Rainbow Rollerskiing

Update from Nick:

After a month sea kayak camping around Casco Bay (the stretch of coast between Brunswick and Portland), I'm excited to be back on the Maine-land (hahahaha). While it was a lot of fun and reasonably active, there were limited opportunities for ski specific training. I'm based out of the University of Southern Maine in Gorham for a few weeks here and have had a good time exploring the running trails and rollerskiing roads in the area. The good news is I have a long stretch until late August without any major training obstacles.

I had a hard time getting going on my rollerski today after a long day in the computer lab and a light rain outside. I found some black powder (for those of you who don't know what this means, it's a road with really good fresh pavement) but still wasn't feeling so great and I considered cutting my hour and a half workout off short to go grab some dinner. Then as I was turning around to head in the skies opened up and there was a full rainbow and parts of a double rainbow. It stuck around for the entire ski back so I added a bit onto the end of the loop to get the full time.

Since I don't think I've ever seen a rainbow on skis before I take this to be a good sign for the rest of the summer and season. That's it for now because I still have to go grab dinner, but more updates to come!

Nat's Stump Sprouts Adventure

It's been a peaceful summer on campus so far, and I've been slacking on blog posts. Fortunately, Nat's got it covered. Here's a report from his trip to the Crawford homestead:

My training hasn't been particularly exciting yet this summer, but I was recently given the opportunity to head down to western Mass last weekend for Nick's sister's wedding (unfortunately, I did not win the contest to be the groom). The roads in Brunswick have been pretty good to me so far, but I was excited for a free trip to Stump Sprouts (Nick's family's lodge/ski area), because there are some serious hills in the area--so serious, in fact, that the local bike race is called the "Tour of the Hill Towns."

Saturday morning, before the wedding in the afternoon, I did a couple of threshold intervals on Nick's driveway, West Hill Road. "Driveway" doesn't nearly do justice to this hunk of road, but that's what Nick calls it--it's about a mile from the bottom to his house, and another quarter mile or so to the top. I'd estimate the grade at between 10 and 15 percent the whole way. I think hills are pretty fun, so this was a decently good time, and there were lots of wedding attendees around to motivate me. Nick doesn't really believe in doing intervals this time of year, so he hopped on a bike and heckled me for the last little bit of my first repeat. Also, there's a farm at the bottom of the hill, and I ran past a crusty old farmer on his tractor on my way up--he told me that I needed to get some longer legs so I could run uphill faster.

Saturday evening was the wedding. I'll spare everyone the full story, but one highlight was finding Fred the UVM assistant coach's hat as I was cleaning up (Nick's parents had hired me to work at the wedding). He'd been looking for it earlier in the evening, and I managed to get it to him as he was sitting in his car with a GPS mapping the route back to Burlington. I know Fred as the guy who's always on the side of the trail with a old-school computer giving splits to the UVM team, so I told him I'd trade him his hat for splits at all the carnivals this winter. He agreed, and even told me he would put my name in all-caps, an honor usually reserved solely for Catamounts.

Sunday Nick and I cruised out on an easy classic distance rollerski, which turned into a bit of a sufferfest on the second half of our loop. The road to his house is up a river valley, and it's downhill on the way out, but not enough for you to really take notice, and it hits you hard on the way back. Sunday was especially rough because it was hot, and the sun was shining right in our faces, but we finished up no worse for the wear.

That workout account is a bit truncated because I really wanted to just skip to the last part of this entry, which was our visit to Phantom Fireworks in Seabrook, New Hampshire. We were driving back up 295 on Sunday evening from Massachusetts, and I think it was Nick who decided that we needed to stop to pick up some pyrotechnics for the fourth of July. We found the exit, took it, and parked in front of the store. We walked in the front door, and before we could so much as set one foot in the shop 17 people--including an armed security guard (armed as in gun, not as in appendage) turned and yelled at us to go over to the other door. We did, and were greeted by a huge sign that listed the store's various restrictions, which were something like this:

YOU MUST BE 21 OR OVER TO PURCHASE FIREWORKS

CHILDREN UNDER 21 MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY AN ADULT

NO CIGARETTES

NO PROFANITY

BUY ONE GET ONE FREE

NONE OF THESE FIREWORKS ARE MISSILES--MISSILES ARE ILLEGAL

As soon as we walked in, we were greeted by a Phantom Fireworks employee, and, since Nick is over 21, he had to supply them with his driver's license so they could print him a slip of paper authorizing him to purchase fireworks. After this, we started looking around--basically, this was the sketchiest place I have ever seen. I can't really explain why this was the case, but here are a few of the contributing factors:

1. There had to be like 15 or 20 people working in this store, and we were just about the only ones shopping at it.

2. Half of the employees seemed just like me, as in, they couldn't believe that a store this cool existed, and even less that they had jobs working at it. For example, the guy who wrote up Nick's profile kidded with me when I asked if smoking was allowed--he told me it was encouraged. HOWEVER, the other half of the employees seemed like the creepy pyromaniac people that you would expect to work at a fireworks store. For example, there were these fireworks that looked a lot like missiles (there was a sign next to them that said that even though they looked like missiles, they actually were not), and I asked another employee if these would be the best kind for shooting at other people. After assuring me that these weren't actually missiles, he directed me to another aisle where he showed me a box of roman-candle like objects, telling me seriously that "these are the best in the store." This gets better. After we'd been looking around for a while, he found us and said that he wanted to make sure that I knew that the roman candle fireworks had a report, which meant that they exploded after you shot them, and that I probably shouldn't actually shoot them at people.

3. The fireworks were really, really expensive, like, $150 a box (we bought the cheapest ones--$15 for two boxes, since we got one for free). And there were people in the store who looked like they probably should have been spending their money on health or dental care, not fireworks.

4. The armed security guard with bleach-blond tips behind the checkout.

5. The fact that fireworks are illegal in Massachusetts and Maine, yet this store is like 2 miles from the Mass border and not that much further from the Maine one.

Bottom line: This was a successful and entertaining weekend, with some decent but by no means difficult training. Look for another more training-centric blog post in the future.

Technique Videos

Here are three short technique videos that Ezra and I put together:



Dryland Drills



Classic Drills


Skate Drills

All-Sports Banquet

Last weekend's All-Sports Banquet was a chance for all Bowdoin teams to get together to celebrate a successful year and honor our athletic award recipients. The big highlight for the ski team was John B. Hall's Academic Achievement Award - John has the highest GPA of all senior male athletes. This comes as no surprise to anyone who knows John and the way he balances athletics and academics with seemingly effortless grace. It's an honor to have a skier win this award among a group of such outstanding student-athletes - I hope we'll see many more in the future.

It's been a great year for Bowdoin teams - one of the best ever. We had 11 teams qualify for NCAA competition, highlighted by the field hockey team's national championship. A quick glance down the evening's program shows winning records for all but one or two of the teams that keep track of won-loss records, as well as a number of All-Americans. As I've said before, this is an exciting time to be part of Bowdoin Athletics - our athletes and coaches have the resources they need, and we're getting results. With a new fitness center on the way, things will only get better.

Incoming

After months of uncertainty, we finally know what our incoming first-year class looks like. We did well - this group includes eleven of the top high school skiers from Utah, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Massachusetts, and of course Maine (no Vermonters, sadly - this has to change). With so many talented skiers joining the program, the competition for the carnival team will be fierce - everyone should benefit from this. I'm hearing good things about everyone's spring training - can't wait to get everyone together in the fall...

Season Wrap Up

It's spring for real now in Brunswick. Campus is entering its glory phase, with rapidly greening grass and leaves on the verge. We've had lots of sun and warm temps, and my team is spending half its time playing wiffleball on the quad and the other half hosting recruits. We had our break-up dinner a couple weeks ago - a classy Bowdoin Dining Service affair (here's some well-deserved good press for BDS). Now we're looking ahead to the future - we've elected next year's captains (Elissa and Nick), we're designing new uniforms, and we're putting together training plans for the summer and beyond.

So - a few thoughts about this past season as we leave it behind. It's been a good one. The men had their best season ever as an EISA team by any measure: we had our best ever team finishes (4th - Bates skate; 5th - Midd skate; 6th - Williams skate) and individual finishes (Walt - 5th twice; Forrest - 8th; 5 skiers posting regular finishes in the 30s or better), and our percent back figures show all of our skiers closing the gap on the race winners. The women's team showed steady improvement throughout the season and individual flashes of brilliance from everyone. We have 4 of our 5 women coming back next year, so there's good reason to be excited about the future of our team.

Some other highlights, in no particular order:

- Snow: Stellar conditions at Pineland from the beginning of December through the end of March and groomed trails on campus as well.
- Maine: fall camp in the western mountains; island time trial on North Haven; pre-season camp in Fort Kent; beach run at Morse Mountain - in short, we experienced some of the best training that the state has to offer.
- Fall semester grades: 7 skiers at 3.5 or above, and only 3 Cs from the entire team combined.
- Persistence: Only 1 DNF (and with good reason - trailside vomiting).
- ECT: This group did a nice job of pulling together the details of race trips outside the carnival circuit. I'm glad that we were able to provide some resources to get them started, and even more glad that the older skiers showed great leadership to make things come together.
- Race season health: Only 4 carnival races total missed due to illness or injury (3 of those were from the residual effects of the January camp plague).
- Judgment: Good decision-making by our skiers all season long.
- Parents: Cheering, photos, and great food at every carnival, not to mention some housing support for the ECT.

As I compile this list, I'm finding plenty of reasons to feel good about what we accomplished this year. But this wasn't a perfect season, and there are some areas where we need to improve. Here are a few:

- Consistency/peaking: The plan wasn't perfect - some skiers made gains throughout the season, while others were up and down. Our February taper took a long time to have its effect, and some of our skiers weren't "on" for the races in the middle part of the month. We saw a nice bounce at Middlebury, but some of our best results didn't come until March (Rangeley, Sugarloaf, & biathlon races). That's great if we're sending skiers to NCAAs and JNs, but we need results in January and February to get there.
- Fall health: Our health in the fall wasn't terrible, but it needs to be better. We had a few skiers who were just snakebit - constantly in and out of training with nagging colds, etc. For some, this was a season-killer.
- Split practices: We held a lot of split practices, where skiers would choose between a morning or afternoon session. This was a good thing, because it minimized missed training time due to class conflicts. However, this also meant that we rarely had the whole team together at once, which is too bad. We'll have to think creatively to get around this one.

None of these challenges are insurmountable. We're learning from the good and the bad of last season - we'll put some thought into our planning this spring and come up with ways to address them. I'm super fired up about the future of this team, and I feel lucky to be here during a time when the program has momentum and is moving up. I can't wait to see the team next fall - I know we'll see some big gains over the summer. For now, we'll relax and enjoy spring at Bowdoin - a beautiful thing.

Biathlon Photos

Some photos from Walt's trip to Canadian Nationals:

Representing Bowdoin at the Olympic venue - nice.
Walt had the highest shooting percentage of any athlete at the Championships - 38 for 40 in three races.
It's not every day that you see a man with an axe presiding over the flower ceremony.