Mansfield Nordic Club

Now that all the paperwork is official, it’s time to congratulate our 4 graduating seniors who are taking their skiing to the next level in 2017/2018!

Alex Warner is going to continue his momentum from a strong senior year (culminating in a strong showing at Easterns) at St. Michaels where he’ll ski for the Purple Knights next season. We hope our connection with this nearby group continues after linking up for some training last fall because it’ll be great to have Alex back at the Range rollin’ with the Pugs now and then!

Ben Carnahan is headed to St. Lawrence where he’ll trade in the MNC colors for the Scarlet and Brown. Ben dealt with compartment syndrome coming into last year, and faced a hip injury in the fall, but put the setbacks behind him and had his most focused year racing all of the Eastern Cups and more. It’s great to see it culminate in a spot on the SLUSKI team!

Eliza Thomas will make it 2 Pugs-turned-Saints as she also earned a spot skiing for St Lawrence along with Ben. Eliza had strong races in both biathlon and nordic, and the proximity of SLU to Lake Placid means she can continue to pursue both next season.

Will Solow will be a member of the Colby College class of 2022…there’s an extra year in there because this coming season he’ll be training and competing with the postgraduate program at the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation.

I’m looking forward to seeing and following all that this crew accomplishes in their continuing ski careers…after, of course, they get even stronger and faster during this summer while they’re still in our corner of Vermont! While seeing athletes make progress with their fitness and technique is inspiring, and watching athletes achieve new performance breakthroughs and have their best races is rewarding, the college piece is even more special.

Having skiers routinely leave Mansfield Nordic ready for another step in the ski world is a sign of so many puzzle pieces coming together. While training hard as Junior skiers is maybe the most direct puzzle piece, there are so many other factors related to higher education that these skiers have had to navigate: communicating with coaches and academic personnel, developing the responsibility and maturity to set themselves up for a more independent 4 years, and of course studying hard and showing they’re ready for the new academic loads that will accompany their new training loads.

Some of these puzzle pieces can be fostered by the Junior team, but other puzzle pieces come from supportive parents…engaged community members…caring teachers…some of the ski skills needed for collegiate ski teams are cultivated in the BKL ranks before these skiers can even envision high school, let along college.

It certainly got me thinking, particularly when the news was finalized that Eliza and Ben were headed to SLU. I was interested in SLU as a high schooler, attended and raced as a student for 4 years, and then coached there for 3 years while learning about and recruiting athletes like Eliza and Ben. And now I’m back at the beginning of the cycle from a different vantage point.

I can see many steps MNC takes to help skiers prepare for college skiing: tough training, year-round focus, a balancing act of school and competition, and continuing collaboration with college teams themselves (like St. Mikes) to make that next step clear and engaging. I realize that there are even some aspects of my day-to-day coaching style that I carried over from working at the collegiate level…for example, at races I expect athletes to know their own warmup and ski testing plans and not need their hands held. Does this always go flawlessly? Of course not…but the point is for the kinks to be worked out before an athlete gets to college. That makes it one less thing to worry about for everyone involved.

However, there are plenty of ways in which we could do an even better job of preparing skiers for college. Am I too lenient in training sessions? Do we need to have more/longer mandatory study halls on race trips? How about a template for MNC skiers making college visits and sending info to coaches?

The best way to approach these concepts is to keep trying to improve, keep reflecting, and keep working hard. You know, college-level work…

Although we are on the verge of May, patches of snow still dot the alpine mountains across Vermont. But just as snow melts from the slopes, mud and dirt begin to clear from the roadways. Do you dust off your rollerskis and pound the pavement? Or do you wax up your skis and make one last go at the patches of snow?

Rollerskiing isn’t a perfect match of snow skiing. Of course the skis are a different length, but there’s subtle other factors at play. How fast do your wheels go? Do they match the snow? How heavy are your snow skis compared to your rollerskis? How quickly can you navigate a turn on each type of ski?

Knowing how to “feel skiing” when you aren’t on snow is a coveted ability. That’s part of the reason APU trains on a glacier in July, or why the US Ski Team travels to wintry New Zealand in August.  You may have also heard of ski tunnels like the one in Torsby, Sweden. Getting access to snow whenever you want is certainly a treat. But when that’s not possible you can look for ways to both keep the feeling of snow alive while also learning about how it differs from rollerskiing. In the end, this should make you a more adept and aware rollerskier!

It takes a certain set of conditions to create what we got to experience on Saturday, which was BOTH rollerskiing and snow skiing. No glaciers or ski tunnels required.

A week prior during our Stowe NorPine adventure we realized there was a big parking lot adjacent to a nearby patch of pretty level snow. We packed both skis and wheels into the cars and made our way there yesterday where we found the perfect situation: a street-swept empty parking lot with a 50-foot walk to some corn snow. We set up a little loop and rollerskied for a while, doing some of our favorite drills. Then we switched right to skis for a few laps. Then back to rollerskis. We took video of each method and discussed how they were similar and different.

Finally, we ended with partner relays: Partner A did the rollerski course, and as they crossed the line Partner B took off on the ski course. After 2 laps each, Partner A and Partner B swapped roles and changed to either skis or rollerskis. Pretty cool to have both types of skiing happening at once.

Ali and Sammy roll, while Adam Glueck glides on skis in the background

Of course when snow is involved, we knew we had to call up Adam Glueck to join in the fun. We got lots of technique footage which is on the MNC Youtube Channel, and I also put together a quick little clip combining the wheels and the snow:

So, what did we learn?

Rollerskis give lots of power. The snow was soft, admittedly, but it was very evident hot much power return the rollerskis gave (even composite rollerskis that flex). With snow, you were rewarded for keeping movements smooth and extra wasted energy was compounded. On rollerskis, you could still move pretty well and get plenty of glide even with somewhat inefficient body position.

Snow skis are long and force you to shift weight in V1. On rollerskis, your feet can wander in, up, back, and all around. It’s much harder to get this effect with skis on, and so there is extra need for good weight shift and a dynamic lower body that applies power to help the body move from side to side.

Rollerskis can turn on a dime. Not only are they shorter, rollerskis edge almost perfectly thanks to sticky rubber wheels. Navigating cones and slaloms on skis places a greater emphasis on “reading” the line into each turn, as you need to account for the angle of the hill, the snow type, the radius of the turn, and more. This is still crucial in rollerski agility courses, but you can get away with much more just by hopping, stopping, and changing direction quickly. On snow, if you try to turn to fast you wash-out, skid off the ideal path, and have to completely re-adjust. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere…

Below are some more clips showing different techniques on both snow and pavement…see what YOU can notice about what is different and what is similar…

The Junior team has begun some spring training because, believe it or not, the work toward the 2017/2018 season is already underway!

It has also been one complete month from the final ski events of the season (MNC Club Relays and Spring Fling) and over a month since the Eastern High School Championships. With that in mind, today marks our first rollerski of the season. For this spring training period up until mid-June we will primarily rollerski just once per week in order to “keep skiing in the bones”.

We may occasionally rollerski more than once a week it it involved a unique opportunity or combo workout, but the spring is also a time to build gradually into running form and explore other means of outdoor adventure such as the famous “NorPine” session. When you bring nordic skis to an alpine resort (or a barely-snow-covered, icy Notch Road in Stowe) you are bound to get some interesting experiences. Thanks to the wonders of the GoPro we have been able to capture some of these moments on film…enjoy the madness!

If you haven’t registered for the Spring Program yet: Junior Spring Training