I came to la belle province a few days early to do a Fast and Female event and make good on a promise to my ski friends here that I’d come as soon as I could. Luckily our Executive Director at Fast and Female, Marie-Helen Thibeault, is francophone through and through and she not only organized a great event here but also translated my message for the girls to Dream Big, Break it Down and Believe!
Intensity camp was a real treat, although I still did 16 hours so the volume wasn’t necessarily that low. We did hard workouts every second day, ranging from “speed threshold” on rollerskis which is around 30 seconds to harder uphill running stuff like 4 x 6 minutes and everything in between as well as speed and strength.
I really enjoyed a run around the mountain with most of the Training Center girls (there are five on the development team aged 16-21) and had some good chats about the need to ignite the dream of being Olympians and successful international ski racers in the hearts and minds of young women in this province. They were surprised to hear that I went to the ’06 games at the age of 22, and find that with their oldest racer being 21 at the moment they lack that direct contact with the next level.