Name This Skier

Slow times here on the Bowdoin Nordic blog lately - the calm before the storm. Here's something to keep our loyal readers busy - a gold star for anyone who can name this current Bowdoin skier:

Photo courtesy of Flying Point Road.

TUNA Race

Wilson capped off a great week by coming home to Utah and jumping into a 10k classic race on Saturday. The Salt Lake/Park City area has a thriving ski community, and there are a lot of good racers in the area, so this was a great opportunity to get some on-snow race prep. Some travel and baggage hassles left him arriving at the venue with barely enough time for waxing and warmup, but he pulled off a strong performance nonetheless, finishing a close second in a competitive field. More importantly, he felt good throughout the race - very encouraging considering that he missed a lot of training while rehabbing a back injury this fall. Unlike most of the team, he'll have regular access to training on snow these next few weeks - in lean snow years like this one, it's good to be a Westerner.

Wilson's Secret Training

Wilson is in Montana right now, ostensibly to do some research for his honors project. It turns out that his schedule is flexible enough to allow for a little exploration - these last couple days, he's been able to do some great skiing on a quiet road out in the wilderness somewhere. Got to love the Mountain West - there's always snow somewhere if you're willing to go high enough to find it.

Merepoint Time Trial

One of my big goals this fall was to add more competition to the training plan - time trials and mini-races within workouts. We've certainly accomplished this, with 4 time trials in the last 4 weeks, among other competitions. Our latest effort was a 5k skate time trial with Bates on Merepoint Rd - a new time trial venue for us and a nice change of pace. We had originally planned to repeat our bike path TT from earlier this fall to measure our improvements, but unfortunately the Thanksgiving snowstorm left the path pretty sandy - not so good for a time trial. Anyway, the time trial went well, and several people - most notably Steph, Dan, Wilson, and Riley - put up impressive performances. Overall, though, our team is clearly feeling several weeks of hard training combined with increasing school stress. Lots of tired faces out there on Saturday. Still, this was not unexpected, and we should bounce back quickly once we start getting some extra rest. For now, we have one more week of training as a team before the skiers are on their own for exams and Winter Break.

Oh yeah - one other point of interest from Saturday. After the TT, Bates invited us to join them in a team tradition - a plank contest, in which everyone held the plank position for as long as possible. There were a lot of stubbon people planking on the grass outside of Farley - some pretty impressive efforts. Ultimately, it came down to Wilson against Hallie Grossman of Bates - they both planked for around 15 minutes before agreeing to settle for a draw.

Here are results from the time trial:

Men

Buetow	Jordan	Bates	11:15.0
Dippo	Wilson	Bowdoin	11:24.3
Milliken	Lucas	Bates	11:28.0
Michaud	Nick	Bates	11:46.2
Hamilton	Alex	Bates	12:04.3
Woods	Sean	Bates	12:11.4
Eusden	Riley	Bowdoin	12:23.5
Deangelis	Tyler	Bowdoin	12:30.1
Regan	Connor	Bates	12:39.6
Polasky	Dan	Bowdoin	12:42.7
Longwell	Scott	Bowdoin	12:48.7
Eusden	Spencer	Bowdoin	12:50.3
Burnham	Jimmy	Bates	12:53.8
Hoose	Kevin	Bowdoin	13:20.3
McGovern	Alec	Bowdoin	13:23.2
Sanville	Chris	Bowdoin	13:51.4
Bloch	Jackson	Bowdoin	13:57.3
Kuzio	Dan	Bates	14:03.0
Women
Dion	Kelsey	Bates	13:03.7
Taylor	Beth	Bates	13:34.9
Grossman	Hallie	Bates	13:35.0
Sellegren	Gretchen	Bates	14:17.2
Lynn	Stephanie	Bowdoin	14:32.8
Aseltine	Shelby	Bowdoin	15:11.7
Daniels	Caroline	Bates	15:11.9
Miller	Kaitlynn	Bowdoin	15:23.9
Forrest	Sam	Bates	16:06.0
Askins	Maren	Bowdoin	16:21.0
Frisbie	Sierra	Bowdoin	16:24.6