BKL Wax Clinic, Pole Adjusting & Equipment Check! Dave Boucher from Toko will give us a demo and then help older kids practice hot waxing their skis. Bring your own hot wax, scraper and brush if you have them so more people can wax at the same time. Younger kids (& older kids) will learn & practice kick waxing. We will also get outside for some running activities so wear your running sneakers!
Thursday 12/07
Wear your running sneakers and get ready for more dryland activities!
3-Day Skiers: Saturday 12/09: Craftsbury, 10 -11:30 AM. Classic. Meet me in the wax room with your skis.
Friday Foxes
Present plan is to start Dec. 15. Watch this blog for updates.
Label Your Equipment Reminder!
Every year someone emails me in the early season because their child went home with somebody else’s poles. This year, I am encouraging everyone to LABEL ALL EQUIPMENT before we get on snow. Here are some great labelling ideas:
-Use permanent marker or a white paint marker if equipment is black.
-If your equipment is rented, apply a piece of painter’s tape and write on that.
-If you have multiple kids, use a different color duct tape for each kid so it’s easy to recognize whose is whose.
-Label skate equipment with “SKATE” and classic equipment with “CLASSIC” so it’s easy to tell which is which.
-Label makers are great. So are address labels covered with a piece of clear packaging tape!
Yesterday afternoon, a great group of MNC coaches met up for a clinic that covered a lot of bases! In addition to housekeeping business like safety protocol and phone numbers, Coach Rosemary led everyone in a great teambuilding/icebreaker activity involving blindfolds and mousetraps. Scary but great for working together! After I (Adam) got the group onto some yoga mats to talk hip activation and body awareness, we took a look at some current-season ski races from a few weekends prior. We talked technique trends, and how to share them with athletes of all ages. Then we moved out onto snow to practice ourselves.
It was a really fun clinic and I for one left motivated and excited at where we’re at as a club in providing skiers of all ages with appropriate, relevant, and important skills in a relevant way! Here are some photos and a link to my “visualization” videos:
Group lunch and caffeine session: crucial for any coach gathering!
Coach Liam, Coach Julie, and Coach Kristina getting ready to be led through some mousetraps by their fellow coaches!
A quick chat before Adam leads some core and hip mobility on the ground
Please see the information below from Catamount Trail Association director Amy Kelsey. If interested, be sure to get in touch!
The CTA is accepting applications from candidates with a strategic and creative mindset, superb communication & organizational skills, a collaborative leadership style, and the ability to directly manage and contribute to a number of operational areas. Candidates will also have an appreciation for the organization’s history, passion for stewarding its mission, and vision for furthering the CTA’s leadership in the future sustainability of the Catamount Trail and Vermont’s expanding network of winter backcountry trails and terrain.
If the above description speaks to you – AND you love working and playing in Vermont’s beautiful landscape in all weather – we’d love to hear from you!
Although every piece of equipment and article of clothing I own is covered in klister right now, I can easily say that this past week was the most productive and meaningful Thanksgiving training camp I’ve been a part of with the MNC Junior Team.
With a varied and fun 1k loop to work with, there was room for a lot of individual feedback and also group work. Moreso than ever before, people took initiative to show up to each session prepared and to make the most of the on-snow time.
The nature of the loop gave us several interesting workout ideas, including a “kickwax reduction project” where everyone started with plenty of kick and then skied 2 kilometers before making a pit stop at a trailside bench Sara and I manned with a torch, putty knives, and rags. Sara and I removed a bit of wax from every athlete’s skis each 2k/2 laps in order to find a balance of speed and kick. It was initially a session designed to get everyone comfortable on imperfect kick, but it also ended up having the benefit of both coaches and athletes knowing the individual pairs of skis more (everyone was on their race skis) and also work on communicating good feedback…for example, reporting that the kickwax was dragging under the front of the zone, or felt think under the heel, rather than “I don’t have kick” or “I have too much kick”.
Rose getting some striding on past the Center
We mixed in both skating and classic along with time in the gym where we continued our strength training from Dee PT. Thanks to the groomers and snowmakers everything held up great and we were on good skis the whole time!
Working on some speeds and the one-and-only Activation Drill!
On Saturday, everyone who had been on snow at least a few days got to race in the Craftsbury Opener. It was a tough event since the temp was about 55 and the snow was wet and slushy. Add to that the fact that nobody was racing on HF or fluoros and you can imagine that the skis were not running super fast for anyone. It was a great chance to get a taste of racing action in, and whether someone had a great race or one they’d rather forget everyone definitely learned a few things. Racers did either 5 (U16 and Open Women) or 7 (Open Men) laps, and Sara and Rick were able to track lap splits for every MNC athlete…very cool to see how everyone paced it and the fact that there weren’t really any drop-offs in time shows that the fitness is there.
Aidan won the 5k race, while Magda and Timmy both turned some heads in the Women’s/Men’s races by skiing with (and besting) a number of college racers from UNH, Williams, and Harvard. Everyone looked like they were ready for more and it’s going to be great to hit the Eastern Cup in only a short few weeks.
Magda heading out of the start. A nice day for some spring skiing in November
Dakota enjoying the slush on Chip Hill
Ava and Lily in sync on the gradual hill. Great forward body position with knees driving, hips forward, and back/spine neutral!
All told it was a phenomenal week of training and racing. Before everyone left, I discussed how I felt about a few aspects of camp…usually, our training camps tend to end up inadvertently bringing something new into the fold. The first time we had Mountain Camp, it was a serious study in team bonding and bringing a group together. By the next year, it was about challenging ourselves with workouts that were tougher than ever. This camp, I felt, really took us to the next level in terms of professionalism and focus. Instead of the snow loop being packed with Williams, Harvard, UNH, and then us (“those guys”), we were just another team getting their work done. I’ve coached at plenty of college training camps and this was the first time an MNC training camp has really felt like a college camp…it boils down to accountability and focus on the part of both the group and the individual, and I’m really glad that both were highly evident this past week. It’s going to be an AWESOME race season!
If you are wondering what wax you should have on hand for your BKLer, here is my list in order of priority. These are all Toko Products. See TOKO TEAM ORDERS for info on ordering. Orders due Dec. 7 (special extension for BKL).
For Base Cleaning: (to take off klister): Waxremover (250ml is plenty)
Grip Waxes: (for waxable classic skis)
Nordic Grip Wax: Red, Yellow, then Blue. Base Green.
Base Preparation:
Natural Wax Cork (for rubbing in the kick wax)
NF or LF Hot Waxes (for skate skis & tips & tails of classic skis): 40 gr. will probably last you a season. NF is no fluro and LF is low fluro. Both these are fine for BKL. LF are faster waxes, especially in humid conditions and if your child is going to race a lot, you may want to get the LF.
Start with Red. If you can get more, get Blue, then Yellow.
*You may use MNC’s wax iron, benches and scrapers at the Range to wax during or after practices. Check in with Adam or Rosemary.
