Great fall training!

Things have gone great with fall training so far. We've finished all of our typical testing events aside from the River Road 7.5/10k skate TT, which is more of a group race than test. With a young team on both sides that came on strong late last year and really started to turn a few heads, we had some high expectations for the returning class. What’s impressive is that this ‘returning class’ basically consists of the entire team, as Kelsey was our only graduating senior. In fact, Eric is our only senior this year, and he is training and studying abroad this semester in Vancouver, BC.

Eric in British Columbia

That means the training group this fall has a unique sense of camaraderie: they all put in the work last year, they all are putting in the work this year, and they will all be putting in the work together next fall as well. That leads to a pretty strong team unity: there is not a lot of BS this season…workouts feel distinctly more professional in nature. This team knows what they are capable of, and they are driven to achieve some ambitious goals.

Kate and Taren, L3 intervals at Morgan Road

That doesn't mean this year hasn't been a ton of fun already, with plenty of games, eating challenges, inside jokes and running humor like the petty “married-couple banter” of Phil and Kyle. What also helps keep thing fun is breaking records, because going fast is the most fun you can have with this sport. That’s why we do it, after all…

Coach Terko giving some apparently hilarious directions at a workout

So I will not write out tons of numbers here, and instead I’ll direct you to our team archive of testing results going back many years. You can see the overall archives for each event, with the times and names from this year in bold. You can also click the tabs at the bottom to review some previous tests from year-to-year, and see averages. 

SLUSKI Testing Archive

Some highlights?

6 men under 10 minutes in the 3k. Average time of 9:59. Possibly a first in school history for both.

Erin Perryman has been on a roll, most notably shattering the DoublePole test record and setting herself up to be the first female under 9 minutes in the coming years.

Erin crushing the DP test. Big gains in all areas this year, watch out for this one

And the most exciting performance of all: The men’s race at St. Regis. This is the quintessential SLU test, a punishing 30-35 minute uphill mountain race. Tom Lepesqueur has held the men’s record of 29:21 since 2006, also the only time in race history under 30 minutes.

Team atop St. Regis

This year, the Meng Dynasty ran the mountain in 28:34 to destroy that record, and he was followed by 2 freshmen: Blaine Ayotte in 29:08 and Calvin Swomley in 29:09, making a simultaneous record-breaking by three skiers. What’s more, sophomore Phil Marshall came in at 29:23, narrowly missing the previous record but putting four racers under 30 minutes in a single year.

Of course, the success was cause for celebration in the form of the inaugural St. Regis Hotdog Cart challenge. The road at the base of St. Regis Mountain is a long winding stretch of quiet road comprised of trees, hills, lakes and…at hotdog vendor cart. Meng attempted to eat one fully-loaded kraut dog in 28 seconds in honor of his 28-minute Regis time. The result?

Fast times and fun workouts are always a sign of a fit team, but good weather helps also. We've been so lucky this year to have an amazing stretch of classic fall patterns here in the North Country. A day of rain will be bordered both before and after by week-long stretches of 40-degree nights and 70-degree cloudless days. Humidity is a non-factor, and t-shirts have persisted long past their usual season here. 

“Cali weather!” Meng is always saying. After spending this past summer out West myself, I can attest to the motivational power of endless sunny days and beautiful surroundings. In this case that means foliage on an exceptional level. I’m quick to point out nearly every day the fact that while basketball teams are inside and football is running drills on grass with lines on it, we get to experience all of these colors and settings firsthand. Rollerskis have been like scenes from an L.L. Bean catalogue, and that makes it so easy to get out and get fast every single day. 

We're headed down for an overnight camping trip in Lake Placid this weekend, my second annual team-bonding trip. It may not be up to the same caliber of going to Canada to watch a World Cup ski race (last year), but it's looking like another great stretch of days to be in the mountains.

C2C 2013

Every fall we are lucky enough to be located in close proximity to one of the biggest training camps of the year for the US Ski Team. This year we were able to reap the benefits of such a high-level group on multiple occasions: the Fast and Female event and USST Technique clinic one weekend, and the Climb to the Castle rollerski race the next.

The C2C race is an annual race up the 5 miles of pavement leading up the back of Whiteface mountain, ending at a very real castle at the summit. At least, the outside is castle-like...the inside features a gift shop, cafeteria and even an elevator to the very top summit of the mountain. 

We've had increasing numbers of participants in this race every year, and increasingly better results each year as well. 

The Subaru caravan rolled out at 5:30am and we were warming up aroung 7 at the toll house. 3 minutes into the warmup Will managed to scrape the bottom plastic of his rollerski off on a frost heave, leaving the honeycomb core exposed. Each time Will applied weight to that ski, the shaft would bottom-out on the pavement with a painful grinding noise. 

Will at the finish with his broken ski. This photo gives away the suspense, but the end-result was that Will completed the entire race on the busted shaft!

Though I tried to re-attach the base as best I could with some athletic tape (a pretty important thing you learn quickly as a ski coach: always have tape on hand) it was a hopeless situation.

Which leads to the race itself. 

Erin and Taren took off first with the women's group. Erin skied a large portion of the race with Julia Kern and Elizabeth Izzo, before dropping back a little at the end. I think large portions of the women's field ended up skiing alone because there were far fewer women in attendance this year for whatever reason. Thanks to the staggered start format, the guys team managed to finish all within a few minutes of both Erin and Taren. 

The fog rolled in only once racers reached the top. Here's Erin in the last 100m

Kyle "Gramps" Curry took the lead for the SLU men off the line, with coach Terko in hot pursuit. Eventually (you had to know it would happen) the pace was a little much for me, and I backed off to regain some composure. If nothing else, this gave me a great view of what was going on with much of our men's team.

About halfway up the hill I heard a familiar noise scrape-scrape-scraping its way up behind me: Will was moving fast taking off time from the leaders! He worked his way right up to Kyle's group and they skied together much of the race. I was also passed by first-year Calvin Swomley, whose smooth technique was easy to pace behind. We ended up skiing much of the race right near each other. 

In the end Will continued picking off racers until he ended up 18th, the best finish of any SLU skier in this event's 7-year history. Gramps and Swomley were close behind in 20th and 21st. 

2 great performances: Calvin (top) and Will (bottom)

First-year Blaine Ayotte and sophomore Morgan Holland were also across the line shortly thereafter...a really good showing by the whole team at this tough event. 

The crew at the summit

Thanks to Marge and NYSEF for putting together such a logistically-challenging event! Results at the NYSEF Blog