Snow, East and West

There's a good sized storm ongoing throughout New England today - Brunswick is supposed to get at least a foot, with inland areas getting several inches as well. This is quite welcome after a very thin December.

Wilson is unimpressed. From Utah, he writes:

As the champion of oneupsmanship (I'm going to leave that as one word because I have no idea how else one would spell it): You think that your 6-10'' is a big storm? This is what Alta looked like today:

Eastern Cup Opener

A couple Bowdoin skiers raced in last weekend's Eastern Cup Openers in Jericho, VT. Spencer had a rather sloppy skate qualifier on Saturday, but came back with one of his best classic efforts ever in yesterday's 12k mass start. Kaitlynn finished exams and got home just in time to jump into the classic race and post a respectable finish. Both were right in the mix with a number of strong college skiers. I have no doubt that they'll both be racing faster in a few weeks, but this is a good starting point. Full results here.

As of today, almost everyone has headed home (I think Polasky is going to be the last person left on campus tomorrow morning). Sounds like the West/Midwest crowd has decent skiing to look forward to, while things might be thin for the Easterners for the near future. Regardless, everyone should have plenty of chances for productive training and, more importantly, lots of rest. I'm excited to see how they look when we're back together in January - in the meantime, I'll post race reports as I get them.

Grafton TT, Erg Test

Yesterday we were able to get away for an on-snow time trial in Grafton Notch - 10k classic. It was great to get on snow again, and even better to do something resembling a race. No times available, but here's the finish order:

Men
Tim
Wilson
James
Scott
Spencer
Riley
Mark
Dan
Rainer

Women
Kaitlynn
Hannah
Emma
Grace
Erin
Steph

On the way home, most the guys stopped by the Eusden house for a quick hot tub. Here's a photo courtesy of Dykstra Eusden:


Either that's a very large tub or our guys are much skinnier than I'd realized.

We also did a repeat of our 500m erg test last Friday. Again, almost everyone saw improvements, some quite substantial. Results were as follows:

Men
James	01:37.1
Riley	01:37.3
Wilson	01:40.4
Spencer	01:40.9
Scott	01:43.2
Rainer	01:45.0
Mark	01:49.6
Women
Grace	01:58.8
Kaitlynn	02:00.9
Steph	02:01.1
Hannah	02:05.3

After 5 straight tough weeks, most people are pretty thoroughly exhausted and ready for a rest. I'm happy that we made it through such a tough period with minimal illness, etc - it's been a very productive month or so. At this point, I'd say that the team's overall fitness is solid, and speed and strength are better than ever, but we're definitely lacking the top-end fitness that gets you up the hills fast. Fortunately, we've got a few weeks to work on this over break. With a little rest and some quality interval work, this group should be ready to ski fast by the time the carnivals start. For now, though, it's exam period - time to forget about skiing for a few days.

Bike Path Time Trial #2

Very encouraging results from our re-test of the bike path time trial last weekend. I was expecting modest gains, maybe 10-15 seconds per leg, so I was pleasantly surprised to see several people improving by 30+ seconds, with some gaining over a minute. Almost everyone improved on at least one leg, and most people had solid gains on both. This is especially impressive considering that we've had 4 big training weeks in a row and that school stress is running high as we get close to exams. The colder temps of December probably didn't help rollerski speeds, either. All in all, a big success - I'm pretty excited.

Wilson	9:39
Scott	10:43
James	10:45
Rainer	11:20
Riley	11:40
Mark	12:19
Spencer	12:25	broken wheel
Dan	13:05	no poles
Grace	13:03
Kaitlynn	13:08
Hannah	13:36
Steph	14:30
Emma	15:18
Classic
Wilson	11:16
James	11:22
Spencer	11:38
Scott	12:13
Rainer	12:45
Riley	13:36
Mark	13:45
Dan	16:00	no poles
Hannah	14:30
Kaitlynn	14:42
Steph	14:51
Emma	15:18
Grace	15:30

Ski to Hallowell, Morse Mtn

Catching up on some of the fun stuff we did the week before camp. First, we did our annual Ski to Nat's Mom's House in Hallowell. It was a fine crisp fall day, made even better by the presence of Walt and Nat himself. There were lots of freshly-paved sections on the route, and the skiing went almost without a hitch. We covered the distance faster than ever this year - not sure if this was due to new pavement, good weather, knowing the route better, or some combination of all these factors, but I'm going to chalk it up to our team's improved fitness and technique. The lunch was even better than the skiing. Nat's Mom (aka Naomi Schalit) cooked up her usual delicious chili feast for us - even with Polasky in attendance, we were totally overmatched by the sheer volume of food. It was a great day - always one of the year's highlights. Much thanks to Naomi and co-host John Christie!

(photo courtesy of Hallie Herz)

We also took a trip to Morse Mountain for a combined VO2max workout and time trial. Times were comparable to the self-test that most people did in September. This is encouraging, considering that we've done very little hard running lately - we've maintained our general aerobic fitness over these last few weeks while focusing on ski-specific speed and strength. A few people made big gains, while a few others lost a bit. In any case, we'll get the edge back as we build high-end fitness throughout December. This weekend we'll find out how well we've done with the whole package, as we'll repeat our bike path time trial from a few weeks ago.