Cambridge Sports Union: Tearing it up in the U.P.!

Saturday, August 3, 2013

Tearing it up in the U.P.!

It is fair to say that the U.P. (Upper Peninsula) is quite a beautiful place. Leah and I (Julia) spent the last week in Marquette, Michigan at NMU for J2(U16) National Camp. If you don’t know where this, we were about 500m from the shores of Lake Superior. We started off the week with a hill bounding workout in 50 degree rain, for which we weren’t prepared after our 90 degree heat wave in Boston right before. Leah, Hailey and Katharine found the upside in this however and went puddle jumping in this weather to wash off the dirt. A few days later, the uphill run test rolled around with warmer weather and sunshine that consisted of a pretty flat 17min course where Leah tied for second place, only a second after Katharine Ogden. This was followed by the strength test where both Leah and I improved overall compared to REG camp. For our last roller ski workout, we simulated a classic team sprint on a very tactically challenging 3min sprint course. Each team consisted of 3 athletes, which were created based off of the prelim we did previously. Every person went three times around the course tagging off to their teammates, which was a fun way to get in some double pole intervals and practice classic sprint agility and tactics. On the last day we all piled into an NMU coach bus and headed off to the Pictured Rocks for an hour-long drive along the coast of Lake Superior. Upon arriving, we split into multiple groups based on the time we wanted to run and then we headed off. Our fearless leader, Dan, a coach at the camp, lead us on a run along the coast with many scenic views. Since the run was so nice, we ended up going longer than we originally planned. One of the highlights of the camp was the cool cliff jumping we were able to do many times throughout the week, jumping into crystal clear water which served as a nice ice bath after the workouts. We also had a great time reuniting with friends and making new ones, creating a fun camp atmosphere, which made us feel like a team by the end of the week.

By: Leah Brams and Julia Kern