The Tradition Continues

Last Sunday was our annual "Ski to Hallowell" day. Since 2006, Naomi Schalit (mother of Nat Herz '09) has hosted the team for lunch after a point-to-point rollerski from Bowdoin (the town, not the college) to her house in Hallowell. Even though Nat graduated three years ago, Naomi and her husband John Christie have generously continued the tradition every November. This year, we had fine weather and good roads (aside from one little roadblock where a bridge was being rebuilt). The team is getting so fast these days that I had to add on a few extra miles for some of them - even so, they cruised right along and made the skiing look effortless. As always, Naomi and John had a huge, delicious chili lunch waiting for us at the end of the road. This event is always one of the highlights of our fall, and the team was in high spirits after the workout (and promptly fell asleep once we got in the vans to head home). Thanks to Naomi and John for their wonderful hospitality!

Penny Road Time Trial

This has been a fairly tough week of training: an early morning skate rollerski threshold, a VO2max bounding workout at Bradbury in the rain, a harder-than-planned specific strength session, and a 30/60 speed session on skate skis, along with a couple of general strength workouts. Today we added to the load with a classic rollerski time trial embedded in a threshold workout. The course went up Penny Road and Gloucester Hill - 4.5k of mostly steady climbing with a few rolls to break it up. Just to mix things up a bit, we split the skiers up into 3 teams (which will also serve as the cook groups for Quebec camp): Mon Petit Chou, Noff Noff, and Der Freischutz. It was a fairly closely matched affair, with Noff Noff prevailing and Der Freischutz and Mon Petit Chou not far behind. Here are individual results:

Men
Spencer	Noff Noff	15:02
Chris	Der Freischutz	15:37.5
Scott	Mon Petit Chou	16:24.2
Jackson	Noff Noff	16:54.6
Alec	Mon Petit Chou	17:00.4
Riley	Der Freischutz	17:18.7
Drew	Noff Noff	19:34	Broken pole tip
Mark	Der Freischutz	21:25.9	DP only
Women
Kaitlynn	Der Freischutz	19:42.2
Maren	Noff Noff	20:30.6
Erin	Mon Petit Chou	20:51.7
Steph	Mon Petit Chou	21:18.2
Sierra	Der Freischutz	21.23.2

This was a fun time trial to watch - everyone gave it a good effort, and there were some great battles out there. In these last few weeks, there's been a sharpness that I haven't seen before from Bowdoin Nordic - aggressive skiing and solid technique. I feel like these guys are on the verge of reaching a new level as a team - very exciting stuff.

No photos from the time trial, but here are some shots Zach took of the soggy Bradbury workout:



The boys also had fun with Photo Booth on the way home from the time trial. Here are a few of the less nightmare-inducing pictures:

Rest Week (sort of)

After a reasonably challenging October, we were all set to back off a bit and have a nice easy rest week to open November. For most of the week, we followed this plan - easy runs and rollerskis close to campus, leaving plenty of time for rest and schoolwork catch-up. We did have one threshold workout that was slightly tougher than planned for some skiers - it was a skate rollerski alternating between 2 min at threshold and 30 seconds easy skiing. The short intervals allowed us to go faster than we usually would in a threshold session, but the cumulative effect of skiing fast for lots and lots of short intervals was pretty fatiguing. That's OK - at this point in the season the skiers need to be moving fast more than they need to be rigidly adhering to the target training zone.

On Sunday, we radically departed from the "easy week" theme - since we'd had a very short practice during the snowstorm last Sunday, we moved our long OD workout to this Sunday. We did a 2 hour "no V1" skate rollerski followed by a 1.5 hour run on the Pineland trails - a pretty solid piece of training, and our longest OD of the fall (outside of camps). I was thrilled with how the team looked in this workout (and for the last few weeks overall) - very fit and focused, and technically solid. Great, great stuff.




One other important note: Chris and Wilson stopped by a local orchard to provide the team with a donut feed - gold stars for them. I'll try to post some donut footage when I have a chance.

Morse Mountain and First Snow

We finally made it out to Morse Mountain on Saturday - hard to believe that we didn't get out to one of our best training venues until the end of October. We did a series of hard hill repeats at VO2max pace, with a surprise mini-race in the middle of the workout - a sort of reverse pursuit, where we handicapped everyone based on their times for the previous interval. It was an interesting exercise to find out who had an extra gear when we switched into race mode (or, as Scott noted, to find out who was sandbagging in the early intervals). Spencer came out on top, with Sierra close behind after an impressive finishing kick. We had several parents cheering us on, and Alec's dad Scott earned much respect by doing the whole workout with the team.

Wilson is nursing a back injury, but he came along to cheer the team on and take some photos. This is the final pitch leading up to the top.

We're glad to have Scott back with us now that his XC season has ended. He pretty much destroyed everyone in this workout.

A perfect day to be out at Morse Mountain.

Since the preserve was open for hunting, we all wore vests, but Riley probably would have been safe without one.

Drew working hard around the final turn.

Glad to be done with a very tough workout.

Like most of the Northeast, we woke up to several inches of snow on Sunday morning. We had originally planned to do an extra-long OD workout, but the weather made this unfeasible, so we switched gears and did an easy ski around the fields, capped off by some erging and a little basketball. The snow was wet and sticky and the skiing wasn't pretty, but it was skiing!

Lobster Roll etc

Since coming back from Fall Camp, we've been chipping away with business as usual - just good solid training. In particular, we've been trying to mix up both the training venues and the workouts themselves, partly for fun and variety and partly to make sure we hit some more hilly terrain than the stuff we can find close to campus. The last few days have included the whole range of our bag of tricks: running at Wolfe's Neck, Bradbury, and Pineland, and rollerskiing at Cathance/Ridge Rd, Doughty Rd, Penny Rd & Gloucester Hill, and the Pownal/Pineland OD loop. We've also created our own hills, so to speak, in some on-campus workouts: a high resistance erg session designed to imitate uphill double poling, running intervals on Pickard Field while dragging weight plates, and a blissful early morning treadmill workout. Tomorrow we'll head out to Morse Mountain for the first time this year - no time trial, just a good hill workout and perhaps a little competition mixed in.

The big highlight of the last few weeks, however, was the 5th Annual Lobster Roll, a 15k rollerski time trial hosted by Maine Winter Sports Center on the island of North Haven. We had great weather and tough competition for the event, and our skiers gave a good effort. Overall, I thought the team looked a bit sharper than we have in past years, with Tyler, Steph, and Kaitlynn posting particularly strong finishes. Here's a quick overview of how our skiers fared:

Men
Tyler - 40:51
Jackson - 42:04
Spencer - 42:57
Nate - 43:05
Riley - 45:49
Drew - 48:12

Women
Kaitlynn - 50:27
Steph - 51:55
Shelby - 54:19
Maren - 54:21
Sierra - 56:25

As always, it was a fun day and a unique Maine experience. Thanks to Andy Shepard and MWSC for making it happen!

Acadia Camp

Fall Camp in Acadia was a big success - beautiful weather and great training all three days. On Saturday, we decided to mix things up a bit by stopping en route to Maren's camp and doing a bounding workout up Bald Mountain in Dedham. Bald Mountain is a basically a big chunk of granite plunked into the middle of the fields and woods of downeast Maine - it's a steep half-mile climb from bottom to top. Our workout was a variation on 30/30s that I learned from Walt Shepard - bound uphill for 30 seconds, then walk slowly downhill for 30 seconds, repeating until you reach the top. We did 2 trips up the mountain for a hard and fun VO2max workout. That afternoon, we did a short recovery run around Witch Hole Pond in the park. Later that evening, the team sat out on the rocks overlooking the water. The sun was setting, porpoises were swimming up the river, and we were eating delicious homemade enchiladas - what's better than that?


The next day was a long run/hike over several peaks on the eastern side of the island. We started with the Bubbles, then Pemetic, Cadillac, Dorr, Champlain, the Beehive, and Gorham - not a bad day's work. Finally, on Monday we ran the Around the Mountain loop, a hilly 12-mile loop on the carriage roads. Zach provided support on his bike, allowing the skiers to run with minimal gear. Erin and I closed out the workout with a little extra intensity, picking up the pace in an effort to chase down the boys in the final 2 1/2 miles - this felt surprisingly good at the end of 3 hard days of running, hiking, and bounding. All in all, three great days of training - perhaps the best Fall Camp we've ever had. Thanks to the Askins family for making it all possible!

Testing and Time Trial

Official practice is underway! We've had a busy week, with fitness testing and a bike path time trial, among other workouts. Testing consisted of a 500m erg test, same as last year, and a short but nasty treadmill test (12 or 15% grade, speed increasing by 0.5mph every minute, to exhaustion). Chris and Erin were tops on the treadmill, and Steph and Riley had the fastest erg times. Pretty solid performances all around - a number of people were clustered near the top in both tests, and overall team fitness is looking good. This was confirmed yesterday with our bike path time trial - lots of people close together, and considerably faster times than last year's October test. More importantly, people just looked good - nice springy skiing. Some of these guys have improved their skiing tremendously since last season. Overall, I'm pretty excited about how the team looks after these first few days. Off to Acadia for Fall Camp tomorrow!

Here are the time trial results:

Women

Shelby - 11:55

Kaitlynn - 12:32

Steph - 12:53

Maren - 13:24

Men

Wilson - 9:47

Tyler - 10:05

Nate - 10:18

Spencer - 10:35

Riley - 10:38

Jackson - 10:40

Chris - 10:46

Alec - 10:49

Drew - 11:26

Mark - 12:01