Flatlander

Grand Forks, North Dakota. Its not exactly the sort of place I pictured my self ever spending time in. I'm out here with my advisor, Antun Husinec, to do some geology research. We're working in a rock core library at the University of North Dakota, basically analyzing rock core from oil explorations foot by foot, eight hours a day, six days a week. Not exactly my dream job either but on the plus side, its inside and not physically demanding, making training much easier and more effective. Previously I had been a farm hand during the summer, picking strawberries in the morning and doing about every other farm job known to man in the afternoon and was often too exhausted and dehydrated to accomplish anything when I got home.
Training has been good so far this summer. Before heading west, I spent two and a half weeks in Caribou training with MWSC again. There was a really solid group there for the summer which made everything pretty fun and productive. We did some physical testing the first week and while I didn't get a chance to do any treadmill tests, I feel I put in a solid effort in the track tests with a 10:14 in the 3000 (just shy of my PR from freshman year at SLU) and a 59.5 in the 400 Given the fact that I am not a sprinter, I was pretty happy with that. I also made some improvements in strength testing, but still need to work on my legs a lot. Despite all the rain, I made it up to Kamouraska-St.Andre, Quebec with Will Sweetser and Sarah Dominick for a day of sport climbing. The climbing was great, but upon our return we heard the very sad news about Willie Neal, which kind of put a damper on things.
Now I'm here in North Dakota, riding my bike on flat, straight roads and swimming laps in the pool. I was going to do a bunch of track workouts, but the track is securely locked inside the football stadium here. Between training and work, time is a bit of a blur, so hopefully I'll be driving back east before I know it. We're going to the Bad Lands Wednesday, which should be cool, and I may head over to Minnesota the week after, we'll see what happens though.
Train smart, be safe, and most importantly keep it all fun!

Sicilian Snow in June

It was on a Sugarloaf chairlift this March that I started to tell someone that I skied at St. Lawrence, before quickly correcting myself.
“Actually, I used to ski for SLU,” I stuttered, my last season having come to an end the day before. I have since slowly gotten used to the reality of the statement, but while my career may be over SLUski certainly hasn’t left me yet, and hopefully it won’t for many years to come!


That said, I couldn’t resist the temptation to leave a little SLUski shout-out when near the top of the volcanic Mt. Etna in Sicily, Italy two weeks ago. A fellow ’09 grad and I saw piles of white stuff on our way up, but thinking snow was impossible we were unsure what it actually was. The temps at the bottom of the mountain were 30C, although at the top it was considerably cooler, and we thought the black, volcanic rock would prove inhabitable for the snow under what my skin certainly found to be a very strong sun. But it was!
As it turns out, not only can you ski the volcano and its lava flows during the winter, snow lasts straight through June. So she and I constructed a little tribute to SLUski.

Happy Summer from a still snowy Sicily!