Author Archive | Adam Terko

Busy first week of school up here in our corner of VT. Not to be deterred, we kicked off the fall with a great week of sessions and events! We got out for a few nice skis, in particular enjoying the morning sessions with MNC Academy in full force. Friday morning was particularly beautiful…cool, calm, and sunny for a classic ski out from the Round Chuch, up the well-packed dirt of Dugway Road and into the center of Huntington!

Timmy, Julia, and Meredith cruising up the dirt with not a car in sight

Made it back to the pavement, heading toward Huntington

Of course we also had some more traditional workouts like bounding intervals on the new trails at Chamberlain Hill, as well as double pole towing. It’s exciting to be back together with the St Mikes team for some joint training a few days a week this fall. On our first day with the Knights we got specific strength in on the rollerskis AND on the pegboard, which we hadn’t visited since early in the summer.

Towing each other to get STRONG

On the weekend we hit up two running workouts. First was the Bolton uphill test. Everyone had a great effort and with 17 competitors we had 16 PRs! A link to the archive can be found HERE. Biggest props of the day go to Ali (who set a PR by almost 2 minutes), Julia (who set a PR by a minute and a half), and Aidan (who is one of only a few to go 14:30 or under)!

Bolton squad! Thanks to Lisa Burt for the pic

The following day, a few of us had a great sunny run at Sleepy Hollow exploring some old classics and newly-built trails. After Bolton we made sure to go at a really relaxed pace, reminiscing on a few workouts past and starting to think about what lies ahead. There was some talk of renting the cabin for the evening to have a team weekend adventure in October!

Beautiful trails, constructed by the one-and-only Charlie Maitland!

And a Junior blog wouldn’t be complete without a little video action! Below are some clips from skate speeds and agility work at Greystone.

Island time!

Whoa, what a great week to cap off summer with!

We had sun, hot weather, and some of our best workouts so far. I’m so impressed with this gang, and hopefully some of the wealth of video footage we captured will show that excitement AND the abilities of all these athletes!

Tuesday: Classic TT

This year we have 3 longer classic races on the Eastern Cup calendar, and 2 of those 3 are mass start. Not to mention the mass start race at JNs this year is in the classic technique. It was time for a timetrial to match! We had some missing faces as fall sports like soccer and XC running started up this week, but everyone skied great despite a couple of the gnarliest crashes and road rashes I’ve ever seen…needless to say I made a trip to WalMart on Wednesday to re-stock after all the gauze we used up in the first aid kit but everyone finished the race even despite the wounds 🙂

Thursday: Skate Team Sprint

Can’t help but get excited for this format now that America is the REIGNING OLYMPIC CHAMPION in it! We had a pretty large gang and it was fun to have everyone teamed up to race against each other. This was the biggest sign of progress for all our skiers this summer: we had everyone in the same race, young and old, new skier and experienced shredder alike. And all the way to the end things stayed competitive, with tactics also making their way down to all the places as everyone got a sense for when they’d get the tag and who they’d need to chase and who they were being chased by!

Saturday: Island Time Summer Closer

Thanks to the Nolan family for hosting us all at their awesome lake house in North Hero! We all got in a nice easy skate ski on some beautifully-paved and relatively car-free roads in the sun. Then there was lots of swimming, bbq, lawn games, and more as we celebrated the summer season. It was bittersweet as we said goodbye to the college-bound and departing skiers heading in different directions this fall…we’ll see everyone again soon enough though!

Skate Clips

If the clips below of some speedy skiing don’t get you excited for this crew to tear it up this winter, I don’t know what will! From good strength training, to lots of rollerskiing, to long trail runs and mountain bikes, everyone has come a long way improving what they’re capable of these past few months. Now it’s time to keep it going right through fall!

MNC college or and college-bound dudes getting after it

It was a much-needed recovery week after a busy schedule of races, camps, and travel recently. Although we’re not quite done with summer, a few cooler days and some grey rain on Saturday definitely put a bit of the “November feels” into the air recently. The MNC Juniors have had an incredible summer and it’s hard to believe school is around the corner. Fall starts have started up, and even more is changing in the next few weeks.

MNC Academy has been off and running all summer, and our student-athletes have been crushing it with passing grades of at least a B and plenty higher in college courses left and right.

MNC Academy in action

What’s more, we’ve seen huge growth in the summer program and are working with lots of athletes every day and at every level. In the past, I’d run to get the camera if more than 10 people were at practice. Now, it feels empty if there’s fewer than 20 of us skiing laps at the Range. Wednesday and Friday, typically low-turnout days, have also jumped up thanks to more skiers taking part in 5-day training and putting in the work.

We’ve also been fortunate to be able to use the MMU gym this summer, meaning there was no extra cost to work on good strength training…something that’s often been difficult to coordinate and structure in the past. I’d say the huge double pole test PRs are a good indicator that things are paying off.

Hanna getting SWOLE

So, where next? We’re heading into a new era for the Juniors and as any of them (ok, and me too) might say “the hype is real”. We’re offering more training and opportunity than ever before with MNC Academy, but also keeping our traditional structures of 1- and 5-day training options, too. There’s lots of ways to stay involved or get involved. So even if it’s raining out, we’ll keep pushing hard and having a good time doing it:

It was a busy past week of racing and testing for MNC Juniors. Lots of competitions and training camps took place, from the National U16 camp to NENSA’s App Gap Challenge rollerski race.

NU16 Camp

Every year, the National U16 Camp brings together the top-ranked U16 athletes in the country for a week of training and competing. This year, MNC was one of only a few clubs to send 3 athletes to this event. Magda, Ali, and Aidan got to work with US Ski Team coaches and athletes from all over across the lake at Paul Smith’s College.

NU16 Camp, featuring Aidan, Magda, Ali

The first test was the Canadian Strength Test, an event you may have read about previously on the blog as the Juniors took on the test earlier in the summer. Among the top 31 U16s in the country Magda put up an impressive 189 to score 14th place. Ali ended up 20th and Aidan 27th, with all 3 Pugs improving on their scores from earlier in the summer.

In the uphill run test, Aidan was the top MNC finisher with a 19th place, while Ali was not far back in 23rd for the women.

The real fireworks came in the Skate Sprint, a full event at the Lake Placid rollerski track complete with qualifier and heats. One-upping their speedy performance as the top-ranked U16 men’s group in the country, the New England boys stole the show with a 1st-through-4th place sweep! Finn Sweet, Brian Bushey, and Will Koch took the podium with Aidan in 4th place overall.

After saying she “wasn’t good at skate skiing” only a few days before leaving camp, Magda finished 7th and narrowly missed out on the final, another dominant New England performance with Quincy taking the win and Nina Seeman in 2nd.

App Gap Challenge

Ava! Rockin’ it

The first event in this year’s Bag Balm Rollerski Race Series from NENSA, the App Gap Challenge didn’t disappoint. It was a sunny warm day, with about 120 competitors taking on a combination skate/classic race to the top of Appalachian Gap. The club had a lot of Juniors competing and putting up some fast times.

In the women’s race, Ava Thurston threw down an 11th place among all the Juniors, 2nd for U16s behind an impressive 6th from Quincy. Not far behind was a great showing from Sammie Nolan in 19th and Rose in 20th.

For the men, Charles Martell and Aidan packed a strong punch in 15th and 16th place, respectively. It was interesting to note times for the skate (lower portion) and classic (upper portion) as Aidan put up a slightly faster skate time but was surpassed by Charles in the classic leg. Looks like these guys will have a good time pushing each other this fall.

It was a sad day at the awards, however, as the gang had to say goodbye to Jenny…after spending 7 weeks with us this summer, you might not have remembered that Jenny is actually a native of coastal Maine. Her Pug spirit was strong, and it was a real pleasure to have her spending so much time with the group training this summer. We’ll see her again soon though!

A nice timeline of athletic development here…
left (63): U16 Aidan Burt
center (74): Middlebury College skier Lewis Nottonson
right (73): Professional skier Ben Saxton

Results can be found on Bart Timing

Photos (including those above) from Dave Priganc!

Summer Biathlon Rollerski Champs

Congrats to Timmy and Marika who competed in the rollerski biathlon races this past weekend! Tim raced to a 5th place in Saturday’s race, while Marika was 2nd in both her events. Results and more can be found at the Ethan Allen Biathlon Club website:

EABiathlon.org