Springer Tourney

Springer Tourney is an annual summer competition in Park City, Utah which boasts competitions on all 6 jumpinh hills from the k-10 all the way up to the k-120.  The week consists of physical testing for all athletes from as young as 7 up to 18 year olds and helps track development and talent identification.  National team athletes from Nordic Combined and Men's and Women's Ski Jumping administer the tests to 120+ junior skiers as well as coach them on the Jump Hill.  Today was the k-90 competition and this afternoon there will be a nordic combined race up the Utah Olympic Park road based on this mornings jumping.  Bryan Fletcher led the first round of jumping against a very strong field but Canada's Mackenzie Clowes took the over-all title after 2 jumps.  Filling out the top 15 men was an impressively diverse group of North America's top ski-jumpers, Nordic Combined skiers and older Juniors.  Here are some pics from the hill today:

 

View from the top

Michael Ward heading over the knoll

Happy Bryan! Nice Jumping!

"Do what you can, with what you have, where you are."

If you are going to be a Nordic skier you have to live by these words.  Snow is fleeting in most of the world, even the mighty Wasatch.  As we watch it dissipate we realign our training accordingly to find fun and challenging ways to do our workouts.  Surely roller skiing is the closest thing but 6 days a week 6 months straight would be hard to find motivating so we cross train.

            This past Monday I attempted to ski Cascade, a large peak near Provo, with teammate Brett Denney and though we eventually did some time on skis we also hiked and ran a fair amount.  http://app.strava.com/activities/54075722

 

It was certainly fun but a sure sign that summer is on the way!

On Tuesday we rode bikes for nearly 6 hours

http://app.strava.com/activities/54272529

 and finally on Wednesday we did some rollerskiing… 

http://app.strava.com/activities/54347167

We also lifted very heavy Monday, Wednesday and Friday this week and the pinnacle of my favorite Roosevelt quote came on Saturday when our team did a fun local fundraiser to support local education called Running with Ed.  We split 38 miles into 10 segments and did 2 each.  Now having not really run at all yet made it incredibly painful but to try and make it a longer workout we also rode our bikes between each leg.  While I don’t have an accurate Strava I can sum up my own day as such:

9 miles of running about 1/3 trail and 2/3 road with 1200’ of elevation gain while doing about 20 miles of cycling in between.

Adam Loomis tagging me

2nd place out of 170 teams. 38 miles of tough running in 3:49

with Bryan Fletcher, Adam Loomis, Nick Hendrickson and Tyler Smith!

Spring into training!

Well, I’m a bit late on this update as we are well underway in our prep phase for Sochi, but I’d like to share a few thoughts and memories of our pre- pre-season.

Beginning in early April we started laying a foundation of endurance and strength that supports our more quality efforts, which will come later in the training year. Basically our first three months are spent increasing total weekly volumes of endurance training and strength as our bodies adapt and we can handle the increasing load. This past week, for instance, I’ve built up to the point where I am doing 18 hours of cardio training, including one “race pace” effort and one sub-maximal workout, with the rest being primarily easy (or as we call it, level 1) training

Now that snow has left the foothills, we are breaking our training into running, cycling, roller skiing and, if we feel like getting up really early and driving to the mountains, some on-snow skiing as well. Now 18 hours does not sound like a lot but....

to read the rest visit:

http://www.teamusa.org/Team-USA-Winter-Bloggers/Billy-Demong/Spring-Into-Training.aspx