Name This Skier

Slow times here on the Bowdoin Nordic blog lately - the calm before the storm. Here's something to keep our loyal readers busy - a gold star for anyone who can name this current Bowdoin skier:

Photo courtesy of Flying Point Road.

TUNA Race

Wilson capped off a great week by coming home to Utah and jumping into a 10k classic race on Saturday. The Salt Lake/Park City area has a thriving ski community, and there are a lot of good racers in the area, so this was a great opportunity to get some on-snow race prep. Some travel and baggage hassles left him arriving at the venue with barely enough time for waxing and warmup, but he pulled off a strong performance nonetheless, finishing a close second in a competitive field. More importantly, he felt good throughout the race - very encouraging considering that he missed a lot of training while rehabbing a back injury this fall. Unlike most of the team, he'll have regular access to training on snow these next few weeks - in lean snow years like this one, it's good to be a Westerner.

Wilson's Secret Training

Wilson is in Montana right now, ostensibly to do some research for his honors project. It turns out that his schedule is flexible enough to allow for a little exploration - these last couple days, he's been able to do some great skiing on a quiet road out in the wilderness somewhere. Got to love the Mountain West - there's always snow somewhere if you're willing to go high enough to find it.

Merepoint Time Trial

One of my big goals this fall was to add more competition to the training plan - time trials and mini-races within workouts. We've certainly accomplished this, with 4 time trials in the last 4 weeks, among other competitions. Our latest effort was a 5k skate time trial with Bates on Merepoint Rd - a new time trial venue for us and a nice change of pace. We had originally planned to repeat our bike path TT from earlier this fall to measure our improvements, but unfortunately the Thanksgiving snowstorm left the path pretty sandy - not so good for a time trial. Anyway, the time trial went well, and several people - most notably Steph, Dan, Wilson, and Riley - put up impressive performances. Overall, though, our team is clearly feeling several weeks of hard training combined with increasing school stress. Lots of tired faces out there on Saturday. Still, this was not unexpected, and we should bounce back quickly once we start getting some extra rest. For now, we have one more week of training as a team before the skiers are on their own for exams and Winter Break.

Oh yeah - one other point of interest from Saturday. After the TT, Bates invited us to join them in a team tradition - a plank contest, in which everyone held the plank position for as long as possible. There were a lot of stubbon people planking on the grass outside of Farley - some pretty impressive efforts. Ultimately, it came down to Wilson against Hallie Grossman of Bates - they both planked for around 15 minutes before agreeing to settle for a draw.

Here are results from the time trial:

Men

Buetow	Jordan	Bates	11:15.0
Dippo	Wilson	Bowdoin	11:24.3
Milliken	Lucas	Bates	11:28.0
Michaud	Nick	Bates	11:46.2
Hamilton	Alex	Bates	12:04.3
Woods	Sean	Bates	12:11.4
Eusden	Riley	Bowdoin	12:23.5
Deangelis	Tyler	Bowdoin	12:30.1
Regan	Connor	Bates	12:39.6
Polasky	Dan	Bowdoin	12:42.7
Longwell	Scott	Bowdoin	12:48.7
Eusden	Spencer	Bowdoin	12:50.3
Burnham	Jimmy	Bates	12:53.8
Hoose	Kevin	Bowdoin	13:20.3
McGovern	Alec	Bowdoin	13:23.2
Sanville	Chris	Bowdoin	13:51.4
Bloch	Jackson	Bowdoin	13:57.3
Kuzio	Dan	Bates	14:03.0
Women
Dion	Kelsey	Bates	13:03.7
Taylor	Beth	Bates	13:34.9
Grossman	Hallie	Bates	13:35.0
Sellegren	Gretchen	Bates	14:17.2
Lynn	Stephanie	Bowdoin	14:32.8
Aseltine	Shelby	Bowdoin	15:11.7
Daniels	Caroline	Bates	15:11.9
Miller	Kaitlynn	Bowdoin	15:23.9
Forrest	Sam	Bates	16:06.0
Askins	Maren	Bowdoin	16:21.0
Frisbie	Sierra	Bowdoin	16:24.6

Camp Wrap-Up

Back home now after finishing camp with a great OD ski on Sunday morning - everyone scattered and explored various logging roads with just enough snow for skiing and came back tired and happy. We had a quick and uneventful trip home (aside from being briefly detained at the border - should have shaved before the trip), and another Thanksgiving Camp was in the books. This was perhaps our most productive Thanksgiving Camp ever - the limited snow kept people confined to a limited space for much of the time, which allowed the coaches to see a lot of each athlete and do some good technique work with everyone. However, there was enough snow so that when people started to go crazy skiing the same trails over and over, they were able to push the boundaries and find some good adventure skiing deep in the woods. As bonus points, we got to do a quality race effort against EISA competition. All in all, a really productive camp that should set us up well for good training in December.

Here are some photos, courtesy of Maren (who also happens to be the Skier of the Week for Thanksgiving Camp 2011, due not only to her photography, but also her expert driving, outstanding conbread, and all-around excellence):

Sierra and Erin

Kaitlynn
Kevin
Jackson
Chris
Maren
Scott, Kevin, and Riley
Shelby
Steph
Spencer carving the turkey.

Nate and Sierra
Men dressed up for Thanksgiving Dinner. In case any Bowdoin administrators are reading this post, I'd like to state that the empty wine bottle that Riley is brandishing did not make its appearance at dinner. Rather, it's a makeshift foam roller belonging to Spencer (it's covered with several layers of plastic wrap).

Women at Lac Bedard, deep in the woods of Foret Montmorency.

Drew
Alec
Spencer

Thanksgiving, Time Trial, etc

All sorts of good stuff happening over the last few days. The snow has held up quite well in spite of warm temps today and yesterday - we've been skiing only a little on the 1k loop and doing a lot of exploring on the various ungroomed roads and trails - not bad skiing out there in spite of thin snow. We've put in a lot of hours and done some good productive technique work. I've seen some notable improvements in a short time - hopefully we can maintain these when we start up with rollerskiing again back home. We've had some outstanding meals, highlighted by a stellar Thanksgiving spread - green bean casserole, broccoli and cheese casserole, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potato fries, stuffing, pies, and of course turkey, masterminded by Spencer.

Today we teamed up with St. Lawrence, UMPI, and Colby for a 5.5k classic time trial on the 1k loop - klister waxing and lots of people in a small space made for a chaotic morning, but everything went quite well. I was really pleased with how everyone looked. People were really pushing hard - a good quality race effort. As importantly, most people I talked to enjoyed the race and were happy with how they'd skied. The results weren't anything special - we clearly have some work to do before we're race ready - but this was expected. I feel good about where we are right now, and I think we're on track to see some good results in the carnival season.

I'll get pictures up as soon as I can. For now, here are the results from today's time trial:

Men

Last Name	First Name	Team	Time
Barton	Jake	Colby	17:10.3
Jackson	Teo	SLU	17:55.1
Supple	Jared	Colby	17:59.6
Terko	Adam	SLU	18:06.3
Meng	Austin	SLU	18:06.4
Fereshetian	Justin	UMPI	18:11.3
Eusden	Spencer	Bowdoin	18:12.9
DeFrancis	Paco	Colby	18:14.5
Lustgarten	Eric	SLU	18:22.4
Bard	Joey	UMPI	18:25.0
Zars	Levin	Colby	18:30.5
Spencer	Kody	Colby	18:41.5
Likly	Reed	SLU	18:50.4
Niles	Nate	Bowdoin	18:55.5
Hoose	Kevin	Bowdoin	18:59.5
Ogden	Ben	SLU	19:05.5
Frielinghaus	Will	SLU	19:05.8
McGovern	Alec	Bowdoin	19:07.7
Prescott	Bill	SLU	19:11.5
Eusden	Riley	Bowdoin	19:39.5
Burnham	Chris	Colby	19:41.6
Hart	Austin	SLU	19:43.3
Sanville	Chris	Bowdoin	19:45.8
Dermody	Dan	UMPI	19:52.7
Longwell	Scott	Bowdoin	20:09.7
Bloch	Jackson	Bowdoin	20:13.8
Nesbitt	Andrew	UMPI	20:47.0
Gustafson	Drew	Bowdoin	21:05.8

Women

Last Name	First Name	Team	Time
Anderson	Lizzie	Colby	21:48.1
Moreland	Amanda	SLU	22:05.6
Susla	Molly	Colby	22:15.7
Miller	Kaitlynn	Bowdoin	22:16.4
Brockett	Sarah	Colby	22:20.5
Krause	Missy	Colby	22:29.2
Donohoe	Emma	Colby	22:47.5
Carpenter	Caroline	SLU	22:53.3
Christoffel	Kati	UMPI	22:53.9
Aseltine	Shelby	Bowdoin	22:59.1
Mulcahy	Kate	SLU	23:00.3
Hotopp	Alice	Colby	23:19.6
Lones	Amy	Colby	23:40.5
Lynn	Stephanie	Bowdoin	23:49.1
Askins	Maren	Bowdoin	23:56.3
Hatten	Erin	Bowdoin	24:29.5
Olson	Lauren	SLU	25:35.6
Frisbie	Sierra	Bowdoin	25:45.5

Camp - Day 1

First day of camp was a big success. We weren't sure what we'd find when we got up to Foret this morning, but things worked out really well. The 1k loop is in very good shape - rock solid tracks, and good kick with hard wax. The road is also surprisingly good - some rocks poking through, but pretty decent skating, and not bad for classic outside the tracks. All told, it was enough for us to put in 3 or 4 hours of skiing without getting too crazy. The advantage of the limited space was that coaches were able to see each skier frequently, so Zach and I were able to pull people aside one after another to work on technique - not possible when there are several kilometers of good skiing and everyone just scatters. I'm really pleased with today - a great start to the camp. We might run into some difficulties as the weekend approaches and the trails get more crowded, but for now we'll just enjoy the skiing and make the most of what we have.

Pineland Sprint TT

Last week was another challenging week, highlighted by long threshold intervals on Lewis Hill Rd, a pleasant run at Wolfe's Neck, a sprint time trial with Bates, and a fine OD rollerski on Ridge Rd. Here are a few photos:




The time trial was a nice change of pace - we ran a prelim and three rounds of heats. A rather elegant format designed by the Bates coaches ensured that everyone was matched up against other skiers of similar speed in each heat, which was both fun and productive. Wilson and Shelby laid down our fastest qualifying times, while Kaitlynn and Tyler each made the A finals. Here are results from the prelim:

Men

Jordan	Buetow	Bates	2:51.7
Lucas	Milliken	Bates	2:57.4
Nick	Michaud	Bates	2:57.6
Wilson	Dippo	Bowdoin	3:05
Tyler	DeAngelis	Bowdoin	3:07.4
Sean	Woods	Bates	3:09.1
Nate	Niles	Bowdoin	3:09.4
Alex	Hamilton	Bates	3:16.7
Connor	Regan	Bates	3:22.4
Jimmy	Burnham	Bates	3:28
Alec	McGovern	Bowdoin	3:36.2
Dan	Polasky	Bowdoin	3:40.4
Jackson	Bloch	Bowdoin	3:42
Drew	Gustafson	Bowdoin	3:44.2
Scott	Longwell	Bowdoin	3:44.3
Women
Gretchen	Sellegren	Bates	3:34.7
Hallie	Grossman	Bates	3:35.4
Beth	Taylor	Bates	3:40.2
Shelby	Aseltine	Bowdoin	3:50.8
Andrea	Fisher	Bates	3:52.9
Caroline	Daniels	Bates	3:54.2
Kaitlynn	Miller	Bowdoin	3:56.2
Stephanie	Lynn	Bowdoin	3:57.1
Kelsey	Dion	Bates	4:02.7
Sierra	Frisbie	Bowdoin	4:12.4
Sam	Forrest	Bates	4:13.2
Maren	Askins	Bowdoin	4:20.3
Erin	Hatton	Bowdoin	4:27.7

Now we're up in Quebec - on snow tomorrow! It sounds like we'll be doing a mix of rock skiing on the logging roads and laps around the 1k manmade loop - whatever it is, it'll just be good to be skiing.

The Tradition Continues

Last Sunday was our annual "Ski to Hallowell" day. Since 2006, Naomi Schalit (mother of Nat Herz '09) has hosted the team for lunch after a point-to-point rollerski from Bowdoin (the town, not the college) to her house in Hallowell. Even though Nat graduated three years ago, Naomi and her husband John Christie have generously continued the tradition every November. This year, we had fine weather and good roads (aside from one little roadblock where a bridge was being rebuilt). The team is getting so fast these days that I had to add on a few extra miles for some of them - even so, they cruised right along and made the skiing look effortless. As always, Naomi and John had a huge, delicious chili lunch waiting for us at the end of the road. This event is always one of the highlights of our fall, and the team was in high spirits after the workout (and promptly fell asleep once we got in the vans to head home). Thanks to Naomi and John for their wonderful hospitality!

Penny Road Time Trial

This has been a fairly tough week of training: an early morning skate rollerski threshold, a VO2max bounding workout at Bradbury in the rain, a harder-than-planned specific strength session, and a 30/60 speed session on skate skis, along with a couple of general strength workouts. Today we added to the load with a classic rollerski time trial embedded in a threshold workout. The course went up Penny Road and Gloucester Hill - 4.5k of mostly steady climbing with a few rolls to break it up. Just to mix things up a bit, we split the skiers up into 3 teams (which will also serve as the cook groups for Quebec camp): Mon Petit Chou, Noff Noff, and Der Freischutz. It was a fairly closely matched affair, with Noff Noff prevailing and Der Freischutz and Mon Petit Chou not far behind. Here are individual results:

Men
Spencer	Noff Noff	15:02
Chris	Der Freischutz	15:37.5
Scott	Mon Petit Chou	16:24.2
Jackson	Noff Noff	16:54.6
Alec	Mon Petit Chou	17:00.4
Riley	Der Freischutz	17:18.7
Drew	Noff Noff	19:34	Broken pole tip
Mark	Der Freischutz	21:25.9	DP only
Women
Kaitlynn	Der Freischutz	19:42.2
Maren	Noff Noff	20:30.6
Erin	Mon Petit Chou	20:51.7
Steph	Mon Petit Chou	21:18.2
Sierra	Der Freischutz	21.23.2

This was a fun time trial to watch - everyone gave it a good effort, and there were some great battles out there. In these last few weeks, there's been a sharpness that I haven't seen before from Bowdoin Nordic - aggressive skiing and solid technique. I feel like these guys are on the verge of reaching a new level as a team - very exciting stuff.

No photos from the time trial, but here are some shots Zach took of the soggy Bradbury workout:



The boys also had fun with Photo Booth on the way home from the time trial. Here are a few of the less nightmare-inducing pictures:

Rest Week (sort of)

After a reasonably challenging October, we were all set to back off a bit and have a nice easy rest week to open November. For most of the week, we followed this plan - easy runs and rollerskis close to campus, leaving plenty of time for rest and schoolwork catch-up. We did have one threshold workout that was slightly tougher than planned for some skiers - it was a skate rollerski alternating between 2 min at threshold and 30 seconds easy skiing. The short intervals allowed us to go faster than we usually would in a threshold session, but the cumulative effect of skiing fast for lots and lots of short intervals was pretty fatiguing. That's OK - at this point in the season the skiers need to be moving fast more than they need to be rigidly adhering to the target training zone.

On Sunday, we radically departed from the "easy week" theme - since we'd had a very short practice during the snowstorm last Sunday, we moved our long OD workout to this Sunday. We did a 2 hour "no V1" skate rollerski followed by a 1.5 hour run on the Pineland trails - a pretty solid piece of training, and our longest OD of the fall (outside of camps). I was thrilled with how the team looked in this workout (and for the last few weeks overall) - very fit and focused, and technically solid. Great, great stuff.




One other important note: Chris and Wilson stopped by a local orchard to provide the team with a donut feed - gold stars for them. I'll try to post some donut footage when I have a chance.

Morse Mountain and First Snow

We finally made it out to Morse Mountain on Saturday - hard to believe that we didn't get out to one of our best training venues until the end of October. We did a series of hard hill repeats at VO2max pace, with a surprise mini-race in the middle of the workout - a sort of reverse pursuit, where we handicapped everyone based on their times for the previous interval. It was an interesting exercise to find out who had an extra gear when we switched into race mode (or, as Scott noted, to find out who was sandbagging in the early intervals). Spencer came out on top, with Sierra close behind after an impressive finishing kick. We had several parents cheering us on, and Alec's dad Scott earned much respect by doing the whole workout with the team.

Wilson is nursing a back injury, but he came along to cheer the team on and take some photos. This is the final pitch leading up to the top.

We're glad to have Scott back with us now that his XC season has ended. He pretty much destroyed everyone in this workout.

A perfect day to be out at Morse Mountain.

Since the preserve was open for hunting, we all wore vests, but Riley probably would have been safe without one.

Drew working hard around the final turn.

Glad to be done with a very tough workout.

Like most of the Northeast, we woke up to several inches of snow on Sunday morning. We had originally planned to do an extra-long OD workout, but the weather made this unfeasible, so we switched gears and did an easy ski around the fields, capped off by some erging and a little basketball. The snow was wet and sticky and the skiing wasn't pretty, but it was skiing!

Lobster Roll etc

Since coming back from Fall Camp, we've been chipping away with business as usual - just good solid training. In particular, we've been trying to mix up both the training venues and the workouts themselves, partly for fun and variety and partly to make sure we hit some more hilly terrain than the stuff we can find close to campus. The last few days have included the whole range of our bag of tricks: running at Wolfe's Neck, Bradbury, and Pineland, and rollerskiing at Cathance/Ridge Rd, Doughty Rd, Penny Rd & Gloucester Hill, and the Pownal/Pineland OD loop. We've also created our own hills, so to speak, in some on-campus workouts: a high resistance erg session designed to imitate uphill double poling, running intervals on Pickard Field while dragging weight plates, and a blissful early morning treadmill workout. Tomorrow we'll head out to Morse Mountain for the first time this year - no time trial, just a good hill workout and perhaps a little competition mixed in.

The big highlight of the last few weeks, however, was the 5th Annual Lobster Roll, a 15k rollerski time trial hosted by Maine Winter Sports Center on the island of North Haven. We had great weather and tough competition for the event, and our skiers gave a good effort. Overall, I thought the team looked a bit sharper than we have in past years, with Tyler, Steph, and Kaitlynn posting particularly strong finishes. Here's a quick overview of how our skiers fared:

Men
Tyler - 40:51
Jackson - 42:04
Spencer - 42:57
Nate - 43:05
Riley - 45:49
Drew - 48:12

Women
Kaitlynn - 50:27
Steph - 51:55
Shelby - 54:19
Maren - 54:21
Sierra - 56:25

As always, it was a fun day and a unique Maine experience. Thanks to Andy Shepard and MWSC for making it happen!

Acadia Camp

Fall Camp in Acadia was a big success - beautiful weather and great training all three days. On Saturday, we decided to mix things up a bit by stopping en route to Maren's camp and doing a bounding workout up Bald Mountain in Dedham. Bald Mountain is a basically a big chunk of granite plunked into the middle of the fields and woods of downeast Maine - it's a steep half-mile climb from bottom to top. Our workout was a variation on 30/30s that I learned from Walt Shepard - bound uphill for 30 seconds, then walk slowly downhill for 30 seconds, repeating until you reach the top. We did 2 trips up the mountain for a hard and fun VO2max workout. That afternoon, we did a short recovery run around Witch Hole Pond in the park. Later that evening, the team sat out on the rocks overlooking the water. The sun was setting, porpoises were swimming up the river, and we were eating delicious homemade enchiladas - what's better than that?


The next day was a long run/hike over several peaks on the eastern side of the island. We started with the Bubbles, then Pemetic, Cadillac, Dorr, Champlain, the Beehive, and Gorham - not a bad day's work. Finally, on Monday we ran the Around the Mountain loop, a hilly 12-mile loop on the carriage roads. Zach provided support on his bike, allowing the skiers to run with minimal gear. Erin and I closed out the workout with a little extra intensity, picking up the pace in an effort to chase down the boys in the final 2 1/2 miles - this felt surprisingly good at the end of 3 hard days of running, hiking, and bounding. All in all, three great days of training - perhaps the best Fall Camp we've ever had. Thanks to the Askins family for making it all possible!