By Ann Cathrin Uhl, a member of Team Nordic People
The newly formed German Pro Team “Team Nordic People” was getting ready for Season X at a training camp in Livigno, Italy. All seven athletes collected first snow kilometers at some early season skiing in the Alps. “Livigno is the perfect place for us right now to get a good training combination of on and off snow workouts,” says long-time Visma skier Robin Frost. “We haven’t only been skiing, but also running and roller-skiing in the Italian mountains!”
The camp served the pro athletes to get lots of volume workouts. In the seven days of training, they were able to ski around 200 kilometers on snow. For the beginning of the week, a well-prepared 2.5K loop with snow from last winter’s snow farming turned out to be a decent training ground considering the time of the year. With many athletes training on the short loop and the weather getting warmer, the snow slowly started to melt. However, the Italian technicians did everything in their power to make the athletes’ workouts as valuable as possible. They shuffled snow all day every day and made sure that 1.5K of the loop stayed in skiable shape for the rest of the week.
What turned out to be even more amazing is that the athletes self-organized this camp and were training the entire week without a coach. “It’s been amazing to see how well the team functions without having a professional coach with us. I think the reason for it is definitely our strong team cohesion,“ says Jessica Wirth, who will ski her fourth Visma Ski Classics season this year. The team received a training plan and all seven athletes were able to give input and make suggestions. Florian Göbel, former xc-ski team skier, revealed that part of this smooth operation is definitely their very competent team manager Bernd Frost, who supervises the team from near and far.
All in all, the team had a fun camp that served as the perfect season preparation. According to the new Visma Ski Classics athlete Christian Winker, the goal was not only to get to know his teammates better but also to get a solid dose of endurance training. Both goals were successfully achieved, and now it will be interesting to see how the strong team spirit and the hard work of Team Nordic People will pay off this winter. The five men and the two women are excited to kick off the new season in four weeks.
The summary of the training camp is as follows:
- 7 days of training
- 7 athletes (5 male and 2 female)
- 29 hours of training
- 170 – 200 km on snow
- 100 – 150 km on roller-skis
- 50 – 60 km of mountain running with an overall elevation gain of 3500 m
- 3 strenght sessions
