Mansfield Nordic Club

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.

Schools are letting out, and with a heatwave fast approaching this week you know summer is here! Next Tuesday is our first day of Junior training for the new “season” so make sure you are registered!

MNC Program Registration

Whether you are looking to rollerski a few times a week to build up your technique and fitness, or you are jumping into full-time training with action all week, we’d love to have you with the crew. Check out he Junior Summer page on the website for more, and of course follow along on social media, Youtube, or this blog to see what we are up to and what is next for us.

We’re excited to have the Mansfield Nordic Community Center coming online just in time to host some strength training, team gatherings, meetings, and more. There’s a lot of possibilities for this space, and it is another way we hope to connect skiers throughout the area.

If you’re a U16 skier, there are a few spots remaining at U16 Mountain Camp taking place from July 25-28th, and you can check out info and registration for that camp at the link above.

We’ll see you at the start of summer training!

This past week featured a few test events, which we use periodically throughout the year to check on how our training is going.

From the 3000m run (done earlier this year) to the double pole test and the uphill run test, there is a lot of variety. As skiers, we’re put in positions where different formats and techniques and courses can necessitate a very diverse skillset! We can (and have) race long hilly courses in soft snow, and flat short courses on icy snow, all within the same weekend or series.

I think this is great because it means everyone is likely to have something to work on, and it does not pigeonhole skiers into needing one type of body or fitness profile to achieve the success they are striving for.

Testing can bring forth a lot of stress, but it doesn’t have to. I’ve realized over the years what kind of influence I can have as a coach, either positively or negatively, on testing. If I put a lot of stress on the “course record” or the big archive of all the times over the years, it really adds to a feeling of urgency to achieve something meaningful on paper. So while we used to offer a pint of ice cream to anyone that broke the course record on a test, and lay out the “time to beat” beforehand during the warmup, I’ve tried to move away from that.

MNC U and MNC Juniors together for Bolton!

Instead, I’ve focused on the fact that lots of our testing events have multiple benefits. For our uphill run test, we have an overall list of times. But you can also click tabs to view athletes with their specific times listed out race-by-race. This means you can see how your times have changed, without having the times of everyone else that finished near, behind, or ahead of you.

Our archive on the double pole test has tabs for each individual event. On those events is also a link to the video from that day, and it’s fun to look back in time and see how the technique of various skiers has improved over time. I’ve even gone back and made video edits showing the progression of a few skiers through the years.

Isaiah and Mia showing some good form in the morning DP test!

Taylor and Pat doing a little easy classic at the Range before biathlon, which has started back up in the evenings

This week, we had pretty great weather and good vibes for all of the tests. With school getting out and various skiers finishing up their years at different times, we’ve been having both AM and PM options. Funny how the morning sessions differ in focus and energy from the afternoon ones…for the double pole test, both groups totally crushed the test with energy and aggressiveness. But then we did a few repeats at a lower intensity afterward, and the differences between the groups was stark. The morning group was dialed-in, picking up some new technique gains and hungry for more challenge. The afternoon group were zombies, gently swaying in the breeze as their rollerskis shuffled back and forth…I’d say it is time for summer vacation!

MNC University didn’t do the DP test, but they did hammer out some DP intervals in Shelburne. Here is Coach Brandon laying out the plans.