Aaron Speden, women assistant coach:
“We arrived at the Evolution gym Friday morning in Fernie BC to start our 4 day Dryland camp, with Andrew Lambert, Brandon Dyksterhouse and Aaron Speden. We started off with a great mornings work out with two groups dividing younger and older athletes both from the women’s and men’s BC Ski Teams. We broke for lunch and then followed up with a 3 hours mountain bike ride through the beautiful scenery of Fernie B.C. Special Thanks to Mike Delich for supplying us free accommodation up at the Fernie ski resort. Beautiful and wonderful accommodation. The coaches loved it.
Next morning we awoke to rain and headed down to Evolution gym for our 3 hour work out. Andrew accessed the weather around noon and decided with the coaches it was a bit wet for outdoor mountain biking so decided to run a double session in the gym following lunch and rest break.
Sunday morning started in the gym for another great work out and with the weather improving it looked promising to get out on the mountains bikes again for the afternoon.
The Monday morning program was a recap with Andrew in the gym of what we achieved in the past 3 days to perfect our workout technique.”
Sarah Freeman: BCST and Alpine Prospect Group
“We just spend an awesome intense four days in Fernie getting jacked and excited for the season. It was really nice to get the girls and guys from around the area together with Andrew to really kick off the dryland season full force. After our morning weight sessions, though it rained (even hailed at one point!!!), we still got out on some grinding mountain bike rides in the afternoons.
The wet trails not only left us covered in mud head to toe but also left a couple of us black and blue. The atmosphere was amazing, totally focused and supportive, nobody cheating the workouts or giving up. Rebecca Bermel did a 45 minute hill climb the day after having the stomach flu. Stephanie Gartner went on her first mountain bike ride after getting a quick bike tutorial from Andrew " ..down shift before you start going up a hill… you’re an athlete you'll figure the rest out!". This camp was really motivating to work just as hard as we did these past four days for the whole summer and fall. Thank you to everyone who help put it on, house us and even lend some of us bikes!”
Next project is individual dryland at home for younger athletes who are in school. Sarah Elliot and Sarah Freeman will be in Kelowna and Vernon starting individual training sessions twice a day under the guided direction of our dryland expert Andrew Lambert.
July 1st to July 20th we are going to go skiing in Mt. Hood, USA and do a lot of dryland activities in Hood river, Oregon. Stay tuned for more updates.
