Midsem Bolton Ski

After two weeks of tough testing it seemed like everyone was ready for a breather going into Midsemester Break. I personally gave my body a chance to fully recover and took two (!) days off in a row, spending more time watching ski movie trailers and searching mountain webcams for snow than actually training for it. I didn't lay low for long, though. Whenever I'm home in the Green Mountains I try to take advantage of as many big hills as possible. I called up Eric on Friday and met him and Austin Meng (who was staying at Eric's house, getting a taste of real East Coast VT life in Burly-town) at the base of the Bolton Valley ski area access road. Skating up this steep 4-mile monster might just be my favorite workout, and I do it numerous times in the summer. It's a pretty gnarly climb with only one small section of downhill, the rest being 8-11% grade of switchbacks, curves and grinding V1 climbing.
The view looking down one section of the climb

After a warmup down on Rt. 2 Eric, Austin and I started off. Though we weren't racing, it takes a good deal of effort to maintain good technique throughout the climb, and keeping your movements sharp and powerful up a long climb like this is one of the main goals I always have. I've never actually raced or done a max effort here, but I always time myself for this workout. I am usually bent over to exhaustion after reaching the top, but I was surprised to find that Friday, after reaching the top and still feeling strong, I'd finished the climb over 4 minutes faster than I ever had before. Eric and Austin weren't far behind, and all three of us were well under the previous "record" for the hill. Looks like all the testing and training, not to mention the resting, is paying off! We took a few photos during our cooldown near the top (the only way to ski more is to just go back down a ways and ski back up); the leaves were starting to fall but there's still a bit of fall color left.

-Adam