March 30, 2004: It sure has been a very busy off season.

After taking some down time after my last race in Hainan China I decided to sign up for a cross country ski camp at Silver Star, BC which is about a 90 minute drive north from Penticton.   I have always been in love with the Interior of BC.  It reminds me a lot of Colorado - one of my favourite places in the world.  I use to cross country ski when I lived in Quebec; but, let it slide since I moved to Victoria in 1995.  Over the past winters I have always managed to get a few alpine ski days in me including an Epic Heli-Ski trip with Roch Frey, my old coach, a few years ago.  Anyway, the Swix Ski camp was awesome.  I learned pretty quick and was addicted to the sport.  I was on my skinny skis twice a day while I was at Silver Star.

I managed to get another few days on the snow when I visited my bro in Whistler which I consider Canada's Disneyland.  There is so much you can do and so much money floating around the place.   The cool thing about skate skiing at Whistler is that you can take a coffee break at Starbucks.  Yup, there I was sitting in my skate ski gear drinking a Grande Americano.  Yum!

In January I headed up to Mount Washington the local mountain on the Island and did an epic ski weekend with some close buddies.  We managed to get over 150 km of skate skiing in 2 1/2 days.  It was an epic weekend.

By February, I began my focus for the 2004 race season; but, then I got wacked with pneumonia.  I spent almost 8 days couch surfing.  I was so sick.  It took almost three weeks to get my strength back.  When I resumed training I was really out of shape.  Rather than rush my training to get ready for some early season races I decided to not commit to any big early season races and see how many fitness progresses.  If it comes along then I will jump into some big races.  My big focus for the summer is Ironman Germany.  The field is amazing and I will need to be extremely fit to have a shot at the top spot.

I spent the past two weeks in Tucson - my old Ironman Australia training base.  I forgot how awesome Tucson is to train this time of year.  The first week involved some volume aerobic training with my training buddy Mike Neill and my Endurance Specialists business partner Paul Cross.  The second week was our Tucson Training Camp.  The coaches were myself, Paul, Mike and Cliff English .  We had 18 awesome campers who got some great miles of training in there legs.  It was a great group.  I am already looking forward to the three day camp in Penticton at the end of July.