The Juniors have finished one of the more intense weeks of the summer. With two days of tests and a Saturday excursion that lasted 11 hours but included some of the more challenging intervals of the season…and cliff jumping, lake swimming, tourist-ing, and ferry rides.
Everything back in Jericho was pretty standard for the most part, with big groups on Tuesday and Thursday. On Wednesday, we branched out and did the Bolton uphill run test. A bit odd to have this test fall on a weekday, but with plans for Saturday it just made more sense. It was a big day with a lot of PR efforts: a good sign that all the work climbing hills that we put in at Mountain Camp paid off, rather than drag folks down. We recovered well from the camp and benefited from what we put in.
A PR for Jenny at Bolton!
Just the next day, we gave the rest of the body the intensity it needed with the Double Pole test and some speedy intervals after. Newer rollerskiers took on the course they inaugurated earlier in the season, albeit MUCH faster! The more experienced group took on the normal test, and a few skiers moved up from the flatter test onto the steep gnarly hills of S-Turn and Badger Loop.
On Saturday, we saddled up in the van at 7AM for a very long day-trip over to LAKE PLACID! It was a hot day, like many we’ve experienced in the past month or so. The mission in the morning was simple: twice up the first 3 miles/5km of the Toll Road. A relentless gradual grade that goes up up up. The first time up was skate, the second time was classic…this was to simulate the App Gap Challenge coming up next week.
Each time up the hill began with 10 minutes of L3/threshold pace, and then STRAIGHT into 30 seconds on/30 seconds off at race pace. A big ordeal to build up some fatigue in the L3 section and then try to maintain good form while going hard. The skate portion in particular was brutal, in part because climbing on skate skis is just plain hard, and also because we may not have been fully warmed-up: the 20 minute ski to the base was probably not quite what we needed. Lessons for App Gap.
After the ski we swam in Mirror Lake and hung out in town, which was bustling with triathletes in town for the following day’s Ironman. After lunch we hit some trails near the Whiteface ski area for a recovery run, and then the Flume trails where we did a little cliff jumping among the massive crowd of other folks out to beat the heat.
As usual, there is a little video edit summarizing our day!!
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