NENSA Gaining Ground Coaches Clinic

This weekend was one of those super-invigorating clinics (I guess work-type people call them workshops, but its all the same), where you leave so full of ideas you think you'll burst. At least, thats how I feel. It was also great to see how many things CSU does right, even if we've arrived at these things by different routes. We had Nina from Gunstock (I can't spell her last name), who was a multi-time olympian and I think had at least one medal, and Andy Newell, from the USST, come talk to us. It was really interesting to see the difference between their skiing styles - not only was it the male/female skiing differences, but the sprinting/distance differences. Fred Griffin (another presenter, but not quite an olympian) described some of his skiers as "hungry, and ready to eat raw meat". Well, Andy's skiing was the raw-meat-eating style of skiing, and Nina was a ballerina. Really interesting to compare.

Nina floating up the hill.

Andy showing us how NOT to classic ski. It was pretty amusing watching him try to ski incorrectly, he couldn't really do it.

Fred pointing out something Andy is doing while skating.

Now that I'm full of ideas, its time to see what the people actually in charge think of these ideas... step 1, acquire some wicked slow rollerskis for Frank so the kids can keep up in L1!

[Northern] Vermont

This weekend I'm attending the Gaining Ground clinic with NENSA - its a coaching certification thing, and CSU thinks its a good idea I learn how to coach before I inflict any permanent damage to our juniors. Anyway, its up in Craftsbury, and it doesn't start until 2pm on Friday, which meant one thing to me - Kingdom Trails Friday morning! I don't really have anything to add about that except that there was not one moment during three hours where I ever thought anything different than "holy crap I am having so much fun right now!". Well, there was one moment when I was thinking "I wonder what that squeaking is?", but I generally don't worry too much about that sort of thing. Thom fixes my bike when it breaks, its all good.

The next two days should be fun, we have Janice Sibilia (NENSA head of competitive programs) directing the thing, Nina (the superfast Russian olympian from Gunstock) and Andy Newell are helping out, and Pepa Miloucheva and the Craftsbury Green Team are giving us talks and stuff in the evening. Action packed!

Back to... reality?

Ski camp in Lake Placid is over, but life on the ranch here is hardly different than an extended summer vacation, thanks to the unemployment thing. It will (hopefully) be ending soon, so I figure I have to take advantage of having the days all to myself while I can. In this vein of thought, I bleached all my water bottles today. Its a busy life, ok?

Placid wrapped up well, with one of my biggest weeks of training in my life. I guess there are some advantages to training four or five hours a day but it makes you kind of tired and not at all in the mood to move fast. It was a good group of people at the camp, and the camp did exactly what it should in terms of mental motivation to keep things going into the fall in a quality manner, rather than filling every day with easy bike rides. We finished it up with a rollerski OD on some new roads, then we stole some more chocolate soy milk (that stuff is awesome, I highly recommend it) from the cafeteria and all went our separate ways. Hopefully Jess and I will meet up for some mini-training weekends this fall, it really helps to keep me motivated.

The theme last week seemed to be dayglo everywhere, NENSA provided us with some sweet dayglo synthetic shirts, to add to my already-large collection of disgustingly bright shirts, and coaches everywhere are cracking down on wearing either a reflective vest or a yellow shirt while rollerskiing. A skier in Maine was hit by a car and killed earlier this summer, so this seems to be the first action to take to become defensive skiers. I just wanted to say that I approve. Rollerskiers benefit from the gawk-factor, but sometimes, we're just hard to see. And we have these things attached to our hands and feet that make it difficult to get off the road quickly. So, wear those reflective vests. I figure I already look like a doofus since I'm on rollerskis, so adding the vest isn't making me any geekier.

Thats Jennie, not me. I didn't do the time trial, so I took some pictures. Shes modeling a yellow shirt, although its not quite bright enough...

In other geek news, I've managed to strip out two of three screws holding my binding to my classic rollerskis (oh, THAT was that rattling noise?), so I better do something about that soon, or bad things will happen. Along those lines, I also managed to break two snow tips by being a beast - I double pole with so much force that the metal tip got pounded into the plastic basket. The pullups work?

Who says maintenance is necessary in rollerskiing, too?

The guilty feeling

I almost did the time trial today, and then I did something smart and didn't race because of the rattling noises in my chest when I skied hard. Boo. There is nothing worse than having to can a quality workout because of sickness. Even though I know it wouldn't have been smart, I still feel super guilty for not racing. I'm such a master-blaster-wannabe.

Jennie, Jess and me on the catwalk next to Avalanche lake.

Yes, I know there is a knee warmer in my mouth. It was on top of my camera in my pocket.

All the slash they had to cut through after the last big avalanche on avalanche pass.

The turban made an appearance.

Avalanche lake.

Ski camp update

We've been training a bunch up here, having a great time, and the weather has been perfect. Only problem is that I am slowly relapsing into the cold I had two weeks ago... darn you body, can't we cooperate? Tomorrow is the Franklin Falls time trial, which I'm really excited to try again. The only problem will be if my chest decides to fill in with green goo, in which case I'll have to scratch the time trial, which would be truly unfortunate. But probably smart... we'll see what tomorrow brings.

Mini tri, team-style

Triathlons aren't really my thing. I can't swim (I'm not just saying that; my favorite stroke is the doggy paddle), my worst discipline on a bike is a time trial, and my running has only landed me injured in the past couple years. The only place I really shine in triathlons are the transitions - I have those transitions DOWN!

Anyway, thanks to this lack of skill in these disciplines, my triathlon experiences have been few and far between, and mostly just because I've forgotten how much I disliked the last one. I might not enjoy any one of the individual pieces of a triathlon, but its ok as a whole, and so when I found out that Lake Placid has a mini triathlon every monday night, I really wanted to do it. So did a couple other people at the camp, even though we all realized that doing a triathlon the night of the same day we'd already done some quality L3 skate intervals was a dumb idea. We decided on a compromise of doing teams, which is super lame. But really, it was the only way to make it through a 20+ hour week with three (well, now four) intensity sessions. There are my excuses.
Lucy modeling Team Pink's swimwear.

I teamed up with Lucy Garrec (swim) and Jennie Bender (bike) to be team pink - I was running. Lucy was swimming in a hot pink bikini, and Jennie was riding in some sexy pink shades. I didn't have anything pink to wear (how could I let that happen??), although I played with putting Lucy's bikini top over my t-shirt. We were clearly being serious about this.
Jess came to spectate.

The swimmers took off, and Lucy held her own against aggro master blasters. She came in somewhere around mid-pack, tagged off to Jennie, and Jennie bolted off down the bike course. Soon, she came back after 13 short miles, and off I went on the run. I should mention that I really haven't run too much since this knee injury. I did my first running speedwork while in Switzerland, 4x5min threshold on grass. It was supposed to be 5x5, but, my knee had started hurting so I cut it short. I was hoping it would be fine for the full 5k...
Team Pink's first tag.

The run started on a flat paved road, and then transitioned to a marginally rolling dirt road, and the runners were told to turn around at telephone pole 13. Our guys' team runner didn't see the pole, and lost their second-place position by running six minutes too far. Pays to listen to the instructions at the beginning of the race... I started out pretty conservatively, since my warmup had really just been plodding around town and I didn't quite feel ready to fly, but I quickly passed a couple guys who were doing the whole thing. I got passed soon thereafter by another two guys, and picked up the pace to match the slower one. Shortly we came to the dirt road, and I used some of the hills to put some time on this guy. I was starting to see a couple people coming back, but I was pretty sure we were holding fast as the second female, behind some chick who had started the run 4 minutes ahead of me and looked pretty pro. After the turn-around I was starting to feel it a bit in my legs, and more worrisomely (is that even a word?) my knee was starting to hurt a bit. Just feeling a bit stiff on the swing-through. I tried to just ignore it and passed a couple more guys who weren't on teams, most impressively a guy who I had thought was going to be really fast, but clearly he just owned fast-looking clothing.

Nearing the end, I was trying not to limp - the knee didn't really hurt enough to limp, but my brain was being scared that it was going to get hurt worse and so it was trying to make me limp. Those damn brains. I was also trying to run more heel-toe rather than striking with my toe like I normally do, because my achilles was aching. I'm just a mess. Anyway, I heard breathing behind me, and it was definitely feminine breathing. Crap! I turned to look and it was indeed a girl, it was Margaret Maher, the NYSEF coach who I think is currently doing ironmans for fun. We had really hoped to beat her, and I realized it was up to me. Yargh. The finish was near, but not that near, so I decided to try picking up the pace. She held fast, and I realized an actual kick was required. I don't think I've had to really kick it in in a race in a long time, but it felt extremely good to just turn on the jets and leave my more tired competitor in the dust. Not that I could have kicked like that if I had actually done the triathlon... but it felt good nonetheless.

We left before they did awards, if they even did do awards. I don't think teams should get prizes anyway, so its just as well. Good times, but I don't think I'm going to be doing two intensity sessions in one day again any time soon. Thats just not smart.

Weddings and macroinvertebrates

Friday I found myself at the Friends of Alewife Reservation office helping out the Summer Ecology Institute - Arlene, one of my [ex-] colleagues, does a day on benthic macroinvertebrates each year at this camp, and I was helping her out with the kids. The plan was to identify dead bugs in the morning and then find our own live bugs, worms, and leeches in the afternoon. Unfortunately, we were rained out in the afternoon, but the kids had a great time identifying the samples in the morning. I had fun with that too, but would have really enjoyed walking around in the muck turning over rocks.

Saturday was Callie's wedding, which was beautiful - on the coast in Maine, and they served lobsters, it doesn't get much better than that. I ran into Pat Dean there, he's back in the states for the summer after teaching physics in Jordan all year, and he basically arrived in NYC and bought a bike and thats how he got to Maine. He wanted to get to upstate NY, and I was heading to Lake Placid, so after dropping Ed at the train station sunday morning, I picked up Pat somewhere on the road near Brunswick and we headed west. Which brings me to my current location - the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, for the SR/U23 ski camp. I'll keep you updated...