Happy 2022! Now that we're on the verge of another carnival season, I should probably catch up our loyal fans on what we've been doing these last couple months. Here are a few highlights:
- After much agonizing about our Fall Camp venue, we settled on a split camp - 4 days at Craftsbury, 5 days at Lake Placid. It was pretty sad to give up on Foret - first ever Thanksgiving Camp at a different venue! But there was just too much uncertainty with Quebec, especially with the border crossing situation. Fortunately, our split worked out beautifully. Craftsbury had a great little 800m loop with a nice mix of terrain for all types of technique work. Lots of other skiers there, but somehow it never felt too crowded for productive skiing. The food at the Outdoor Center was great and spirits were high.
- Next stop was Lake Placid with a similarly sized loop comprised mainly of a long grinding climb and a nice fast descent. This felt a bit more like our traditional camp, since we were living in a couple rental houses and cooking our own food. After a few days of quality training and foosball, we did our first on-snow race of the year - a 6k time trial with a few other college teams: UVM, Bates, and SLU. So great to get the season started with a race against college competition! Renae led our women with Aggie close behind, and Zach and Elliot did the same for men. With snow falling throughout the time trial, we were set up for a couple beautiful days of exploration around the Mt Van Hoevenburg system - such a nice way to close out the camp. Nine good days of training, technique work, and team time - a really successful camp.
- As usual, we came back to no snow and short days - tough training in December! Fortunately, Quarry Road had a great loop open, and we were able to do a the Quarry Road Opener with Colby, UNH, Bates, and a several other skiers. Zach and Renae again led the team, with several others posting strong results, most notably Ingrid and Luke.
- A semester-long project for our women's team has been upper body power development. We measured our progress with another round of our 2000m erg test. Results were impressive, with some huge PRs. Every single skier beat her previous best time, and Morgan set a new team record in 8:05. The energy was fantastic - really encouraging to see not just the fast times but also the excitement and encouragement.
- After a typically hectic exam period, people took off for home and holidays and a much-needed break. Most of the country has limited snow, but from what I've heard everyone's found ways to make it work and get quality training (most notably Ayden crushing a 400m loop at Weston). Now we're coming back together for Jan Camp - got a small group on campus and we're headed to Jackson today to meet up with most of the rest for a long training weekend and a mini preview of the UNH Carnival. Meanwhile, US Nationals are well underway - we've got a few people competing there as well. Look for a report on all this fun stuff next week!
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