Thanksgiving Camp 2018

Well that was nice.  I've seen some pretty great Thanksgiving skiing at Foret over the last 11 years, but this year was the best ever.  It started snowing up there a few weeks ago, and I guess it just never really stopped - so much snow!  We got to experience some of that snow fresh from the sky on the Tuesday evening drive up - that was exciting, especially since it was my first time out with our beautiful new trailer.  Leslie's late van got the worst of it, but she was a hero and powered through safely.  Next morning we awoke to a vast stretch of white with remarkably good tracks.  All this snow changed the nature of the camp a bit.  Most years we have a nice 2k loop with maybe a little rock skiing on the roads, so we end up doing endless laps and a ton of technique work.  That's great, but when you have miles and miles of roads and trails to stretch out on, you have to forget the filming and get out there.  Which we did.

Day 1:  Classic exploration in the morning, ripping the roy on skate skis in the afternoon.  We did a nice downhill skills session on some super fun technical turns - our team is pretty solid on downhills, but it was interesting to see some fundamental weaknesses exposed here.  Also some strengths - turns out that Perrin is a downhill hero.  We made some good progress and learned some new tools - there are definitely some things we'll keep working on.  First cook group stepped up to the plate and produced a hearty meal of risotto, spinach salad, and bread sticks, preceded by a classy fruit and cheese plate and finished with a delicious strawberry shortcake topped with cream that had been lovingly whipped by hand.

Day 2:  Froid.  Really froid.  We covered up and went out for another nice long classic tour.  There was a frantic flurry of Thanksgiving cooking before and after our PM skate workout.  This was one of our smoothest Thanksgiving meals ever - Elliot is pretty much a turkey expert now, and everyone else displayed remarkable competence with their meals as well (thanks largely to Leslie's presence as kitchen consultant).  The final result was outstanding.  This is always a special day for our team - we have so much to be thankful for, and even though it's always hard to be away from family, it was so nice to share this meal with such a special group of people.

Day 3:  Less cold.  More classic skiing!  Some good technique work and good progress made.  After lunch we had to switch over to new lodging since our beautiful Boreal was booked for the weekend - no big deal once we got settled in.  That afternoon we previewed the time trial course despite not knowing exactly what it was.  Next cook group stepped up to the plate with a fine curry over rice, green beans, and warm berries on ice cream.

Day 4:  Time trial!  5/10k skate with several other college teams and some local biathletes.  We're focused on being race-ready for January, and that showed in our results - nothing special, but we'll get there.  All three first-years skied over their heads and put up some very competitive finishes - nice showing for their first time wearing the Bowdoin suit.  It was a good tuneup and a good learning experience - plenty of stuff to work on in the coming weeks.  That afternoon we decompressed with one of the most amazing classic skis any of us have ever had - a long loop on a remote trail that most of us had never skied, with tons of climbing and absolutely stunning views of the frosted boreal landscape with the first hints of sunset in the sky.  On the way down from the high point we formed some mini-trains and got going shockingly fast - fun times.  Saw a moose, ripped some turns, and had a great great final night at camp.  The last cook group swung for the fences with an ambitious attempt at French-Italian fusion cuisine:  pasta puttanesca, potatoes au gratin, spinach salad, and cake with lemon curd and whipped cream.  Good stuff.

Day 5:  Sadly, there was no final morning ski at Foret.  With threatening weather closing in, we decided to sprint out of town and head home early to beat the storm.  This was a good choice - looks like we missed a lot of freezing rain from Quebec City to Jackman.  As it was we still drove through some snow in western Maine, but no big deal.  As a consolation prize, we stopped at Quarry Road for a short ski before completing the trip - it was nothing like Foret, but any snow time in November is like gold.

Overall, this was an amazing camp - we couldn't have asked for better conditions, and we certainly took full advantage of them.  Now it's time for a rest - time to sleep off all that training and get schoolwork sorted out before the final push to exams!

November Less-Rain

November is turning out to be slightly less rainy than October, but we're at no risk of drying out any time soon.  That hasn't stopped us from crushing some good workouts as we move toward Thanksgiving Camp.  Some highlights:

- A first-time workout for Bowdoin Nordic:  classic roll to Reid State Park finished with a run on the beach.  The sun was out for the first time in days, the pavement was perfect, and the scenery was gorgeous - a perfect day.  We'll definitely make this an annual session.

- A rollerski skills workout around Farley and Watson.  Not the most exciting scenery, but with a short loop we were able to stay in constant contact with the skiers and give everyone some good individual feedback.  Now that we're into short days and early darkness, on-campus workouts like this are a productive way to use our limited daylight.

- Skate roll intervals in Woolwich - quiet roads, good pavement, and nice rolling terrain made for a fast and competitive workout.

- Another Bowdoin Nordic first - Thursday game day was football under the lights!  Turns out that nordic skiers are not very good at football (except for Renae, who appears to be related to Tom Brady).  Fun times, anyway.

- Hitting the weights and getting huge.

- And another batch of sand skiing intervals.  No such thing as too many trips to the beach!  People were really locked in this round - one of our most productive sand ski sessions ever.

One more week of good hard training before Quebec.  Looks like there's plenty of snow up there - can't wait!

Maine Event and More

Last weekend we attended the Maine Event, a fun agility challenge hosted by NENSA at Pineland - so great to have a NENSA rollerski event come to Maine!  The course featured three different wooden ramp-type rollers along with the usual slalom, grass skiing, figure 8s, etc - fun stuff and a real skills challenge that showed us a lot about everyone's strengths and weaknesses.  The dire forecast kept the numbers down, unfortunately, but even so the Maine teams showed up in force - lots of Colby, Bates, and Gould skiers joined us, along with a couple local skiers from Freeport.  It was pretty fun to watch everyone learning and improving as the morning went on - as they figured out how to ski the rollers you could see body position change as confidence grew.  The rain held off long enough for everyone to get several practice runs and a good clean qualifying round.  Our women crushed it - Renae 2nd, Perrin 3rd, and Gabby 4th.  Men were solid as well, with Noah G 6th and Elliot 7th.  Good showing by the first-years!  The heats were set up bracket-style, with skiers going head to head starting on opposite sides of the loop - a super cool idea that ended up being a bit too time-consuming once the cold rain started up.  With the course getting slick and the skiers starting to freeze, we all huddled and decided to cut the event short - a few rounds of heats heavily compressed, with the qualifier serving as the final results.  It was kind of a bummer that we couldn't stick to the original format, but everyone still got in a great morning of skill work and competition.  Thanks to NENSA and Pineland for hosting a fun event!

We got up to a lot of other good stuff in the second half of October:  mystery intervals at Pineland, a couple visits to the quiet back roads of Woolwich, a pair of fast and high-quality workouts on the bike path, some good hard hill repeats up the water tower hill in Topsham, and lots more.  We're just now wrapping up our favorite recovery week, the annual Most Boring Week Ever - short and simple workouts close to campus as the daylight gets shorter and shorter.  Daylight Savings on Sunday, so next week it'll be time to shift to the earlier practice schedule.  We're trying an experimental new practice schedule that should make it easier for everyone to get to practice.  Hope it works out - we'll find out soon!