Last weekend I was able to get in on a skate rollerski threshold interval session with US Ski Team member Andrew Johnson. AJ had been training at home in Greensboro, Vermont for several weeks and was about to head off to Park City to meet up with the rest of the Team–the plan being to spend about a week training at elevation in Utah in order to be ready for their annual on-snow camp in New Zealand. Here is a brief summary of what it was like to try and keep up with a National Champion, and a couple things that I learned.
The first task of the day was to navigate the ever-confusing and counter-intuitively-organized back roads of rural Northern Vermont, which sometimes conspire to turn a 30 minute trip into a 1 hour trip or worse. As I neared Greensboro I was blown away by the excellent rollerskiing available. Greensboro is quite possibly the closest thing to rollerski paradise I have ever seen, with dozens of miles of well-paved, low-traffic roads over continually rolling terrain with farm fields on either side and gorgeous views of the Green Mountains.
 is pretty much true. But that doesn't stop anyone from getting out there and training. There was a group of 20 or 30 juniors doing their training session on the same road that day.</p><p><BR><center><img decoding=)
