Kristen Bednar '09

Hey everyone! Hope your summers are starting off well. My summer started off great for training, but has been suffering a readjustment period as it adjusts to life in the real world… better put life at IBM. Turns out that forty hours a week is a LONG time. Everything is going well, except for the fact that I’m the dumbest person there, not to mention that I have no engineering or computer science background, so I am essentially trying to learn a second, very technical language. At least my internship is in marketing….

Anyway, I’ve been trying to get one race in each week. I ran the Ottawa half-marathon with a friend from SLU on Memorial Day weekend and she basically pulled me along on the fastest 13.1 miles I will probably ever run. While that was an awesome experience, I’m trying to work on picking up my pace on the shorter 5ks because right now I am stuck in that half-marathon pace. I’ve done two 5k’s so far, one cross-country race at Catamount and one road race. I also did a 10k in between the two which was a good pace test.

I started doing some spenst and ski-walking workouts last week and am trying to work more rollerskiing into my training as well. Up to this point I had been doing a lot of biking, swimming and running. Kind of like Kalie and Beano, although significantly less bad-ass, I biked to Plattsburg the Friday of exam week and met my mom at the ferry, so I almost biked home…but not quite. I have my first triathlon this weekend so I’ll really be able to tell what I have to work on depending on whether I sink or swim...

Enough about training! I hope everyone’s doing well. I’m sure you guys have all kinds of summer jobs and training schedules but I’d love to hear from you! Email Ethan a blog so I can read about what you’re all doing. I need the break at work. Any of you that are in the Burlington area, let me know if you ever want to do anything!

Good luck!

Zach Wetherell '10

Overall things have been going well, I've been having a blast up here in the NEK. Training has been great; although now I have to do any running/mountain biking on my own due to Hunter's ankle. I usually get up in the morning around 7:30 and start work at 8. Work consists of mowing lawns, painting, drywall, and building a new deck on one of the dorms. Lunch starts at 12, back on the clock at 1. I usually work until 4, and then train for about 1hr30 to 2hrs. I usually get done around 6 or 6:30. Recently Hunter, Brian (a recent alpine grad of burke), and I have been fly fishing after our workouts for about an hour or so. After dominating the small mouth bass in Burke Mountain's snow making pond, we head back to campus and cook dinner. It may shock you that we're even still alive having to cook for ourselves, but let me tell you, I don't think the king of England ever ate this well. Bed time's between 10 and 11, then get up the next morning and do it all over again.