Hi all!

I hope you have had a great summer so far. While my training has been going pretty well, I have found that it has fallen into a steady state of "blah" at this point. So after my final triathlon this weekend, my first Olympic distance-ahh!, I'm going to try to settle in and make the most of my last few weeks of summer before I head to school.

While I followed the Tour de France religiously for the last month, I am now putting in some time at work to wrap up my internship and also to teach the woman in China, who will continue with my work, how to do everything. Maybe she can give me some inside scoop on the Olympics...

I have been busy otherwise balancing my family's attempt at short summer vacation trips, getting in my training hours, and also have kept my schedule full of races. While I am only 'tapering' for 1-2 races this summer, I sadly have come to rely on the race setting to really get my heart rate up. But also love the socializing that comes after, it has been great to see so many SLU skiers and students at these races!

We took a family vacation to Cape Cod for a long weekend where I ran, rollerskied and biked on the bike path and roads along the coast. The workouts were fun, although I got SO many comments when rollerskiing consisting of a sickening number of "you go girls" and including my personal favorite, which comes with strong New Yorker accent, "You're gonna have shoulders like a gorilla after doing that!" Regardless the beaches were heavenly, the food was great and Provincetown never fails to entertain.

It was great to meet some of the new Vermonters at the BBQ, and I will be meeting the rest of you entirely too soon...no offense. Enjoy the rest of your summer, have fun, and feel free to shoot me questions!

Kristen

East Road Time Trail

The plan was to get up early and get it over with. My alarm went off at 7 but I was still tired and lacking motivation. This lack of motivation seems to happen to me when I’m coming off a few big weeks (29.5 hrs in the previous two weeks) and beginning a recovery week. I usually don’t have a lack of motivation during a big week which is good. So I shut my alarm off and reset it to eight. When it went off again, it was clear that I wasn’t going to be able to work up the motivation to get up and do it right then, so I went back to bed. When I finally got up I decided that I had to do something in the morning. By this point though, it was too late (too hot) to do the TT. I ended up getting a decent strength session in with a friend, which I was planning on doing that night. I went to “work” for most of the day and when I came home I still didn’t have much motivation to do the TT. Part of the reason may be because no one else was doing it with me. I dragged myself up to East Road with the plan to just see how I felt and go from there. A note on East Road, I’ve roller skied it too many times to count. It’s just an out and back for a total of 4.2 miles. I’m pretty sure I know ever bump and crack in the pavement, you get the idea. However, I have times on this TT for the last 3 years and earlier this summer so I thought it would be a good idea to do it. Anyway, I felt good doing an easy ski so I did some warm up intervals and felt good again. So I decided to do it. Thirty seconds into it I knew that my time was going to be pretty good. My legs felt great, full of pop. I looked down at my watch at the first mile, which is mostly gradual uphill- 3:58, I knew I was skiing well. When I’m skiing well I don’t dread the hills, I don’t cringe in the pain, the pain even feels different, it’s a pain that I can deal with and push through, I just think about skiing faster. I hate it when I’m not skiing well; I just want to be finished with the race, the pain hurts more, I dread the hill etc. Anyway I was flying up the hills V2ing all of them. This was pretty cool, not only because I had never done this before in this particular TT, but because I have been working on my V2 a lot this year and it felt great. I ended up doing the last mile in 3:47 and ended with a time of 17:19. Four weeks ago I did this same TT in 18:35; I was 1:16 faster! This time was also 11 seconds faster than any other time on this course. Hopefully this is a good sign that my training is working and paying off well, I don’t really know what else it would be. The rest of this week I’m going to do some easy training and take it easy before starting another big training period.

Post from new SLUskier Sam Martell!

Hey there! I'm going to be a freshman this coming year and am so excited to be a part of SLUSKI. Thought I'd post and say hi!

Training this summer is going fairly well. I've been training with the Mansfield Nordic Club at least twice a week which I really enjoy because those two days are usually the only time I get to train with other girls my age. The other 5 days of the week I'm either training on my own, with one of the guys from my high school team, or with a group of middle aged women. That last one is my personal favorite. I see the same group of women twice a week at the local gym for strength classes. Mondays are weights. These are fun, but slightly embarrassing because these women may be 30 years older than me, but they put twice the amount of weight on their bars. It's quite impressive. Wednesdays are cardio strength. Now, this is hard. This class is the "I better go for a run first because I won't be able to move afterwards" class and it is taught by a woman I fondly refer to as "Crazy Lisa". This woman is about 5 foot nothing, but what she lacks in height she more than makes up for in muscle and energy (she reminds me of the energizer bunny on like 10 redbulls). Other than rollerskiing and trying to keep up with Crazy Lisa I've done some running races and most recently, the kayak leg of a local triathalon in St. Albans Bay. I've canoed since I was about 10, but never alone and I've never really kayaked, so I felt the race went well becuase a. i didn't flip the kayak and b. i made it to the finish. Ah, success.

Besides training I've been working in my dad's office (he builds houses and his two partners sell real estate) and also at the City Pool teaching swimming lessons. And let's not forget the Tour de France! The reason my family has the hardcore cable package is for the Tour. We have all chosen our favorites and I have declared myself a fan of Cadel Evans. Now just cross your fingers he isn't doing loads of drugs...

The rest of the summer is looking about the same and I'm not complaining. Though I am looking forward to heading to SLU in the fall, I have no problem enjoying summer for the time being. Hope everyone else is enjoying it as well!
-Sam

Wooly in Mammoth

I received this from Eric Wolcott today.

What up folks. Well it's been nearly two months since we left school. In that shortperiod of time, summer has been treating me real well. I spent two weeks at home just
chilling with friends and family. I basically slept, ate, played with my dog, and rep'ed
the Celtics. On May 26th however I began my trek cross country. A friend and I drove from
Concord, NH to Park City, UT in 42 hours, 36 of those was actual driving time. We spent the next five days hanging out enjoying the P.C. lifestyle. To say the least it was a little different. After a second friend who came down from Montana met up with us, we packed up the car and finished our trip to Mammoth, California. The sense of excitement that came with a journey like this is amazing and when we finally arrived, we spent much of the first few days in shock and awe. The area which we live in is incredible. The house that I am staying at is situated at about 8000 feet, if i look out my window all i see around me are crystal clear lakes and snowcapped mountains. In the four weeks we've been here it's been a consistent 75 to 80 degree temp during the day. In this same period it's rained all of five minutes. But enough about the travels and landscape. Now that I no longer am focused on soccer, I've been able to get in some amazing
training. With access to awesome roads, endless trails and huge mountains I've been able to do all sorts of stuff. Just last week alone I rollerskied, road, singletrack, downhill biked, ran and swam in a lake at 11,000 feet with a wetsuit on. Basically it's absurd what the possibilities are out here. Well that about wraps it up for me. Some closing thoughts though, spend this weekend shooting off fireworks, wearing an American flag on your shoulders and enjoying an ice cold Country Club. 1.

P.S.-The photos are of a slide I descended, before and after.