It was about time for a break, after about two straight months of competing every weekend. Ski racing takes a toll on more than just your body, as it’s a difficult task to motivate and gear-up to put yourself through a lot of pain each new weekend (even if you’re racing fast and feeling healthy!). The same goes for coaches…I think a lot of us were ready for a little less pressure and being able to sleep in for a few days. The final rounds of regular-season racing strike fast and furious, so the timing of an off-weekend couldn’t have been better.
For high school racers, it’s a bit of a different story as we’re in the midst of the Tour De Chittenden. In fact, the final race is about to begin at Cochran’s as I type. MNC skiers have been doing great and it looks like more hard work paying off for the Pugs.
For those of us not racing the HS circuit, this weekend was a chance to hone in on some technique and fitness and check out the next level of racers. On Saturday, a crew went up to Trapps to watch the UVM Carnival mass start race. UVM is dominating on the men’s side, and Dartmouth is equally dominant for women. We also got to watch lots of friends and alums racing, like Eliza, Marika, Will, Greg, and Isaac. Oh yeah, Bill Harmeyer won on Friday and Henry was just off the podium on Saturday (in a UVM 1-6 sweep). Nice!
After checking out the races, the group went out to the Telemark trail for a little bit of race prep for this coming weekend’s EHS/U16 Qualifier. That day is a 3km classic in the morning, and a 3km skate race in the afternoon. To mimic that we did 2 intervals about 8 minutes long: one classic, then one skate. Here’s a bit of video from the classic, bookended by a pass of the UVM women in the race a half hour earlier!
On Sunday, we had one of the most fun skis of the year! We went down to the Capital District (Montpelier) for a skate session on the top-secret trails behind Julia’s house. They’re not actually that secret…but they’re pretty special. A series of connected loops that link up to Morse Farm, these trails were a lot like the Bogburn trails although with a more skier-friendly layout, you could say. There was a ton of snow, and Julia’s dad did an awesome job grooming everything with the super-sweet Bearcat snowmobile and full Ginzugroomer setup that used to belong to the ski center. Can I just say that having 10km of trails out my backyard, with a legit grooming setup, is a life goal of mine. So it was fun to live in this fantasy world for a few hours.
The weather was warm, the trails were nice enough to use race skis, and the loops wound through fields, pine stands, and thin sugarbush forest. It was amazing! We got in a nice long ski and even had some fun with some balance drills like one-ski downhills and swapping skis on the fly.
Gathering at the trailhead, ready to rock some amazing and fun loops
Such nice trails! And of course some hydration from our TOKO waterbelts
Eli and Aidan with some idyllic Vermont ski terrain
Here’s some ski drills to try…the one foot spin (above) and the partner ski-swap (below)
The first swooping downhill out of the backyard and into a lower field was so fun, I tried to capture some footage of it and play it all together. Hopefully this makes you want to get out and ski, and maybe even cut some trails on your own property:
After the ski, the Oliver family was nice enough to make us an amazing lunch of mac n’ cheese! Thanks for an awesome day. If you can’t already tell by the tone of this blog post…it was the ideal weekend off from big races!
