Last Day of Camp

Another beautiful day at Foret. We got up super early this morning to fit in an OD before the long drive home. It was sunny and cold - the snow was dry and sharp and perfect for classic skiing. We tried to close out the camp with some games, but both of the open fields were swarming with skiers from the local clubs - Team Subway has taken over Foret these last couple days. I envy them - their winter is fully underway, while ours is back on hold (although we did get a dusting in Brunswick this evening). It's been a great camp - we couldn't have asked for better conditions, and we accomplished our goal of a big volume week on snow along with our first on snow time trial. Some good technique changes are moving along as well. I like what I saw from the team this week, and I'm excited to start the winter in earnest - hopefully soon.

Cold mornings - perfect for ice beards.

Ollie leading a group of guys on the OD after a technique session.

Not messing around. That's a triple decker sandwich on some of the thickest slices of bread I've ever seen.

Foret Time Trial

Today was a beautiful day for a time trial - cold dry snow and sunny skies (at least for a while). The course was about 9k, point-to-point partway around the main loop at Foret - some good climbing followed by a couple long descents and then a gradual rolling climb for the rest of the way. Our team got after it pretty hard and gave a good effort. Chris was our big star today, finishing 8th behind some really outstanding skiers. Full results will apparently be posted on NENSA at some point - for now, here are our finishes:

Women
21 - Grace - 29:20

Men
8 - Chris - 21:54
13 - Spencer - 22:37
14 - Scott - 22:38
22 - Colman - 23:30
23 - Tom - 23:31
30 - Woody - 24:31
31 - Dan - 24:36
32 - Nick - 24:45
32 - Shem - 24:45

I'm happy with this showing - there's work to be done, but this is a decent start.

This evening we drove into Quebec City to wander around the Old Town. Ollie and I had a bit of an adventure finding parking - old European style cities aren't built for big vans, especially not on a Saturday night - but we managed. The skiers found some chocolat chaud but no crepes, much to Maren's disappointment. The big toboggan ride was closed, sadly - in spite of this crushing setback, a good time was had by all. The most fun part for me was driving around the city taking random turns trying to find Rt. 175 Nord (which was not to be found by driving the opposite direction on Rt. 175 Sud, for some reason). After considerable help from Nick's instincts, we drove through several more narrow streets and almost ended up on some kind of cargo ship. Eventually, Nat rescued us with some French-speaking skills (he's a baller) and we found our way home. Photos may or may not be forthcoming.

Camp Day 3 - Birthdays

More snow at Foret today - there were a couple fresh inches on the ground this morning, and it snowed lightly throughout the day. The men did some leapfrog sprints on classic skis and the women had a productive technique session.


We had a mini birthday celebration tonight - Chris turned 19 today, and Scott turns 19 tomorrow. We made a couple of cakes on the sly - a nice feat considering that both guys were part of the dinner crew.

Tomorrow we'll do a skate time trial with a few of the other folks training up here - pretty low key, but it'll be nice to find out where we stand at this point of the season.

Thanksgiving Skiing

More good skiing today - two sessions this time. There are several other teams here - Colby, St. Lawrence, UMPI and others - but the trails don't feel crowded. It's hard to imagine anything feeling crowded up here - so great. I forgot how much I love Canada until yesterday.

Nat shredding the gnar.

Just a fraction of our huge men's team.

People are in good spirits right now - what's not to like about being on snow at Thanksgiving?

Speaking of Thanksgiving, we had a magnificent dinner tonight - stellar effort by the team. Parents would have been proud. No photos, but suffice it to say that the spread was impressive. Even Polasky got enough to eat.

Camp, Day 1

We're finally in Canada and finally on snow. It's been a challenging couple of days, but all's well now. Due to some nasty weather yesterday, we postponed our trip until this morning - we left Bowdoin really early and still had to scramble to get some skiing in before dark, thanks to an extended border stop and hassles with the condos. It was all worth it, though - lots of new snow at Foret and 10k of surprisingly good skiing. We skated today and loved it - looking forward to 4 more good days.

PS - New race suits were shipped on Monday - pictures will be forthcoming!

Morse Mtn Time Trial

Yesterday was round 2 of the Morse Mountain time trial. This is a new fitness test for us this year - approximately 1 mile, almost all uphill, on the access road that runs over Morse Mountain to Seawall Beach. I like this test better than the traditional 3000m run on a track, because uphill running is more about aerobic fitness and less about leg speed and running economy. The team did a self-test earlier in the fall to set a baseline, and yesterday was our chance to see what kind of improvements we've made. We weren't expecting a big jump, since so much of our training is on rollerskis, but we were hoping to see some progress, and we did. Most of our skiers shaved off a few seconds, with Chris and Grace making huge gains. Here are the results:

Men
Chris - 5:40
Walt - 5:58
Spencer - 5:58
Nat - 6:17
Woody - 6:40
Tom - 6:52
Nick - 7:19

Women
Erin - 7:27
Grace - 8:25

Hopefully this is some of the last dryland training we do this year - we're headed up to Stoneham, Quebec tomorrow for Thanksgiving Camp. If we're lucky, we'll get on snow at Foret Montmorency - conditions are still marginal at the moment, but apparently some teams skied over the weekend, so hopefully the snow will hold out. If we're really lucky, we'll have skiable snow at Pineland shortly after we return, but that's almost too much to ask - probably bad luck even to type these words. In any case, we have a fun week ahead of us!

Bridge Troubles

Yesterday we tried a new workout - a running warmup with some spenst exercises, followed by sprints on classic rollerskis. The concept is the same as our current strength phase - the rollerski work leaves the muscles with a ski-specific imprint that helps translate general strength/power gains into speed on skis. Things didn't go quite as smoothly as planned, however. Ollie and I dropped the team off east of Wolfe's Neck Farm - they were supposed to run west past the farm and meet us at the state park for rollerski sprints. Unfortunately, the bridge across the mouth of the Little River was out, and they had to backtrack and take the long way around. By the time we figured out what was going on and drove out to pick them up, the running warmup had stretched far beyond its designated time - Walter was sad. Nonetheless, we squeezed in some decent sprints in the waning daylight.

Daniel Blue Polasky. He's tall.

It looks like Nat's standing in front of an oncoming car, oblivious to the danger - however, although this is a very feasible scenario, I don't think that's what's happening here.

Either Wilson and Maren are both moving fast or my hands are unsteady. Probably both - my nerves are shot from watching Nat drift in and out of the middle of the road with no reflective vest.

Long skate rollerski at Runaround Pond today - cold and windy. The ice has come out in a hurry these last few days.

Courtney forcing Grace to stay in L1.

More Polasky - he's very photogenic. Chris in the background - Minnesotans tend to stick together in strange new places.

XC New Englands

The XC team wrapped up the season with a great showing at New Englands last weekend. The women finished 7th, with Courtney in 36th - she was just 0.4 seconds from All-New England honors. The men were 5th and just missed an at-large bid to NCAAs. Colman finished 19th, one place away from qualifying individually, and Scott ended a solid first season in 88th (14th for first-years). Great work, runners! We're looking forward to having these guys back at ski practice - the team is gradually starting to feel whole again.

Ski to Hallowell

The forecast this morning said "100% chance of rain."
The forecast was right.
A perfect day for our annual ski to Nat's house in Hallowell - 26 miles.
Fortunately, there was a vast spread waiting for us, courtesy of Naomi Schalit (Nat's mom) - a massive pot of chili, rice, salad, and a high class lentil dish for the vegetarians. Nice warmup for post-race tailgating this winter.
What a great way to end a week of training - thanks Naomi!

Skiing in the Rain

We're not building arks here in Brunswick, but we're getting close. A little rain never hurt anyone, though, so today we did a long pace workout on the Woodside/Bunganuc loop (by "we" I mean "the team and Ollie" - someone had to take pictures). No frowns, no whining - everyone jumped right in.

Here's Shem, burning it up - at least, I think this is Shem.

At least one of the coaches still has some street cred.

Nick and Wilson - easy cooldown rolling.

A half-drowned team wrapping it up at Maquoit Bay.

Elissa's Fall Break

Elissa just came back from her fall break abroad:

I spent most of my time in Switzerland in the mountains, and I am happy to say that I have now been on snow twice! I mean, running through snow is not as exciting as skiing on it but at least snow is involved. I went running on back roads and into small villages and even got stuck in a few cow herds! I went running in the evenings, so generally I would find myself on the same roads as the dairy cows being brought in to the barn at night. Pretty cool, especially because Swiss cows have really, really, big cowbells on them and you can hear a group approaching at a distance. I also got to go hiking near a glacier, but sadly I could not see the glacier because it was super foggy and rainy that day.

As far as training goes back here in Italy, I'm up to about 6.5 to 7 miles a day running and I exergenie most nights and do core when I can. Although I am taking five courses, I don't have a ton of homework (excluding studio time, there is always lots of studio work to do) so I am free in the evenings to do core work (even if my roommate laughs at me from time to time). Niko visited me two weeks ago, and we got to go running all the days he was here. It was really nice to see a familiar face and to have a training partner. He seems to be doing really well and is weight lifting a lot back in Copenhagen. I'm sure he is going to be fast this year. Anyway, I took him on my usual morning route, running through the city and up to Piazza Michelangelo and around the Arno (about 5 miles) and suddenly, because I was showing it to Niko, I remembered how beautiful it all really is...running across the bridges over the Arno as the sun is rising and then standing in Piazza Michelangelo under the copy of the David certainly doesn't suck.

I can't wait to hear about Thanksgiving Camp, and I hope that everything goes well!

First Month

We've been training as a team for just over a month now - it's been a good month. I'm thrilled with how the team looks - they've done a great job of executing the training and everything else. If things continue the way they're going, it's going to be a great season.

We wrapped up this week with a long classic rollerski that included some specific strength work. Today was a perfect day for working on little technique adjustments, and Ollie and I kept up a steady nagging for most of the workout. The changes are coming along - we'll be a much sharper team by the time we're on snow. People showed remarkably little fatigue from yesterday's bounding intervals at Pineland - we tested out a new workout, a hybrid session with several minutes of moosehoofing at threshold before finishing with a kick up to VO2max pace. It was a surprisingly hard workout, and the wet weather we've had made it tougher, but everyone handled it really well.

Speaking of Pineland, here are some photos from last week's XC race, courtesy of Nick:

Colman ran through the background and ruined this perfectly good shot of me.

Scott's had a great season - he's had some breakthrough races and is running fast enough to make the top 7, which extends his season by another 2 weeks. This is both good and bad.

The last hundred meters of Maren's season - good to have her back with us.

Focus Change

Lots of things changing in the last few days. We turned the clocks back last weekend - daylight is scarce in the afternoons now. Fortunately, we're moving into a new period of focus in our training - we're transitioning from threshold work to VO2max work, accompanied by a lower total training volume. Tuesday was our first VO2max session - skate intervals on Highland Road, the biggest hill we can find that's close to campus. We'll expand our boundaries in the weeks to come, but Highland will remain a great bread-and-butter location for our VO2max intervals. This is a fun time of year - everyone's excited to start going hard after we've been holding back for so long. We'll still keep in touch with threshold training, though, with some hybrid sessions and an occasional pace workout.

We're also into a new strength training phase - like last year, we're now finishing our max strength workouts with rollerski sprints. The new hockey arena is almost finished, so we have a beautiful new parking lot to ski in - perfect for sprints. Small groups of athletes skiing in circles also provides a good opportunity to work on technique. We're getting into some very productive training right now - it's an exciting time of year.

No pictures lately, but here's a Lobster Roll video that Ollie put together:

Duelathon 08

The 8th Annual Jenex/Patagonia Duelathon is in the books. We had a good turnout - 45 racers, mostly from Bates, Colby, and Maine Coastal Nordic. Nat once again led the race on the pace bike - he wisely chose a mountain bike this year. Colby racers Wyatt Fereday and Matt Briggs quickly broke away from the back, joined by Sylvan Ellefson of Bates. Fereday came into the transition with a slight lead, but his slow rollerskis quickly took him out of contention, and the race turned into a duel between Briggs and Ellefson. After a few kilometers, they settled into an easy cruising pace and waited for the sprint (this was fortunate for Nat, whose bike was apparently was stuck in the granny gear or something - he struggled heroically to stay ahead of the leaders). Ellefson pulled away in the final uphill sprint to take the win, with Briggs close behind and Bates's Sam Evans-Brown moving on the rollerski leg to take 3rd.

The women's race was less contentious - Colby's Lucy Garrec entered the changeover just a few seconds ahead of teammate Kathleen Maynard and Kirsten Gill of Bates, but a quick transition and a blistering rollerski leg gave her the win by a wide margin, with Maynard cruising to a second place finish. Bates's Megan McClelland won a three-way sprint with teammates Natalie Ruppertsberger (skiing as a team with Ingrid Knowles) and Caitlin Curran to claim third.

Our team did a nice job of pulling the event together, and things went pretty smoothly. We were also lucky to have help from Bowdoin alumni Danielle and Ryan Triffitt '97 and ski team parents Sue Crawford and Betsey Shepard. Thanks to all of today's racers, and to NENSA for providing bibs. Thanks in particular to sponsors Patagonia and V2/Jenex, who donated great prizes for today's event. Without their support, this race wouldn't continue to exist.

Full results here.

XC NESCACs

The XC team competed at the NESCAC Championships at Pineland today. We brought a group down to watch the races and do a long run. It was a beautiful day for a race or a workout, and we had a great time cheering on the runners. The women finished 6th (Courtney 36th, Maren 114th), while the men were 7th (Colman 16th, Scott 57th). Pretty solid showings in such a tough conference - the D3 national rankings for XC are loaded with NESCAC teams.
Women's Results
Men's Results