Halfway through Testing Week

The first two tests (3k run and Canadian Strength Test) went down in the past few days, with two more (Specific Strength at Browns Bridge and St. Regis) coming up Friday and Sunday.

On the men's side, the 3k had been long been slated as a battle between two perennial track speedsters, Austin Meng and Will Frielinghaus. Meng had been struggling with some sickness, but after a week off from training showed up ready to go for it. 200 meters into the race Meng and Will had a 50-meter lead on the field. The win was settled when Will made a move with about 2 laps to go. Meng was impressive in keeping pace after struggling to get out of bed for the last 7 days, but had to settle for second. Will and Meng went 9:46 and 9:50, respectively, both times in the top ten of the Testing Archives. The battle for third was literally waged between the entire rest of the men's field, who hung together as a tight pack the entire race before first-year Matt Dier laid down a finishing kick of Northug-like proportions in the last 150 meters.

The women's race broke up right away, with first-year Erin Perryman and senior Kelsey Nichols setting the early pace. A chase pack, led by sophomore Kate Mulcahy, slowly reeled the two leaders in, however. Kate made a devastating move to turn up the pace with a few laps to go, cruising to the win. Her time put Kate in the top-5 all-time for this test. Kate and Will made it a double-victory for Glens Falls skiers on the day.

Will leads Meng down the back-stretch of the track during sunrise

Yesterday the team did the Canadian Strength Test, a brutal ten minutes apiece of pull-ups, situps, pushups, box jumps and dips. This was a really impressive showing. Eric Lustgarten demolished the USST Senior Male standard of 299 with an incredible 358 points, and first-year Cassidy Cichowicz hit 14 pull-ups in a row. Last year we had maybe 2 or 3 girls who could do a single pull-up, and this year all but one we able to get their chin over the bar at least once. Compared to last year (when we first did this test) the men's average went up by 14 points, and the women bumped their average up by an incredible 31 points! Just as impressive, the women's results were almost all within a 10-15 point range. These girls are not only fit, but able to push each other well since they're so competitive among themselves.

Cassidy hammered out 14 pull-ups en route to winning the Strength Test

The 3k and Canadian Strength tests aren't direct measures of skiing performance, but they're very basic indicators of fitness, and fitness helps win ski races. Things should get really exciting when we hit Browns Bridge on Friday, and St. Regis on Sunday. Regis is perennially wet and rainy, but after this summer of drought and heat, the stage could be set for some records to fall...

Strength and Conditioning Notes

Yesterday Ethan and I attended a discussion (more of a presentation, really) by the strength-and-conditioning coach for the SLU Hockey team. I scribbled down some notes on prominent topics, and I thought I'd re-post them here in raw form (with a few links added). It's cool (yet unsurprising, really) to see how many similarities exist between all sports when it comes to strength training, progression, and philosophy. Here's some of what I took down:

Notes: Strength and Conditioning discussion 9/19/2012

-What energy systems are you using in your sport? Ex: Hockey players are on 40sec shifts, going all out and then resting. 3:1 rest to exertion ratio. Understand where the energy comes for this, and train that system.

-If you want to increase explosiveness/quickness, MANIPULATE THE NERVOUS SYSTEM to achieve this. Don’t confuse this with maximum effort. This is the difference between doing a few pullups with lots of weight and a few pullups with so much explosive effort that you shoot up off the bar. The two are each important, but you need to train the nervous system first to get that quickness. Same goes for technique and skiing (see “Speed versus Intensity of Training”, Galanes 2004)…produce power correctly and efficiently before adding load.

-There is a progression of Speed-->Strength-->Conditioning (Again, see Galanes 2004)

-There is a lack of maximal strength on SLU teams.

-Understand the physiological vs psychological impact of strength training. If doing some short benchpress reps helps an athlete feel good before a game, for example, let it become routine for them even if it has no benefit.

-In soccer, a midfield player runs an average of 12 miles in a game, including changes of pace and bursts of speed. Additionally, he cannot be fatigued during this time because he has to execute his skill (ball-handling, traps, etc) for the duration of the event.
-In the same way: A skier skis 12 miles (A 20k), including changes of pace and bursts of speed. Additionally, he cannot be fatigued during this time because he has to execute his skill (correct technique) for the duration of the event.

-Recovery has to be incorporated and INGRAINED. Foam rolling, massage, ice bath, recovery drinks/foods. This needs to be something the athlete does as instinctively as showing up to practice.

Climb to the Castle

Saturday morning a few members of the team headed down to Whiteface for the annual Climb To The Castle rollerski race. With competition from the Craftsbury Green Racing Project, US Ski Team, and the National Training group, it was a stacked field. It was great to see so much motivation for this race. Last year only Eric, Reed, Swayze and myself made the trip. This year we had 5 guys and 2 girls, and would've taken more if we had more drivers. Apparently waking up at 5:30 on a Saturday to race up a mountain in the rain didn't appeal to everyone...

Eric and Evan Martell had great races in the men's competition, skiing with strong packs and beating some big names and placing 24th and 29th. In a smaller but no less competitive women's race, Kate and Margot skied to 17th and 21st place. Kyle Curry and Evan Smith got to race for the first time with 'SLU' as their team, and coach Terko only got beat by Liz Stephen by a mere 8 minutes.

Here's a picture of Eric (from fasterskier) that pretty accurately sums up the weather. It was almost helpful to have fog preventing everyone from seeing just how far up we had to climb...


As always, Lakeview Deli in Saranac made for a great post-race lunch after the wind and rain of Whiteface. Here's a link to some results:

MEN
WOMEN

Balance Board UPDATE!

Took 24 hours before I decided to make some ski-specific changes to the balance-board, partly from some suggestions of team-members. I cut up an old Peltonen ski that's been lying around for some time (It belonged to current NENSA Directer Zach Stegeman, who graduated in '02, for the record), as well as one of Austin Hart's busted boards, and integrated them into the design. I spray-painted them for uniformity and installed grip-tape bindings. Now you get the feeling of a racing ski underfoot while balancing.

DIY Balance Board

It's no secret that balance is important for Nordic skiers, who spend the vast majority of their workout time on only one foot. In looking for new ideas for circuit training, I had been thinking about incorporating a balance board for a while. They usually run about $80-$100 a pop (the Vew-Do type), but are really the most simple two pieces of material around. I've had one in my basement for the last few years that was little more than a piece of 2x4 resting on an old dumbbell.

So instead of breaking the team budget, I saved hundred-dollar cost (you could buy a whole ten grams of Gallium GigaSpeed wax for that!) and dug around the ski room for some building supplies.

The steps and photo's below are the process. It's pretty basic, and you don't have to do half the crap I did, like sanding, stenciling or getting grip patches...all you really need to do is saw a PVC Pipe and find a board. But I think it's cooler to fool around with some stuff...

Your basic materials...PVC (4 inch) and a strong board about 3 ft long. I sanded the board smooth, rounding the edges a little. A completely pointless step: I found some stencils in a box so I made a "SLUSKI" one. It came out pretty ugly. Whatever. While the spraypaint was drying on the stencil I biked down to the hardware store and spent the only money of the project: $3 for some stick-on sandpaper, aka griptape. Voila! Saw off the corners and call it good. What more do you need?

Denmark!

Hey SLUSKI,

Sounds like everyone is back and settled into fall training at SLU. I figured I’d post a quick update about my fall semester as well. I have been studying abroad in Copenhagen, Denmark for a little over 3 weeks now. It is quite different living and studying abroad, but I’m adjusting. I live with a host family outside the city in Allerød, which is a beautiful rural area. I bike to and from the train station every day, where I have a 30 minute train ride each way into Copenhagen. My host family is great, and has really helped me adjust to Denmark.

Copenhagen is a cool city to live in. Denmark is a world leader in environmental policy, so Copenhagen is a perfect place for me to study for my major. One of many examples is the heavily used transportation system and bikes. People bike everywhere in Denmark. I've seen men in suits and women in heels speed by in bike lanes on their way to work, as well as little kids who can bike better than I can. Dodging bike traffic is often scarier than cars! DIS where I study is in the old part of the city, surrounded by old streets and shops. It's fun to explore the city, but can also be costly, as everything in Denmark is expensive.

I just returned Saturday from a short trip to Germany and Denmark for a my core class. I got to see renewable facilities, including climbing to the top of a wind turbine. We also went to the Wadden Sea, a unique marine ecosystem. Then on Sunday, I ran in the Copenhagen Half-Marathon with my host parents! Having never run a half-marathon before, I started slow and sped up quickly, using passing skills learned from mass start races. I ended up finishing in 1:24:31, in around 250th place out of 7500. It was a pleasant suprise, as I have been unsure of my fitness. I've been running and going to a gym on my own and playing soccer with a Danish club, so I guess I'm in better shape than I thought.

I'll wrap this up with some photos, but keep training hard everyone! Every so often i'll send an update, and feel free to facebook me, or send me your address if you want snail mail.

 Nyhavn Port, really pretty area of Copenhagen.

 Lake where I went canoeing with my host family.

 Wind turbines. I went out in a boat into Copenhagen's harbor to see them up close for a field trip.

 Copenhagen from the Round Tower.

 A solar panel field in Germany.

 The view from the top of a German wind turbine.

 Standing in the Wadden Sea, we used nets to catch marine wildlife.

Post Half-Marathon, with the medal to prove I finished!

Enjoy the fall at SLU,

Bill Prescott

Alumni Race

The first hard effort of the fall semester was the XC running team's Run For Ryan/Alumni Race held last Saturday. We've been invited to this event for many years now, and it really just boils down to a simple race setting: The current XC team, the current Nordic team, and the alums of both.

This year the men's team (clearly standing out in the crowd by being the only group of 10+ who went shirtless) raced mostly as a large pack, with Sophomore Austin Meng taking top honors of the ski crowd (not counting Alum and 2002 Olympic Biathlete Lawton Redman, 3rd overall) and probably surprising a few XC runners. Not far behind him was first-year Matt Dier and junior Eric Lustgarten, who recently returned from a summer in Sun Valley, ID.
"I didn't even feel the effort" said Meng excitedly afterward, fresh from Truckee, CA. "That's what you get from altitude."

Maybe, but a glance at the training logs from Eric or Meng, who spent their summers at high elevation, shows more than just thin-air oxygen consumption. The two both put in the hours and workouts to be top performers, and the training is already paying off. The rest of the men's team was not far behind, mostly running together and pushing each other as a group. The surprise of the day was when Coach Etown put in a huge surge at mile 2 to pass the guys team and stay ahead of them, crossing the line as 4th SLUSKIer. Yours truly took a more typical coach-esque approach, pretty much doggin' it near the back of the pack and watching the whole scene unfold.

Eric finishing off the Alumni Race Saturday

The girls race was equally impressive, though I didn't get to see as much of it for obvious reasons. The SLUSKI women even managed to make a pretty good dent in the women's XC team, giving a lot of them a run for their money. First-year Cassidy Cichowicz finished in 5th overall, just 2 seconds ahead of Sophomore Kate Mulcahy.

Overall Cassidy and Meng combined for a Cali-sweep of the ski teamers, doing the West coast proud. The race was sunny and hot, but things changed shortly after. As first-year Evan Martell, a Vermonter->Sun Valley transplant, said in the driving rain yesterday, "been a while, guess I'm not ready for this East Coast stuff just yet".