End of October

It’s been a busy couple of weeks here at the end of October. We have settled into a nice training rhythm and everyone is doing a great job balancing skiing, school, soccer, play, college applications, and everything else that is happening right now.

This post has a bunch of pictures from the month, covering much of what we have done, though certainly not all. Heidi snuck out underneath Sandy and has made it to snow in Norway. The rest of us are gearing up for a few final weeks before departing for our great western tour. Starting November 14th, we will travel to Sun Valley, then West Yellowstone, then Bozeman. Occasional mountain snow has gotten us excited for the trip, and we can’t wait to get on real snow. In the meantime, we’ve been productive on a lot of fronts…

These strange shots are part of a dynamic warmup that Heidi brought back from some US Ski Team camps. The idea is to get the all-important muscles around the hips and butt activated and strengthened. Being strong in that part of the body is key to almost everything we want to do on skis.

The mid-Atlantic is recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, but it was just over a year ago that Vermont felt the wrath of Irene. We went down to Rochester to participate in the White River Disastour, an adventure race that started with a 10 km run, transitioned to a 3 mile kayak (or SUP) down the river, and finished with a 12 mile mountain bike. 

As you can see, the mountain bike was pretty muddy! We had two GMVS teams, pulling in Big Ben Brown to mountain bike for Team 2. Team 2 pulled out a narrow victory over Team 1 in spite of several sabotage attempts, and perhaps aided by superior technology in the water and bike legs.

The past few weeks have brought the customary mix of warm and cold weather that we expect in October. One cold morning we rollerskied (and by rollerskied I mean double-poled) all the way up App Gap. Pretty tough with hard pavement to pole on, but the gang stuck it out and powered over the top. Somehow I only got pictures of Dev, but I don’t feel too bad because he’s been underrepresented on the  blog due to his absence for soccer (still going in the playoffs) and Play (starred as Jesus, the lead in Godspell, to incredible acclaim this weekend).

We have also been working on footspeed and the excellent fitness that can be gained from running. These photos are from a pre-3000 meter test tune-up. We did a mix of 400s and 200s, and finished with a 200 meter staggered start race that Dev won after sandbagging the qualifier. 

Finally, we’ve been doing some good old distance skiing with technique work.

The name of the game on this beautiful fall day was the application of power to each ski before pushing off while skating.

We did a number of drills working on knee flexion and worked on a light V2 to emphasize both sides of the motion.

And last but not least, we have been doing some good time trialing recently. Here’s one image from our uphill double pole test, with Maddy cranking up one of the flatter pitches. It’s steeper than it looks!