That’s not the first day on snow- That’s the last day on rollerskis where we played a sweet game of Keep Away (note the soccer ball) where Team Tall destroyed my team without even cheating.
Now on to the real deal…
These guys looked great today doing upperbody work around Smith Lake.
The pack heading around the lake.
First snot rocket on snow?
The girls are excited about the snow…
…Pete’s excited about the snow.
Technique had been a theme this past week. It is there with us nearly everyday. A couple of examples:
We worked a bunch on bounding technique with the Devos yesterday. The guys did great!
Getting a feel for forward body position
Monkey see, monkey do
Note Joe's nice low arm swing
We worked on skate body position with the Comp Team on Thursday. Instant improvement in glide.
Its been a while since I’ve downloaded pictures from my camera so here are a few of the highlights from the last few weeks.
Pat with a look of pain in the strength test. The hard work paid off though with a new FXC record.
The cheering squad
Yoga and dance moves
Granite Tors Trail
Today was a day off in the public schools, so those not coming back from an XC meet in Oregon, visiting schools on the east coast, taking a needed rest day, catching up on homework or otherwise engaged took a trip with Nick and I to my favorite hiking and/or running trail within an hour of Fairbanks. There is something about emerging from scrubby trees onto a wide open ridge with tors and bogs and burn scars and views of nothing but mountains that leaves me euphoric for the remainder of the day. There is so much country and so little civilization out there, you definitely feel like you’ve gotten away…
Into the late morning sun...
Shedding layers
The final pitch on the initial climb
Nick and CRAZY Ziggy
No fruited plain, but the purple mountains seemed pretty majestic
Is there such a thing in the wilderness?
Walking through the five year-old burn
Refreshment
Sunday for the first time in a couple of months we hit up the west valley parking lot with the Comp Team for some balance and agility training on roller skis. It hasn’t been that we’ve been neglecting this work (in fact, everyone looked more comfortable than in the past), it’s just been that we’ve had our focus elsewhere in the training. At this point we’ve completed a period of about 10 weeks where we focused a lot more on hi intensity training, either through an XC running season or in regular ski training. Now we’re going to spend this first part of winter making sure everyone’s in touch with a good base of aerobic fitness as well as balance, technique and specific strength before we hit the prime time of the racing season.
Some pictures from Sunday:
Check out Kipp's air on the left
We did a bunch of sprints too...
We had a great afternoon with the Devos yesterday. Nick set up a scavenger hunt that involved a map with six checkpoints on the UAF trail system with unlabeled drawing of where the eggs - each containing one letter - were located at the checkpoint. Once unscrambled, the letters spelled out the location of the finish. It was way better than any scavenger hunt I’ve ever put together, and everyone had a blast while running pretty fast all over the west side of campus.
To kick things off we threw around the pigskin for a few...
I love games.
I love games because they force young athletes to move. Just check out the pictures.
Keegan stretches for one
"200 dead or alive!"
The forehead catch
They're also a great way for young endurance athletes to work on the coordination skills they will need to draw on to develop great technique over the next few years.
Twisting, turning, bending, jumping, ducking: it's all there and more.
After the warm-up it was time for the main event.
Nick explains the scavenger hunt
As soon as they got their bearings on the map (and sometimes a little before), the teams were off
In search of checkpoints
searching high...
searching low...
must wear the party hats...
The running mechanics of this group never cease to impress me
ditto
First team to unscramble 'S-K-I-H-U-T' and arrive there
To the victors go the spoils.
To finish the day off we did 15 minutes of various strength exercises.
party hat pushups?
Uphill wheelbarrows
Maximus!
Coach Crawford gets into it
Ze Torgermeister
"We get more donuts after this, right?"
Role reversal?
split leg squats
leapfrog
piggy back races - Ti picked a good partner.
Rasslin' strength
Good training, good fun, good fitness. What more could we want?
This really resonated with me when I read it earlier today (From U of Michigan Women’s Swim Coach Jim Richardson, found on Vern Gambetta’s Blog.):
A final word on “success.” Some of us are blessed to work with highly talented individuals. I’ve never believed that the performances of the most talented or placings at championships are the best criteria to use to evaluate the “success” of a program. Talent has a way of “forgiving” a number of mistakes in the training process (not to mention the recovery process). I look at the slower, less talented swimmers in our program and ask - “Are they getting faster?” To me, they are the most accurate measure of whether what we are doing is working or not. So when we have swimmers who have never placed in the top 24 at the US Junior Championships prior to coming to Michigan, now placing in the top 16 at the US World Championship Trials or qualifying for the NCAA Championships - well, they are getting faster. In swimming, at the end of the day, that is the only performance measure that really matters to me.
Yesterday was our last Miller Hill Double Pole test of the season. The test is pretty simple: double-pole with all you’ve got from the bottom to the top of Miller Hill Rd. Some mapping program once told me that it was 1100m long with approximately 67m height difference between bottom and top. Pretty legit for any hill that we encounter as ski racers.
View from the top of the steepest pitch. If you click on the picture you can see skiers making their way up the hill.
At this time of year, the rollerskiing gets noticeably slower as the cold weather starts to effect the bearings in the wheels. That means the odds are stacked against us, but as racers, we have to be used to showing up some days when that’s the case and simply overcome. (’No excuses’ is one of the items we included in our team rules last weekend.)
The first two to cross the finish line
The group did well. Of 17 starters, we had 7 PRs , 3 first-timers and 3 people within 10 seconds (or 2%) of their PRs. Considering much of the team is coming off of a rather intense period of running where upper body training has been on the back burner, that’s quite solid.
The group starting a repeat as part of their warm-up prior to the test
Throwing what's left at the finish
If the picture is underexposed, and I play with it enough in a photo editor, can I actually make it decent? Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder...
A collection of Photos:
No Pole classic work from a couple of weeks ago
James: distance classic roll
more no-pole
finishing said roll
Claire
see and be seen
10km Time Trail on Cripple Creek
2.5 km in
Vanya hammering the big hill
Stef on the final straight
James powering to the line
I did
