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The Juniors raced fast this weekend. Not just kinda fast…collectively our group brought the HEAT to Lake Placid! But given a split-second to think about it, those

#Vanlife and the best ski race tailgate around!

races themselves weren’t the heart of the weekend: they were just a component of it.

For everything we do, the larger element tying everything together is the hype, the fun, the atmosphere, the mood, the VIBE. If you’re sick of me referencing the vibe yet, year after year, well…I’m not going to stop, especially when it is right there to get absorbed in!

Not everyone would consider it “fun” to spend their weekend waking up at 5:30AM on Saturday, driving and ferrying across a lake to race in two rollerski races, crashing on beds, cots, couches, and air mattresses early enough to wake up at 6:00AM Sunday to ski up a mountain. It takes a certain type of person to put this on their schedule. And it takes a certain group of people to turn it into a fun and hilarious adventure.

The coincidentally-titled “Vybe” which is a high-powered massage device from hell

Whether it was attacking each other with a pulsating cordless-drill-lookin’ recovery massage tool, Google translating savage Swedish put-downs, recording dance moves on pop culture’s definitive teen app of September 2019, or snapping our jaws apart trying to chew on overcooked lasagna noodles…this group was in it 100% this past weekend. There’s something about being tossed in a van and hauled around the ski world that brings out the vibe in a group. By the time 8:00PM rolled around on Saturday we were all all gathered in the living room, brought together not by some forced team activity but by the collective experience of “are you as tired as I am?” Instead of screens in our faces, the team was joking around and laughing, first at various antics and then just the hilarious state of our tiredness.

When the vibe is rolling along like that, there doesn’t need to be some taskmaster or drill sergeant running the show. Instead of feeling like students on a field trip, we all feel like we’re in the moment together: dishes get cleaned and put away, beds get made-up, lunches for the following day get packed, and these things all happen with a shared understanding of a group effort.

This is the same team who within the weekend raced to podiums left-and-right, cut MINUTES off their race times from previous years, and most definitely had the best tailgate going in the Olympic Ski Jumping Complex parking lot. The vibe and the results are tied together like you wouldn’t believe. It’s a reference I’ve made before: but it’s a bit of a chicken-or-the-egg scenario. Do strong results fuel the vibe? Or does the strong vibe fuel results? Safe to say a little bit of both, with a snowball effect being the ultimate goal, picking up speed and size and hurtling uncontrollably toward the race season!

Results from the weekend

Photo album from the weekend

Although it probably does not do justice in sharing the true experience, here are some clips from the weekend compiled into a vlog:

Bringing home the BACON..or the soy bacon, in Rose’s case 😉 

Warmup time at the Jump Loops

Some links and info for Juniors preparing to race at the ADK Rollerski Minitour this weekend.

MNC Team Itinerary

Registration Page and Schedule: Registration closes THURSDAY at 5PM

MNC Trip Registration Page

Fall is cranking up the intensity as speed and power get added to each workout. Whether it’s a set of 30/30 intervals to practice maintaining strong form, towing your partners along the trail to strengthen your muscles, or jumping into local races to practice the thrill of competition, the Juniors are ramping it up. The ingredients are a really productive summer of technique work, strength training with improvements in balance and coordination, and a consistent group to hammer with. When blended together the end result is a smoothie of fast winter racers!

Evidence of the above recipe:

We’re happy to again be partnering with many of the skiers from the Saint Mike’s team this fall. Some we know from last year, and others are getting their first taste of MNC. It’s great that we can collaborate because there’s a lot to learn from one another, and as the video above shows it’s easier to do hard work in a big group. Leading the charge in many of these video clips is Mikey Halligan who also spent the whole summer with the MNC crew and is looking to be prime shape for the season ahead.

What’s cool about this collaboration this fall is we’ll be joined by Pennie and Molly more frequently, the coaches with the SMC team. More hands-on-deck for helping everyone improve and put their best effort forward.

Virginia heading to the finish

On Saturday, we put a different kind of effort forward…the annual Burlington Invite! Before the high school racers take to the line, there is an open citizen’s race on the same course. We started doing this race a few years ago just for a chance to get a race in without much pressure…last year there were 30 finishes and I think this year may have been about 25. Just some light warmups and casual conversation on the starting line…they were literally still laying the cones for the course as they were getting the gun ready to send us off.

We had some great individual races, highlighted by the women’s team going 1-4 (Rose, Julia, Hanna, Sammie) and Virginia completing her first-ever 5km. She’s only an 8th-grader but she’s had an awesome summer of skiing and biathlon training so watch out for her in the U16 competitions this winter! With some big improvements over only one year ago, Julia and Hanna were :45 and 1:15 faster, respectively!

Adam and Mikey battled it out the whole race to take 3rd and 4th place, not quite matching the fearsome performance of the women but solid nonetheless.

Special shoutouts to MNC Masters representative Katie, and Ava Thurston who won the women’s varsity race, and many other MNC skiers out there laying it all on the line for their respective HS and MS teams…Quincy, Greta, Julia, Maisie, Silas, and more!

post-race vibe

After the race the MNC gang deemed it necessary to refuel with a group brunch session at Skinny Pancake before returning to watch and cheer on the Varsity racers…crepes were had and the systems were replenished for a strong bout of…sitting in the grass and yelling at people as they ran by in agony! It was a really nice day and perfect for both racing and spectating.

Julia congratulating her non-biological daughter Ava at the team tents

In the afternoon we took a short 1-mile drive to the infamous “127 Bike Path”, frequently haunted by the MNC Masters groups who train in the Burlington area. On this day we were the only skiers, and in fact the only users of the path aside from a group of tourists who were not eager to move out of the way too quickly…or were just unaware that we did not have brakes on our rollerskis. Either way collisions were avoided! No photos from that adventure as, well, it’s hardly the most photogenic spot as we literally skied parallel to the highway for an hour.

What’s next for the gang? A week with some bounding intensity on Wednesday and the CLIMB TO THE CASTLE weekend! A highlight of the fall for sure. We’ll travel over for the “Double Day” 3km and 1km races on Saturday, spend the night in Saranac Lake, and compete in the Climb to the Castle race on Sunday. It looks like MNC will be fielding a huge roster of Juniors and Masters alike. Be sure to check it out!

Registration for MNC Climb to the Castle Trip

Flickr Album of Junior Fall (updated regularly)

XC Running and more

Fall is here, and with the new season and the return to school comes a plethora of training options. Some of our skiers will continue to train each day for Nordic with a mix of rollerskiing, running, bounding, strength, and long adventures in the mountains. Some will play soccer or field hockey, but many will embark on a season of XC running with their respective high school team.

For runners as well as anyone else embarking on tough training this fall, there are a few key components of training it’s important to stay in touch with!

A) Long distance training, especially if it’s on rollerskis

After a summer of epic adventures and volume training, the switch to fall sports can usually mean a drop in overall volume. Finding one day or session a week to incorporate some longer training will help keep the engine ready for races later in the year…think January, February and March!

Ava and Camille, XC runner crew out for a 3 hour mountain run on Sunday!

B) Upper-Body and Strength training

It’s no secret that strength, specifically upper-body strength, is a vital component of our sport. Maintaining the strength and specific gains made over the summer is a matter of consistency…finding ways to incorporate gym time, or even just bodyweight strength work in a pinch, can really make a difference. Twice a week is great! For structured suggestions or ideas don’t hesitate to contact Coach Adam!

Runners out there with access to a SkiErg (be it your own model, or a model at a school or local gym), please feel free to check out this sample page of SkiErg workouts to try and incorporate once or twice per week! These are 30 minutes long and are designed to be short on purpose: they’re easy to fit into a day after a run, in the morning before school, or on a weekend afternoon!

SkiErg Workout Sheet

The Week on Rollerskis and Beyond

It was quite a busy week for runners and non-runners alike! With the double pole test, some tough skate intervals, some long L3 bounding intervals, and epic ridgeline adventures…we all finished Sunday quite tired!

This time of year is a balance between pushing some of our biggest weeks of the year (north of 16 hours were completed by some this week!) alongside fall races AND that ever-present threat of sickness. Add in a return to school germs and crowds, some colder weather, and tired bodies, and you’ve got to play it extremely careful. Luckily the team seems to be taking care of themselves…it’s also important to remember all the training we’ve done this year already, and accept that getting sick just happens sometimes. The common cold isn’t enough to erase all of that hard work from the past many months.

Speaking of hard work, nothing like bounding up Stowe…all the way to the top!

And the obligatory recovery meal at Piecasso!

Double poling in some beautiful weather

Atop Mount Hunger on a joint session with Craftsbury…a day in which we also passed the UVM team running the other direction! Guess we all had some similar good ideas for a training session that day,

Tough skate intervals! Speed all the way:

We finished up the last week of summer with some FAST rollerski efforts! First up was a skate timetrial at the Range, which was a great way to put the summer training to work. It was also beneficial because some of our older skiers got either their first 10km race in, or their first 10km SKATE race. At US Nationals this January, the individual start race will be a 10km freestyle for U18s and older so this is great prep.

A course with multiple laps meant lots of skiers got the opportunity to ski with each other. There was SO much video footage that instead of making an edit I uploaded it all in segments depending on the section of trail the videographer was stationed at. Be sure to check it out on Youtube and look for yourself!

On the weekend we switched it up to classic. One thing we did last fall that seemed to work great (and which we’ll continue going forward) is a set of speeds and focused technique the day before a hard intensity session…in this case, spending Friday morning working on some classic drills and a few speeds in order to be ready to rock on Saturday. This enabled the interval day (Sat) to be focused entirely on the effort itself rather than front-loading a ton of technical info and then having to also engage the tactical and intensity-based mindset.

Here’s some footage from our Friday “activation” workout where we prepped for classic intensity with some pickups. We actually started with an on-foot warmup, bounding and skiwalking coordination drills, and THEN the ski out to Greystone.

On Saturday, we took our first trip to Road 101 for the season. This is a beautiful, winding road near Smuggler’s Notch! We had a great time linking up with some our Masters skiers for a collaborative workout. Having the big van meant we could easily fit a lot of folks in for the shuttle trips down the steep road each time.

Juniors and Masters alike enjoying a ski!

And naturally we got some cool video footage. This workout has a lot of “past memories” which is great for thinking about fun times but ALSO great for reviewing footage from seasons past to look for improvements. You could say that some of us have gotten quite a bit stronger, smoother, and quicker!

This week, it’s back to school time and we switch to afternoon sessions at the Range. It also means the start of FALL and all of our offerings! We’re not live with registrations ranging from:

-Fall Training (including MNC Academy)

-Climb to the Castle Trip

-Thanksgiving Camp

Lots of great ski events to look forward to! Next up is the Burlington Invite XC race on the 7th, and then the big show in Lake Placid as we tackle the rollerski loops and Whiteface!