With adventurous travel both near and far this week, it was a great end to the “spring” training season. The brutal heatwave midweek was survived thanks to lots of popsicles, ice water sponges, lake time, and post-practice swimming. Over the weekend, we had a mini training camp in Ludlow and managed to escape total downpours and even tornado threats. Just another typical week in Vermont.
Wednesday Lake Day
Wednesday was a very rewarding day, and a good story about what makes club skiing so cool. With temps rising to the upper 90s, the Carlsons invited us to take over their lakeside camp for a day. We had running intervals planned, and with a dirt road right nearby it meant an easy warmup, solid training, and an immediate dunk in the lake after.
90 degrees is no problem, and the show must go on
While I cooked hotdogs on the grill, Taylor fired-up the boat. After lunch, I got to hang out on the dock while the whole team sped off into the distance: a crowd on the boat, and 2-3 skiers at a time riding the “hotdog” tube across the waves.
lake life after training
Having a group of older skiers, younger skiers, newer skiers, and returning skiers was ideal for this workout. It really brought a big crew together on a day when you could use the atmosphere of your teammates and the setting on the lake to forget about the actual tough workout and sweltering heat. Thank you to the Carlson family!
Okemo Mini Camp
A big goal this year is to spend more time together not training. Sounds weird for a ski team, right? But we really want to have MNC become a group that connects beyond just training and racing. One of the action-items of that goal was more trips, even if they were small and simple.
My affinity for Ludlow has grown every year since we started having some of our training camps in the area. Situated between the fancier resorts like Stratton/Bromley, and the mega-resort of Killington/Pico, you will find Okemo. Not a small mountain, but a somewhat underrated mountain if you ask me. Ludlow is a walkable village that’s not pretentious, and if you believe in Okemo’s underrated status in the winter you can only imagine how undervalued Ludlow is in the summer.
Rainy skate intervals up Okemo Ridge Rd
That means lodging is often very cheap, yet amenities and training options aren’t hard to come by. Sure, the rollerskiing may not be the best (we are so spoiled here in Chittenden County, it’s crazy) but you can make a whole lot of training happen with an alpine mountain and the access road up to it. Plus proximity to more “traditional” outdoor hubs like Woodstock and Killington mean a short drive will get you any workout you need.
The rain came down for the weekend, and temps got much more manageable. Again, classic Vermont where you can think of nothing but iced coffee and a cold shower one training day, and dream of hot chocolate and a warm blanket 2 days later.
In another checkmark in the goals column, the team worked hard up Okemo Ridge Road on Saturday morning with some skate intervals. A team goal is to increase our capacity and “durability” in tough and hilly skate races. That doesn’t mean going up big hills every time we skate ski, but looking for opportunities to tackle that goal in a focused way is key. This mini training weekend was the ideal time for it.
Seven and Kate working hard together during intervals
After some lunch and movie watching, we took a 5 minute drive up a steep paved road in order to get to a really quiet and pretty dirt road run on a loop from training camps past. The humidity was still hanging around, and the fog was giving everything an eerie vibe. Sure enough, it really started to pour just as we finished up. It was definitely time to bake some brownies and cook some ground bison meat for dinner!
The next morning I devised a 10-mile run from Bridgewater into Woodstock on some dirt roads, with a few scenic laps through the historic parts of town when we arrived. We then went up, across, and down Mt Tom, the small hill overlooking town itself. As a fan of local history, everyone got to hear me discuss topics like Rockefeller properties, the railroad industry, and the story of local hills that literally spurned skiing itself in America.
From reading historical plaques, to noticing labels to determine whether a given house was built in 1790 or 1810, to making educated guesses on current real estate values of homes for sale, there’s no shortage of things to look at on a run in Woodstock.
It was a great change-of-pace for the weekend after a spring of busy training locally, and now it’s time for SUMMER!
Coming down Mt Tom and onto one of the carriage roads on the Billings-Rockefeller property
2024 skiers and gear running through an 1824 world
Mid-run bacon. Enough said.
