Lobster Roll 2013 & October Recap

A few days ago the team headed over to North Haven for the 2013 Lobster Roll.  The Lobster Roll is always a fun time - it's not every day that you get to do a rollerski race on an island in the Gulf of Maine.  We had a small crew in attendance, along with some enthusiastic parents since it was Family Weekend at Bowdoin.  Eva had the top performance of the day as the 7th women, with Tess not far behind in 10th.  Mac was our top man, finishing 13th - a strong showing for a first-year.  Overall, the team skied pretty well considering that we were finishing up a tough block of training - most people improved their times from previous years (although who knows what that means in a rollerski race).  More importantly, it was a fun experience and a good race effort.  Thanks to Andy Shepard of Maine Winter Sports Center for making this trip happen!

Now we're heading into the dark days of November after a beautiful October.  We were lucky to have lots of mild, sunny days with almost no rain, and we were able to get in a lot of solid workouts with a few adventures here and there.  Aside from Fall Camp and the North Haven trip, (most of) the team took a trip to New Hampshire for a run/hike in the Presidentials - some did the full traverse, while others did a nice loop over Madison and Adams.  The day to day training has been really productive as well.  Since fitness testing concluded, our main focal points have been threshold and specific strength - lots and lots of double poling on rollerskis, quality time on the SkiErgs, and a few laps around the fields while dragging weight plates.  So the team is looking pretty strong right now - some of these guys can double pole up just about anything.  Our new focus for the next few weeks is speed - trying to apply all that strength to our skis and poles in a quick and efficient manner.  This means lots of rollerski and erg sprints, as well as some spenst work.  We'll continue to do regular threshold workouts and probably another time trial or two as we head toward Thanksgiving Camp - just 3 weeks to go until we're on snow!