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!