Danger Is His Middle Name

Certain members of the team were lobbying for us to name the baby "Danger." We decided to go with something slightly less unusual; nonetheless, the team gave us this onesie (artwork by Matt) as a gift. Very thoughtful, and Finley looks pretty sharp in it, although he's still a couple months from filling it out.

PS - Any biscuits reading this will be glad to know that the team still has a healthy appreciation for Austin Powers. Groovy, baby!

Thanks

Those Mt. Ararat kids are multi-talented. Here's a photo that they sent to Ezra and me:

Break

First semester is over - exams ended yesterday. The last few stragglers left campus today for some much too short time at home. We're back in just two weeks - we leave for Fort Kent on Jan 2nd, and things start moving fast shortly thereafter. In the meantime, though, we'll all take a deep breath. I'll post an occasional update over the next couple weeks - or maybe just some baby pictures. Enjoy the holidays, all.

Mt. Ararat Ski Team

Ezra and I did a clinic with the Mt. Ararat HS and middle school teams at Pineland today. They're a great group - enthusiastic and athletic and fired up to ski. They're a relatively new program - they've only been around for a year or two, thanks to the efforts of a few volunteer coaches. It's so great to see new teams bringing kids into the sport - we need more of this!

We were lucky to have a great day for our clinic - clear and cold, lots of snow, and perfect grooming. We worked on some skating fundamentals and played some games on skis - good stuff. I think we had at least as much fun as the kids. Lots of potential in this group - keep an eye on these guys!

Great Glen Sprints

Great Glen Sprints yesterday. There was a good crowd, mostly college skiers - about 130 racers total. The weather started out windy and then turned into snow flurries as the afternoon went on - tough weather for coaches, but we came prepared and brought some donuts. The folks at Great Glen have a nice loop for sprinting, although the coverage was a bit thin on one section - most people ended up racing on rock skis. Ironically, there was plenty of snow on the rest of their trail system - just one bony hill that happened to be on the course. Interesting race format - everyone raced a qualifying heat of 4 skiers, rather than an individual prelim time trial. Subsequent heats were then seeded off of the results of the first heat, with winners getting a bye to the 3rd round. This was great - one flaw of sprint racing is that if you're eliminated in the first round, you've spent a lot of time and money for just a couple minutes of racing all by yourself. This format gave everyone at least 2 shots, and against live competition instead of the clock - much more fun. Time consuming, though - with so many people, the first round dragged a bit, and the organizers decided to cut the course in half to move things along. At that point, the race became a real test of speed, with each heat over in less than a minute.
So, how did our skiers do? Pretty well, I thought. We've only just begun working on the high-end fitness needed for such a short race, so it was exciting to see 6 of our 10 skiers advance to the 3rd round. Tom and Walt won their first heats, while Shem, Sarah, Forrest, and Niko battled through by winning their second heats. No one advanced further, unfortunately, but I was pleased with how good everyone looked. Niko was practically airborne with every pushoff; Forrest dropped two of Colby's better skiers in one of his heats; Sarah just plain overpowered a Dartmouth skier to win her second round. We don't have the speed to win sprint races yet, but yesterday showed that we're strong and fit. If our team can ski this well now, things look good for the races that count.

Sprint Prep

First race of the year tomorrow - Great Glen Sprints. Nothing at stake - just an opportunity to go through the process of racing and remind ourselves what it's all about. Bates, Colby, and UNH will have skiers there, so we'll get an early look at the competition. We prepped for the big event with a sprint relay today (a true sprint relay, with each leg 10 or 15 seconds long). Can't remember who won, but it was fun to mix it up a bit. Should be a good day tomorrow.

Early Morning Intervals

Great skiing this morning - last night was nice and cold, so the track firmed up nicely. I took a group down this morning for an interval workout - for various reason, some folks are still focused on threshold, while others are doing the VO2max intervals as planned. People looked pretty sharp today for Day 2 on snow. Jeff was skiing as well as I've ever seen him ski this morning, with a nice snappy tempo up the hills. He's consistently one of our fastest guys in pure speed workouts on rollerskis - if he can build the fitness needed to sustain that speed, we're in business. Another good day. When you're on snow, they're all good days.

First Ski

First ski today at Pineland. They got several inches and groomed 20k. Still soft, but good skiing. It's December 4th and we're skiing - that's good. Easy skate workout today - just getting the feel for it - skis feel like they're 8 feet long. Intensity tomorrow - sooner than is ideal when you're getting back on snow, but we want to have our cake and eat it too.

Snow!

First real storm of the year in Brunswick yesterday - looks like 8 or 10 inches on the ground. Probably more at Pineland - they started grooming yesterday afternoon, so we should have some good skiing there today. Sprints on the quad this morning - it was near perfect skiing on the plowed walkways until the sand truck came along and ruined our fun. After that we made our own little loop on the unplowed area - good stuff. Winter, at last.

Hero Hill

Hero Hill is a dirt road leading down to a sand and gravel quarry on the edge of town - one of the few long hills in Brunswick, and a great place for bounding intevals with poles. It used to be one of Coach Slovenski's favorite training grounds for the XC team - he's the one who named it - but no one's used it for years. Yesterday we resurrected the Hero Hill tradition, at least for a day. The workout was 4x4 min VO2max intervals for most of the team. Like the 30/30 workout, 4x4s are meant to increase VO2max, but through a more traditional method - moderate length intervals at 90+% of max HR followed by full recovery. Four minutes is long enough to get your heart rate up to the necessary level and spend some time there, but short enough so that you don't have to slow the pace and drop the heart rate. In my opinion, there's no workout that will get you in shape faster than bounding with poles for 4x4 minutes at VO2max pace. There's only so much that can be gained from this kind of workout, though - everyone has a VO2max "ceiling," and a well-trained skier can reach this ceiling fairly quickly. We don't want to be in top shape in December, which is why we've waited so long to start our VO2max training.

Now that we're here, though, we're hitting it hard - the team gave it a great effort yesterday. I jumped in and out of the workout to check out technique and give feedback, so I got a pretty good sense of the effort level: hard. Seems like it didn't take long for people to remember how to push themselves - in a few weeks, they'll still be pushing just as hard, but they'll be going a lot faster while doing it. Everyone was pretty worked by the end, and it sounded like they were still feeling it today, which is to be expected. We cleaned it out with a long rollerski today - same thing tomorrow, and then a day off on Monday should have everyone fresh and ready to go again on Tuesday.