Thanks to everyone who joined us on Saturday for our first Masters Mini Camp! It was a great day with lots of skiing in all techniques, video analysis, warm weather, and snow galore.
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Coach Liam and Coach Rick got to work with a lot of skiers and, most importantly, a TON of Mansfield Nordic Masters got to spend a day on snow together!
We’re looking forward to more events like this as the season continues. The snow has us off to a great start and we can’t wait to keep the momentum going. If you’ve never taken on the challenge of a Nordic race, or if you want to get out more and ski with our group, now is the time!
With a need for a little recovery after a busy and productive Thanksgiving Camp, it wasn’t too stressful to see our snow/venue/lighting situation fluctuate pretty wildly this week. First there was the power going out at Sleepy Hollow, cutting the lights out in the middle of some skate speeds. Then it was the Range lights going out just after some intervals had thankfully been completed. Now we’ve weathered a day of rain and it looks like the cold is coming back as we begin the final prep for the Eastern Cup season.
On Saturday we made a trip up to Craftsbury for some classic intensity on the new sprint course, and everyone looked great taking the technical gains into the higher speeds. We kick things off with some short sprint races for the Sprint Doubleheader Weekend in two weeks so it was a good preview of how things ski and what to expect. We’ll incorporate some more practice with the actual structure of a sprint race next week to really get in full Game Mode.
Then the rough weather set in for Sunday, but that didn’t stop us from attempting a backcountry expedition. The wind and rain were pretty terrible in the parking lot but once we hit the woods toward Bryant Cabin things calmed down. The snow was incredibly East Coast-ey crust that made turning impossible, but if you could ski through trees and crud in this type of stuff NO downhill on a racecourse will seem challenging!
Deep into the Vermont forest with LOTS of snow!
Of course, like most of our adventures, there is of course a short video to share our exploits 🙂
Racing season is right around the corner! We have several big weekends coming up: they both look busy and it is a great idea to get registered sooner rather than later.
It is recommended that most MNC Juniors register for Sunday’s freestyle sprint as this offers the most opportunity for experience in head-to-head racing in heats, as well as matching the technique/distance/course of the following weekend’s Eastern Cup Opener. Those looking to compete in both Saturday’s classic sprint and Sunday’s skate sprint should check in with Coach Adam!
Next up is the Eastern Cup Opener at Craftsbury the weekend of December 22nd/23rd. This is one that every MNC Junior should have on their radar. All signs are pointing to this being an EXTREMELY large event: please register early and avoid any potential hassle later! Registration links for both events are below:
Most snow to be had (30+ kilometers all skiable on race skis for the whole week)
Most food to be had (the size of the dining hall has literally doubled)
Most training to be had (endless options)
Most motivated group (endless enthusiasm)
It’s no secret that we’ve worked hard all spring, summer, and fall. If you’re reading this blog right now, you’ve probably read the rest of the summaries from this website all year. And seen the Instagram posts. And watched the Youtube videos…so you know what we’re about. What’s difficult right now is that there’s just not one single media compilation that can fit or capture everything we accomplished this past week. That goes for training accomplishments, emotional accomplishments, teamwork accomplishments, and more.
The good news is that we have a whole season ahead of us, and it feels like we’re only just beginning to taste the possibilities. We put in hard work when it came to distance workouts this week, but also some important other sessions. We got in freezing cold skate intervals in Murphy’s Field, and showed some guest skiers how far we’ve come with strength training over the course of the year. We dialed out zones with the now-annual “kickwax reduction session” and then dialed in our speed with some of the fastest fifty meter sprints in the Northeast Kingdom.
Then, we raced on Sunday and started to show why we’re aiming to be stronger than ever before. In a 5- and 10-km skate race against teams like Williams, Harvard, UNH, CSU, and Craftsbury the Pugs straight-up threw-down. Just taking video was making me and Sara more excited than ever, and we kept shouting our excitement over the radio to each other as we watched MNC skiers fly by on separate parts of the course.
“Julia has a really good tempo up this hill!”
“Eli caught up to Everett and is hanging on!”
“Ava’s glide is so smooth, nobody’s gonna catch her!”
“Timmy’s V2 is so strong! And Charles V2’d up all of Moss Run!”
Good results were exciting to see, but so was great skiing. Everyone was limited to LF wax so it was a nice simple affair as far as ski prep was concerned. We used up the last of an old chunk of LF8 and put on some structure and let it rip.
So…where does that leave us now? Hungry for more! We are experiencing a boost to start winter off with great on-snow options, we get to kick off the “official” winter season with BKL and Masters programming, and the real races are right around the corner. Go Pugs!
Pausing briefly to look ahead…
Bonus video! Check out Jenny’s edit from Thanksgiving Camp below 🙂
