah Freeman of the women’s BC Team provides insight into what it was like to live through the month-long "Camp of Pain" in Whistler this summer…..
In attendance were:
Sarah Freeman (Fernie Alpine Ski Team)
Jocelyn Ramsden (Whistler Mountain Ski Club)
Sarah Elliot (Big White Racers)
Celine Rytz (Fernie Alpine Ski Team)
Alecia Willis (Whistler Mountain Ski Club)
We were reunited at the Penn’s house in Whistler, which was our ‘home’ for the next 28 day of the ‘Camp of Pain’ we were about to start. It would take far too long to tell you EVERYTHING we did but I will help you understand by telling you about our daily highlights:
July 11: Realizing that this camp wasn’t going to be a walk in the park
July 12: Slip and bleed at Rainbow Lake with some random Ontarians
July 13: getting our first taste of Olympic lifting
July 14: playing silly versions of tag at gymnastics for warm up
July 15: heaps of pancakes and getting to finally sleep in
July 16: last day of running technique training – apparently the difference from the first day was phenomenal
July 17: Rafting on class four rapids with the whole B.C clan…. Oh yes and our extremely well executed pieing of Conrad for his 21st
July 18: DAY OFF!!! Playing some squash, road biking and discovering Colin Bullock, an amazing local acoustic guitar player
July 19: Hiking the Chief Mountain in under 40 minutes, feeding the chipmunks at the top and then hiking back down to Shannon Falls
July 20: Two words: Tie Dye 🙂
July 21: well I wouldn’t call this a highlight but we did field sprints in the morning then hill bike sprints
in the heat of the afternoon so the highlight would be how good the cold glacier run off felt afterwards.
July 22: triple session workout!!
July 23: “Games” that turned out to be death circuits that took almost 2 hours to complete… I guess that is Cindy’s idea of fun
July 24: Last day of gymnastics, we learned handsprings and back flips!
July 25: Disappointing “skiing” on the hill to test boots. Unfortunately the snow was more or less M.I.A
July 26: Day off! Night swimming in the full moon 🙂
July 27: Hopping races
July 28: Last bike sprints and it wasn’t even above 30˚C!!
July 29: hammock naps
July 30: Colin Bullock came back and had CD’s for us
July 31: last day of hard training
Aug 1: Swimming in the ocean and a nice visit to Doctor Bob’s office
Aug 2: We had to workout indoors because of the fires on Blackcomb. All of us fell off a ‘BOSU’ ball at least once this day.
Aug 3: Ben’s birthday and beach volleyball
Aug 4: Testing! Yay for the lactate test
Aug 5: Fare thee well whistlaaaa!
We saw improvements in all our areas of fitness! We would like to make a shout out to Cindy, Dianna, Lauren, Gregor, Sam and everyone else that made this camp possible. Because of this camp we are going into the season better at running, lifting, biking and of course dancing.
Sarah Freeman