Author Archive | Adam Terko

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Tackling uphills is something we’re always working on. Until they have every ski race on a flat track, we’ll always be looking to climb faster and glide uphill more than the competition.

On Saturday the group pushed through the rain and mist to double pole from the Hinesburg General Store all the way to the top of App Gap. A popular route for bikers, we pretty much had the roads to ourselves aside from a few cars here and there: not many bikers out in the rain, and not many folks looking to drive up App Gap for views of nothing but clouds.

Gary Solow drove along and snapped some cool photos, in addition to my own:

This is why you keep the fenders on the rollerskis, people! (G. Solow photo)

Heading up the steeps! (G. Solow photo)

Aidan, drivin’ through the rain (A. Terko photo)

Tired arms, strong skiers (G. Solow photo)

Since I was driving along in the support vehicle, I was able to get some video footage thanks to our secret trick of taping the GoPro to the sideview mirror. You may have seen videos from MNC with this angle before: the wifi remote start/stop feature and the wide-angle lens means I can capture moving film without having to balance holding a camera and paying attention to the road. You’d be surprised how smooth of a technique this is in action. Oh, and did I mention how smooth and powerful the technique of the team looked? Great progress already this year!

The sun finally came out this morning for a bonus little hike up Camel’s Hump. Everyone is getting pretty excited for a summer vacation with even more busy training!

Summit Bobo break

Our Saturday training sessions for Juniors are often a chance to make a simple workout into a more elaborate affair. This past weekend we combined what was originally a combination rollerski/run into a day of travelling down beautiful roads and then working on some trails of our own.

On the small mountain behind the Burt’s and Richer’s neighborhood is a network of homemade trails for mountain biking and trail running. After our very sunny rollerski out toward Hinesburg and back from town, our crew gathered up some tools and headed into the woods to dig, smooth, and rake a new section of trail.

Headed up to the woods, tools in hand

Under Steve’s guidance we carried large rocks to make a cliffside turn, scraped away debris and leaves to pack a smooth surface, and benched out hillside into a rideable section of trail. Nothing makes you appreciate the work of trail builders like spending over an hour crafting a portion of trail with 7 people that takes about 8 seconds to ride!

Birthday shredder Aidan tests out the work

Trail crew embracing the dirt

Not a bad weekend to cap off the first volume week of the year for the Junior Team. Yesterday we raced the first Bolton Hillclimb TT of the year and added some speedy times to the archive. For some it was the first Bolton test ever, while for others it was a nice chance to get reacquainted to the ski trails without snow on them.

You can view the updated Bolton Hillclimb TT archive HERE.

But we weren’t quite done with mountains after that. On Sunday coach Sara invited us up to the Canadian border for a segment of the Long Trail taking us up an over a few peaks, culminating with the summit and descent of Jay Peak. One of Sara’s projects this summer is running the LT in segments over the course of various weekends. While the call of the wild wasn’t enticing enough for the entire crew, some hearty souls like Ben, Will, and Timmy gathered at the Park and Ride early for a lengthy trip.

Shelter break fueled by Toko water belts

We were able to run about half of this segment, and ended up hiking/climbing the rest, dodging some wildly scattered debris that had the trail looking like a hurricane had blown through in many spots. In the course of 3 hours we covered 9 miles of rugged trail, with barely and signs of civilization or other hikers in sight until we reached the ski trails at Jay and began bumping into Quebecois trekking parties on the path down to the cars. Gotta love those uncluttered NE Kingdom adventures.

Taking in the view from the top of Jay

Some burgers and club sandwiches at the Jay Village Inn were the ideal way to replenish our carbohydrate stores after the session. Good eats for the money; thanks to Tom Thurston for the tip on that one. We were some of the only people in the joint, and after watching us devour our meals from the other side of the restaurant our waitress came over and asked if “we’d just run a marathon or something”. Guess our eating gave us away, or else our sweaty dirty bodies did.

Until next time, Long Trail!

Mountaintops FTB

Now that all the paperwork is official, it’s time to congratulate our 4 graduating seniors who are taking their skiing to the next level in 2017/2018!

Alex Warner is going to continue his momentum from a strong senior year (culminating in a strong showing at Easterns) at St. Michaels where he’ll ski for the Purple Knights next season. We hope our connection with this nearby group continues after linking up for some training last fall because it’ll be great to have Alex back at the Range rollin’ with the Pugs now and then!

Ben Carnahan is headed to St. Lawrence where he’ll trade in the MNC colors for the Scarlet and Brown. Ben dealt with compartment syndrome coming into last year, and faced a hip injury in the fall, but put the setbacks behind him and had his most focused year racing all of the Eastern Cups and more. It’s great to see it culminate in a spot on the SLUSKI team!

Eliza Thomas will make it 2 Pugs-turned-Saints as she also earned a spot skiing for St Lawrence along with Ben. Eliza had strong races in both biathlon and nordic, and the proximity of SLU to Lake Placid means she can continue to pursue both next season.

Will Solow will be a member of the Colby College class of 2022…there’s an extra year in there because this coming season he’ll be training and competing with the postgraduate program at the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation.

I’m looking forward to seeing and following all that this crew accomplishes in their continuing ski careers…after, of course, they get even stronger and faster during this summer while they’re still in our corner of Vermont! While seeing athletes make progress with their fitness and technique is inspiring, and watching athletes achieve new performance breakthroughs and have their best races is rewarding, the college piece is even more special.

Having skiers routinely leave Mansfield Nordic ready for another step in the ski world is a sign of so many puzzle pieces coming together. While training hard as Junior skiers is maybe the most direct puzzle piece, there are so many other factors related to higher education that these skiers have had to navigate: communicating with coaches and academic personnel, developing the responsibility and maturity to set themselves up for a more independent 4 years, and of course studying hard and showing they’re ready for the new academic loads that will accompany their new training loads.

Some of these puzzle pieces can be fostered by the Junior team, but other puzzle pieces come from supportive parents…engaged community members…caring teachers…some of the ski skills needed for collegiate ski teams are cultivated in the BKL ranks before these skiers can even envision high school, let along college.

It certainly got me thinking, particularly when the news was finalized that Eliza and Ben were headed to SLU. I was interested in SLU as a high schooler, attended and raced as a student for 4 years, and then coached there for 3 years while learning about and recruiting athletes like Eliza and Ben. And now I’m back at the beginning of the cycle from a different vantage point.

I can see many steps MNC takes to help skiers prepare for college skiing: tough training, year-round focus, a balancing act of school and competition, and continuing collaboration with college teams themselves (like St. Mikes) to make that next step clear and engaging. I realize that there are even some aspects of my day-to-day coaching style that I carried over from working at the collegiate level…for example, at races I expect athletes to know their own warmup and ski testing plans and not need their hands held. Does this always go flawlessly? Of course not…but the point is for the kinks to be worked out before an athlete gets to college. That makes it one less thing to worry about for everyone involved.

However, there are plenty of ways in which we could do an even better job of preparing skiers for college. Am I too lenient in training sessions? Do we need to have more/longer mandatory study halls on race trips? How about a template for MNC skiers making college visits and sending info to coaches?

The best way to approach these concepts is to keep trying to improve, keep reflecting, and keep working hard. You know, college-level work…