Author Archive | Adam Terko

The third edition of Mini Mountain Camp wrapped up yesterday, and once again this trip highlighted some of the coolest parts of club skiing. Mountain Camp is extremely tough and demanding, and often very experienced skiers are taking part. This camp, by contrast, is more of an introduction to training camp life.

Some of this crew have been racing since the young BKL days, and others are totally new to the sport. Everyone got to spend some fun time together though, whether training or just hanging out in our team house.

In both summer camps this year we’ve gotten to do some joint race efforts with local teams. In Stratton we had a classic timetrial with SMS, and on Saturday the Mini Mtn Camp group travelled to a favorite road of Ford Sayre to do a team sprint race. With one partner from MNC and one partner from Ford Sayre (team sprints have 2 skiers on each team) it was a cool way to meet some competitors and bring teams together!

Niko leading the charge in on a team sprint lap

After the team sprint we were welcomed to FS parent Jay Davis’ house for swimming and lunch!

We also completed some favorite workouts like a rollerski up the Killington access road, this year making two trips on on skis instead of switching to bounding/running equipment. We wanted to get some extra work on skis for a group that in some cases is just picking up classic rollerskiing.

Always gotta have some lounging time

Thanks to Ford Sayre coach Hilary for joining us at camp this year!

You can check out lots of photos from camp at the albums below. Time to start planning for 2022!

Mini Mountain Camp 2021

Mini Mtn Camp Team Sprint w/Ford Sayre

The best yet? Mountain Camp 2021 featured the most consistent and high-level training the club has ever put to trails or pavement. It included a timetrial with SMS on a fleet of matched NENSA rollerskis, and a warmup/cooldown with the World Cup skiers from T2.

Fast athletes, hardworking friends, fun-loving teammates, and an incomparable vibe. The most rewarding and exciting training or racing trip I have ever been a part of, bar none!

I sent a note to the team including a few bullet points on why I thought this went so well…

• Willingness to work harder than any group has at Mountain Camp, and for the right reasons/with the right attitude about it. There was a lot of push for personal goals and improvement, but it never felt competitive among our own group. There was also plenty of team motivation, like whole groups asking to ski longer, do more intervals, and extend camp more days 🙂
• The USST often talks about various skiers on their team falling into “roles” within the group. They reference descriptors/roles like “caretaker” or “listener” or “cheerleader” and that goes one level deeper than just saying someone is a “role model”. It was fun to see this group define and develop these roles, and watch skiers in action bringing out the best in each other.
• This group knows how to have fun and bring everyone into it. It’s too easy to be on a team where the hard work is the focus and the fun is forced. Or a team where the fun is paramount at the expense of hard work. I don’t think either were less than 100 this week.

You can check out some photos from the week on the MNC Flickr album HERE.

Last week Jessie Diggins and the T2 team put out a post saying they were holding some open workouts that anyone could come to. Naturally, even though we are 2 and a half hours away from Stratton we decided to make a journey!

We had a great day-trip, leaving in the late morning and getting in a sweaty, humid run at Pine Hill Park in Rutland. After the run, we enjoyed a picnic lunch and a little relaxation before hopping back in the van.

Nice little views from the trail at Pine Hill Park

Picnic lunch at the park in Rutland

We had a somewhat-eventful trip to Stratton as I was adamant the van could successfully arrive before running out of gas. Funny how it always works out to be 20 miles left, yet the “40 miles of fuel remaining” seems to drop faster than that…anyway, we made it! There were actually very few other people who seemed to have taken up Jessie on her offer, so the crew got to have some real quality experiences rolling through an agility course with Jessie, Will Koch, and Katharine Ogden before some head-to-head sprints including traditional starts, push-up starts, and laying-on-the-ground starts.

Agility ramps…you’ll find ’em everywhere these days

Rowan versus Diggins!

After the ski the clouds and impending thunderstorm parted just long enough to get a photo and some autographs. Really cool to have such an impromptu experience from the top skier in the world. Thanks Jessie!

Of course we weren’t quite done, as a mandatory pizza stop was needed in Rutland to break up the drive…and to refuel! If you can’t tell from the content of these blogs recently, we are big fans of pizza.

Special delivery to the MNC van

Skiers don’t need no chairs!