A secret trail

Sunday June 20, Camp Fortune: Today all of my pictures from rollerskiing didn't turn out too well. I did however manage to get a few shots of the girls hiking up one of the many secret trails in Gatineau Park. This particular trail stars on Meech Lake road just before you reach the skyline lodge of Camp Fortune. It is marked with a bamboo stick at the trail head. From the road it climbs straight uphill until you reach the end of skyline trail (trail # 6). It's a cool little short cut to get you onto the fun trails if you happen to be starting from the P8 parking lot.

Charlotte leads the girls up the first pitch of the trail.

Emilie (second from the right) finds this trail much harder than everyone else.

Katherine. She doesn't like pictures of her exercising, so this was the compromise. And by compromise I mean me taking a photo of her when she wasn't looking.

It's very green in the park these days.

Coach Luc loves Gatineau trails!

The big bald rock means you've reached the top.

Bike path twists and turns

Saturday June 20th, Gatineau Bikepath: For some reason when constructing the extension of Boulevard Allumenttieres engineers thought that it would be too dangerous for cyclist (and rollerskiers) to stop and look both ways before crossing a single lane off ramp. To eliminate any potencial cyclist-car interaction they built a series of bike path tunnels and over passes in a twisty pretzle maze beside the road. Although completely unnecessary, this bike path pretzel does make for an awesome sprint loop for practicing rollerski cornering and agility. Today we did some short intervals around these turns.

Leif and Steffan powering up a hill.

Do and Gui round the bend.

So fast they need to be fenced in.

Nansen was killing it today. Zeke does not like to be humbled.

Noemi throwing down her best workout in months.

Birds eye view of Alana.

These girls know how to corner...hips and hands high, leaning to the inside.

Gui finishing his last interval....

...and blowing out a birthday cake.

 That's a big steel bridge!

Riel really wanted to be in the blog today, so he posed for this shot. He's not skiing, just standing on one foot pretending to ski. Pretty hardcore...

Sprint Warmup

Tuesday June 15th, P7 and P12: Before interval workouts oftentimes we warm up with short sprints which helps to get the brain and the body on the same page. Over the past two weeks I snapped a few shots of both training groups doing their warm up bounding sprints.  Here a couple of sprint and interval photos from these workouts. First up the T2C group...

The pole dump for the zone 1 jog.

  The boys sizing up the sprint hill.

...and they're off!

Aidan Lennie: Fast bounder, Netherlands fan.

Intervals: Even though the speed is lower, they're still pretty fast.

Some people have very different reactions to being finished intervals. No and Alan are about to fall over, Alison is posing for the camera.

Aidan is really excited to be done intervals.

Now let's see how the younger guys do it...

Coach Peter sez "Go!"

Coach Kieran demonstrating bounding, Charlotte demonstrating having legs as long as your poles.

Running is faster than skibounding and if you do head to head skibounding sprints running tends to become the technique of choice for many skiers. Leaving a little gap between skiers keeps the running at bay. Here Maddie, Bryana and Charlotte leave some space.

Pat and Ian hammering their last sprint.

Charlotte and ponytail looking forward to intervals.

Pat and Jordan: 3x7min zone3 bounding intervals.

Coach Peter is a real trooper; he did the entire interval set with a broken neck.

Between intervals coaches hide in the trees to get photos. At one point during this workout Coach Kieran was shirtless crouching behind a rock while taking photos....

...but we forgive his eccentricities because we get cool photos like this.

Rainy Asticou

Saturday, June 12 Asticou. A rainy workout on the bike paths in Gatineau park. We started with some sprints then did one set of intervals on the flats and another up a large hill.

Alana at the start of the bike path.

Ben and Zeke on the flats warming up.

Steffan trying to make his face as long as possible.

The gals getting ready to sprint.

Steffan, Nansen and Andrew like bright colours and double pole sprints.

Pat and Reil are more subdued in their colour choice, but not in their sprinting.

James doing his best Pat imitation.

The crew coming and going between sprints.

My water bottle watches enviously as the boys throw down some uphill intervals.

Riel between intervals.

Nansen gaps the pack during the last interval. The rain forest is impressed. Good practice today!

The Beaver Chase Running Race.

Tuesday, June 11th:  Throughout the summer the racing team participates in a fun, low key running race out in Kanata known as The Beaver Chase. The race came by this name during the inaugural race as a beaver was scared by the race leaders and tore off down the trail ahead of them. To the course marshals just up the trail it appeared that the runners were chasing the beaver. Hence the Beaver Chase was born. This race is held on a mix of gravel trails and bike paths and is held on the second Tuesday of every month. The Beaver Chase has been a fixture of summer practices at Nakkertok for the past 4 years.

Charlotte limbering up.

Bryana laces up while Emma stands guard.

Then it's time for a warm up yog. Thank you Will Ferrell..."Veronica and I trying this new fad called, uh, jogging. I believe it's jogging or yogging. It might be a soft j. I'm not sure but apparently you just run for an extended period of time. It's supposed to be wild."

Warming up Patrick and Jessie style.

Slowly a crowd gathers at the start line. 

...and swells.

Improvised megaphones are required to relay instructions.

Then it's go time. Simon, Phil, James, Zeke, Ben Lief and Duncan charge out of the start.

Leif with the leaders 1 mile in.

Duncan, Phil and Simon in hot pursuit. 

Alissa and Zoe: two younger Nakkertokers that love to race.

Simon was born with a rare condition whereby instead of hands he has blurry orbs of energy. 

Zeke and Duncan hammering to the finish.

The relief and pain of the finish.

Ben finishing...

...followed by C. Foley...

...Alana...

...Kirstin...

and L. Foley.

Finish lines are a wonderful thing.