Friday we had 2 ice times, 2 hours each. I got up early and walked around town a bit, and then went for the first ice time. They took our team picture, and we went into power skating, passing shooting, and our first scrimmage. There are only 14 of us, and one guy hurt his shoulder before coming to camp, so he couldn't play. Our team had just 6 people, but we played 3 on 3 which made it easier. We were on "Olympic" ice, which is a larger surface area than most of us are used to, which made it harder. The teams were actually pretty well matched. I felt better at the end of this 2 hour session than I had the previous night.

There was a "chalk talk" session and a "dry land" session in the afternoon. In the chalk talk, the coach went over some ideas on a white board and we got to ask questions about positioning and play. I learned that there are relatively modern ideas about how to line up at a face off, compared to the kind of standard thing we do in our league. The dry land session was something I'd never done, and it was great. The idea (for us) was to level the field a bit by taking skating out of the picture, and working on positioning and offensive and defensive strategies. We just used a small soft ball that we threw to each other. We took the ideas from dry land to the ice in the second ice session.

I don't remember being this tired since hiking up Pikes Peak when I was at camp in Colorado as a kid. Two hours on the ice is about twice what I'm used to, and the pace is pretty intense. I'm having a great time, and getting a lot out of this.