Hi everyone,
It's official, we are back up and running here at SLU! Upon arriving to campus, we quarantined in our rooms for four days, mainly doing school, indoor workouts and going out when we had to pick up meals or get another PCR test on campus. Going from Phase 0 to Phase 1 meant that everyone's second PCR test had to come back negative, which thankfully they did. We then got released from Phase 0 and entered Phase 1 (which we are currently in), meaning we can go outside to practice and class, but masks and social distancing are still required.
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| Higley is looking fresh! (PC: Gabby '21) |
We started training officially as a team Tuesday January, 18th. And for going since last March without the whole team being together (because some people were off campus in the fall), seeing everyone training together was so nice! We got dumped with snow while we were in quarantine (snowing a little everyday), so Higley Flow had a solid couple of new inches on their base. The golf course has been groomed for classic single track, and the practice fields has been groomed for skate (Thank you GH!). To abide by COVID regulations, we have two vans leaving at different times in the afternoons to accommodate both people's class schedules and keep the van capacity capped at eight people total, something we had to do last semester as well.
This week has consisted of mostly an average training week for us. On Tuesday, we did 4 min classic intervals starting at the house near the pump station and making a loop going up to the lodge, and heading back down the main road. We've previously done this in the fall semester as bounding intervals, and they really get the heart rate up! Good, aerobic efforts are always a good start to the week.
Wednesday consisted of a longer 2 hour skate ski, focusing on one pole drills around the camp loops. Thursday was classic specific strength, focusing on double pole, no pole and single stick efforts on some of the flatter campground loops. On Friday, we did a solid skate speed workout starting with 5 minutes of 30 sec on/30 sec off, and decreasing down to 5 minutes of 10 sec on/ 50 sec off. We've got some rockets on this team!
On Saturday, we competed against Clarkson's Nordic Ski Team in an asynchronous 10k classic time trial at Higley Flow. Our team warmed up and raced at 10:00 AM in 30 second interval starts with the women going first, and the men following. Once everyone finished, the SLUSKI team went off to go cool down while the Clarkson team then raced. Our times were then compiled in a spreadsheet found below:
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| 10k Men and Women's Results (PC: Amanda '24) |
That was a very cold morning!! It was sunny and in the single digits while we were racing, so we really put our bodies (and lungs) to the test. Although, the beauty of it being so cold was that our kick was spot on! The team did well, and it was a great opportunity to get back into race mode in a low-stakes environment with good competition. Like always, the first race effort of the season doesn't determine the rest of the season, and can act as a base of what to work on for next time.
On Sunday, some of the team did a classic OD at Higley to top off the week. It was actually colder than Saturday, as we started skiing at -8*F and warming up to a balmy 5*F by the end. Again, we had perfect set tracks, sunshine and solid kick. It was a great way to end the week! Tim '21 and Kai '23 headed down to the Snow Bowl on Sunday to get in some backcountry skiing, and likewise had a beautiful day to ski.
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| Snow Bowl snow! (PC: Tim '21) |
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| Ready to rip (PC: Tim '21) |
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| From Sunday's OD at Higley; hi sunshine! (PC: Charlie '23) |
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| Robyn with the stride and glide (PC: Amanda '24) |
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| Hi Dana! (PC: Charlie '23) |
