Busy week as we ramp up the intensity. Unfortunately, no fun photos from our MOST intense day, some tough L4 bounding intervals at Honey Hollow with the St Mikes team. 4-6 x 4 minutes L4 up a road like that will get you breathing hard pretty quick…or struggling to breathe at all, if you’re one of the many from our crew who got a little sick after cramming 14 folks into the house in Lake Placid last week…
But to wind it back to the beginning, here is a little video of some striding intensity from earlier in the week. We had a small group but Dith, Julia, and Aidan just got to have more video footage of themselves as a result!
As the week went on and got a little colder, we didn’t let up and were rewarded with one of those perfectly crisp fall weekends. After the big intervals on Saturday, some of the gang got in a nice hike at Mt Hunger complete with cider doughnuts and all those other fall things you expect this time of year.
It was a weekend perfect for a sunny getaway: everyone has been in school long enough for some routine to set in, and it’s been a while since we had a rollerski race to compete in. Time for a trip! Every year we go to the Climb to the Castle rollerski race in Lake Placid. This year, a new event was added on Saturday: a Double Day event featuring a 3km skate race and then a 1.5km skate race. Lots of action!
Some rollerski race ACTION!
The prologue was a fun way to kick things off, and the group did well on the technical, fast rollerski track at the Olympic Jumping complex. The big news was Tim Cobb WINNING the whole race, even ahead of Senior competitors and some competition from one of the Canadian training centers. What’s more, he did it on a pair of Marwe skis with #6 wheels, a bit slower than the #2 Swenor wheels many competitors were competing on. Aidan finished 3rd overall for a double Pug podium, while Magda led the women’s team as they went 5th-9th.
One of the most fun parts of the day was the break in between the races. It was hot and sunny out, and although I didn’t plan to bring the MNC trailer at first, I was glad I made the last-minute decision to hook it up and toss in the tent, some blankets, and an old mattress pad. We ended up having a nice little hangout spot and got to spend time visiting with friends from other clubs like Laura Appleby (CSU), Alex Frago (HURT), and some of our fellow training partners from St Mikes.
Tent Gang!
The sprints were up next and things continued to be fast and fun, with Magda again leading the women to a 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th. Hanna was next in 9th, only seconds behind…super impressive race as Hanna was just getting her rollerski legs under her for the first time this spring and barely double poling up the gradual hill at the UVM bike path…now in this sprint she was hunting for seconds, pushing around corners at 20+ mph, and sprinting up hills with ease.
In the men’s race times were super tight. Timmy and Aidan were 3rd and 4th, only .2 seconds apart and .1 seconds out of 2nd place. In the end with places/times combined Timmy was 2nd overall for the day. He was very close to winning a pair of classic rollerskis, a pretty ironic prize for a biathlete to win from his performance in 2 skate races!
BUT WE WEREN’T DONE! It was time to go home and hit the study hall, and then make dinner before resting up.
Study time and dinner shopping time. Thanks to Hannaford for supporting our trip with a gift card donation!
Some of the girls team bringing a little VT swag to Lake Placid
On Sunday morning, we woke at dawn to another sunny day. Good opportunity to race up a mountain! This is one heck of a race and it’s quite the experience. Grinding uphill for an hour is not for the faint of heart, but we had some really strong performances and a lot of fun checking out the scene at the top. Special shoutout to the MNC Masters who raced as well!
Meredith and Jenny had an epic battle to the finish of the women’s race, scoring top-20 results and sneaking ahead of some strong college competitors. It was also the 2nd strong day in a row for Julia who was solidly in-the-mix for all 3 races, from 1k to 8k! In the men’s race Aidan improved his time by a minute over last year while Cameron skied much more aggressively in packs, and Brook said afterward that “no other hill would be the same”.
Some race footage of the Pugs, also including race winners like Jake Brown, Raleigh Goessling, and Tara Geraghty-Moats
Three of Mansfield Nordic’s most notorious street-wheelin’ masters completed their mission in Lake Placid this past weekend, throwing it down at the annual Climb to the Castle rollerski race!
Future album cover for three legends of Masters Hip Hop
Steve “Craftmaster Flex” Crafts, Mike “Mixmaster” Millar, and Michael “G-Unit” Gaughan all repped the club well and had some fast times at this challenging race. The field was the biggest it’s ever been (over 100!) and the Masters category was quite large. Craftmaster Flex took home some prize swag with a 3rd place Masters finish!
3rd place for Craftmaster Flex!
Congrats to these guys on hitting the hills all summer to prepare and send it big when it counted. It sounds like our rivalry with the metalheads at Peru Nordic continues as we are looking to schedule a joint timetrial with them in the coming weeks. Let’s take the showdown to HOME TURF in Vermont! Who’s in?! Stay tuned!
Two photos from Michael, that can be combined to show the whole course!
Sometimes very simple, real-world examples playing out in front of my own eyes remind me why rollerskiing is important, and why being strong is such an integral part of ski racing in 2018.
The videos below show some double pole test footage. The first clip is Magda and Sammie in the summer of 2017, followed by a clip from this past week (2018). The clips were taken in the same spot about a full year apart:
Equally impressive are some clips of MNC racers who hadn’t rollerskied as much but have really put in the time this summer! Case in point? Meredith, Ava, Brook, Julia, Hanna, and more. It’s fun to see times on the double pole test drop dramatically and continue to get lowered as progress happens.
But before we get too carried away…this week wasn’t ALL about rollerskiing! On Wednesday we had a really fun run at the Mobbs Farm trails. It was maybe the 4th run this year we’ve done in 90+ heat but that didn’t stop the gang. It doesn’t hurt that there’s a really cool swimming hole deep in the woods near Tarbox Rd.
95 degrees, bring it on
Magda taking a refreshing dip
Then on Saturday, we woke to cold temps but faster running…we showed up early to the Burlington Invite to race the Citizen’s event (same course, before the big HS events) and had a pretty fun time getting used to a “real” race again. It was pretty hard to hide how much fun we had but we tried to have at least one “apathetic running picture” in honor of Conor Munns:
Hard to look apathetic on a nice day, with a fun race AND some legit matching singlets
Big shoutout to the speedy Ava Thurston on getting 2nd in the Varsity race (only her 2nd HS race ever!) and clocking in at 19:59 for her first sub-20 ever! Congrats to Greta too, who took the win in the Middle School race! Lots of other MNC skiers out there racing fast…Peter V, Julia Thurston, Carly Trapeni…way to go!
Since it was a volume week and we’d already had our fair share of awesome double sessions, that plan continued with the crew taking a few hours to go out to lunch and shop-it-up on Church Street before we paid a visit to the infamous “127 Bike Path” for an easy double pole recovery ski. Julia and Sammie were pretty tired but decided to take a mid-ski rest stop by some of the more dope (and internet-appropriate) graffiti on the path:
Tired gang, still making sure to honor James Franco
BUT WAIT, you’d think that after all that action it would be time for a break. But not for the Pugs. On Sunday we traveled to Huntington for a nice long ski from the Brewster Pierce School. We began at the school and skated out to Hinesburg and back on a relatively flat stretch down Hollow Rd. Then, we got back to the cars at 1.5 hours and switched into classic gear to ski up the lower portions of App Gap from the West side. Not a bad way to end a week at all, and people were psyched to have another big ski in the books.
Mitch, Timmy, and Aidan leading out the gang
Casual roadside balloon cop
Nope, not an actual MNC van (thanks St Mikes) but maybe someday 😉
The MNC Masters have continued to push the envelope, building their uphill rollerski skills in preparation for the aforementioned epic showdown with the Peru Nordic Masters at the Climb to the Castle rollerski race. There is no official counter, but Mic-Drop Millar and Mix Master Mike Gaughan have what we believe is the record for number of skis up Bolton in a single month.
Not to be outdone, Slick Rick Costanza and Steve Craftmaster Flex continue to hit the climb as well, this week joined by Trick Daddy Ric Schaaf.
If you want to check out what all of our Masters are up to this week, and join in yourself, be sure to check out the Masters Training page!
MNC Masters Hip-Hop album cover? (photo from Craftsmaster Flex’s Strava)
