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