Great days to be a skier

Happy Holidays everyone! I know it's Christmas Eve, but all I can think about is being outside. My Grandparents are visiting, and they like it warm. My dad cranked up the fire in the furnace and the thermostat reads...hang on...81 degrees in here. I might pass out from heat stroke. Luckily, there's tons of snow outside for me despite the tropical conditions in my living room. A pretty good amount of VT ski areas were open when we got back for break, but the past few days have seen some nice fluffy powder and great skiing almost anywhere you choose. Steve came up for the Bolton Opener last Sunday (results HERE. I put SLU on my club but apparently it wasn't listed on the results?). I had been skiing there for 2 days prior and though conditions were great with wicked hard-packed skating, it looked like nobody would show up for the race. I was proved wrong on race day when a whole host of guys showed up from Team Rossi, UVM, Craftsbury and even CXC. The most well-represented crew though? Team SLUSKI, with Wolcott, Steve, Teo and myself, along with recent alums Issac Noyes and Angus McCusker. The race went well, and the next day Steve and I went to my home base, Sleepy Hollow, for some training on the St. Mikes Carnival courses. Should be a wicked steep hill and chaos for the classic sprint relay. Conditions were mediocre, but the next few days brought good snowfall. Yesterday I headed up to Trapps for some classic intervals. The plan called for 7 minutes: 6 being level 3 pace, with a 1-minute pickup of level 4 sandwiched in the middle. My goal was to practice the race course for the UVM carnival. The terrain worked out perfectly; I strode out the first level 3 effort on the gradual climbs at the low point of the course, hit level four as I hammered up the biggest, longest hill (if you raced it you know where I'm referring to), and kept it back to level 3 as I finished the climb and ended coming out of the woods into the stadium. After resting up and eating some lunch I went out again, this time with my summer training buddies/high school rivals Jared Supple (Colby) and Pete Hegman (UVM). We cruised around and I'm sure blinded some of the touring holiday guests with our vibrant displays of red, blue and green spandex from our respective schools. Different attitudes toward the sport, but it was obvious everyone was just psyched to be out skiing.


Tried out the self-timer on my parents camera at Bolton. Good skiing on Sunday, and even better conditions now I'm sure.

Dig the Hig

Higley Flow up and running as of Wednesday. Classic tracks and all today. NYSEF opener in LP tomorrow, then exams!

Finally

After some agonizing December rollerskis (the type no one really looks forward to), we finally got out on snow. With only a few inches falling in Canton, we headed south to the golf course in Star Lake to get some quality K's in. Though they weren't quite mid-winter conditions, I think it would be safe to say that everyone was pretty excited to finally be out on the white stuff. It was certainly encouraging to finally see some snow fall after what has been a very mild past few weeks. Hopefully there will be more coming, and with any luck, we may be racing in Lake Placid this weekend.

short clip from Stoneham

I think Adam has already done a great job of summing up camp but I am finally getting around to downloading some pics from the camera. Most of which are blurry since I just can't seem to figure out how to take action shots. Recently though I did figure out how to take short videos which seem to capture the moment better for workouts anyway. Here is one of the boys hitting the bounding intervals hard at Stoneham.

Culture clash

At around 8:00 last night Kyle, Connor, Bogden and I were in Cornwall, crossing the water to the USA. With our stomachs full of gas-station A&W burgers, we gunned our 15-seater gas guzzler over the bridge and blasted the Team America theme song as we rolled up to customs. That's when I realized how much I love our country. We do everything over-the-top and love every minute of our indulgent lifestyles. Of course, as a responsible team we do our best to shed the image of the typical lazy, environmentally destructive American stereotype. Every once in a while though, you just have to embrace your heritage. This was one of those times. We all needed some good old 'merrrcan time after a tough week of hammering it out Canuck-style in Stoneham. Intervals, s'il vous plait! Though we got our snow feet wet on a 500m loop for a few days, most of the week was devoted to hard training either by foot, rollerski or Go-Kart. Some of us (me) learned the hard way that Mariokart driving abilities don't hold up so well when you're in the real deal. All in all there was a positive atmosphere despite the lack of ski time. Some incredibly tough workouts stand out, like switchback rollerski striding intervals, a great 2.5 hour trail run and all-out bounding ladders, but a couple of us agreed most of the week felt like a consistent blur of naps, egg-frying and sore appendages. Mostly shredded quads, particularly for Lanky who (with a broken wrist) toughed it out with all legs all week. Maybe they don't have dollar menus or SUVs in every driveway, but our neighbors to the north know how to accommodate skiers. When it comes to training like, this I guess Canada's alright.


Smooth roads and no traffic made the local park a great place to train


Baby Calvin, taking some fashion notes from Wolcott


Kelsey and Andrew skiing the loop


We traded dinner duty each night: Wolcott and Lanky's kabobs

skiing?

After skiing on the manmade loop at Foret on Tuesday I had pretty much decided that it was not worth the 45min drive and battle for space that would be part of getting on snow. Since the point of training camp is training and not getting on snow at all costs (while it would be nice) I decided to focus efforts on utilizing the terrain and sites available for dryland. This went exceeding well and I think that even though our on snow time was very limited this was quite possibly one of the best training camps I have experienced and run as a coach. We are finishing it off with a hard bounding session we did this morning up the ski slope at stoneham, with a recovery run this afternoon. The forecast is for snow overnight but it won't be enough to immediatly open more Ks at Foret. I called and tried to get some time reserved on the loop for the am only to be told that they were full and no time could be scheduled.
So we are left with either a rollerski at Jaques Cartier park and then pack up and leave or pack up and head for Gatinue Park in Ottawa for a rollerski there.
We were going to head home on Sunday but given the conditions have decided to get back a day early so everyone can get caught up school work and resettled for the final drive toward the end of the semester.
At least it looks to be turning a little more winterlike with some snow forecast for Northern NY and other parts of New England. Hopefully we will all be on some quality snow soon.

Go Speed racer

Gokarting in Quebec city and a stroll in the Old Quarter. Andrew and I were trying to think of some suprise fun for the end of the week and I think we might have a new yearly tradition that involves stinking of gas and oil. It was not environmentally friendly but it was certainly fun. Wolcott and Beano made good on their trash talk winning overall and turning in the fastest lap time while finishing second respectively. It took me a couple laps and nudge from behind to figure out that the only real way to make an effective pass was basically to push the cart in front of you out of the way. We may have stretched the language barrier excuse a little far as most didn't seem to pay attention to the yellow caution flags that repeatedly came up as the less deft of us has to be turned around after spinning out by the swift footed attendants who appeared rather exasperated with us toward the end.
The absurdly warm weather made walking around the old part of the city comfortable at least. Sorry about forgetting the camera, but if you really follow this you have learned to expect that I often forget the camera and am not very good with it anyway.

Results from the kart race
1. Eric
2. Ben K
3. Connor
4. Hollis
5. Me
6. Andrew
7. Adam
8. Ben O
9. Tyler
10. Leah
11. Hannah
12. Margaret
13. Caroline

UP continued

I figured I would just continue along Adam's line for what is going on up in Canada. Well we were not expecting much snow and that is what we got, not much snow. So day one was an excellent 2.5hr trail run from Jaques Cartier Park through the woods and over a river back to Stoneham. Actually for not having a map this was probably one of my luckiest calls ever. At one point I said we could be about 10minutes away or we could be out here for 5 hours, I am really not sure.

Foret has skiing a reasonable 500meter loop that was okay for an easy skate in the morning. For the afternoon I decided we needed to hit it hard while everyone was still fairly well rested. The housing boom in Stoneham aided this effort by providing a rather quiet 1mile climb up into the mountain amongst several houses and then finishing on some new pavement and a building lot that will make someone a fine mountain home. An absolutely excellent workout that got the thumbs up from the residents who started watching our crazy workout that involved shuttling the team back down after every interval.

Hopefully Foret will have a little more terrain tomorrow for a couple of easier sessions on snow, if not we will do a ski in the am and a roll in the afternoon.

Well I have some pics but for some reason I can't get them to upload. Figures I also just found out I forgot a necessary cable for watching the video I took of the intervals.

Training is great though.

Up

The team is finishing up a tough two weeks of training. Lots of intensity, lots of volume, lots of focus. Lots of up. Up mountains. Up the tempo. Up the pullups. Up the temperature. It's mid-November, but we rollerskied for three hours without shirts this Sunday. Up the complaining. Where's the snow? Why aren't we there? We practically live in Canada, but the only thing falling across the border is the value of our money. No time to worry about that when you've got this much intensity to be ready for. 3x6x30. 4-5x5-6. Up the multiplication. Up the effort, but only if you up the rest along with it. Maybe you have class until dark. Too bad, gotta get out there and get it done. Have a headlamp? Good. Up the brightness and ski off into the night. It's almost Thanksgiving. Up the speculation. Maybe it'll be a dryland training camp. Maybe we'll be kicking out four hour classic skis on hardwax. Either way, the preparation has to get done all the same. Train, rest, train, rest. Live it up.


Up mountains. We literally scaled the Eagle Slide rock face of Giant Mountain early this fall. Terrifying.


Steve in the SLU Quadathlon. Steve won the bike leg and SLUSKI Nordic won the event by 4+ minutes.


Lanky and I at SUNY Canton after dark. Sprint speeds with a little extra strength added in.


A typical North Country sunset


A final shout-out to the Snow Gods. This is from Quebec almost exactly one year ago.

Kiki gets a haircut

Kyle was known for his hair before, and now even more so. Tonight we took the scissors to him for the mustache-bash (notice his fu-manchu already prepped) on campus tomorrow. We had our friend Katherine (who's given both Ben and I haircuts before) use her skills to whip up Kyle a sweet new mop.

7 Springs Spa and Resort visit #3

I believe this makes the third visit to this wonderfully long hill in the woods of Colton (maybe Parishville) twice since the start of official training and once during captains practice in September. We went at it really hard today with 4-6 repeats up the hill with 4 full out bounding sections within each. Getting dark early now so the pics are a bit grainy. The team looks great and aside from a few who have been sick it seems that most have managed to stay healthy even with the onslaught of flu cases on campus over the past two weeks.

I wish I had some pics from this morning. After a short stationary bike interval session we tried some yoga. First year Connor Hunt showed off some rather impressive yoga skills.

All in all a very solid day, hope it gets cold soon though we are looking forward to some snow.

Going Fast

A short clip from a sprint work out today. This was toward the end of 3 sets of 6 x 30sec. I am impressed in the ability that most on the team have to go really fast on rollerskis. It is considerably, like night and day, faster than the sprinting speed that I had on rollerskis when in college even as a fairly decent college skier myself, a little over ten years ago. I think the anty is always getting upped as to the level of speed training that can be done on rollerskis. There were no crashes and no broken poles during this workout and everytime was a full out sprint.

Ability on rollerskis is something that I have been stressing to the team for the past couple of years now since it is rather hard to work at being forward and aggressive with your technique if you don't have the skill and confidence on rollerskis. I think all the junior clubs and programs are helping a great deal with this as we continue to see an ever higher skill level of the athletes when they enter college.

River Road skate rollerski TT

We certainly were not let down by the weather. Forecast was for clearing by midday but about 5 minutes before we were to start a steady rain accompanied by fog rolled in. About 30 sec after the last finisher it stopped. Results will be posted on the team info webpage probably monday but Zach successfully defended his title making it 4 for 4 winning this event every year since he was a freshman. I doubt anyone had faster times than last year due to the wet road surface. Caroline won on the womens side again as well.

The FLU has descended on SLU and that kept some on the team out of the event and probably out for the next week or so. Hopefully most of them can avoid catching it which unfortunately is rather difficult within the close confines of campus life. I suppose the best we can hope for is for it to run its course prior to Thanksgiving break in Quebec.

St. Regis mudfest, 2009

The conditions didn't really offer much opportunity for record breaking times this year. At some points the trail was over a foot deep of mud and pretty much the entire way up was a soggy sloppy mess. This certainly didn't curb the enthusiasm of this much anticipated team time trial though. Fortunately we got out of there with only a couple mild ankle strains. I was awake much of the night before listening to the rain pounding down and envisioning much worse. Zach took the win this year on the guys side, coming into the major part of the climb with Eric and Kyle close behind. For the women first year Kelsey Nichols held off Caroline by about 20sec for the win.

At the top we put in 350 pullups as a team for our 350.org action.

Make a Difference Day

With the St. Regis time trial looming on Saturday we had a relatively easy day today. Before practice we did some community service in Canton as part of the Make A Difference Day that students for St. Lawrence are encouraged to participate in. We did this a couple years ago but not last year, not sure why. Anyway as you see from the pics we spent about an hour and half raking leaves, moving some dirt piles and wood chips, as well as staining a tool shed at one of the newest village parks which opened this summer. Afterwards a short easy classic rollerski during which the weather managed to hold off for a change.

Mid-Semester Break Training

Stowe, VT
October 15

Inspiration

After a week full of 6:30 AM practices, interval sessions, and general strength, Ethan brought a bunch of us to Lake Placid for something like the "nordic combined dry-land championship." Despite the dreary weather, the scene was pretty cool--live music, good food, and a surprisingly high number of spectators.

We got there around 12:00, which was just after the first round of ski jumping. With some time to kill before the next

round (and the rollerski race at 2:15), we had some time to kill. We took advantage of the comp tickets we had and took the chairlift up to the top of the hill. From the bottom, both the small, a mere 90 meters, and the long jump, a bit more lengthy at 12o meters, were pretty daunting. It was not different up close. We took an elevator to the top of the mammoth 120 jump tower and wonderer around the top for a while. With the second round beginning, we made our way down to a spectators platform near the takeoff where the competitors were taking off. After shaking hands with Andy Newell (who is apparently on a first name basis with Steve) we descended the hill to find a stop for watching the rollerski race.

The race was also very spectator friendly--being a 10k on a 2k loop, there were a lot of opportunities to see the skiers passing by. Though the course was pretty technical and hilly, the level of competition was pretty high which made for an interesting race. In the absence of Billy Demong, Todd Lodwick cleaned up, making the win look easy. Freezing, we headed back to the van and took off back to campus as the sun began to emerge from behind the clouds.

Black Powder

I started seeing the term "black powder" in use about maybe 4 or 5 years ago. I don't often use the term but it certainly would characterize much of the awesome road skiing we have 15-30min from campus by car. I am really not a big fan of rollerskiing personally. It was never one of my favorite things to do for training and I would always much rather trail run or even a road run to rollerskiing. However after having grown up in Vermont, gone to college at SLU, and then coached a bit out west I can say with some experience that the rollerskiing we have nearby campus here is some of the best there is. For some reason the back roads in Northern NY nearly all get paved and are fairly well maintained or at least don't get beat up to quickly. These are the kinds of roads that in most states would be dirt or gravel or perhaps some chip seal if you were lucky. For this same reason the road biking is really good here to. The picture here is about 2/3rds of the way through a drop off point to point ski this past Sunday. The guys went for 3 hours and covered a little over 30miles. I would guess that in that time we saw perhaps 15-20 cars. It still can be dangerous but most of the time we have the road to ourselves.
It was a really great OD workout a slight rain, just enough to keep you cool. Of course I didn't ski much of it myself while running support with the van and nursing an injury I probably only got in about an hour, enough for coach though.

Fall Testing

We started official training this week which doesn't really change much other than I can be present and we do some dryland training tests. 3K on the track was yesterday, I think it went fairly well. We had a couple guys under 10min and all except 2 in under 10:30, the average is probably about 10:15, Zach outkicked Eric in the home stretch to take the win. It is impressive to see guys their size going that fast running, not the typical skinny runner build. The womens group this fall is a bit small with so many juniors and one sophomore in abroad programs. No really fast times but everyone under 13 and all except 1 over 12:30. I would have liked to see some times in the mid 11 range but those that ran that fast last year are not on campus this fall. What is great to see is that even with their lack of experience the first year girls all were under 13min which usually doesn't happen. Specific Strength tests coming this Saturday as well as the family weekend cookout. Next weekend will likely be the St. Regis hill climb which everyone gets pretty excited about.

Game faces

Fresh pavement on Miner Street = Specific Strength repeats
No joking around here.

Browns Bridge, Home of the Brave!

About 15 minutes from campus is Browns Bridge road, I named so (I assume) because of the brown metal grate bridge you cross on the approach. It's a great place to go fast; a long uphill that we use for our testing climbs straight up, and numerous side roads curve, dip and wind like a ski course around the perimeter. Lanky, Kyle, Bogden, Connor and I were out for a little specific strength intervals this morning. After a warmup around the bottom roads we headed up for intervals alternating between no-pole skating and double-poling. We were all on different pages due to fatigue, sickness (the SLUbonic plague is sweeping campus as usual) and whatnot, but we all managed to get some good skiing in. Lanky got some footage of our intervals which you can check out below.


We're all putting in serious work, and it's clear people have been putting in their serious work over the summer too. Wolcott put on a clinic in a practice 3000 the other day, but almost everyone else also made big improvements over last years times. Other than that its just the standard killer ski training you know and love: Intervals at SUNY Canton, endless laps around Partridge, terrifying rock climbing/hiking excursions to the Adirondacks, getting our swell on in the gym and sprinting for town lines. Gotta have the basics.

SLUSKI Hikes the Presi Traverse

1 day
23.8 miles
11 peaks
5 skiers
11 straight hours of hiking









For more information on the Presi Traverse:

http://home.earthlink.net/~ellozy/presidential-traverse.html

The Mountain Stages

Last Thursday I drove down to Shaftsbury for a weekend of training with Steve and Bogden. Friday afternoon Steve and I packed up the PBJs, water and chocolate milk and hit the road towards the Massachusetts border en route to Mt. Greylock. We were meeting Bogden for a serious ascent up the tallest mountain in the state via the freshly paved access road. This summer I've really been hitting up the rollerski climbs. Mostly just the Bolton access road, really, but that one's a doosy. With the Tour De France climbing in the Alps that weekend, I imagined us gliding up and around the mountain like a perfectly fluid team. In skiing I think we all have moments where reality just escapes us. Sometimes it's because we're pushing so hard that nothing matters, and sometimes it's just our surroundings. Being nordic skiers seems to set us up for a different sort of reality anyway. A reality where Whiteface is seen as an UPHILL ski area, and the sound of "Fischer" invokes images of yellow carbonfiber, not forest animals or weekends on a boat. The reality of Greylock was that it was going to hurt, plain and simple. We hit the road and after an initial steep pitch the road flattened out, eventually even going downhill in sections.



As the scenic lookout pulloffs increased though, so did the grade. Without saying a word or making so much as the slightest gesture, we began to speed up. Our poles crunched and cracked into the pavement with a more defiant "snap!", and our breathing became rhythmic and heavy. Sweat cruised in a rollercoaster ride from my forehead down my nose, jumping to my chin and slopping to the pavement from the strap on my helmet. It was on. Still without speaking we upped the tempo again. We hit a series of full-on switchbacks and suddenly the insidious climb seemed to edge on gravity a little more. C'mon, make it a little heavier it nagged. Cars stopped passing on either side. Or more likely, we just didn't notice them anymore. I hit the top and went into the nordic pain cave position: wide feet, elbows on the poles and head slunk low under the straps. After a while cars began to go by again, and people appeared seemingly out of thin air, staring at me in the typical dumbfounded gaze of tourist-on-rollerskier amusement. I was back in reality.


(Both photos stolen from Ben)

Flatlander

Grand Forks, North Dakota. Its not exactly the sort of place I pictured my self ever spending time in. I'm out here with my advisor, Antun Husinec, to do some geology research. We're working in a rock core library at the University of North Dakota, basically analyzing rock core from oil explorations foot by foot, eight hours a day, six days a week. Not exactly my dream job either but on the plus side, its inside and not physically demanding, making training much easier and more effective. Previously I had been a farm hand during the summer, picking strawberries in the morning and doing about every other farm job known to man in the afternoon and was often too exhausted and dehydrated to accomplish anything when I got home.
Training has been good so far this summer. Before heading west, I spent two and a half weeks in Caribou training with MWSC again. There was a really solid group there for the summer which made everything pretty fun and productive. We did some physical testing the first week and while I didn't get a chance to do any treadmill tests, I feel I put in a solid effort in the track tests with a 10:14 in the 3000 (just shy of my PR from freshman year at SLU) and a 59.5 in the 400 Given the fact that I am not a sprinter, I was pretty happy with that. I also made some improvements in strength testing, but still need to work on my legs a lot. Despite all the rain, I made it up to Kamouraska-St.Andre, Quebec with Will Sweetser and Sarah Dominick for a day of sport climbing. The climbing was great, but upon our return we heard the very sad news about Willie Neal, which kind of put a damper on things.
Now I'm here in North Dakota, riding my bike on flat, straight roads and swimming laps in the pool. I was going to do a bunch of track workouts, but the track is securely locked inside the football stadium here. Between training and work, time is a bit of a blur, so hopefully I'll be driving back east before I know it. We're going to the Bad Lands Wednesday, which should be cool, and I may head over to Minnesota the week after, we'll see what happens though.
Train smart, be safe, and most importantly keep it all fun!

Sicilian Snow in June

It was on a Sugarloaf chairlift this March that I started to tell someone that I skied at St. Lawrence, before quickly correcting myself.
“Actually, I used to ski for SLU,” I stuttered, my last season having come to an end the day before. I have since slowly gotten used to the reality of the statement, but while my career may be over SLUski certainly hasn’t left me yet, and hopefully it won’t for many years to come!


That said, I couldn’t resist the temptation to leave a little SLUski shout-out when near the top of the volcanic Mt. Etna in Sicily, Italy two weeks ago. A fellow ’09 grad and I saw piles of white stuff on our way up, but thinking snow was impossible we were unsure what it actually was. The temps at the bottom of the mountain were 30C, although at the top it was considerably cooler, and we thought the black, volcanic rock would prove inhabitable for the snow under what my skin certainly found to be a very strong sun. But it was!
As it turns out, not only can you ski the volcano and its lava flows during the winter, snow lasts straight through June. So she and I constructed a little tribute to SLUski.

Happy Summer from a still snowy Sicily!

Skiing in the Clouds

I think it was on the ride home from Shelburne that Steve mentioned to me that he thought rollerskiing up the Mount Greylock access road would be a good workout.  I nodded, thinking of all the times I’ve skied up it in the winter, realizing that he was right, it would be a good workout. 

            Interestingly enough, when I got around to checking email today after work, I saw that the local training group was holding practice on the toll road—level 3 intervals up Massachusetts largest and most rugged 3,491 ft mountain (its actually just 9 feet short of being considered a true mountain, but here in mass, its all we’ve got).  Excited, I thought it would be fun.  I jumped in the car and headed over to the visitors center at the bottom of the access road. 

            Though it had stayed dry in most parts of the area, it was a different story on the Greylock.  As we neared the top, the clouds grew thick and condensation began to fall.  Fortunately it never actually rained—mostly it was just a drenching mist.  Don't get me wrong though, it wasn't in the least miserable.  Rather, it was quite enjoyable. Skiing through the clouds, while catching up with some high school buddies--what could be better.  Despite the wet, we reached the summit in a speedy 1:30 and were shuttled to the bottom by some devoted parents. 

            It was a good workout and an even more enjoyable ski.  Fresh pavement and little traffic made the ride smooth and uneventful—definitely a new favorite.  So Steve was right, it was good.  And if anyone is in the area, call me up, and I would love to do it again. 

 

Adam Terko, 2nd place in Fasterskier photo contest

http://fasterskier.com/2009/06/the-get-your-sping-on-swixfasterskier-photo-contest/

Not sure if he was actually playing golf or just looking for some snow!

You want mulch with that?

A scan of this mornings local paper

It's raining again. The story of my summer so far isn't too interesting, but I figured I'd share it because there's not much else on my to-do list today. You see, I've been working at a garden center this year. I work a lot if it's nice out, and the only days off I get are when the weather isn't nice. Luckily for me that's worked out alright lately. When I'm working though, it's tough. I like to think of every day as a new strength workout because with the exception of a few day's here and there of lousy business, I spend 8 hours with either a shovel, axe, mallet, pitchfork, weedwhacker, rake or wheelbarrow in my hands. "Must be the chain gang they got going here" I've heard multiple times from customers. It's about right. It's a funny scene at that place. I don't wear the official Gardenside uniform (a Canadian Tuxedo) like my superiors, but even if I'm not lifting something into a car or shoveling gravel/mulch/compost/topsoil/manure, people still timidly ask "..do you work here?" They can tell from the smell. Thanks to a busted piece-of-crap weedwhacker from 1970-something, the tons of plants everywhere and my own laboring I come home smelling of equal parts sweat, dirt and gasoline. Oh, and then I have to train as well. That's been going along nicely though, and I stop my garden job monday for the less-stressful, less-strenuous job of being a custodian and cleaning swine-flu infected schools for the rest of the summer. I've found a bunch of new roads to rollerski on, and I've been spending a lot of time with my two new summer activities: mountain biking and rollerskiing up the Bolton access road. I'm not that good at mountain biking, but It's fun as hell. And skiing up Bolton is fun too, for someone like me. I also installed a pullup bar on the door to my basement/apartment (my parents want me living as far from them as possible). There's a 7-pullup toll (and increasing) now to go downstairs now. No excuses. Wake up and go upstairs to pee at 3am? My conscience won't let me through. Gotta pay the toll before going back down to bed, you lazy sack of crap! When it comes to pullups I'll steal a line Usain Bolt told Sports Illustrated. Simply put, "expect big things from me this year". I've been building up training nicely, stretching my arms out in the dugout this spring as opposed to last year when I was throwing fastballs nonstop and needed some serious relief by the time the 4th inning came around. Summer is in full stride though, so there's no excuses for not being much faster this year. I've been putting in my work. That's about it for me. I've accomplished most of my goals for the day: eat 9 chocolate chip pancakes, finish my book, and I think that's about it it aside from a short run and a core workout when I feel like moving.


Pete Hegman, John Dixon, Jared Supple and I on top of Camels Hump last week