EC #1 and Holiday Break

Hello!

After a week back at school, and a week at home, I'm back up north in Jackson hanging out with a friend and getting in some skiing.. fingers crossed for tomorrow.. it's pouring right now!

The week at school was great and was highlighted by some pranking, gingerbread house making, hanging out with alpine friends and some skiing on campus at the beginning of the week. We spent the week getting our bearings with our schoolwork and preparing for the season opening Eastern cup races by waxing, and doing some tune-up intervals and good stretching. One of the nice things about being a PG is that I have lots of time to be waxing my skis so I don't have to manage the juggling of ski-prep and homework that always made pre-race week so stressful in high school. 

Lisa and I TPing Sophie's bed. Prime Prankage

Maggy and Julia getting down to business on the gingerbread houses

I also spent part of the week working on this video for the Development Office:

On Friday evening, we welcomed some "campers" who joined us from Massachusetts for the weekend, had a team meeting and tucked into bed early. We arose the next morning to cold temps and clear skies- perfect for great classic tracks. Upon arriving to the race venue, Craftsbury, we grabbed our bibs and double-checked start times and got ready to race. The first race was a sprint- one lap around the man-made loop- and it went alright. It definitely felt like a first race! We had a couple of hours until the prologue-two times around the man-made loop- and it went really well. I improved on my morning's result by 13 places and felt fast. After running a good cool down, we hopped back into the vans and returned to find 40 5th-7th graders scrambling around campus for the Alpine Christmas Camp. Lucky for us, they abided by their 9pm bedtime!

We packed up Sunday morning and headed back to Craftsbury for a skate race, 4.5k (3 laps) for women and 9k (6 laps) for men. It was even colder and even clearer than the day before, and the track was hard and fast. For me the race was ok, I made a couple of mistakes in pacing and got a little too caught up in everything. A little bit frustrating for sure, but I definitely walked away with specific things to think about and focus on in the future. 

Many thanks to all of the people at Craftsbury who worked many long, cold, and sometimes dark hours to hold a world class event in adverse conditions. Those guys rock.

With my #1 Fans and Sponsors- Mom and Dad. Thanks guys!

Here's a video that I made with race footage that my Dad took. Thanks Dad!

I went home with my Dad after the race on Sunday for some holiday vacation. It is always nice to be home and after a full weekend of races I was ready for some downtime. But sadly, there wasn't any snow to be found, so I did some running and a little rollerski practice with my old high school team. I was able to go skiing at Waterville with my Mom on Saturday and then had a great holiday with my family. 

Our tree

I'm returning to school tomorrow night and then heading off to Rumford, Maine for US Nationals next weekend. Should be an eventful couple of weeks, so I'll be sure to be more on top of the blogging than I have been recently!

Think Snow!

Emilie

Pre-season camp parts 2 and 3 and more!

2 Sundays ago at the Foret, it started raining and didn’t really stop. The outer trails were pretty much wiped out but we stayed until Wednesday and got some really good work in on the 1k manmade loop. While it was a little bit frustrating, we all knew that returning to Burke to do dryland in an area that we are all familiar with would provide the most productive training.

Campus was pretty quiet as it was only the J3s (14 and 15 year old ‘pineys) and us and since we were still on camp time, we didn’t have any classes, just dryland and recovery.  Due to the low snow situation that is facing the entire Northeast, the Burke schedule was altered to allow all of us to go find it! The older alpiners, or FIS athletes stayed in BC for an extra 6 days while the J3s flew back out to Colorado for a 5 day training camp. We were poised to go back to Canada, but Pete called the people up there and they said that it wasn’t quite worth the trip, so Pete sent us home for a few days. It was a bummer to not be going anywhere to ski, but it was nice to be with my family for a while, and go for runs on my home turf. I also enjoyed training with my old high school team and was happy to see that they were keeping it fun as always.

When we returned to campus on Saturday, it had snowed and we drove over to Craftsbury for a ski! It was great, but what was even better was that our campus loops were open and wonderful. We skied out the door yesterday and had a great technique session before skiing to brunch. Right before dinner, most of the FIS kids arrived, including my 2 roommates! I am so happy to have them back, and it is great to have campus full and busy again.

Here are some pictures from the last couple of weeks.

T-Minus 5 days until the first race of the season!

Emilie

Rainbow on the way home from Canada!

Drylandia

We spent a great evening drinking hot cider, and roasting marshmallows at the cabin of former BMA nordic coach and current USST coach Matt Whitcomb- Thanks Matt!

Scene on Mountain road upon the return to campus

Skiing!!

Spiffy team

The best!

Thanks to Pete and Kate for some of the photos!

Life at Foret

All is well up here at the Foret. We have had a very successful start to camp and everyone has been making good progress working onto the snow. Though the conditions are slowly but surely deteriorating (with more rain to come..) we have still been able to get some really quality training sessions in. On Thanksgiving day, more and more people started to arrive for the weekend, so the trails started to get tons and tons of traffic. To combat the crowds, we did our interval sessions before breakfast and then took to the woods and ungroomed terrain for our other sessions. The trail network here is really extensive and most of it is ungroomed, but conveniently most of the college teams did a lot of OD workouts where they ended up skiing in a really nice track.

Life up here is definitely rhythmic. The closest town is Stoneham, which is 40 minutes by highway, so there really isn’t much to do besides sleep, eat and ski. We’ve been skiing 2-3 times a day, pre-breakfast, mid-morning and afternoon, and meals are 7:30, noon and 5. To break up the down time and make sure that we don’t zombie too much in front of the screen, there is some homework, some reading, but mostly board games! The girls team collection right now is pretty extensive- Monopoly, Chess, cards, Settlers of Catan, Rat a Tat Cat, Slamwich, Bananagrams. You name it, we got it.

Yesterday was a down day, so after some video review, a little woods tour and watching some of the college teams pull off a little time-trial, we headed to Quebec City for some food, culture and exploring. We had a couple of hours to explore and then we met back up for dinner at a Creperie. I went with a fruity theme and had an apple and cheese crepe for dinner and a chocolate-hazelnut and banana crepe for dessert. It was yummy and a nice break from the decent but nonetheless cafeteria food we eat here.

Getting art-z

Jenna and some HUGE dogs (in the back ground)

Cannons on the Citadel that was built to defend Canada from foreign invasions... us

Girls team!

We mostly strolled the old part of the city

Cool shadow

Just your run of the mill squirrel in a tree

The crew!

Today, we had a nice skate ski that was made a little bit challenging due to the firm and slick surface- the result of about 1000 skiers over the past few days and the continuous mist/freezing rain that has been looming around. We had a long break in the afternoon (lovely nap!) and then went for a team run. Though we were running instead of skiing, spirits were high and we all had a good time sliding around on the iced up gravel logging roads that surround the Foret. Pete also set up a great presentation after dinner that detailed the ideology and science behind our training plan. It was interesting to learn the ideas that go into our weekly and monthly plans

We’ll be up here until Tuesday, and after that our plans aren’t concrete. We have one more week of camp-time after that and we’re going to go wherever the best training is whether it’s at Mt. St. Anne where we are planning to go, stay here if it snows more, or head back to the States and ski at Craftsbury.

Also, the US Ski Team women have opened the season with a bang!! Multiple women on the team have already had multiple personal bests and it has been exciting to watch. It is really inspiring to be able to look up to these fast women! Here is a great article about their early season success:

http://fasterskier.com/2011/11/randall-takes-6th-in-ruka-tour-brooks-23rd-u-s-women-keep-rising/

One last thing- Thanks to Jane, Kate, Pete, Kaitlin and Jenna for some of these pictures!

That's all for now,

Emilie

Back to the Blogosphere, up to CANADA!

Hello, folks! Sorry it has been so long since my last update- these last few weeks have been packed with an increase in intensity to the training, making the final preparations for SOS (skiing on snow, duh) and pg chilling (as usual). We have had some great intensity workouts, ranging from intervals on the rollerskis to moosehoofs on the feet with lots of technique work, some speeds and strength sessions in between.

skate intervals

moosehoof madness before breakfast!

A classic, but nonetheless stunning Burke-set

After saying goodbye to my alpine counterparts who are skiing and racing in British Colombia, I headed home for a quick break. It was great to see my friends and family, go for a great run, eat Thanksgiving dinner, and hoof around with the nordic team! 

Yesterday we made the trek up to our home for the next week or so, Foret Montmorency. It is a forestry research laboratory about an hour north of Quebec city. In the summer, students from L'University Laval study, and there are many of the trails are logging roads, so I'm assuming that quite a bit of logging goes on too. We are staying in the dorm here and eat our meals in the dining hall, which is really convenient because we really don't have to leave. There is a wax room down stairs and the trails are literally right out the door so we can generally get in 2-3 ski sessions a day and still have the right amount of rest in between. Right now, there is a about a 3-4 inch base (not that much) on some of the trails, and a 1k manmade track. Today on rock skis, I got in a little over 30ks of skiing- not bad for the first day! It felt really great, and I didn't feel nearly as wobbly as this time last year. It is also pretty cool to ski around up here because it is really the only place on the East coast that has skiable snow (well at least up until today.. I guess you all got hammered with the pow at home!), so tons of teams are zipping around the trails. Today it was us, UVM, Colby, St. Lawrence, UMaine-Presque Isle, Bowdoin, some Canadian teams, and I think that a few more are going to show up tomorrow and for the weekend.

Stay tuned for more updates and pictures as soon as I can git 'em!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Emilie

Lots of Exciting Things!

Lot's of exciting things have been happening on campus lately! Halloween was Monday and I don't think I've every been somewhere that takes is so seriously- EVERYBODY dressed up, even most of the faculty. It was the most fun I've ever had on Halloween and I didn't even trick-or-treat! Here are some costumed friends:

Murph-master and Carter as bros (guess how many shirts Murph is wearing-- 4!)

Cinderella at the salad bar

Batman keeping hydrated

An alpine costumed as a nordic!

Razz the boxing champ

My personal favorite, the tetris pieces!

Peach, Toad, Mario and Luigi

2 Kate Middletons

Baby, Papa, and King Smurf

Group shot!

X-mas M&Ms

In the afternoon, the alpine women had a mountain bike race, costumes encouraged!

Six of the older alpine women just returned from a week of skiing in Loveland, CO. When they returned, a girl in my dorm hooked my roommate Lisa up with an autographed Lindsey Vonn T-shirt! What a welcome back surprise!!

(Notice the face paint- Lisa and the rest of the girls flew home in costume, she was the cat half of catdog)

Yesterday, Jenna and I took to the slopes of Burke Mountain for a great adventure. When the snow first flew, we made sleds out of cardboard boxes and trash bags, so yesterday we hiked up with our "sleds."

Jenna ascending the fire tower

J-chillin' at the top

Descending

The gap and windmill

Mt. Washington and the Presidentials

Bawse-Dawg J-Hill

SO AWESOME!

Though the days are getting shorter, the sunsets are still spectacular!

Gibby striking a pose

Today, we did some Lactate testing. In a nutshell, you do intervals of increasing intensity and get "pricked"in between each one to get a reading of the lactic acid that your body generates. You also take a heart-rate reading so you end up with some really good data that tells you a lot about how your body handles intensity and how your training is going.

Jenna

A bloodthirsty Kate looks on while I'm on my way to maxing out

So yeah, that's what I've been up to!

Cheers, Emilie