First off I would like to say that I wish I had a camera. Instead, I spent all my money on ski gear this year. Now back to business.
WOW! What a week!
First off, we had our annual post-exam training camp at Mount St. Anne. I didn't get to/ force myself to train terribly much since thanksgiving, so it was great to finally get quality training. I've had too many other things to do. I not going into many details about camp, because aside from "29 of the best people ever" (<-Delaney) crowding in together at once, nothing extraordinary happened. We'd wake up, eat, ski, eat, ski eat, eat, eat some more, and then sleep. This is the most training I've done in such a short time since summer. I'll let Derrick or Matt take up the details of the camp. I was to busy eating to notice anything.
So I get back at midnight on Thrusday, due to threat of snowstorms (and then eat some more). Thankfully, the snow did some and it was glorious! I took Friday completely off. I just sat my butt on the couch and tuned into HBO for some good old fashioned veggin' out. The next day is for gift shopping, which came to a successful conclusion. Later that night, my friend Andre and I decide to go out the next day and do the Eastern Cup race at Trapps. I read about it on FasterSkier. Not only would it be a great opening race, but I would be going up agianst the likes of people such as David Chamberlin and Andrew Johnson. Who could pass this up?
We meet at 7:30 am and load up the van, which will henceforth be referred to as the Blue Whale. Dispite the road conditions, we make it to Trapps without incident in under an hour. Being number 415 on the starting roster gives you a lot of time to play with. Essentially, we got there at 9am and our start was at 1pm. In that time me met many old Vermonter friends, and a few odd New Yorkers. Your may know them as Jusin Tetlow and Jess Snyder. Jess made an impressive 3rd place finish for her age category, while Justin complained about how we don't plow our roads in Vermont.
I went into the race knowing it was stacked with all those olympians and D1 skiers. My plan was to go out at a decent pace and try to hold it. Oh, I forgot to mention that it was bilzzard conditions up till the start of the race, then it was just plain snowing. The tracks were soft, but they had a firm base underneath. The start was downhill for a K, then pretty much the rest of the race was uphill. I remember being a pretty good climber from last year, so I attacked the first hills with gusto. As they would plateau out I would get into a nice, powerful V2, and then fly through the short switchbacks which popped up throughout the race.
Interesingly enough, I felt much more comfortable with the V2 in this race than with my climbs. The major reason for this was that my legs bonked out after the first 5k lap. I thought of two great excuses for this: camp tired me out more than I let myself believe, and my knee injury which didn't allow me to do much leg exercises till school started. I did notice that my good leg was being used in the V1 much more than my bad leg, which resulted in liqid buring agony in my right quad. Not only do I have to do more strength work on my legs, but I have to correct this imbalance that has shown up. Meanwhile, my core and arms felt ABSOLUTELY FINE. GRAAAAA!!!!
Subjectively, I felt satisfied overall. There is definately room for improvement. Oh hey, results are up.
http://www.nensa.net/results/index.php?io_view=events.show_results&event_id=263
I got 130/182. I beat a few names that I thought would beat me, and I am right behind some names of which I know are good skiers. I notice that my 10k time is only a bit faster than my 15k time of old, but this course is nothing like I've skied in college so far. I'm only ~8 minutes behind David Chamberlin. I'll say this is a good start, knowing that I've some off a relatively intense week of training.
So begins the 2009 season of Clarkson Skiing for me. I hear the scheduel of events is up, go check that out.
I just want to mention a few more things. Mad Props to Ryan White of the Colchester Nordic Ski team. Thats a good result for the place you are now. Also, the Blue Whale stopped at Cold Hollow Cider Mill to stock up on "Legendary Cider Donuts". Delicious. Then Andre and I played darts when we got back home.
Phew, that's a lot of typing. I'm done.
-Lamothe
P.S. I crushed JT.
I am all growed up now, and every grown man needs his own tool box. While I was going through my old things looking for tools, I found this ski wax. I was given as a gag gift to my my freshman year of high school. This Speed Powder has text on the back: "Glidewax for black bases. Apply a thin coating on each side of the groove. Iron the full length of the ski. Let cool to room Temperature. Scrape off excess wax with a plastic scraper." Then on the top right it says GP4.
