Mansfield Nordic Club

After a busy two weeks of races both on foot and on rollerskis (Burlington Invite, Lake Placid Double Day, Climb to the Castle), the Junior squad was due for a weekend without a competition. Judging by the apathetic start to our bounding intervals on Saturday morning, that break was much-needed. Thankfully we seemed to work into the bounding, with several remaking how earlier in the summer that same workout had been the “worst thing ever…but not so bad this time”.

We culminated with that bounding session but were actually quite busy all week, taking to the streets with a lot of classic skiing and double pole work to change it up from the three-race-skate-series of Lake Placid. As many are now aware, we’re dealing with some changes in command and civilian access to the Range and although it sounds like we should be back to our regularly-scheduled programming in October, we’ve been relegated to the neighborhoods and roads of Richmond, Williston, and beyond.

It has been challenge to keep it interesting without the Range at our disposal every Tues/Thurs, but that challenge has been good in that it forces me to get a little more creative and plan sessions differently. It’s also brought me back to many of my old rollerski stomping grounds from the high school days…one thing that’s made a big difference has been the MNC Van. While the van was never acquired with Tues/Thurs sessions in mind, it has now become invaluable for those very days. It enables us to execute shuttles of large numbers of skiers, which means we can link together routes and roads that we wouldn’t normally connect via rollin’. The team can ski out to a point, hop in the van for a 2-minute shuttle down a big hill or a dirt section, hop out, and keep the train chugging along. It also means we don’t need to END every ski where we START. When you’re trying to get creative (you can only rollerski Cochran Road so many times in a season) this is clutch.

Rose and Julia atop Chamberlain Hill, in the midst of the morning fog on Wednesday

That doesn’t mean we’re just skiing, though…in fact all the photos I have from this week actually involve either biking or bounding. We’ve tried to fit mountain biking back into the schedule and the weather has been perfect for it, if not a bit chilly in the mornings.

We live in an area that has some of the best trails in New England (if you ask me) for mountain biking and trail running alike. If you take Cochran’s or the Round Church as a base camp, there are just so many trail networks within a 30 minute radius…Cochrans, Chamberlain, Sleepy, HTF, Carse, Mobbs, Brewster River, Perry Hill, Saxon, Sunny Hollow, Mud Pond…and that’s just off the top of my head.

I’ve said it before and I’ll put it in writing here: Richmond in 3-5 years is going to be an East Burke situation, with more people on mountain bikes than in cars. You have the networks and centers to support it (like Cochrans), you have the restaurants and MTB-style apres spots (Stone Corral, Hatchet, soon-to-be Stones Throw Pizza), and you

Bolton bounding, from the lowest stretches of Broadway

have the outdoorsy culture and persona. Plus, you’ve much closer to Burlington than East Burke is, so the after-work and weekend-warrior influx is exponentially higher. I like to think we’re getting in on the ground floor of this explosion, and it’ll be interesting to see what it does, for better or worse, to the town and surrounding area. Just remember…buy your VMBA membership, support the trails by attending work days, and always be friendly to other trail users!!

But back to the ski training, and another example of creative new approaches to familiar workouts.

We would often do bounding at Honey Hollow or the Bolton or Stowe ski slopes in the past. Simple enough: go up the hill, then go back down when finished. Problem was, on the Bolton slopes you quickly run out of boundable real estate. At Honey Hollow or Stowe, once you finish the intervals you have an arduous grind back down all the way you went up, which is not great for the legs. Van to the rescue!

On Saturday we met at the base lodge at Bolton, but then shuttled down in the van to the start of the Broadway trail, which is actually a VAST/Catamount trail segment beginning down below the Timberline base area. That meant that 4×7 minute intervals took us right up to Bryant Cabin…then, the trip down only meant getting back to the upper parking lot rather than traipsing all the way down everything we climbed. It was a game-changer for legs and logistics alike.

And then…we hit the bike trails again!