The North Country has been blessed with a good amount of early-season lake-effect snow. While it seems most other parts of New England woke up to some powder this morning, we have been skiing all week. Star Lake has been prime, and after a day of "skiing it in" we had a track suitable for fast skating intervals. The big treat came yesterday as a good amount of additional snow fell even down in the lower elevations (campus) and combined with cold temps (single-digits this morning). This means that in a few minutes Ethan and I are bringing out the groomer! We'll try Higley first, and perhaps Star Lake. We'll also try to call on some people in the know to figure out of a trip to the VIC at Paul Smiths or Van Ho is worth a trip either tomorrow or Sunday.
The new Big Rig truck was prepared for grooming with our snowmobile this morning
Intervals in a blizzard at Star Lake on Wednesday. Headlamps have become the norm
Check out www.xcearlysnow.com for the latest ski info (or to submit your own report!). It's a great site by some SLU alums. I've already submitted quite a few posts as my job currently connects well with the purpose of the site right now...
That camp was legit. After a week of on-snow training at
Foret Montmorency the team is getting primed for the season. Each year it seems
like this training camp is tweaked more and more, (and not just to account for
the dwindling lack of snow each year) with good returns and more productive
sessions.
A photo from the nearby tower looking down on the manmade snow loop (Photo: Reed Likly)
Only a few years ago when this camp was as simple as it
gets. Ski a lot, eat a lot of anything, and ski again until you are too tired
to move. In the space of a few years we’ve gotten more professional, more
thorough, and more organized. We meet at night to discuss topics like recovery,
race mentality, goals and warm-up routines. We plan meals that will best suit
our training, and talk about why we eat what we do. We upload, modify and watch
video of technique (sometimes even before we’ve left the lodge).
Video analysis
Skiing around a 1.7k loop can be arduous in some ways, and
extremely beneficial in others. Ethan and I can see everyone on the team
multiple times, at multiple places. We can ski ourselves, take video, ski some
more, pull team members aside, send them off with things to work on, and (my
favorite) ski with just about everybody at least once a day. “Let’s take a lap”
was probably my most common phrase I said all week, uttered whenever somebody
came by with a technical question or if I wanted to get a sense of how someone
was skiing.
Erin Perryman is the technique-master of the women's team. She is always thinking and modifying to improve how efficiently she skis
ON RACING
And while technique and easy skiing are the foundation of
this camp, a little early season racin’ is usually in the cards. There’s not
much at stake with these early TTs, but we competed well. A few of the top guys
weren’t too happy with their races for one reason or another, but our women’s
team was incredibly impressive. For a group composed entirely of freshmen (with
the exception of sophomore Kate, and senior Kelsey who was not present) these
girls were in the MIX, stacking the top 10 against much older Colby and Bowdoin
teams. The part that keeps impressing me with this group is how similar in
ability they are (and it showed here) and how that enables them to keep pushing
each other and improving. People have probably been led to believe we’re in a
bit of a rebuilding year with such a young team, and even I have been thinking “man,
give these girls a year or two together and things are gonna get real fast”.
But after seeing this group on snow I get the feeling we might start seeing
some killer results sooner than expected.
On the men’s side, Will Frielinghaus is continuing to
improve and impress in every hard effort. He’s probably most known for being on
the eccentric side, both in personality and ski technique…but as he skied by
the waxing benches while Ethan and I were prepping the women’s skis, we saw a
whole new Will. Calm, smooth and efficient, but with all the snap of that wild
side. He was carrying out absolutely everything that we’d talked about and that
he’d worked on this summer and fall, and doing it all without prompting. It was
clear within 10 seconds of watching him ski that he would be our top guy on the
day. Eric was struggling a bit after tweaking his leg skiing the day before,
but opted to gut it out and race, still coming out competitive in the end. I’ll
still hold to the statement I’ve made all fall that Eric is possibly the best
classic technician on the EISA Circuit (and not far off in skating), and when
he’s at full throttle there’s gonna be some impressive races from him this
year.
Reed also had a solid race, and looked powerful throughout.
He ended up less than a minute off some consistent top-20 Carnival racers, and
I’m confident he can keep chipping away at that gap by the time the real race
season gets underway.
The night before we left, some of us took the customary trip down to the Stoneham Terrain park after dark to hit some jumps and boxes. Here's some photos of Reed and Austin Hart gettin' it done and working on their balance:
Box grind
Stair gap
ON CAMPUS
In a rare move, mother nature decided to throw us a bone and
give us a little early-season snow at
Star Lake this week. It’s always a treat to finish up Thanksgiving camp and
keep skiing, and we’ll be heading out this afternoon for a little skate ski on
the golf course. I spent most of yesterday driving around and checking out
other options, but Star Lake, like usual, is where it’s at.
We’re eagerly awaiting Exam Week, the end of the semester,
and the beginning of the racing season!
Milk comes in bags in Quebec, and this year we've got a real-life Canadian (Philip) with us demonstrated the simple solution everyone knows and we were too stupid to figure out. Turns out you keep the milk IN THE BAG, put it in the jug, and THEN cut it open. We'd been doing it wrong for four years...
We've been up in Stoneham and training at Foret Montmorency for a few days now. Currently we're relegated to the same 1.8k loop as last year, which as far as little loops go is pretty sweet and?varied. The weather has been cold upon arrival, changing to mid-40s by noon, with bluebird skies and solid tracks. Essentially, we're doing laps in midwinter conditions in the morning session and spring skiing in the afternoon. Since the other college teams (Colby, Bowdoin, etc) aren't arriving until tomorrow, we've essentially had the place to ourselves for the entire time with the exception of a few locals and XC Ottowa members.
We're gonna ramp it up and get some intervals in tomorrow before the loop gets too packed. Rumor has it they'll be spreading out some extra piles of snow on the lower section to add a few hundred meters...can you say 2+ kilometers baby!?
All eyes are on the Laurentides' long-range forecast this week as everyone tries to push through one more week of dryland before heading to Canada for Thanksgiving Break training camp. Last week everyone got a bit of a break, as the hard training and shorter days were really starting to take a toll. We backed off just before the breaking point, eliminating an interval workout and morning practice from last week's schedule. On Saturday, we headed down to Mt Arab, just outside of Tupper Lake, and did some hard uphill running intervals as our one focus workout of the week. This "mountain" has a fire tower and cool views of the northern Adirondacks, yet it only takes 11-12 minutes to get to the summit when you're fit and running fast. The men went up three times, the women twice. The conditions were cold and clear, with mud, ice and snow. That's all likely out of the picture now that we've had back-to-back 60 degree days, but hopefully the snow guns are still running up north.
Longboards were all the rage at SLU my Sophomore year (2009/10). Then they fell out of style, only to come back this year for some reason. The access road to the Mt Arab trail was really nice for carving (if you're Reed), sitting (Calvin) or skeleton-ing (Kelsey)
The other big news, which you already know if you follow the various other social-media outlets of the team, is the newest addition to the ski team armada: The SLU-Haul. A gigantic heated, insulated, wired wax trailer that will be towed to races behind our new Chevy 3500 Duramax HD Diesel pickup truck. Everything is big, loud and red:
The giant snowflake-logo on the side is forthcoming...
First-year Evan Martell grew up in Vermont, but he was a Sun Valley transplant for the past few seasons before coming to SLU. After being pampered with bright, dry, bluebird weather for the last 24 months, he gets irate at the first drop of rain or cloud in the sky.
"Look at this straight-up East Coast Bulls#!%!" he proclaims loudly on any workout taking place in less-than-perfect conditions. Meng, also used to West Coast summers of hard-packed manicured trail runs, brings out the old "we don't have this crap in Tahoe" speech whenever he trips on a tree root or a pile of wet leaves.
"Having such nice conditions all the time out West is great for training," Meng mused Tuesday as we ran alongside the Raquette River at Stone Valley.
"Yeah, and it also makes you complacent and soft!" I replied (maybe with some more aggressive language), eager to defend my East Coast upbringing.
Instead of fighting back, Meng agreed with me.
Being uncomfortable is a natural part of ski racing. If you live and train in a cold, wet, empty landscape like we do, you get to ingrain a certain level of toughness with every workout. And when you add tough workouts to a tough setting, you really induce a final layer of mental-strength: either suck it up and get it done, or you just won't survive
With that in mind, Ethan and I have a list of all the toughest and hardest workouts SLUSKI has, and we've been incorporating one per week starting after Mid-semester break a few weeks ago. The Dpole Derby, the Higley Bounding Loop, Russell Hill yesterday...
It's too bad the body can't sustain these hard efforts day after day...instead of getting dreary and whiny, everyone's been getting more fired up for these workouts than ever. The hardest workouts were my favorite as an athlete and they're by far my favorite as a coach: everyone is really into it, technique and fitness gains are really brought to light, and there's a definite sense of complete satisfaction on the van ride back to campus. Everything we do is geared toward getting faster, but on a cold November day these are the workouts where you really feel like you're faster before you even finish your cooldown.
Connor came out to help shoot some video at Russell Hill yesterday, as Ethan and I were shuttling skiers back down the steep hill after each repeat. Here's a little footage -
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