30/30s

Yesterday was our first VO2max workout of the year. We've been focused on threshold and volume throughout the summer and fall - aside from an occasional race effort, we haven't done anything above threshold. The skiers have been patiently waiting for the chance to go hard - now the time is finally here.

VO2max (the maximal amount of O2 your muscles can consume) is largely determined by your heart's stroke volume (the amount of blood pumped in one beat). To increase stroke volume, you need to work your heart at near-maximal levels - 90-95% of max HR. The traditional way to do this is to do moderately long intervals (3-5+ minutes), usually on a hill, with plenty of rest between intervals. We'll be doing our share of this in the coming weeks; however, hill repeats aren't the only tool in our bag. Yesterday, we did short intervals on rollerskis - 30 seconds easy, 30 seconds hard, for 25 minutes total. If done properly, the skier's HR will gradually reach 90+% of max throughout the first several minutes of the workout. Because the easy periods are so short, HR won't drop significantly between hard efforts, and , for the last several minutes of the workout, the heart will be pumping near max regardless of whether the skier is going hard or easy. This allows the skier to rack up a lot of time near max HR, but without the high lactic acid buildup (and subsequent long post-workout recovery time) of a longer interval. Also, the frequent rest periods allow the skier to practice skiing at high speeds, as opposed to sustained hill intervals, where the pace is usually fairly slow. Nonetheless, 30/30s (or 60/30s, or whatever work/rest combination you choose) are a very hard workout, and our team is feeling it today. It's a good feeling - feels like race season. Lots more to come.

Speed Work

We're into a new phase of our strength training these days - I'm calling it a "speed complex" for lack of a more technical term. The first phase of the workout, the complex training, the skiers alternate moderately heavy lifting with explosive plyometric-type exercises to form a complex (some people define "complex training" differently, and would call this "contrast" training instead). The point is to stimulate the fast twitch fibers with the lifts to allow more of these fibers to be recruited for the plyos, thus training the muscles to contract quicker and with greater force. We've been doing variations of complex training for a couple months, and now we've added another layer. After the complexes, the skiers head outside for a series of short sprints on rollerskis. The goal here is to leave the freshly stimulated muscles with a ski-specific imprint - theoretically, this will help turn weight room gains into actual improvements in speed on skis. Track and field athletes have been using this method for years, so why not us? Here's a very brief clip of Walt sprinting past Appleton:

National Champions!

The runners weren't the only Bowdoin teams competing in the NCAA Championships last weekend: our field hockey team beat Middlebury to win the national championship on Saturday. The victory caps off a great fall for Bowdoin teams; almost all of our teams had great seasons, and several went deep into the postseason. Four qualified for the NCAA Championships (women's soccer was the forth). It's a good time to be part of Bowdoin Athletics - from what I've seen and heard, the support for our programs is as high as it's ever been, and our teams keep getting better. The future is bright for all of us.

XC Championships

Our runners competed in the NCAA Championships in Northfield, MN on Saturday. The men finished 20th and the women were 27th. John ended his college career in fine form, finishing 57th (7th New Englander), with Colman 207th. Courtney was 201st for women. It's hard to grasp the significance of the placings since the race was so big, so here's some perspective: there are over 430 D3 colleges in the US, and virtually every one of these schools has an XC program. Only the absolute best teams and individuals qualified for the championships - 280 of the best D3 runners in the country were packed into each race, and our runners held their own. Bottom line: our runners are fast, and we're proud of them. Can't wait to have them back with the ski team.

Ski team alum Jacob Scheckman '06 was at the race - he's in grad school in Minneapolis. Thanks to Jacob for the photos.

Colman - moving too fast for a clear shot.

A Good Week

It's been a good week of training. We're in the middle of a mini spike in volume, trying to take advantage of the upcoming Thanksgiving break by squeezing in a couple big weeks before we cut the hours back in December. Big hours and small daylight don't mix well, so it's been a challenge trying to fit it all in. The team's been great, though - people are showing up on time and executing the training well, and everything's gone according to plan.

We capped off this good week with a great OD rollerski, starting with one of our usual routes in Bowdoin (the town) and skiing to Nat's house in Hallowell. It's always nice to check out some new roads, and it's even better to have a destination in mind for a long workout instead of just skiing a loop or an out-and-back. People were surprisingly perky after 3+ hours - a sign that the base fitness is solid. Or maybe it was the chili. Naomi Schalit, Nat's mom, made us an amazing lunch, including some chili that people will be talking about for a while. This is a crowd that's used to eating the best college food in the country, so that tells you how high-class this chili was. I have a feeling that they'll be calling for another round next chance they get - consider yourself warned, Naomi. Thanks for the warm hospitality.

Morse Mountain

Morse Mountain is actually more of a largish hill, but it's about the closest thing to a mountain that we have on the southern coast of Maine. There's a nice rolling road that runs over the mountain and down to one of the most beautiful beaches in the state, if not the world. Both the mountain and the beach are part of a conservation area managed by Bates, but the property is open to the public for hiking, or, in our case, running. We did some long threshold intervals out at Morse today - the beach was deserted as we ran down from the mountain. It was a bright, windy day, with sand swirling along the shoreline - beautiful. The plan was to take advantage of the hills on the road, but some people were so thrilled to be next to the ocean that they just ran on the beach for the whole workout. I ran 2x20 minute intervals with Matt and hung in for a while before eventually fading. That's OK - getting dropped is always a good sign for a coach, or so I tell myself. A fine day and a fine workout. Wish I'd brought a camera.

Fun With Tires

Flat tire on the way home from practice today. It was cold and dark - perfect conditions for tire-changing. Fortunately, Forrest had changed a tire on a 12-passenger van not too long ago, so he knew the drill - he and Ezra seized the moment and started assembling the tools and whatnot. I helped by standing around with a frown of manly concern on my face. The rest of the team huddled off to the side while Elissa taught them a bizarre dance involving hopping on one foot and giggling - at least they were staying warm. Kind of a strange scene - "a bunch of kids in spandex changing a tire," as one of our skiers put it. Fortunately, we have people with skills on our team, and the new tire was in place soon enough. Walt came through with some muscle in the clutch, loosening some nasty lug nuts that wouldn't budge - the man is huge. We made it home just a little behind schedule - not so bad. I was impressed by how little this incident bothered the team - no complaining, just people hanging out by the roadside enjoying each other's company. As I later told them, if we handle every tough situation this well, it's going to be a great season.

New Zealand Part 2

More from Nick Crawford, living the good life:

Well, this will be my second and last update for the blog from the southern hemisphere. I’m fortunate because I was able to do some snow skiing back in August, but now am taking advantage of long warm days while the rest of the team is training in the dark. Also, the school semester is shifted down here - I finished up exams a few weeks ago and have a long break from school and more time to train through December. For training I was able to copy the team schedule through September and October pretty well. There aren’t any rollerski races in this country (only probably 10 pairs of rollerskis in the entire country), so I made up a few time trial courses and raced them with a fellow exchange student/skier I know. The last few weeks I’ve been doing some amazing traveling and hiking in the tall mountains known as the Southern Alps. Still quite a bit of snow above 3000 ft but no skiing on this trip. From here I have 2 more weeks of travel and then it's back to New England and maybe some snow skiing by then. I would highly recommend a trip here to NZ if you ever get a chance - the semester abroad experience has worked out great for me.

I’m sporting our awesome Bowdoin hat in front of Mt Cook (the highest mtn in NZ) and a big glacier.

Walking one of the many beaches here. This one was actually on a trip to a smaller island called Stewart Island.

New England Championships

Our XC teams ran at the New England D3 Championships on Saturday. Good day for both teams - women were 3rd, men were 5th, in perhaps the most competitive region in D3 cross-country. Courtney finished 44th for women; for men, John was 19th, just 11 seconds from 4th, with Colman 56th. Both teams earned at-large bids for the NCAA Championships in Minnesota this weekend. Congratulations runners!

Erg Test

Double pole erg test yesterday. We have a number of rowing ergs that have been modified - stood upright and fitted with a curved bar - to simulate a double poling motion. The upright ergs are a Dick Taylor idea that Marty wholeheartedly embraced - we have 6 of them - and that we've continued to use. It's not a perfect imitation of double poling, but it's not bad. One of the best things about the erg is its ability to measure power output. This allows us to test skiers periodically to determine whether or not their double poling power has improved. Our test measures average power output over 2 minutes. It's a short but brutal test, like an 800-meter run - short enough to demand a near-maximal power output, but long enough to really hurt. Just the thing you want to do at 7am.

The test results were mixed. Back in September, most of the team did a self-test with this protocol, so we had some baseline data - we saw big gains in some people, but losses for others. I'm not sure what this is all about - the results didn't follow a predictable pattern, which is not unusual with a small group of subjects. One potential confounder is that the test is long enough to require some pacing, and different pacing strategies could have had a big effect on the results. It's a new test, and I'm not yet sure whether it's valid or reliable. We'll have to keep playing with it to decide whether it's worth keeping. For now, we won't read too much into these results - we'll trust the training plan and look for other ways of evaluating our progress.

Duelathon Results

Results for the Duelathon are posted on the NENSA site.

3000m Test

We're in a rest/test week right now - yesterday was a 3000m time trial on the track. It was a rather odd session. Turns out that the gates to the track get locked at sunset, which is now ridiculously early, so we had to climb the fence to get in. It had been raining all day, and there were small puddles and wet pine needles on the track. Halfway through the warmup it was so dark that I was having trouble seeing the stopwatch, and by the time the test started it was hard to tell who was whom as they ran by. Nonetheless, the team gave a solid effort under strange circumstances. Results weren't quite what we'd hoped for - in hindsight, this makes sense. Our training has been focused on long threshold-level efforts, primarily rollerskiing and moosehoofing - not the kind of stuff that makes you fast on the track. The 3000m is a convenient test, because it allows you to compare results with other skiers, and our team has a history with this test. However, I'm realizing that it's not a good fit for the kind of training we're doing this fall - next year we'll switch things up a bit. For now, we'll consider this a hard workout and stay focused on the plan - more volume and threshold through Thanksgiving Break before getting into the higher intensity stuff. Upper body erg test tomorrow.

Thanks to Ryan Triffitt, ski team alum from '97, for hauling his aging body over the fence to help out with timing.

Duelathon Photos

Photos by Jeremy Huckins '05.

Jenex/Patagonia Duelathon

We hosted the 7th Annual Jenex/Patagonia Duelathon on Sunday, a combined running/rollerskiing race. The Duelathon was created by Marty Hall in 2001, back before duathlons were hip and no one knew what to call them - hence the unusual name. In past years, the race has begun with an interval start rollerski leg, followed by the running leg on the Bradley Pond trails. However, due to a strong grassroots campaign from race fans, we decided to hold the running leg first as a mass start. For various reasons, it made sense to use the Mt. Ararat High School XC trails for the run, and then transition to rollerskiing along the usual course.

The race started under clear skies, and John Swain of Colby quickly took the lead. Swain is a legitimate runner, almost as fast as John and Colman, and by the time he reached the sandy, open trails around the midpoint of the course, he had a sizeable gap on the field. Nat was leading the racers on his cyclocross bike - he's a pretty accomplished rider, but the loose sand on the trails was too soft for a cross bike, so he ended up throwing the bike over his shoulder in true cyclocross style and running like hell in a desperate attempt to stay ahead of Swain. It didn't work, but it was quite an effort - I wish I had a photo. Anyway, Swain ended up coming into the transition with nearly a minute lead, but his teammate, Matt Briggs, put up a great rollerski leg to close the gap and win by 11 seconds. On the women's side, Ingrid Knowles of Bates was several seconds behind teammate Kirsten Gill at the transition, but smoked the rollerski phase to win easily.

Overall, it was a very successful day. The team did a nice job running the event - it went flawlessly, and we got great feedback from the racers. Everyone seemed to enjoy the new format, which would not have been possible without the help of Mt. Ararat XC coaches Diane Fournier and Stu Palmer (Class of '86). We were also lucky to have generous sponsorships from V2/Jenex and Patagonia, which allowed us to give away some great prizes, including ski poles, gift certificates, and several fleece vests and jackets. Over half of the racers walked off with a prize of some sort, which is nice, but hopefully we can increase our turnout a bit in the future.

I know that there are some race photos out there somewhere - ski team alum Jeremy Huckins took several, and perhaps there are others. If anyone reading this has photos, please send them my way - I'll post them as soon as I have them. NENSA will be posting the results shortly - I'll link to them when they're up.

North Haven Time Trial

Still catching up from a busy last week...

Sunday was one of the more unique events on our calendar: a trip to the island of North Haven. Bates, Colby, UMPI, and several Maine Winter Sports Center athletes joined us for a 15k skate rollerski time trial. The event was the brainchild of Andy Shepard, who was looking for a way to combine a great experience for the skiers with a fun and inspiring event for North Haven residents to watch. Tom was our big winner for the day, beating a field of some very talented skiers, including a few of last year's NCAA qualifiers. As I've said previously, rollerski race results need to be taken with a grain of salt due to variations in ski speeds; still, this was a great day for Tom. He's been working hard and steadily improving since he came to Bowdoin, and this result should give him some confidence heading into the season. Forrest also had a great race, finishing a solid 3rd.

All in all, a great day for our team. I'm told that the event encompassed some of the most beautiful rollerskiing anyone had ever seen - fun, rolling terrain, great pavement, and amazing ocean views. What a privilege this was for our team! How often do you get to rollerski on a remote island off the coast of Maine? Thanks to Andy for creating this event from scratch just a few weeks ago, and arranging free ferry passage and lunch for the skiers - this was an experience that they won't soon forget.

Here's an article by Austin Ross of Colby with results. Photos shortly, as soon as I get ahold of some.

Finley James

Finley James Alsobrook - born Oct. 26th. 7 lbs. 11 oz. Pretty much the cutest baby ever.