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.