Graduation 2012

A bit late, but here are some photos from Graduation 2012 - once again, Greg Askins came through.
This was a happy day, but we're certainly sad to see this crew go.  These guys were my first recruiting class at Bowdoin - they've been fantastic since Day One, and they've helped bring our team a long way over the last four years.  They leave a big hole that will be hard to fill.  Congratulations and good luck, seniors - we'll miss you!

Presi Traverse 2012

Last weekend, a few of our skiers continued what has become an annual tradition:  hiking the Presidential Traverse.  Here's Steph's report on the hike and her recent road trip:

A good friend once told me that the best thing about being an adult is going on vacation.  This past week, I learned the truth of these words.  For most people summer break constitutes a period of relaxation between grueling semesters at Bowdoin, but for me it’s always been a time for manual labor.  For the past month and a half I’ve been in upstate New York working hard for the Adirondack Mountain Club’s professional trail crew, but even I need a break from acting the noble savage.  So I’ve spent the past five days embarking on my first “adult” vacation.  During the past week I’ve traveled across New England with Kaitlynn in tow; mostly we’ve been causing a commotion, but we also spent time hunting down various members of the Bowdoin ski team.

After leaving Lake Placid my first stop was the Miller residence nestled in the hills of northern Vermont; I had two goals: 1) deposit five weeks of paychecks in a TD Bank, and 2) kidnap Kaitlynn.  These objectives were quickly met.  Before leaving Vermont for greener pastures, Kaitlynn dragged me on a run up Elmore Ridge Road and fed me massive quantities of beet greens from Hannah’s garden.  All and all, I had a successful visit to one of my favorite places.

On Friday Kaitlynn and I followed the faint smell of freedom east to New Hampshire.  We met Riley, Shelby, and Emma at the Eusden’s summer house in Randolph.  The next day the five of us embarked on the third annual Bowdoin Nordic Presidential Traverse.  This was my first time hiking the twenty-plus mile traverse all in one day; I could barely sleep I was so excited.  Our hike began with an early morning charge up Mount Madison.  When Riley and I stopped to wait for the girls just below tree line; I realized that I had forgotten my lunch in the refrigerator miles below.  Luckily for the small and stalwart team, my sandwich calamity did not set the tone for the hours to come.

We had flawless weather (clear, warm, and windy) for the entire hike; as a seasoned New Hampshire wild flower, I can tell you that an entire day of good weather almost never the occurs in the Whites.  The five of us traveled at a steady pace; we bagged peak after peak, and stopped for lunch right below the summit of Mount Clay.  We bumped into a Nordic skier from Williams on the summit of Washington (she was working for the AMC on the Lake of Clouds Hut Crew) who generously handed out candy bars to the famished crew.  After Monroe and Eisenhower, the hike was basically all down hill; by dinnertime, we were off the mountain and on our way to Gorham to pick up an all American feast: pizza and potato chips.

On Sunday morning we parted ways: Shelby headed south to Gilford while Kaitlynn, Emma, Riley, and I traveled to various destinations in Maine.  Later that day, Kaitlynn and I met up with Grandma Clare Stansberry for a stormy swim in Sewall Pond.  That night, we crashed in Clare’s tent at the Woodruff farm in Brunswick.  Kaitlynn helped Clare to do evening chores while I bonded with a pregnant cow (I was on vacation after all).  On Monday, we drove to my house in beautiful Bow; en route, we met Erin for smoothies and caught up on her post-graduation exploits.

Tomorrow my first real vacation ends.  On the way back west, Kaitlynn and I will drive through Rutvegas in search of the notorious Hannah Wright.  In Charlotte, Kaitlynn and I will part ways for the next several months; we’ll be spending the fall semester on separate continents.  I hardly know Bowdoin without Kaitlynn, but I feel fortunate that the two of us were able to embark on one epic, final hoorah.   

On top of Madison - we're explorers.

On top of Jefferson - we're throwing the brown claw.

 On top of Adams - "The Wilderness must be explored!"

On top of Pierce - the final peak of the day.  Very tired with many sore feet.

End of an Era

Most Bowdoin Athletics fans have already heard that Athletic Director Jeff Ward is stepping down.  I'm pretty sad about this.  In my 5 years at Bowdoin, Jeff has done a great job of supporting the team and giving us the resources we needed to be successful.  The program has come a long way during his tenure, and we'll miss him.  Thanks Jeff, and good luck in the future!

Nordic Alumni Blog

Newly minted Bowdoin grad Chris Sanville has wasted no time in transitioning to alumni status - he's started a Bowdoin Nordic Alumni blog, with the goal of building community among alumni.  I'm pretty excited about this - anything that strengthens the Bowdoin Nordic community strengthens our team.  Check it out!

Evaluating and Planning

As always during the spring, I'm in the midst of evaluating the past season and planning for next year.  This season was a great learning experience for me - I had a few valuable realizations, and the skiers were full of creative ideas and insights in our end-of-season meetings.  I'm pretty excited - I feel that if we can make good use of the lessons learned this year, we have a chance to take a big step forward.  This is why I love the spring - time for thinking, planning, and getting fired up about the future.  Here are a few of the ideas I've been thinking about:

Speed and Technique Sessions:  Finding time for technique work is always hard.  Every practice has a training objective, and stopping to do a technique session of any length makes it hard to accomplish this objective in our limited time frame.  I've come to realize that we're going to have to schedule technique sessions into our training plan if we want to do more than just the occasional roadside reminder.  So, I'm trying to design a twice-weekly session combining technique with speed work (with a little agility thrown in for fun).  We've done variations on this concept in the past, and it's worked out well - making it a regular part of our training should give good results.

Mini Strength Sessions:  Every year I become more convinced that general strength training isn't the answer.  This is ironic, because most athletes and coaches (including myself) spend a disproportionate amount of time fretting about general strength training - when/how often to do it, which exercises, how much weight, how many reps, etc.  But as far as I can tell, it takes a huge general strength improvement to yield even a small change in a skier's ability to apply power to skis and poles.  If we had unlimited training and recovery time, I'd probably have our skiers on some sort of carefully periodized strength training plan - maybe Olympic lifts, a really hard circuit workout, or whatever.  But we don't, so our time is better spent on specific strength and other forms of training.  Next fall, we'll replace our two weekly general strength workouts with frequent mini-sessions added on to other workouts.  This should be enough to give our skiers a decent foundation of general strength while freeing up time to do more productive types of training.

Specific Strength:  We already do a reasonable amount of specific strength training, but I think we need more - in addition to our regular weekly SS session, we can add more frequent SS to our overdistance workouts, and also perhaps fit in more short ski erg segments as add-ons to running workouts.  I'd like to find a way to include more double pole hill intervals and sprints, but I'm not sure yet where these will fit.

5K Training:  In recent years, we've tried to close the gap between our performance in long and short races.  We've made some progress, but we're not there yet - some of our women still felt a little under-trained for the 5k races this year.  We do a ton of threshold training, a lot of 20-30 sec sprints to build speed, and some 3-4 min intervals on hills to build VO2max, but some of our skiers are still lacking the extra pop to ski fast over the tops of hills and through rolling terrain.  One idea that we'll experiment with is doing short (1-4 min), fast intervals, which will allow us to work on sustained skiing at 5k speeds rather than just revving the engine on a hill or skiing fast in very short bursts.  A couple extra short time trials should also help.

Goals:  Goal-setting has always been a pretty low-key exercise on our team - no real process, just occasional informal conversations.  We're changing that.  A few weeks ago, Athletic Director Jeff Ward was kind enough to lead a goal-setting session for the team.  The athletes set team and individual goals and identified specific action items necessary to achieve them.  This was a really productive exercise - I think it will give the team a more clearly defined common purpose, which should help people stay more focused during the long months ahead.

Remembrance of Skiing with Damon O'Neal

Over the last few years, I've been fortunate to correspond with many Bowdoin Skiing alumni. Recently, I got an email from Hank Haskell '56, who shared a thoughtful piece he'd written in honor of Damon O'Neal, brother of Hank's former teammate Roly O'Neal '59.

I was once an avid skier. I learned how to ski at Cardigan Mountain School in Canaan, New Hampshire, and later found myself on the ski team at Bowdoin College. Bowdoin’s ski team was pretty informal when I was there (1952-1956) and in my senior year, there were two seniors on the team — Paul DeBrule from Laconia, New Hampshire, and me — Paul was primarily a jumper and cross-country guy and I did slalom and downhill, albeit no expert.

Bowdoin accepted a group of excellent skiers three years after I arrived. These young tigers included Charlie Long, Charlie Jackson and Bucky Owen and featured John Christie from Camden, Maine, Bruce Chalmers from Brighton, Maine, and Roly O’Neal from North Conway, New Hampshire — all terrific skiers. With their expertise, and management by Charlie Leighton, Bowdoin’s ski team became one of the best in New England. John Christie recently told me, “We did end up competing with the B boys and even in the Winter Carnivals at Dartmouth and Middlebury. In 1958 we won the State Intercollegiates, beating the vaunted UMaine team that included Olympian-to-be Charlie Akers — our crowning achievement..."

One weekend I joined Roly O’Neal at his family’s house in North Conway. I met Roly’s Mom and Dad and his younger brother, Damon. Roly told me his brother was a better skier than he was, but I really wondered how he could be at so young an age (age 13). Roly and his family were modest people, and no one told me much about Damon. Roly mentioned we would be skiing the next day with Toni Matt. The name meant nothing to me at the time.

I ate dinner with the O’Neals and we talked about skiing the next morning at Cranmore Mountain. We hit the sack early and ate a wonderful breakfast the next morning — cooked for us by Roly and Damon’s mother. We walked up to Cranmore Mountain with our skis on our backs, and met Hannes Schneider, the head of the world-famous Eastern Slope Ski School, and met Toni — who would be skiing with Roly, Damon, and me that day.

Toni Matt lead the way as we rode the Tramway up Cranmore Mountain. He told us we’d start out on the back-side of the mountain, to limber our legs up, before setting up a slalom course on the main slope. Off we went — Toni, Damon, Roly and I. Wow! I watched the gifted Austrian, Toni, head down the slope with his skis practically glued together and Damon and Roly right behind. It was obvious to me that this would be quite a day. I had never seen such a great young skier, as this teen-ager, Damon, was that day. He was right with Toni Matt at every turn as they all three glided down the mountain, with me trying to keep up. I think I skied the best I have ever skied in my life that remarkable day and just couldn’t believe how talented Roly’s younger brother was.

I remember breaking to eat the sandwiches that Mrs. O’Neal had made for us. We talked together and I learned that Toni had schussed the headwall at Tuckerman’s Ravine on Mount Washington, New Hampshire, in 1939. I had no idea that we were eating lunch with, “the fastest skier to schuss the Headwall at Tuckerman’s Ravine on Mount Washington. His time for the 8-mile race was 6 minutes 29.4 seconds, with a top speed of 85 MPH."

The truly remarkable thing I remembered that winter day in 1956, however, was skiing and having so much fun with a fantastic young skier — Damon O’Neal. Damon was a delightful young man, who adored his brother Roly and his parents and skied with me as if I were a pro myself. I knew I had skied that day with a potential future U.S. Olympic leader. As Roly and I drove back to Brunswick, Maine, we talked about Damon’s achievements and hopes.

On March 15, 1959, Damon O’Neal was killed, “…in a skiing accident at Sugarloaf Mountain, Maine, as he was preparing for the Junior National Alpine Ski Championships. As a 16 year-old, Damon had won the New Hampshire Skimeister award a month earlier by the widest margin in the history of the competition. Local leaders of the skiing community had raised funds for Damon to go to Europe to help him prepare for the Olympics.”

I was honored to have known Damon and not only to have known him but to have skied with this gifted skier and outstanding young gentleman. The world skiing community lost a great young man that tragic day in March 1959 — a young man who has been an inspiration to me in the many years I have participated in the great sport of skiing.

Big Move for Zach

I'm happy to report that Zach is moving up in the world - he's just been hired as NENSA's new Executive Director! This is a pretty big deal - NENSA is one of the most successful and influential nordic ski organizations in the country. Outgoing director Pat Cote is a tough act to follow - his tenure saw incredible growth for both NENSA and New England skiing as a whole - but I have no doubt that Zach is up to the task. We were really lucky to have Zach as part of our team this year, and we're excited that the whole New England nordic ski community will now get to benefit from his many talents. Congratulations Zach, and good luck!