NESCAC Championships

Late update on the XC team: the NESCAC Championships were held at Williams last Saturday. Both teams managed a solid 3rd place finish in one of the most competitive conferences in the country. John was 10th and Colman was 24th for men, with Courtney finishing 46th for women. New England D3 Championships coming up on Nov. 10th at Conn. College, with NCAA berths at stake.

New England Rollerski Championships

We brought a small group down to Cumberland for the New England Rollerski Championships last Sunday - Shem, Sarah, Forrest, Tom, Matt, and Ezra. It was a beautiful but unseasonably warm day, so it was fitting that the organizers, Coastal Nordic Ski Club, had designated this race as a "carbon-neutral" event. CNSC had purchased "cool tags" for each racer from a company called NativeEnergy - the money goes toward investments in renewable energy sources, which, in theory, will balance out the CO2 emissions generated by travel to the event. I know that the jury's still out on whether or not carbon offsets are effective at slowing climate change, but I think it's great that CNSC stepped up to try something creative and thought-provoking.

The race itself was a mixed bag for our team. Rollerski races are pretty unreliable measures of skiing ability, because ski speeds vary tremendously. Most people on our team ski on V2 910s or 920s, some of the slowest skis made. V2s are great for training, because, in my opinion, they provide similar speeds to snow skiing; however, they're not so much fun to race on. Consequently, our skiers were never really in the mix for this race - most of the competitors were on Marwes, which are pretty fast, and the lead group pulled away quickly. Forrest actually hung in with the chase pack for a few k, which was impressive, but he broke a pole tip and was immediately dropped. He skied without poles for a few k before getting a replacement pair, but it was too late to get back into the race by then. In general, the race was more of a chance for our team to get a good hard workout and to go through the process of racing - mentally preparing, warming up, figuring out pre-race details, feeling for the right pacing and exertion, etc. With a couple more efforts like this, we should have a much more relaxed and streamlined approach to race day when we get to the races that count.

After the race, we stopped by the Shepards' home in Yarmouth for a mid-morning brunch - good food and great company. Andy Shepard is a former coach of the Bowdoin Nordic team from way back - he's the keeper of some team history that I'm looking forward to unearthing in the future. All in all, a great way to cap off the morning.

State of Maine Championships

Good showing for Bowdoin XC at the State of Maine Championships at Pineland Farms last Saturday. Both teams won, beating an array of DIII Maine teams, including Bates, Colby, USM, and others. For men, John was 3rd and Colman was 10th, while Courtney was 5th for women, narrowly missing 4th after a strong kick in the last 200 meters. These guys are super fit right now - should be interesting to see what happens when we get them back into ski training.

Saturday was my first time checking out the trails at Pineland - outstanding. Great venue for an XC race, and an even better venue for ski training, from what I've heard. Can't wait to try them out for myself.

Uphill Climb Results

Results from the Sugarloaf Uphill Climb, finally.

Phil Soule Phlail

Bowdoin Nordic hosted the 2nd Annual Phil Soule 5k Phlail on Sunday. The race is a memorial event for the late Phil Soule, who coached several sports at Bowdoin for 39 years. Our team runs the event for the Athletic Department to raise funds for ski camp. A great crowd turned out this year, including countless members of the Soule family - we had 145 finishers and a good-sized group of spectators as well. Joey Luchini of Windham won the men's race in 16:49, while Bowdoin soccer player Dana Riker won the women's race in 20:21. In spite of some frantic moments, the race went well and everyone had a great time. The skiers did a nice job of pulling of this event, and we got a lot of positive feedback. There are a few things that we can do better next year, but I'm very happy with how it all went.

Sox vs. Cleveland, Game 1

Walt knows someone who knows someone, and somehow ended up with a free ticket to Game 1 of the Sox-Indians series - great seats, right along the 3rd base line. Things turned out pretty well last night - we're looking into the possibility of getting him a ticket for Game 2.

Long Falls Dam

The Long Falls Dam Rd. runs from North New Portland to (of course) the Long Falls Dam on Flagstaff Lake. It's several miles of smooth, little-traveled pavement over rolling terrain - perfect for a long classic rollerski. We did just this on Tuesday morning. The sun was back out, shining through the flaming trees and dappling the road with shade. Who wouldn't love a rollerski workout on day like this?

Bigelow Hike

The Bigelow Range is a series of 5 peaks in the mountains of western Maine. On a foggy Monday morning, we set out to hike/run the entire range from east to west. I'd estimated the distance at 17 miles, but soon saw on the first trail sign that it was closer to 19. Wet rocks and fallen leaves made for slow, slippery going, but we made good time to the summit of Little Bigelow, the first peak. The brilliant fall colors in the valley were totally invisible, blanketed by a thick white fog that gave us the eerie sensation of standing on the edge of an abyss.

As the team pressed on toward Avery Peak, I circled back to the van to shuttle over to the western trailhead. By this point, it was mid-afternoon, and Shannon and I started up toward Cranberry Peak, hoping to meet the team up on the ridge. Shortly after, I got a call from Ezra (yeah, we were hiking with cellphones - safety first!) - the team had covered about 12 miles but, with 7 miles of rugged trail to go, was starting to get worried about daylight, not to mention toasting themselves for Tuesday's long rollerski. We decided to have them skip Cranberry Peak and take the AT down to the Stratton Pond Rd, cutting 3 miles off the hike. This was a good decision - people were comfortably exhausted but still in good spirits by the time they finished. I'm sure that our group could've handled the full 19 miles, but the safety risks and the extra training load weren't worth the satisfaction of traversing the entire range. Maybe next year. In any case, we got what we needed out of the workout and came back to camp content and healthy. After a truly classy stir-fry dinner (our team can cook!) and some cards, we called it a night.

Uphill Climb

As promised, more camp details...

The Sugarloaf Uphill Climb is well-named - basically, you climb up Sugarloaf as fast as you can. The course gains 3000 ft in 3 miles, with some ridiculously steep pitches - you spend most of the race walking unless you're a fool or a genetic freak. Bowdoin Nordic has generally shown pretty well at this event - Forrest won by a wide margin a couple years ago. No Forrest this time - he was in Texas doing something related to rocks - so seven of us represented Bowdoin in his stead: Sarah, Shem, Elissa, Tom, Niko, Walt, and myself. This time, Sarah provided the big highlight for our team, taking 2nd for women and handily beating all of the Colby competitors. We already knew that Sarah has great upper body power - now we know that she has a great motor as well. Two big pieces of the puzzle. On the men's side, our team was solid but well behind Colby's top guys. Colby has quietly become one of the best men's teams in the East, and beating them will take some doing - this race reaffirmed that. Fortunately, this was a foot race in October, not a ski race in February. All in all, a good, hard test of our early fitness.

After the race, we made our way over to Embden for an easy recovery rollerski before settling in for the night. Mike and Louise Gilmore were our benefactors for this trip - they have a camp on a beautiful slice of the Embden Pond shore, where they generously invited us to stay. We cooked a fine meal of pasta with pesto and other good stuff and then turned our attention to the real competition: poker and ping pong. Sarah turned out to be the big winner once again - turns out that the wholesome Alaskan thing is just a facade, because this girl knows her way around the poker table. She dominated the game - Ezra insisted on hanging on till the bitter end and was pretty much trounced for his efforts. The rest of us went to bed with pride intact.

Fall Camp

Bowdoin's Fall Break has just ended, and we've just wrapped up a mini training camp. Six skiers plus coaches spent 3 days racing, hiking, and rollerskiing in the mountains of western Maine. I'll detail the day-to-day training in subsequent posts, but for now, here's a brief rundown of our camp:

Sunday: AM - Raced the Sugarloaf Uphill Climb. PM - Easy classic rollerski near Embden Pond.
Monday: OD hike/run in the Bigelows.
Tuesday: Classic rollerski on the Long Falls Dam Road outside of North New Portland.

Quality training (about 11 hours) was done by all, good meals were cooked, and poker games were won and lost. More later.

Open New Englands

Bowdoin XC took 8th in the women's race and 11th in the men's race at the Open New England Championships today. This was a huge event, with lots of D1 & 2 teams at the race, so these were solid finishes. Courtney was 74th, while John and Colman were 57th and 108th, respectively. Colman was the 4th Bowdoin finisher today - guess we won't be getting him back any time soon.

Rockhounding

We spent this fine fall morning running the trails and roads around Wolfe's Neck Farm. At the end of the run, we took a few minutes to search the roadside and shoreline for perfect rocks - bigger than an egg, smaller than a grapefruit, no jagged edges, no barnacles or algae, etc. The rocks are prizes for our upcoming road race, the Phil Soule 5k Phlail. Phil Soule was a former Bowdoin coach whose nickname was Boulder, so rocks seem like a more fitting prize than ribbons or medals and such. So, today we gathered up several dozen rocks, winnowed out a few that didn't make the cut, and left a box of our best for Lou McNeil over at Rhodes Hall. Lou is a carpenter at Bowdoin - he'll tidy up the rocks and make them worthy of prize status, and in just over a week, the race will be on.

EISA Fall Meeting

My first EISA meeting was surprisingly worthwhile. We met at the OTC in Lake Placid on Monday for a technique session with USST coaches Matt Whitcomb and Pete Vordenberg - they shared some of the drills and cues that they've been using with their athletes, and gave us a little feedback on our own skiing as well. This was fun - most coaches don't often have the chance to have others critique their technique. I don't necessarily agree with these guys on every single element of technique, but the basics are pretty similar regardless of one's philosophy, and this session gave me some new ideas and perspectives. I've been impressed by the dedication and openness of the USST coaches - these guys pretty much live their jobs, and I'm sure that they could have found other things to do with a few spare hours in the middle of a training camp. They chose to work with us instead, and I appreciate that.

Tuesday's meeting was a little less interesting but included some noteworthy developments. The one thing that will affect our team most is a change in the NCAA qualification process. The old system had skiers qualifying based on points scored in their best two races in a single technique. In the new system, we'll combine the points scored in the best two races of BOTH techniques (four scoring races total). This will require more consistency and versatility from the skiers, which I think is a good thing. I would have preferred to make this change next spring, because I like to take my time to discuss these things more thoroughly, but I think it's a good change nonethless. It'll work to our advantage, too - I expect our skiers to be strong in both techniques throughout the entire season rather than popping a couple good races in January and then disappearing.