First Week

Our first week has seen some beautiful weather and quality training sessions.
Wednesday: specific strength on the scenic Androscoggin River Bike Path - double pole and single stick sprints uphill.
Thursday: treadmill testing. We increased the grade and speed every 3 minutes and recorded heart rate at the end of each stage. The goal here was to establish baseline heart rates for each stage - in a few weeks, we'll repeat the testing - if our training has been effective, the athletes should be able to complete each workload with less effort (ie, lower heart rates). Most people did a submax test, stopping one stage after we estimated that they'd passed their lactate threshold. A few lucky folks kept going to max in order to determine their max heart rates. It's no fun to run on a treadmill on a beautiful autumn day in Maine, but we got some useful data as well as a decent workout.
Today: a long easy classic ski out toward Pleasant Hill - stellar colors in the afternoon light along Highland Road. Perfect.

Fall Break is now underway - tomorrow we'll do a long rollerski/trail run at Pineland. After that, we're off for our mini camp in western Maine: Sugaloaf Hill Climb on Sunday, a run/hike along the Bigelow Range on Monday, and a long rollerski down Long Falls Dam Road on Tuesday. Weather looks good and we're excited.

First Day

First official practices yesterday - finally! We jumped right in with a strength workout in the morning and threshold skate intervals in the afternoon. This was my first chance to see how our skiers look in training - I was impressed. Lots of raw talent in our first-year group. Good fire, too - a few of the guys couldn't resist chasing Nat during the intervals - they went a little harder than the workout called for, but it's good to see people pushing each other. Speaking of Nat, he looks like a whole different skier this year - amazing what happens when you spend the summer rollerskiing instead of bike racing. The bar is being raised again - it's an exciting time around here.

Morse Mountain Time Trial, Try 3

Here's a report from Nick about the team's self-test at Morse Mountain:

This weekend marks the end of our fourth week of training as a team and last week of training without coaches or college support. The last month has been very successful with lots of quality training time and also lots of team bonding and getting to know all the newcomers to the team. September is a tricky time of year for us because it takes some getting used to the college schedule and we don’t have vans or coaches to organize us. The Morse Mountain Time Trial was an example of this. We had originally hoped to do it two weekends ago but we had a hard time making it happen with the weather, transportation and peoples schedules until today.

Anyhow the time trial came together today and we had nearly everyone who isn’t on the XC team this fall make it out to do it. The rains of hurricane Kyle threatened to make for a miserable day but it ended up just being misty/foggy for the majority of the run. On good days you can see a good stretch of the coast and interior from Morse Mountain but today the view was pretty grey. I think people were pretty happy with the first go at the time trial with times in the 6-8 minute range. The real importance of this workout is comparing times we do later this fall to today’s efforts. After the interval we enjoyed a nice cool down run along the beach which we had to ourselves. If you haven’t been to Seawall Beach before, it’s a must-do if you’re in the area. Nearby Popham Beach has road access and gets crowded at times but because you have to walk in the 1.5 miles over Morse Mountain, Seawall is always empty. The day wasn’t exactly good for getting a sun tan or going swimming though so we booked it back for brunch at Moulton. I’m not sure who posted the best time in the time trial but Dan definitely won brunch in terms of quantity of food consumed.

-Nick

Jeff in Madagascar

More news from abroad, this time from Jeff. He's keeping a blog of his semester in Madagascar - check it out.

Elissa in Italy

Elissa's been in Florence for two weeks - sounds like things are off to a good start:

I am loving it here. I'm running about 5 or 6 miles a day every morning. My roommate thinks I am a little crazy in that I do a core workout most nights and I use the exergenie pretty frequently. I have yet to find a decent gym (the only one I found close to my apartment is called Nordical and has huge posters of Arnold Schwarzenegger all over the place and no women seem to go there. Scary.) but I did find a good swimming pool. I plan on finding a way to swim more frequently, but the great thing about Florence (and Italy in general) is that I am constantly on my feet and walking everywhere. Last weekend I think we walked about 8 miles in Pisa and Lucca just going to look at churches. I know this is not exactly typical training, but I sure do feel the walking in my calves! Anyway, this weekend I am hiking in Cinque Terra on Saturday. This is a hilly hike through five coastal towns and it is about 7 miles from one end to the other. I was planning on walking one direction with my friends, giving them my bag while they take the bus back to the first one, and then running back in the other direction. Should be fun.

Jumbo Invitational

First XC meet of the year yesterday - the Jumbo Invitational at Tufts. Good showing by the Bowdoin teams - the men won and the women were fourth, just 3 points from second. Colman was impressive in second, while Courtney was the third Bowdoin woman in 10th. Two first-year skiers are also running this fall - Scott Longwell was 22nd for men and Maren Askins was 56th for women. As always, it's good to see our skiers holding their own in the running world. I'm already counting the weeks until we get them back, but in the meantime it'll be fun to watch them race.

End of Summer

It's been a slow news month for the Bowdoin ski team - good solid training all around, from what I'm hearing, but not much excitement to report. That's probably a good thing at this time of year. The calm won't last long, though - summer's ending. Right now, the first-years are out on Pre-O trips, with Nat and Grace among the leaders. Next week, the upperclass students will be back on campus, and things will get busy after that. It's going to be fun - stay tuned.

I'd love to post a cool training photo, but I don't have anything current, so I'll take this opportunity to show off the cutest baby ever instead: