This weekend Steve came up to my place near Burlington for a weekend of some quality
training and racing. After a three-day trip to NYC with my mom and aunt, it was time to
get back to business with a 12k rollerski race in Jericho. I was pretty pumped because I
hadn't done so well at the previous NENSA race at Mtn Top, and felt like I was ready to
show some kids up. It wasn't the case. Unlike Mtn Top, where I could make numerous lame
excuses for my poor performance, there was simply no way around it this time. I was
embarrassingly slow, and it was painful. I can tell when I'm having a bad race because
the one recurring thought my mind plays is "what am I doing here?". This was the bottom
of the bottom for me. My best races last year were all distance skate, and here I was
getting shown up by kids I absolutely should NOT be getting beaten by. When they hammered
the results on the wall it felt like they were driving a ski pole through my chest. I
haven't looked at them since. Though this summer has felt like my best in terms of
training quality, quantity and effort, both ski race efforts have failed to live up to
that training. It's hard to maintain confidence in your training when you get beaten so
soundly, but I've been working it over. I looked back at last year and figured I might be
lacking some intensity. I met with Eli Enman, who I've known as a coach and friend since
8th grade, and he went over my training plan and log. He echoed my thoughts on intensity
exactly. We both felt like my training was going really well otherwise, and he assured me
that he'd never raced well on rollerskies either. Aside from intensity, I think my main
issue with this summer racing is my mentality. Last year as a senior, I put a ton of
pressure on myself, and I had a lot of ups and downs throughout the season. I think this
summer I've been too worried about what my summer racing will mean about my future
season. So no more BS; I'm just gonna go out there and kill it like it IS winter, and
have the confidence to know that when the snow flies is the true measure of a good
summer's training. So with that initial dissapointment out of the way, I headed back to
my house with Steve (who had much better race than I did) to refuel and chill out in
Burlington. We went for a short run later that night, and tried to get ahold of some
other skiers in the area for an OD the next morning. I was going to call call Caroline
(another freshman skier), but we ended up getting a little distacted by the Olympics,
mainly womens beach volleyball. We basically spent the rest of the evening cycling
through Olympic channels. NBC was alright, but the Canadian channel had a commercial
about Chandra Crawford (that's a lot of alliteration), which was pretty sick. The next
morning our three hour skate was pretty uneventful. We skied around with my friend John,
who had to bail after he stepped on his pole mid-stride and snapped it. We spent the rest
of the time talking about how tired (me) and bored (Steve) we were. We ran into Caroline
after all at the end of our ski, and I appologized for not including her in all the fun.
Since she had already been out for two hours, it seemed like we all had the same idea. So
this summer has been a mix of awesome training with bummer races, but I'm still fired up.
Insane bounding intervals with Anders Follerass and Juergen Uhl, skiing up mountain
access roads, uphill trail running, and classic OD skis in the pouring rain. Basically
the usual stuff.
Photo: A bunch of skiers after a classic ski/hike up Bolton Valley. I'm second from the
end on the right. Sam Martell is below me, and Hunter is second from the left.
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