Crimson Nordic: The VIP Austrian Training Camp

Now that I am home with reliable internet and all my pictures downloaded I have no more excuses for postponing my report from my time in Austria on the Dachstein Glacier. After four trains, two buses, and one taxi, I arrived in Ramsau am Dachstein on Saturday, July 28^th. It was a long day of travel but it exposed me to two new countries and left me rested and excited for my upcoming days on snow. I stayed at a Farmhouse hotel five minutes form the center of town and the bus stop. They had about twenty-five rooms and they provided a filling breakfast each morning of Austrian sausage and bread, cereal, and fresh milk and yogurt from their cows. It provided a great basecamp from which I had only a thirty-minute commute on the bus and cable car to reach the glacier. I skied everyday, usually doing a longer workout in the morning when the snow was a little harder followed by a shorter afternoon workout of the other technique. The first day had extremely variable weather, experiencing everything from dense fog, to full sun, to strong wind and even rain! This was followed by heavy fog all of my second day, which was an interesting experience as it made it feel like it was 4pm all day, but also distracted me from the fact I was going in circles on a 5km loop. It was a good first two days getting used to the feel of skis and snow again and it made the sunshine and company of the US Men’s Ski team extra welcome for my next three days! I classic skied for a short while behind Noah Hoffman on Tuesday and on Wednesday I caught the whole Men’s team for the last half hour of their workout. These first two experiences were helpful for helpful for my technique and their lessons were solidified and expanded upon on Thursday morning when I got to ski with Tad Elliott and Eric Packer for an hour and a half, meet both Jason Cork and Chris Grover, and join the full Men’s team for their strength routine that afternoon. It was a wonderful opportunity to ski with them and to get to see what they are doing in the weight room. While lots of their lift routine is similar to what we do at Harvard, I also picked up some new exercises that will be nice additions to our current routine. While the Men’s team left Friday morning for the Ski Tunnel in Germany, I had two more great days of skiing that included making friends with two French skiers and even getting them to take some technique video of me! Skiing with people from Norway, Austria, Germany, Japan, France, and the U.S., with good grooming and on the whole cooperative weather, I was able to ski over 300km and had an amazing seven days on snow!

I hope everyone’s training is going well and I am getting really excited to see everyone at school soon!

Akeo