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MNC wins the NENSA Club Cup!

In all the business of spring recaps and planning, one big news item went under our own radar…

MNC won the NENSA Club Cup this year! 

This is a really cool achievement signifying not only our speediness on the race course, but our wide-ranging group of skiers of all ages. We had many skiers racing in many events across the whole season. If you donned a bib and represented Mansfield Nordic this season, thanks so much for being a part of it all!

Winning the Club Cup and not realizing it at first feels fitting for me (Adam) as a coach…if you’ve read our Junior blogs this season, you know how much of a philosophical wrestling match it is to grapple with results and achievement of the literal sense, versus growth and improvement in a holistic sense.

As a leader I used to simply focus on the outcomes as the driving motivation for training, racing, growing, improving, and measuring what we did.

As a club, we’ve also had years where we attempted to “rally the membership” with the Club Cup as a big goal.

As a leader I hope I have grown past that simple way of operating. And I like to think we’ve done the same as a club…We focus on doing the best we can, improving ourselves as skiers and an organization, and lo and behold it bears fruit in the results page, too!

Read the NENSA press release here…from NENSA:

The Club Cup rewards participation by lots of club members across many races and various age groups (up to three deep per gender). The strongest clubs generally are scoring in several age groups at many of the races. For overall Club scores, the Masters heavy NWVE came in 3rd place, with the multigenerational teams of Ford Sayre in 2nd and Mansfield Nordic Club coming in first this year!

Find the final standings below:

Club Cup Standings 2023/2024

Skirack Swenor Rollerski Order (due May 13th)

MNC members and skiers,

Skirack has put together some special pricing for us with rollerskis! You can order Swenor skis from Skirack at the link below, with submissions due May 13th.

Note the inclusion of some #2/#3 speed wheel options on the Fiberglass Classic model…if you have been rollerskiing for a few years now (say, if this is going to be your second pair of classic rollerskis) this slightly-slower wheelspeed is recommended as it is much more relatable to actual classic skiing. Double poling is more realistic, and striding work is more effective.

The Fiberglass model also comes in a standard #2 front and back speed, and all other models are #2 speed.

On the order form, you can check out specific notes on models and descriptions which I put together. You can also view those descriptions directly by clicking here.

Click the link below to submit your form for ski ordering through Skirack! Orders are due May 13th.

Skirack Swenor Order Form

Masters group runs this week (Thurs/Sat)

Join MNC Masters this week for some low-key group runs!

Thursday 4/25, 6pm @ Catamount Outdoor Center

Meet at main parking lot. A 5 mile loop with many shorter loop options for those who prefer less mileage or would rather walk.

Saturday 4/27, 9am @ Shelburne Farms

Meet at main parking lot. 5-6 miles that can easily be shortened/added to.

Nobody is too slow or fast to join these runs! All speeds welcomed and accommodated. Whether you are training for the Sleepy Hollow Mountain Race or just looking to get outdoors this spring, come along.

Silent Apprenticeship

A Japanese apprentice spends six years studying a specific craft under their master. Often, not a word is spoken to the apprentice for the first two years…everything is based on observation and careful thought. The apprentice is simply given a broom and told to sweep up the shop, meaning they are always in close proximity to the craft. For 700 days or so, the apprentice sweeps whilst keeping a keen eye on the master at work.

Once it’s time for the apprentice to take their next step in a particular craft, words of guidance are not necessarily uttered…if the apprentice has been paying attention, the lessons have already been learned. Or they haven’t.

All this comes from an interesting article about Japanese boat building published in Seven Days last week.

It’s fitting that this article came out during the spring lull between training seasons. Over the past few weeks, rather than skiing or running sessions, I’ve been meeting with athletes to reflect on the past season. We discuss what went well, what didn’t, goals for the future, short-term and long-term ideas, and more.

As an athlete I was always thinking of these meetings from a technical point of view…

Did my coach think my technique improved this year?

How many hours should I try to train next season? 

Should I try a new brand of ski or pole?

As a coach, too, these topics are often easy starting points because there are often answers that are either concrete, or easy to find with data or patterns.

But over many years of spring planning sessions (and given the structure of our club) I’ve come to appreciate these meetings as a rare time to talk beyond just literal “training” stuff. MNC doesn’t have every athlete attending every training session, and in some cases we see some athletes only once every week or two. We don’t have an indoor space other than the Walker Building, where there’s always energy moving from one thing to the next. “Office hours” do not exist for me in a traditional sense. Training camps are only attended by a handful of athletes at a time, though they do provide the necessary non-training downtime for coaches and teammates alike to get to know each other better.

During these spring meetings I’ve tried to not only talk logistics and numbers, but delve into topics that can’t always be manipulated by training hours or technique video. No skier is a robot. While I’m often impressed with the amount of hard work and physical strain members of this team can put themselves though, I’m more amazed at the mental fortitude and psychological adaptability of this group. We have a team that thinks deeply about sports, friends, teammates, challenges, successes, and failures.

I’ve referenced before the words of a former athlete’s parent, who I often heard reminding his youngest child to “listen twice as much as you talk.” That seems in the same vein as this silent apprentice methodology. In these meetings I’m often finding myself getting carried away babbling about my interpretations of attitudes or impacts, and I try to catch myself. When our MNC athletes talk about important subjects, they have tons of great things to say. Enough so that I started jotting down some of my favorite quotes and observations right after meetings in order to make sure I’d remember them.

Without any identity attached, here are some really impact quotes and thoughts and goals that our skiers (not me) have brought up…

  • If I achieve all my goals across the year, the feeling I’d have is of being proud of what I’ve achieved. 
  • I want to have a race where I say “holy cannoli, that was awesome,” as in, I couldn’t have pushed harder or done anything differently.
  • The concept of going into a race season with a better awareness of what “feeling good” and “racing well” will feel like, and be confident in executing that.
  • Use the psychological tools I have to capitalize on my ability to dig deep.
  • Have more than one reason I am showing up on the start line.
  • When other people around me are stressed before a race, know that I can find humor and a wider view of everything…even if I’m still stressed too.
  • Say ‘yes’ to different experiences and trips and activities outside of skiing, to engage with new places and people I’ll be with in the coming year.
  • Be a queen (flexible and able to move in different directions), not a pawn!

Our goals are always laid out in a pyramid, with the top representing a tough-but-maybe-attainable goal. That top triangle is pretty small, and that never used to be a problem because it was always just filled with “short-worded” goal such as:

“EHS”

“Top 10 EHS”

“JNs”

“Top 10 JNs”

“NCAAs”

…and so on. 

While plenty of our athlete’s goal pyramids still have those targets on them, the smaller spaces are becoming less useful to us. I find myself turning the goal pyramid page sideways in order to use as tiny handwriting as I can muster to scribble a really strong thought from an athlete into the borders of that triangle. And in the course of the season, I bet a lot of those highly performance-based goals are still going to be checked off whether or not they were expressly written onto the page.

I think this is a team far above apprentices ‘sweeping up the shop.’ We are headed into 2023/2024 ready to be the masters of our own skiing.

MNC skiers named to NENSA Elite/Devo Teams

  1. Congrats to our athletes named to NENSA’s Elite and Development teams! These teams recognize great performance across the season, as well as Junior Nationals. We’re proud of these skiers and what they have achieved, and excited to have them representing not only MNC but NENSA and our region itself at high levels of sport.

NENSA Elite/Devo Press Release

Elite Team

Anders Linseisen

Ava Thurston (MNC Alum/Dartmouth)

Hattie Barker (MNC Alum/UNH)

Emma Crum (MNC Alum/Bowdoin)

Devo Team

Greta Kilburn

Gillian Fairfax

Brooke Greenberg

Kate Carlson

Jonah Gorman

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