Craftsbury EC Sprint

Matt, Blaine, Morgan and I are currently holed-up in our Morrisville hotel room as we wait out a wild overnight ice storm that left the entire town (state?) without power until a few hours ago. The second race of the Craftsbury Eastern Cups, today's classic mass start, has been cancelled, so with time to kill I think this would be a good time to get in a recap of yesterday's action.

Our team highlights were having two athletes racing in the heats. Erin Perryman qualified an awesome 10th overall, and raced to 4th in her heat. She ended up 16th, tying her best EC result from last year in a far more competitive field and with far better points. As Erin continues to qualify more and more it's easy to see her comfort level increase in head-to-head heats. Won't be long till she is in the final round of one of these things fighting for a podium.

Erin just missed out on getting third in her heat and a potential Lucky-Loser spot in the Semis. Still a great start to the season for her!

Kyle also qualified for the Jr men's heats. For someone who admittedly is not much of a sprinter, this was a really good sign of a season of great training, especially in the strength and technique department. Kyle didn't get a fast enough start in his first heat, but tried to move up continually. He learned from that experience and, in his next heat, started out much faster and stayed near the front the whole time for 10th in the Jr race. 

Chumley had a solid qualifier and picked up some good points toward JN qualification, just 2 sec out of the Jr heats

Blaine also had a solid qualifier, narrowly missing out on the Jr heats by less than a second despite having a sickly fever a day prior and being a questionable for starting at all. 

In addition to the current team, I also got to be a wax tech for SLU alum, former teammate and friend Eric Wolcott (SLU class of 2010), who now skis for the professional CXC team. Eric won the men's qualification round by a whopping four seconds. He then easily won his quarter and semi-final heats. He took the lead in the final with 300 meters to go, but got a bit bogged down on the final climb and lost some ground to his competitors. Despite not taking the win in the heats, it was cool to help be a part of a really solid day for him. Though it was probably very overboard, I like to think my crazy amount of wax testing and early-mornings in the SLUHaul the past few days gave us a nice edge with fast boards. All the SLU skis seemed to be running quite fast!

SLU Alum Eric Wolcott easily taking the W in his quarterfinal heat (check out the huge new lodge building construction!)

We will reconvene at Craftsbury later today after we confirm that the roads are safe. From there the team will go it's separate ways for Winter Break before we meet up again in Lake Placid. Keep your fingers crossed that some more snow returns to the area!

NYSEF Opener

It been a few years since this race really happened for us, but I'm happy to say Mother Nature did her best to bring it back! The last time we attempted to ski this race was in 2010. It was a miniature ice-storm the night prior, and after sliding fully through a 4-way-stop intersection in Potsdam we reluctantly made the call that the trip to Lake Placid would be unsafe driving.

Fast forward to yesterday morning, when a large winter snowstorm brought about a foot of fresh snow to the area. More complicated weather to drive through, but luckily we'd gotten our winter-driving feet wet with a particularly harrowing drive up to Foret during Thanksgiving Camp. We made it easily, albeit only about 30 min prior to the start.

The race itself was a 6k for both men and women. Unsure of snow conditions, the call was made earlier in the week to hold the races at the jumping complex. The course was great: it twisted and circled in on itself, and was filled with elements that really rewarded adept technical skating. The competition was not very deep (besides our team there were a handful of NYSEF racers and the ever-stalwart Peru Nordic Masters), but the tight times within our own team proved it was a hotly-contested race for all.

Here's Kyle Curry's GPS data from the course. Does a good job of showing how much terrain you can fit into a small space. A 1.5k loop that really has it all.

Overall winners were Elizabeth Izzo (UNH) and Austin Meng (SLU). Erin was our top women's finisher in 2nd, while Kate picked up a 4th place result. The SLU men swept the top 7 places, and all finished within 57 seconds of each other. Definitely a group with both speed AND depth.

Laurel heads out of the starting gate

This is one race where the coach can get in on the action and relive the glory days! 

I'd say the most impressive performances came from the younger crowd...Erin has really taken a step up with her racing, pacing and mentality. The freshman duo of Blaine and Calvin started 15 seconds apart and skied virtually the same race, with FIS/NENSA points (I calculate that stuff for fun...) a big step up from their race points last season. Morgan Holland had a really great race as well, and I'd say all three of those guys, as well as Erin, are all in the hunt for the New England JN team this year.

NYSEF OPENER RESULTS

The team is busy with finals this week, but I was able to groom the trails on campus last night so skiing is right out our door until most of us leave for Craftsbury this weekend!

Nighttime grooming action

Etown took some video footage of the race, which I put together below. Since it's a bit blurry I captioned with names of racers to make it easier to tell who is who. 

One final note...if you have not already heard the news, SLU won our bid to host the 2015 NCAA Championships in Lake Placid! Here we go Saints!

Post-camp skiing

The snow hasn't been perfect, but we've been able to piece together a solid week of skiing here in the North Country. The highlight was definitely a lake-effect blizzard today at Star Lake.

Ethan and I went up to the small mountain village both yesterday and this morning to do a little trail grooming, a task which has been made much easier by utilizing the SLU-Haul to transport the smaller of our two snowmobiles...



Once we made a few passes and loops with the roller (about 2-3k of varied terrain) things looked pretty good. This is a shot from yesterday (Friday) afternoon after some passes with the roller to compress the snow:

Fresh skate lanes at Star Lake

We woke up to find that the new overnight snow had never materialized, but Ethan and I went up to touch-up the existing trails before the team arrived. As we drove up the hill toward the Oswegatchie area, a few flakes settled on the windshield. By the time the team arrived it was hard to see straight ahead through the masses of quarter-sized flakes coming down rapidly.

Etown approves of the new snowfall!

Matt (skate) and Kyle (classic): Friends, roommates, and training partners in the blizzard

Attempting a photoshoot for our holiday card!

It was perfect conditions for some fresh powder: temps in the low 20-s and frozen ground mean this could be here to stay. The weather for the next week or so looks to be even better, so we are hoping that more snowfall closer to home (Star Lake is 35 min away) at Higley will be even more beneficial to us. This was a nice recovery week after training camp, but the team is anxious to get headed into the race season pretty soon...2 weeks and counting!

Heading in from the storm...but not for long

Camp wrap

We didn't quite achieve my goal of having a new blog post by a new author every day over the course of training camp, but I think it was an admirable attempt. At the very least, we got some new voices on here instead of just mine!

Plus, I think everyone did a fine job of incorporating stories and photos to the point where there isn't a ton left to say...the skiing was excellent: up to 40k or so was groomed and tracked by the time we sipped the dregs of our last Tim Horton cappuccinos. 

Typical morning arrival scene at Foret Montmorency

This is my 6th (!) year in a row of attending this camp as either an athlete or coach. I think our fitness leading into this camp has been the best yet. Focus was high and it seemed like we never really hit that wall that often arrives 3 or 4 days in...the kind of wall where everyone complains about the afternoon workout and struggles to drag their heads away from their drool-soaked pillows. 

That never happened. Morale was high, and the 20+ hours we put in went almost effortlessly. The TimeTrial we ended up doing with many other teams (not far off of a miniature Carnival) was a success as well. We had a lot of process goals for the race, with minimal focus on results themselves. For the most part I feel that the results for many were right where we wanted them to be, however. What's more, those who weren't happy came to me immediately afterward with not excuses, but instead well-constructed analyses of their races and what they wanted to change. Taking those steps yourself as a racer, before just bumming out or dragging others down, is a big sign of athletic maturity I think. 

The finish line for the timetrial...as the starting line for the season ahead

Now that we are back on campus the focus shifts a bit. We are putting in some lower hours this week to recovery, yet still taking advantage of the snow that has graced the North Country to keep skiing. Areas in Vermont like Craftsbury and Rikert are utilizing manmade loops to get their training in. For us, our northerly latitude is the original snowmaking machine. I groomed about 5k of skating at Higley yesterday, and Bob is out to continue the work before practice this afternoon. A warm spell is approaching for the weekend, but future forecasts are calling for more cold and snow. 

A little Monday morning grooming at Higley Flow