Eastern Cup #2 took place in Rumford, Maine over the past weekend. In our unique sport we get to travel to a variety of locations in the name of ski racing. You could find yourself in the picturesque vacation towns of Lake Tahoe or Sun Valley, mill towns like Rumford, or hardworking former mining communities like Houghton, all in the same couple of months.
The trails at Black Mountain are typically wide and feature a mix of gradual and steep climbs, and a famously-exciting long downhill finish. Ironically we got none of that this past weekend, as warm weather reduced everything to a 2.5km loop that was quite narrow and featured an uphill push to the finish line.
Saturday was combined with an EISA race, and that meant busy trails with lots of pack skiing. Sugary snow meant there was little recovery to be had, so there were some tired skiers by a few laps in!
After skiing many laps of manmade snow in variable conditions all winter, the MNC group was not phased by the courses in Rumford. As I said in a pre-race email, in Rumford things can get weird and you just have to embrace the weird.
Paige in her first Eastern Cup race
It was the first Eastern Cup races for Paige and Aaron, and it invoked a bit of nostalgia for me as my very first Eastern Cup as an athlete was here in 2008. I remember being wowed by “big deal” race features like an announcer calling my name at the start, a live results screen displaying times (not an email of a spreadsheet the day after the race!), and college skiers racing hard amidst the high school athletes.
Pushing through the sugary snow en route to some great finishes were Julia and Emma, who had some of their best points finishes ever as a result of finishing close to the leaders in a very competitive college field. Another U18 who was back in the mix was Elsa, who put in a lot of great training in Vermont while many of her teammates were out in Houghton. That work paid off!
Rye continued to show his consistency in distance races, this time nabbing an EISA finish in the 40s and just narrowly missing the U18 podium for yet another race. The steady skiing in both skate and classic races has been a huge improvement for Rye though, whose big points finishes last year came at sporadic times and events compared to this season. Also quietly racing his way to an incredibly strong season is Nico H, able to hold his own in any type of event.
In 2020 Nico was incredibly new to skiing. His first race with MNC, and his first non-HS competition, was one of the final Vermont Cup races during the COVID season. I remember well how he borrowed a pair of MNC test skis to warm-up, as when he dropped off his race skis he was dropping off the only pair he owned. I later learned his classic skis were a pair of zeros that he just put wax right over…
…then, on Saturday night of our team trip last weekend, I heard Nico discussing classic sprint strategies and rules with Aaron, who was on his first Eastern Cup endeavor. It’s pretty great that one skier who was brand new to this whole thing only two years ago was now sharing his knowledge and experiences with another skier just starting out on their journey. A really powerful statement about how your teammates and friends can be just as important to this sport, or more important, than coaches, gear, training plans, and technique.
But that’s getting ahead of things! The classic sprint was still a night of sleep after the U16 races in the afternoon, where Jonah, Niko Cuneo, and Aaron (a trio full of energy, ambition, and interesting teenage lingo) raced in some of the softest and dirtiest snow of the day. You may think a 5km race is all about hammering, but this course and this field prove otherwise. In Lake Placid, Niko C started off way too hard on his first 2.5km loop, and went from having the 2nd or 3rd fastest split to the 19th fastest on lap two. This time, the pacing was spot on, and Niko moved up slightly on lap 2 into a great finish. Jonah actually had the opposite thing happen from LP to Rumford, but it’s all part of the learning process!
Tired but happy U16s Niko and Jonah
In the women’s U16 race both Brooke Greenberg and Seven Bowen skied strong in some of their first few Eastern Cups ever. I couldn’t believe how poweful and agressive Seven was skiing around the corners and pushing onto a really driven ski, and Sara and I both asked her parents if she’d ever rollerskied before. Turns out the answer was a no, but in reality it’s a lifetime of backcountry skiing that seems to have given her the gift of “snow feel” as we call it! After a great fall of running, including taking the middle school state title, Brooke put her fitness to the test and skied great on a course with very little recovery.
It was also an amazing fight put forth once again by Kate Carlson in this race. She started 15 seconds behind strong Ford Sayre skier Annie Hannah (top-10 at JNs last year for U16s) and while she said she didn’t want any splits or info, it was clear what the game plan was. Annie was just barely out of sight the whole race, but the chase was on. The two skiers stayed almost perfectly matched with one another through lap one, and then lap two, all the way until the final 400 meters where I actually timed Kate being about 2-3 seconds down going into the final uphill curve and into the finish stretch. I watched her go around the corner in the distance and could only wonder…
Turns out, Kate must’ve really turned it up to 11 in the last 400 meters because she did end up taking 4th place, just ahead of Annie, and it all happened in the final 20-30 seconds of the race! This was especially cool to see because a theme of our week’s training was finishing strong at the end of a race, after more than a few MNC racers got nipped at the line in Houghton having fallen apart a bit in the final few hundred meters…whether or not the speeds and work we did over the course of the week directly contributed to Kate’s finish only the training gods can know, but maybe it played a role!
On Sunday it was time to sprint, and upon arrival to the venue and identifying icy fast tracks and the sun shining you could tell something was just in the air for MNC to have a standout day…
A lot of MNC hype after this qualifier!
It took less than a lap of the course for many of the men’s team to decide to double pole the race on skate skis. Not everyone did this (Nico H was very through in his analysis and gets a lot of credit for grabbing both race skate and classic skis to work through his planning) but for our U18/U20 men all but Nico went for it. A few from other teams tried, but we seemed to be the real group to undertake the task. Although they didn’t make the heats Taylor, Kai, and Will each also took to the skate skis and powered through, which I don’t think they would’ve gone for. This is pretty telling of a confident and race-ready group of skiers. This whole scenario also brought about a key aspect of racing mentality and unlocking performance that’s worth talking about.
Our team does a lot of strength training, men and women alike. Maybe too much, in the case of some! But there’s a lot of excitement around the gym…the most common question I’m asked each week is when the best days to go to the gym are. In our strange inter-team communication style, this is actually phrased as “when to go Jim” which I think you’d just have to spend about 5 minutes with our team to understand.
So we’re strong, I’m proud to say that. But it wasn’t strength alone that helped Geo and Anders go 1-2 in the qualifier, and 5 men/5 women/10 total qualify for the open heats, almost certainly a new MNC benchmark on a sprint day…
When the group found out the course was doable as a double pole race, they got super excited. The double pole test is one of the most exciting tests we do, and people get energized for it like no other event. One time this fall the test went great, and in a spur-of-the-moment decision everyone did more intervals after the test. Some days you can just feel the energy radiating around a specific technique or workout.
On this race day, the notion of double poling immediately changed the mood from “an important, stressful Eastern Cup race” to a mood more like “heck yeah, this is going to be fun and it’s just what we’ve been waiting for.”
The speed didn’t come from necessarily being better at double poling than others, or being stronger physically. It also came from being excited, ready to have fun, and possibly even forgetting that this was an Eastern Cup with pressure on the line. I think there’s a lot to be said for that!
Geo won the men’s qualifier, and fresh off a great classic sprint at Nats, Rosie was 3rd in the women’s quali!
In the heats the excitement continued, with Anders, Nico, Geo, Emma, and Rosie all advancing to the semifinals. Having 5 skiers from MNC advance to the semis in the open heats of a sprint race is likely also a new benchmark! Special shoutouts also go to Niko Cuneo and Kate Carlson, who advanced to the open heats as U16s and held their own!
Jonah, Anders, and Aaron getting ready to cheer for the women’s heats
The day wrapped up with the U16 heats in the late afternoon, where Jonah and Aaron got to go head-to-head on the same course as the earlier races. It’s worth noting that a recent rule-change was passed in NENSA wherein 18 racers from the U16 category now qualify for head-to-head heats, rather than the previous 12. The idea is to give more racers chances to compete in heats, especially with the U16 field as that group continues to grow in size.
On his first Eastern Cup trip, Aaron qualified 13th, meaning he got to race in the heats on Sunday! He would’ve just missed out had this been last year, so you can’t find better proof of a rule change having a positive impact right away!
That’s it for Rumford. We now have a few weeks off from Eastern Cup racing before things pick up again with a busy schedule involving Waterville, Sleepy Hollow (the U16/EHS Qualifiers), and Dublin all in a row!
