The smoke blew out of town overnight so we got today’s first flight of the Miller Hill Double Pole Test off.  The result?

12 of 13 PRs (only one of which was a first-timer, and the non-PR individual was only 2 seconds (.7%) off their PR after spending 3 of the last 7 weeks on the beach in the Virgin Islands without rollerskis).

New records for men and women (4:11 and 6:06, respectively).

An overall awesome job.  Upper body/double pole power and aerobic capacity have been major foci for us this summer, so we’re very pleased to see that the work has paid off.

1 more flight this evening if the winds remain favorable.

I’m fresh back from the AK Regional Elite Group camp in Palmer.  Heather, Kelsey and Jordan received invites to the 20-athlete camp and had a chance to work with US Ski Team coaches Pete Vordenberg and Pat Casey, and train alongside a great group of many of the top juniors in Alaska. The week’s training involved a lot of roller skiing with a heavy emphasis on technique and technique review, coupled with a strength test and an uphill rollerski time trial.

In the midst of all of this training, Thursday afternoon afforded us some time off, an opportunity to recreate, clear our minds and get away for a couple hours.  As the self-appointed fun coach (appointed after the fact - in fact, I appointed myself just now), I took it upon myself to come up with a fun activity that would give us a little local flavor (cultural experience).  Since the camp was taking place in ‘the valley,’ there were some natural options: explosives, firearms or internal combustion. Upon review, however, firearms, explosives and internal combustion are either not safe, not easy to come by for an afternoons recreating, or incapable of interesting 20-30 skiers for an adequate portion of said afternoon.

So, we settled on some good ol’ fashioned bowlin’ in the bucolic hometown of our now former Governor Palin.  Northern Bowl looked like the sort of place Joe Six-pack could hang out at, unfortunately for the owners, it was just us that afternoon.  After a couple of games, and some intriguing styles of play it was clear that we should stick to skiing.

J-man

Forrest

Laid out

S. P. Jerome: that cat can roll...

The two-handed heave (left)

The 'professional' (looking) shot

The straight-up gutter ball...

...will get you scores like this

the flop

the run and drop

and of course: backwards between the legs

What could be more Alaskan than getting to watch the progress of someone butchering a moose on the side of the road while doing double pole intervals?

When we arrived at Ballaine Lake at 8 this morning, there were flashing lights from a cop car up the hill on Farmer’s Loop.  Routine traffic stop?  Flares to mark a broken down car?  Nope, just a dead moose on the side of the road after an unfortunate vehicular collision.

Fortunately for the athletes, the downhill turn of the recovery loop from both our specific strength repeats and DP intervals passed right by that point so they got to watch as knives, power saws and the works were produced from a trio of pick-up trucks to divvy up the ungulate into guts and good-eating.  By the time I rolled past at the end of practice, there was nothing but a pile of giant organs left to be cleaned up.

Unfortunately for you, I didn’t bring my camera today, so instead I will share some pictures from yesterday’s speed and agility session (which, by the by, is far more photogenic).

Occasionally someone misses an obstacle

Occasionally a piece of the course goes along for the ride

The smoke rolled back in for the evening just as we finished

…But we’ve been busy training in the meantime.  This week we’re on a bit of a recovery week over the holiday, after completing our first big training week of the year.  We finished it off on Sunday with a 2:50 paddle upstream (2:00) and then down (:50) on the Chena River followed by a cookout to welcome our new assistant coach Nick Crawford.

I’ve got a bunch of photos from June that I’ll try to put up in the next few days, but for now I’ll leave you with a one from Sunday and one from this morning.