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Junior Vlog + Supertour Recap

By on 29 January, 2018 in Junior Blog

This was quite a busy week for the MNC Junior team. We started out with a great session together and a large group on Tuesday, but then found ourselves scattered a bit with the “Tour De Chittenden” High School events. It was an exercise in managing and balancing quality sessions with busy races!

Since we have quite a few Klaebo fans out there, and the Klaebo Vlog has taken the Nordic social media world by storm, I decided to really get into it this week and record at least a little bit of what we were up to every day. I frequently put together 1-2 minute “edits” of our sessions, but after this week-long vlog endeavor I have a lot more respect for Johannes Klaebo’s younger brother Ola, who edits and creates the vlogs for his brother every week!

[Note that more content, photos, and words follow below the embedded video!]

This week, having so many skiers off in various directions was a challenge. We get the most out of our training when everyone works together, but given the nature of our programming it’s been hard to guarantee that continuity. Right now we make do with schedule-swapping and training needs that make sense given each athlete’s priorities and obligations for that week, but I’m excited about a few possibilities we have lining up that could help streamline our club’s ability to have athletes working together, learning from, and skiing with, one another.

In terms of outside resources and opportunities, we are fortunate to have a lot at our disposal. We really are given all sorts of benefits and advantages thanks to amazing ski centers like the Range, Sleepy Hollow, and Craftsbury. Snowmaking is the norm for us, and I often am quick to complain about having to alter plans due to a grooming or snowfall headache here or there…but man do we have it good when you think about it. What Vermont and New England is able to do on a regular basis is on par with some of the best in the world.

The same can be said structurally and organizationally from NENSA. I attended a spring Board meeting at NENSA and questions that drive and influence many decisions revolve around “are we in-line with the best in the world, or on a path to compete with those who are?”

This isn’t just about offering training and racing opportunities: it’s the whole picture. Are the courses that Eastern Cups are held on tough enough to develop future World Cup skiers? Does our region have enough summer rollerski races like they do in Norway? Do venues that host events like BKL Festivals have snowmaking to ensure young skiers get effective time on skis? Do we promote Masters skiing enough to create a full-picture skiing society?

I can only speak to one, maybe 2 other regions from experience…but New England is a step above without a doubt. I’d like our club to continually be asking those same questions of ourselves…what races are we attending? Are they helping develop our skiers more and replicating the types of courses and race formats seen on the World Cup? Is a weekly training schedule fully-inclusive, offering a beneficial amount of time in the gym for strength training, long enough distance-training days, and a coherent and reliable off-day each week that can be planned and counted on?

The Supertour race this past weekend was a prime example…this race was a BIG DEAL, with live broadcasting, coaches bibs, chip timing, and a new 5k course at Craftsbury that seemed to feature even steeper and more intimidating climbs than ever before. I’m excited at the possibility of seeing this course more, because I think our skiers spend time on terrain that’s similar, and test themselves equally so, when they are with MNC and racing events like Eastern Cups.

How do you define a race course tough enough for FIS and the World Cup? Each lap of the 5k race course at Craftsbury featured 501 feet of climbing…meaning the men’s 10k involved over 1000 feet of uphill! For reference, the vertical drop of Cochran’s is 350 feet.

Craftsbury will be the host for US Nationals next January so you can bet we’ll be stringing together the toughest climbs we can find this summer for rollerskiing and running! Should be no problem since skiers love a challenge 🙂

Jenny skis a strong points race on Sunday and then took some great photos which you can see on the MNC Facebook page! I’ll share a few great ones below:

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Gaelen out for another strong skate race! (photo by Jenny)

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Kai had a great race on a course that had his name all over it with those steep climbs! (photo by Jenny)

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Tim Cobb, relieved that he didn’t have to ski through that slush AND hit targets this time (Jenny photo)

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Isaac speeding along with his race suit for next year (Williams) in the background! (Jenny photo)

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Jenny on course, about to climb up Chip Hill located just past the entrance to the PAIN CAVE!

Also, we’d like to say happy birthday to Magda who celebrated her big day with…what else? A ski at the Range! Also, a Klaebo-themed birthday muffin since Magda is his number 1 fan:

 

Perspectives on being a PG skier: by Will Solow

By on 22 January, 2018 in Junior Blog

Will is training and racing in Sun Valley, Idaho this year as part of their post-grad program. He took some time to share his story on the Intermountain Division website and it is certainly a good read for those of us here in the East! Will has been having a great season and we’re looking forward to watching him ski fast all the way through the winter!

Perspectives on being a PG Skier: by Will Solow

The choice to take a PG year was daunting as many of my friends headed off to college, some of whom continued to ski for the varsity team. For many of our competitive careers, skiing in college and making NCAA’s is an overarching goal. However, with the depth of skiers applying to New England colleges, skiing as a college freshman wasn’t a given for me without JN’s qualification as a highschool senior.

I started to explore gap-year options after I realized I may not ski my freshman year. Knowing that I wanted to ski varsity for Colby College in Maine, I leaned towards a post-grad year focused on skiing. While the East boasts the ski schools Stratton and GMVS, I knew I didn’t want to continue to compete in the East as I wanted the chance to move far away from home to grow as an individual.

Will Solow Face.jpg

Many post grads may be under the belief that the only point of a gap year is to improve skiing results, however I would argue that personal growth is equally important. The opportunity for personal growth is ultimately why I chose to ski in Sun Valley for the year before moving back East to Colby College. Sun Valley’s program has similar structure and the resources to rival GMVS and Stratton, but athletes live on their own or with a host family.

I currently rent with another PG athlete in Hailey and commute around 20 minutes to practice each way. While the cooking isn’t as good as meals from home, it has given me the opportunity to learn how to feed myself, budget, and shop for groceries (more difficult than it sounds when staring at aisles of food!).

The West Coast’s mountain ranges were a large for me. Even after living here for months, I continue to be in awe of the jagged peaks which are unlike anything in the smooth and lush Green Mountains. These peaks offer top notch hiking, mountain biking, and running with the bonus of altitude training. The rollerskiing does not live up to the road networks of the East, however it is easy to limit rollerskiing to intensity sessions and the SVSEF rollerski treadmill while volume training in the mountains.

Living without the responsibilities of school is a blessing for training through the fall and winter seasons, and for the first few weeks I lived out here, I did next to nothing aside from training, house cleaning, and cooking. This was great until I realized how bored I was outside of organized training. One of the challenges of not being in school was learning what to do with myself. I spend a fair bit of my time reading (hooray for the Ketchum Public Library!) and doing intern work for a local software company.

Having a form of extracurricular activity whether it be a job, internship, online course, or volunteer work is vital to a meaningful PG year. Finding the balance between training and personal growth has allowed me to mature, and I hope it will make the transition to a college athlete easier as I balance a heavy workload.

 

Rikert EC Breakthroughs

By on 15 January, 2018 in Junior Blog

Last week we watched almost all of our bountiful snow turn to grass in the course of 2 days. On Friday while driving to Rikert, patches of snow on the northern sides of hills and forest edges were steaming and sweltering as the cover evaporated right into the balmy air.

On Friday night a wall of cold swept throgh while we slept, and it went from 50 to -5 in no time at all. Rain turned to sleet, then turned to snow, then just kept snowing. And blowing.

Thankfully Rikert had a great base, some helpful elevation, and a trail crew that’s dealt with more than your average share of finicky natural chaos. Courses were changed, but races were not! And it’s a good thing too, because the Pugs had some good momentum going into this one and the racing showed that strength in all sorts of ways.

When it goes from tropical to tundra in 12 hours, with every type of precipitation imaginable, what’s the last event you want to wax for? That’s right, a classic sprint! Last year Rikert also held a classic sprint, also in challenging conditions that resulted in a lot of [unintentional] double poling. I made some bad wax calls that day, and it cost us dearly, and so I was actually somewhat relishing having another challenging classic sprint at Rikert to prove that troublesome kick days are an exception for us, and not the norm.

Thanks to a nice combination of some extremely thin precision klister work and a variety of nice hardwax combinations, our crew (myself, Sara, Kate, Liam, Dan) was able to put together some skis that kicked well and went fast. Of course, that wouldn’t have been possible without fast skiers on top of those boards, and the Pugs delivered.

As the qualifier results rolled in, we learned that Magda had absolutely stomped the women’s race to qualify for the open heats (top 30) in 15th place! Camille also skied into the open women’s heats in 27th, while Aidan nabbed 29th to make it three U16s toeing the line in the heats with the open field! The stage was set and the crowd (or maybe just me) was hyped for a Burt vs Burt quarterfinal with Aidan and Greg scheduled to race in the same heat, although Greg was feeling a bit tired from a string of stellar performances at US Nationals and opted to sit out the heats. Next time!

In the heats, both Magda and Aidan skied really well and were right in the mix, notching 4th in each of their respective heats. That was enough to garner them each 2nd place in the U16 races, and 17th (Magda) and 20th (Aidan) in the whole Eastern Cup. Camille skied right with her heat the whole way too and battled it out to finish 28th overall!

Aidan and Magda with their podium prizes: local hot sauce

Despite claiming to not be a sprinter, Isaac also made the open heats in 27th and skied all the way up to 15th place with 3rd in his heat, barely missing out on advancing to the final. He was looking forward to the distance skate race the next day more though…more on that in a bit.

In the “bittersweet category” were Kai and Jenny, who narrowly missed open heats and would have been strong qualifiers for the U18/U20 heats had those events not been cancelled due to the weather causing postponements and necessitating the elimination of those races. Still great sprint efforts though!

Ali and Sammie were also dangerously close to the open heats, with a fall on the downhill in the qualifier taking Ali out of contention. These two Pugs were out for revenge in the U16 heats though…they each won their semifinal heats, and then went on to go 1-2 in the A-Final, with Ali absolutely decimating the rest of the field…the picture below is from the final, although it looks like an individual start race because Ali was so far ahead of the rest coming into the finish!

Nobody in sight!

We had some first-time sprinters, and a tough crew of wax-support athletes from “MNC South” (Brattleboro) and beyond. Dakota moved up a ton of spots from his first Eastern Cups in Fort Kent, and even though they were under the weather Rose and Lily got after it with a hard fast effort.

During a team meeting on Tuesday we talked about what it means to have confidence, and how that’s a good thing to carry with you. We discussed “power posing”, tried out our favorites, and busted them out this weekend. Before people went off to start their races, the group was really into embracing the poses.

Kai and Jenny powering up

Power poses making their way into the cheering section!

Couple more images from Dave: Rose and Dakota getting after it!

On Sunday things were bright, sunny, and cold. The lack of wind made it feel amazing though, as did the transformed snow which was fast and fun. The racing started out with the U16 5k events, where Aidan notched another 2nd place finish. He and GMVS skier Brian Bushey have had a nice little rivalry going from a few races, and on this day Aidan was in first place after lap 1 before Brian stormed it on the second lap to take his first Eastern Cup win. It’s looking like these two will have some fun together representing New England in Utah in a few months.

The women’s race showed that MNC was a force to be reckoned with, thanks to 4 in the top 10, 5 if you count Quincy’s “dual club citizenship!” 😉

Camille with top style points for the Flylow mittens (don’t tell Toko!)

Q took home 2nd place, while not far behind was a name you can probably expect to see near the front of more Eastern Cups sooner rather than later…it was Ava “I’m not that good at skate skiing” Thurston, ripping along to 4th place in her first Eastern Cup start as a U14!

Camille had a great race to notch 5th, with Ali 6th and Magda 9th to really solidify the Pugs as the major players in this field. Definitely a great way to start the day.

Things were exciting for the older racers, as they competed in their first individual-start distance race this year. Jenny was pumped to start right as one of her biggest competitors was lapping through; she latched on for 2 of the 3 laps, and then put the hammer down and increased her speed even more on the last lap to take 26th overall! Also skiing a super smooth and speedy race was Marika who crushed it with 15th place and has just been on fire and very consistent in all 4 of the Eastern Cup races so far.

In the men’s race, Isaac absolutely stormed the course and cranked out a 6th place overall finish! This was the race last year where he turned some heats by finishing in the top 20, and this year he was really not messing around, finishing as the 3rd U18 behind World Junior team qualifiers Ben Ogden and Scott Schultz. Williams is lucky to have him next year!

Not to be outdone, both Gaelen and Kai showed their distance racing chops. In terms of raw data, these two guys train a lot, and those hours showed their benefit this day with 17th and 25th place overall finishes: big personal-bests for both!

This weekend brought out some real strengths of the team, and although it’s hard for everyone to have their best day on every single day, it’s hard to say we didn’t take another step forward overall at these races. I’m sure part of it has to do with the venue being close-to-home, but more than that it shows a good focus for the past few weeks: people that have been getting out and training well were ready to rock this weekend.

It hasn’t always been easy to balance schedules, training goals, and racing conflicts these past few weeks. For these races though, almost everyone was “in the moment” and not caught up in other areas. Of course, it sounds like that’ll change this week with some exams for a good number of the team, but it’s a good time to take a [short] breather for a few days before we start to build up to a few more one-day races and then the last two Eastern Cups of the season. Looking forward to the action!

Big thanks to all the parents, MNC wax crew, Rikert organizing crew, and all others for a great weekend!

See you again soon Rikert!

Dave Priganc photos: Day 1

Dave Priganc photos: Day 2

Results via Bart Timing

 

LP Mini-Camp

By on 8 January, 2018 in Junior Blog

Mini-Camp in more ways than one, you could say! This past weekend a few of our Juniors braved the cold Adirondack mountains for a training camp in Lake Placid. The goal was simple: after a stretch of holiday time that put lots of different people in different places and with different travel schedules, the thought was to get the gang back together to re-focus for the onslaught of Eastern Cup racing coming up.

Some teams traveled to US Nationals, and some to Mont Sainte Anne, but I tried to keep this relatively inexpensive (compared to those first two options) and relatively close-to-home, in order to keep everyone healthy and travel-free.

Unfortunately the HS racing schedule was not very forgiving, and the cold and some team sickness going around didn’t help either. We ended up having a small but hearty crew for this camp. I still feel the benefits were just as I had intended (low stress, good focus, and a solid race start at the Crosscut Classic despite the originally-intended Mid-A JNQ cancellation). Magda, Dakota and I made the most of a good weekend in the mountains!

On Friday night we got super bundled-up and went for a ski around Mirror Lake. They plot a skating track around the lake each winter, and new snow blew into the track making it a perfect ski lane

Headlamps helped on the East side of the lake, but by the other shore near town, twinkling lights of shops and restaurants lit the way!

Several hotels have artsy displays and even pond hockey rinks out on the lake

Oh, and with the recent snowstorm, skiing on the street wasn’t bad either 😉

Making some pizza for dinner. On Saturday night we had the now infamous “MNC Room Pasta”…even though we cooked it in a real kitchen it still brought back images of our favorite hotel room hotplate Eastern Cup meal…

On Saturday, the temps were at their lowest yet. With the outside world a brisk -16F (not counting the wind chill) we opted inside for our sessions. In the morning, we went to the local gym and did a solid warmup, some hip activation, and then some really quality pre-race intervals on the spin bikes. We got in a little upper body work, core work, and then used the recovery items to help us stretch and roll out a bit.

That afternoon, we took a trip down the road to Saranac Lake to hone our skate technique…ICE skating technique, more specifically. Magda had done some figure skating in the past and was the most graceful, even showing her skills and mastery at the Snapchatting-While-Skating technique:

I don’t usually condone the use of phones while training, but I liked Magda’s natural millennial ability to multitask with social media so I let her get away with it for a little bit

Kind of a weird phenomenon to go into the ice skating rink to warm up from the outside, but when the temps on the ice rink are about 40 degrees warmer than the parking lot you’re not doing too bad. I don’t ice skate that much, but I had a lot of fun thanks to my sweet “Turbo” skate circa 1985 that I picked up at the thrift store for $5 earlier in the day. Hey, it was cheaper than renting a pair! Dakota, meanwhile, worked on his chair-skating skills as he built up to the workout itself:

Just like skiing, you gotta start with the basics!

Hot cocoa stop on the way back from the rink

On Sunday morning we checked out of the house and drove straight over to Stowe for the Crosscut Classic race, which was a lot of fun and, at about 3 degrees (that’s 3 degrees ABOVE zero!) things were feeling like a regular heat wave. With everyone back in business this week there’s a lot to be excited about, as we head south to Ripton for the second Eastern Cup. We’re going to have BIG BIG crew for this one…I have to crunch the numbers and check some historical posts but, including athletes we are doing race waxing service for this could be the biggest roster MNC has EVER had for Juniors at an Eastern Cup. Get ready for a busy weekend!

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