It’s May. Yes, really. For most skiers, the new page on the calendar also marks the beginning of a new training year. Dust off your rollerskis, locate your heart rate strap and drink belt, and make sure your running shoes have plenty of life in them. With the country still predominantly on public health orders to stay close to home, avoid groups, and keep at least six feet of distance from those outside your home,...
Say this name three-times fast: “Dreissigacker”. Not so easy at first. Break the four-syllable surname into discrete parts: Driess (with a hard I) – i – gack – er. It then rolls off the tongue … Dreissigacker. In northern Vermont and in particular around the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, Emily Dreissigacker, of the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP) is as well known a name as any. Her parents, Dick Dreissigacker and Judy Geer, bought the Outdoor...
GRP Limelights occur monthly and showcase members and/or people closely associated with the GRP Rowing & Skiing Teams. Lynn Jennings was one of the first people I met at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center. Little did I know that the woman, who came out from the faded Duck Blind to find her dog, Towhee, staring at [...]
I was a bit nervous about returning to Muonio this year after getting burnt out on the darkness and Arctic living here last November when the snow was very scarce. I was at my breaking point last year and didn’t know if I could ski another loop in the dark around the short, icy, and [...]
I spent a day off in Calgary. It is a surprisingly big city, with a population of about 1.1 million (compare to Boston with 625,000, or Dallas with 1.2 million). I found the downtown very clean, with free public transport, lots of walking space, support for the arts, interesting parks, and an extensive Chinatown with delicious [...]
With the end of the fall rowing season upon us and Thanksgiving just around the corner, it’s time for the rowers to put up their oars and try their hand at skiing. In the words of Coach Roock: “Your rowing future depends on this, no pressure.” Temperatures have started dropping to the point where the [...]
Hi everyone! I am resurfacing from blog absence in order to give you some Canmore highlights. Canmore is about an hour north of Calgary, just east of the Rockies. It is a gorgeous town reminiscent of other Rocky Mtn ski towns, minus a destination alpine resort. Here, the Nordic center, home of the 1988 Calgary [...]
Hey everyone — All winter long, GRP skiing results will be compiled in this post. As our racing takes us across the US and Europe, this will hopefully help you keep tabs on how we’re doing! WEEK of NOV 12-NOV 18 Muonio, Finland (World Cup tune-ups: Ida) Friday CL sprint: Ida 6th, 1st American [...]
This past week I decided to take a day off from skiing and go for a run up to the Grassi Lakes just west of Canmore. The morning started off with an awesome sunrise so I couldn’t give up the opportunity to explore. Canmore is littered with amazing single track trails that wind their way [...]
Soon it begins. On Tuesday I will be traveling to Sweden to start another winter of World Cup biathlon racing. It means four months living out of a duffel bag and braving airports almost every week… The thrill of putting on a race bib and standing on a start line in front of TV cameras [...]
Alright, so I’m a few days late. But here are some Halloween pictures from here in Canmore! And we weren’t the only costumed skiers out there either–a bunch of the Canadians also dressed up, so it made the little loop a bit more interesting! We had a lot of fun putting costumes together out of [...]
Although Canmore has been feeling wintery and the 2k loop has been excellent skiing, yesterday we drove away from Canmore towards Lake Louise where there is more natural snow. About an hour away from Canmore, within Banff National Park, we turned into a makeshift parking lot at the start of Moraine Lake Road, curious to see [...]
Susan and I spent the last few weeks in Utah at a training camp with the biathlon team. Here are some pictures! When we first got there, we had some beautiful western weather, and there were still some bright colored leaves around on the aspens and things. I’ve never thought of the west as having [...]
With a little snow on the ground, really good skiing, and temperatures in the 20s or colder, it doesn’t feel like October in Canmore. The Nordic center Camore saves snow from the previous winter and rolls it out in the middle of October every year for “Frozen Thunder.” Our first day here it was warm [...]
I spent the last 10 days in Park City Utah for testing and an altitude camp. After some wet weather at home, it was great to arrive in the arid west and see the sun! The town of Park City is around 7000′ but we stayed in a condo near the top of Guardsman Pass [...]
The scene at the “Singletrack Shootdown” Photo: Judy Geer A week ago, we hosted a biathlon race at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center as part of our Oktoberfest celebrations. The event included a beginners’s pre-race shooting safety clinic and featured separate races for beginners and for experienced biathletes. Additionally, participants could chose to either compete running [...]
Fall is one of my favorite times of the years. Colorful leaves, the last garden harvests with pumpkins, squash, and apples galore, and that frosty chill in the air which is an exciting harbinger of the upcoming winter. This year we had a very dry summer and early autumn and this nice weather became the [...]
To the new sculling campers, the oar rack they are using this week has always been there. But everyone else knows otherwise: with space for 90 pairs of sculling oars – double the capacity of the old rack – and about two times closer to the docks, the new rack will help get campers on [...]
From September 10th through September 21st, the skiing portion of the GRP was in Lake Placid, NY for a training camp with our peers from other training groups around the country and the US Ski Team. I’m not going to attempt to summarize the camp here, because chances are that if you’re interested in our day-to-day [...]
This Monday evening Jamie, Kyle, and I headed up to the church on the common to check out the Zumba class taught by Rosa, one of our community rowing regulars. For those of you who don’t know, Zumba is a dance fitness class that combines a little of everything, from belly-dancing to kick boxing to [...]