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".