Author Archive | Adam Terko

You can now find signups for our Eastern Cup team trips at the MNC Registration page. A few notes on these team trips:

This season MNC will offer three “team trip” options for Eastern Cups. The team has grown and grown each year, and it has gotten harder and harder to handle the logistics of all athletes at all events. In some cases, clubs will avoid team trips entirely (for example, Craftsbury expects their athletes to handle lodging, meals, travel on their own). Other teams will only travel as a team (for example, SMS will house and transport all of their athletes to races and handle meals too). 

MNC operates in a bit of a hybrid model. This year, we will offer team trips that include:

• Travel (in van) from VT to the race site on Friday.
• Course preview ski at venue on Friday afternoon
• Lodging in either hotel (EC1) or house (EC3, EC4) for the duration of the trip
• Meals for the duration of the trip
• Travel (in van) back to VT after the conclusion of Sunday races

Note that these team trips do NOT include wax/race support fees, which are handled separately for all athletes. 

These “team trips” will have space for 10 athletes…this is a number that is manageable for the van (which allows some seats taken out to fit personal gear, as well as 1-2 seats for coaches in addition to Adam) as well as a manageable number of athletes for coaches to facilitate in addition to other coaching duties on race weekend. 

In the interest of reducing complications, these trips are an all-or-nothing situation. It’s too complicated to involve, for example: 

• Travelling in a personal car, but staying in the team lodging
• Travelling in the team van, but staying in another hotel/house

The exception to this is team meeting/team activity time, which takes place the night before each race. The more of the team we can get in one place, the better in terms of having our pre-race meeting and group team building activity. Parents and skiers attending race weekends separate from team trips are still of course encouraged to stay at the same hotel(s)! 

Preliminary schedule and costs for 2021/2022 Includes all travel, lodging, and meals

Eastern Cup #1, Waterville ME

Holiday Inn Express, Waterville

$319 team trip

Eastern Cup #2, Lake Placid NY

Rental house, near venue

$249 team trip

Eastern Cup #3, Craftsbury VT

No team trip

Eastern Cup #4, Dublin NH

Rental house, Bennington NH

$189 team trip

How do I get my skis ready? What is “race support”?

Race support fees can be paid as one up-front cost (for those planning to attend all EC races) or can be paid per-weekend. These costs go toward a lot of factors: mainly, compensation for coaches who are testing skis, waxing skis, helping organize and facilitate a race weekend, wax trailer costs, and more. In fact, the smallest portion of the race support fee is the physical wax itself, however those costs are certainly not insignificant. 

Racers typically drop skis off with Adam on Wednesday or Thursday. EXTREMELY IMPORTANT: please drop off skis CLEAN and SCRAPED/BRUSHED whether skate or classic. Clearly label kick zones, and put your NAME on all your skis with permanent marker!  

Congrats to everyone who is winding down (or has already finished) their XC running season this fall. It has been tons of fun to follow along with races across the state and even across the region. This weekend, New Englands will be the final race for many.

Balancing running and skiing can be tough: for one, many runners did not get to do the same volume and overall training load as skiers in the fall. More races and shorter workouts are the reason why.

Additionally, most runners were only able to rollerski once per week, if that.

There’s no need for every high school athlete to train like a World Cup star, and running XC provides a lot of benefits like a great aerobic top-end work and race situations. The goal now is to synthesize the training from athletes who ran (or played other sports this fall) with those who trained specifically for skiing. We all want to be on the same page and ready to tackle focused Nordic training together when the snow flies!

I’ve shared this at the beginning of the season, and this piece from Andy Newell regarding XC running for skiers is worth a quick read once more:

XC Running Advice

A few specific MNC suggestions for runners making the switch to Nordic:

Those who have FINISHED running as of now (11/8) and are not going to New Englands

The weather this week looks really nice, but a break is important both physically and (especially) mentally. Training every OTHER day is a great way to still get outside, but really consider at least one bike ride and one rollerski in order to pull back from the leg-pounding of running. Remember:

-It takes about 2 weeks to see “detraining” and strength loss

-It takes about 3 weeks to see “detraining” and loss of top-end race fitness (level 4, or 5km race pace)

-It takes about 4 weeks to have “detraining” and loss of easy distance training capacity

So that means IT IS PERFECTLY ACCEPTABLE TO NOT TRAIN EVERY DAY FOR A WEEK! In fact, it is beneficial for your body to go through a different stimulus than repeated training during the shift in seasons. As alluded to before, it is also important for your MIND to have a break. Catch up on school, enjoy some time without pressure or stress of training and competition, and come into the Nordic season with a positive mindset!

Those running New Englands (11/13)

This race puts even less of a break between running and Nordic season, as many will be at Thanksgiving Camp starting on 11/23. For this group, it is critically important to take time off. A week is not long enough to lose ANY fitness gains from cross country running, but it is certainly enough time to get fully burned-out if you try to keep training hard and every day between New Englands and the start of camp.

I really really encourage 2-3 days totally off (such as Sunday, Monday, Tuesday) since we will already be searching for snow by the weekend. Take a break from all training, including running, and then starting on Wednesday gradually ease back with 30-45 minutes of easy activity each day, or even every other day.

Didirk Tonseth, one of the fastest skiers in Norway and also a very competitive runner

Skiers, parents, and families…the 2021/2022 Eastern Cup season is laid out and all of the final details for the competition season are coming into place.

Below are two links and pages that will hopefully provide lots of answers to questions about what racing is going to look like!

Eastern Cup Primer ’21/’22

The Eastern Cup Primer: What licenses do I need? Where are the races located, and are there team trips and lodging? What is Junior Nationals and how do athletes qualify? What about Easterns and U16 Championships?

MNC Race Calendar

This race calendar involves all NENSA and open races that MNC Juniors attend. Note that many public HS/VPA races take place midweek: this means athletes racing for public HS teams may benefit from resting on certain non-EC weekends rather than adding additional races.