Island time!
Whoa, what a great week to cap off summer with!
We had sun, hot weather, and some of our best workouts so far. I’m so impressed with this gang, and hopefully some of the wealth of video footage we captured will show that excitement AND the abilities of all these athletes!
Tuesday: Classic TT
This year we have 3 longer classic races on the Eastern Cup calendar, and 2 of those 3 are mass start. Not to mention the mass start race at JNs this year is in the classic technique. It was time for a timetrial to match! We had some missing faces as fall sports like soccer and XC running started up this week, but everyone skied great despite a couple of the gnarliest crashes and road rashes I’ve ever seen…needless to say I made a trip to WalMart on Wednesday to re-stock after all the gauze we used up in the first aid kit but everyone finished the race even despite the wounds 🙂
Thursday: Skate Team Sprint
Can’t help but get excited for this format now that America is the REIGNING OLYMPIC CHAMPION in it! We had a pretty large gang and it was fun to have everyone teamed up to race against each other. This was the biggest sign of progress for all our skiers this summer: we had everyone in the same race, young and old, new skier and experienced shredder alike. And all the way to the end things stayed competitive, with tactics also making their way down to all the places as everyone got a sense for when they’d get the tag and who they’d need to chase and who they were being chased by!
Saturday: Island Time Summer Closer
Thanks to the Nolan family for hosting us all at their awesome lake house in North Hero! We all got in a nice easy skate ski on some beautifully-paved and relatively car-free roads in the sun. Then there was lots of swimming, bbq, lawn games, and more as we celebrated the summer season. It was bittersweet as we said goodbye to the college-bound and departing skiers heading in different directions this fall…we’ll see everyone again soon enough though!
Skate Clips
If the clips below of some speedy skiing don’t get you excited for this crew to tear it up this winter, I don’t know what will! From good strength training, to lots of rollerskiing, to long trail runs and mountain bikes, everyone has come a long way improving what they’re capable of these past few months. Now it’s time to keep it going right through fall!
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