Last weekend on a long and scenic run on the old long trail, we discussed the smell of evaporating or freshly-fallen rain.
“I know there’s a name for that!” I said, and struggled to recall the term. Of course, these days you can just look up anything you don’t know immediately within a couple of seconds.
Petrichor: a distinctive, earthy, usually pleasant odor that is associated with rainfall especially when following a warm, dry period that arises from a combination of volatile plant oils released by soils into the air and carried by downdrafts. (Merriam-Webster).
That was a new word for trivia night, and coincidentally a smell we’d be experiencing a lot in the week to come. But it also hits on something deeper. The concept of their being an overarching feeling or atmosphere that you can really pick up on.
There was a distinct moment during training last week where a sense of joy and satisfaction washed over me with the return of familiar feelings in all the senses.
It was a humid sunny day and the team and I had just gone on a run from the MNCC up Dugway road. Along the way we chatted about skiing, training camps, nature, prom, vlogs, and more. We scooted down an embankment to dunk our heats in the water at the Triple Buckets swimming hole on the return trip, and finished that first portion of our session back at the MNCC as the sun was starting to get a little lower in the sky and cast shadows across the gym floor.
We turned on the speakers and distorted guitars began to fill the room, competing for sonic space with two loud and powerful fans also droning loudly with their own tune. Weights clanked on the bars and racks, the flywheels of the two SkiErgs whirred intermittently, and the sound of loud footfalls from box jumps and hurdles echoed as well.
The smell of sweat was unavoidable, and white clouds of chalk floated across the low sunbeams streaming through the windows. Everyone knew what to do; this was a standard lifting day with exercises people were familiar with, so it was not about asking questions or deciphering printed strength sheets. The team just got down to business, and it felt instinctual.
It was a moment you’d close your eyes and recreate if you were talked with embodying “summer ski training” and it almost got me emotional! The sense of “place” was strong literally and figuratively. That energy carried through the rest of the week and it felt like the humid, sweaty, chalky, clanging ski-specific version of petrichor signaled the real start of the training year.
Here’s some more photos:
First team rollerski, featuring some double poling technique work and…
…ending the ski with a roll over to Dominoes to pick up our order
A very wet 3000m that included a delayed-start due to thunder
A nice wooden pug we found on our ski in Vergennes on Sunday!
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