Compelled to travel

Justyna Kowalczyk is currently resting after the successful season of 2010/2011 and she still has several weeks without tough trainings ahead of her. Yet, our top contestant already knows how her training schedule before the next season will look like. Coach Aleksander Wierietielny has already made detailed plans and decided to make first modifications in the pre‑season training regime in several years. Thus, training camps will take place in different locations than previously, but once again the triple champion in the overall classification of the World Cup will spend most of the year outside Poland.

“Training in new places is always useful. It’ll be another factor motivating me to do further hard training,” says Justyna Kowalczyk

However, the coach is unwilling to reveal too much information about the new places of training camps.

“We’ll be training in Zakopane. We’d prefer staying there the entire time since this is our winter sports capital. Unfortunately, I’m only joking, though we would very much like to have a track there that would suit our needs. Regrettably, no one makes any effort in this respect: neither the local authorities nor the persons who work and are active in the area of cross‑country skiing. Yet, it is true that we will spend a while, albeit a short one, in Zakopane,” underlines Aleksander Wierietielny.

Justyna also deplores the lack of facilities in Poland that would enable her to train for the competitions.

“If I had such a possibility, I would do all my trainings in Poland. We’d need a five‑kilometre‑long tarmac track, closed to hikers, with appropriate configuration. This isn’t that much to ask, is it? Five kilometres of a roller‑ski track where there’d be no dogs running and no people walking so that it is not too dangerous for us. Roller skis have no brakes, and the case of Sylwia Jaśkowiec shows how tragically trainings in an unsuitable location might end. Hence, if there was an appropriate track in our country, I wouldn’t have to leave Poland but for high‑mountain camps. But since there is no such thing here, we were compelled to plan further travels,” says Justyna Kowalczyk.

 

(mz)/www.justyna-kowalczyk.pl