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!

Testing and Time Trial

Official practice is underway! We've had a busy week, with fitness testing and a bike path time trial, among other workouts. Testing consisted of a 500m erg test, same as last year, and a short but nasty treadmill test (12 or 15% grade, speed increasing by 0.5mph every minute, to exhaustion). Chris and Erin were tops on the treadmill, and Steph and Riley had the fastest erg times. Pretty solid performances all around - a number of people were clustered near the top in both tests, and overall team fitness is looking good. This was confirmed yesterday with our bike path time trial - lots of people close together, and considerably faster times than last year's October test. More importantly, people just looked good - nice springy skiing. Some of these guys have improved their skiing tremendously since last season. Overall, I'm pretty excited about how the team looks after these first few days. Off to Acadia for Fall Camp tomorrow!

Here are the time trial results:

Women

Shelby - 11:55

Kaitlynn - 12:32

Steph - 12:53

Maren - 13:24

Men

Wilson - 9:47

Tyler - 10:05

Nate - 10:18

Spencer - 10:35

Riley - 10:38

Jackson - 10:40

Chris - 10:46

Alec - 10:49

Drew - 11:26

Mark - 12:01