The U16 Festival and Eastern High School Championships are a highlight of the season for many skiers. These events are competitive, fun, memorable, and pivotal to the development of skiers in our region.
As with many things these days, costs for these trips are escalating. In an effort to cover more of the line items like lodging, bus transport, and team entry fees (while keeping the costs for each trip as close to past years as possible) the Vermont Nordic Ski Team is having a fundraising raffle!
Through the link below, you can make donations to the teams/trips and be entered to win season passes to awesome Nordic areas like Sleepy Hollow, Craftsbury, Wild Wings, Rikert, Kingdom Trails, and Woodstock Nordic Center. Check it out, and help support the future of skiing in Vermont and New England!
On the afternoon of Sunday, October 29th you can stop by the Community Center of Jericho to find all sorts of Nordic needs…used skis, boots, poles, and apparel will be available for purchase. The swap runs from 12-5pm (with the first hour for MNC members).
This is your chance to clean out all the Nordic ski gear in your basement earn some money, help MNC, and outfit local skiers with gear. You can drop-off items on Saturday, October 28th from 4-6pm.
After the event? Stop by to pick up your unsold items. If you’d like to keep them out of your closet, garage, or basement, MNC will bring them to the Cochran’s Ski Swap the following weekend, and/or consider them a donation.
Come to the swap to make sure you have the equipment you need for the ’23/‘24 season and beyond.
In addition to traditional ski swap items we will have our full stock of BKL rental skis, boots, and poles from Alpina to get younger skiers all set for winter.
If you would like to bring your own items to the swap you may choose to contribute either 25%, 50%, or 100% of your sold items to MNC.
Item drop-off is on Saturday, October 28th from 4-6pm at the Community Center. Additionally, we will announce drop-off options with Coach Adam in the MNC trailer in Jericho.
Please keep in mind that this swap/sale is for Nordic-specific skis, boots, poles, and apparel only! Thanks.
Items contributed will need to be registered for tracking and sale purchases. You may fill out a hard copy of this information on-site, but it is preferred that you use the form below to provide details of your gear and equipment (up to 5 items per form).
Online gear intake is now closed. You may do consignment on Saturday with an in-person form.
Interested in volunteering to help work at the swap? You can find a volunteer sign-up form below. Thanks for your interest in helping make the sale a success!
The cool nights and bright, crisp days have made for amazing training this past week! From leaves crunching under the rollerski wheels, to colorful backdrops on dirt road runs, you can’t really beat this time of year.
After a busy weekend with two races in Lake Placid, it was nice to take a step back and focus on some basics…on Tuesday and Thursday we stuck to mostly easy distance skiing and technique work at the Range, and we visited Sleepy Hollow for some running intervals on Wednesday.
We ran into Eli in the parking lot and asked him about some trail work, and the date is now official: join us this coming Wednesday, 10/4, for some trailwork (limb trimming, debris clearing, log hauling) at Sleepy! We’ll go for a short run at 4pm (30-45 minutes) and then head out to the Sap Run and Upper Saddle trails. Tools will be provided.
On Saturday, a group piled into the van and headed to one of our favorite roads for smooth, gradual, scenic classic skiing…Road 101 at Smuggs! The views never disappoint, and the striding was looking pro.
Behind the scenes…if you’ve ever wondered how some of our smoothest video clips get created, Sara is shown here demonstrating the way it’s done. This is how the coaches get their speed workouts in; lots of running at rollerski pace!
Nothing beats a Vermont dirt road in the fall, and while many of our XC running athletes got plenty of strides in at race over the weekend, a smaller group got out for a scenic on-foot tour of Richmond and Huntington via Wes White hill, Mayo Rd, and Dugway Rd.
We’re heading into another busy week. With a government shutdown avoided, we’re happy to be able to continue skiing on the rollerski loop which is ever more critical as daylight fades. Speaking of fading daylight and changing seasons…
The days are getting shorter, and so it’s time for the annual re-post of this article from Fasterskier outlining safety tips and guidelines from US Ski and Snowboard with regard to rollerskiing on open roads.
We have an order on the way for several small lights that can be affixed to helmets or modified to fit on water belts during training sessions. These are ideally to be used in a situation where athletes do not have/forget to bring a light of their own going forward this fall. MNC encourages all rollerskiers to purchase a small “bicycle or running light” either online or at a local store, whether you are a Junior or Masters athlete. The cheaper options for these are only a couple of dollars and could literally save your life!
See below for a screenshot from a recent US Ski Team email. In his note to athletes regarding their upcoming Park City training camp:
In addition to always wearing high-visibility clothing on the roads, please be conscious of your routes and skiing organization (single file vs across a lane).
When we rollerski, we not only represent MNC as a club, but our sport as a whole. For the most part, we live in an extremely rollerski-friendly part of the country…not everyone is so lucky, and that access/friendliness is not a guarantee or a right.
This past weekend was the Castle Conquest, a big rollerski racing event in Lake Placid. The weekend featured a skate sprint at the new rollerski track on Saturday, and the legendary Climb to the Castle race on Sunday.
MNC partnered with the team from Gould Academy to share in some housing, meals, and camaraderie. It was fun to see another team operates a lot like ours…rolling in with coolers and boxes of food, coaches willing to crash on the floor and couches, teams groggily getting their gear ready to race early in the morning under constant prodding…thanks to Ben, Jacob and the whole Gould squad for connecting with us!
There was fierce competition at the race from the likes of SMS T2 (including a few Olympians and World Cup skiers) as well as local Juniors and athletes from Paul Smiths College. There was a noticeable lack of collegiate participation, which I touched on in another post, but that didn’t stop the racing action from being intense.
The “royal court” format meant everyone raced a qualifier and multiple heats. Taylor got to go up against World Champs sprint medalist Julia Kern…pretty cool!
Both Sara and I were running around frantically capturing video and photos from the Saturday of sprint racing…with a course that loops around to make for great spectating, it was inspiring to see MNC and other Junior athletes not only racing head-to-head with others their age, but also folks like Ben Ogden, Julia Kern, and Lauren Jortberg…it’s a very small world of Nordic skiing, and these athletes are all incredibly approachable. A couple of our juniors recently stopped-in at the Richmond farmers market to get some dinner from Ben Ogden’s new weekly hotdog stand. That’s about as “old school Vermont” as it can get for a skier.
Jonah and Lorenzo found themselves battling in multiple heats!
Junior women’s podium. Virginia, Elsa, and hey, that’s Ava!
Junior men’s podium, Ellis + Anders + Niko
We competed in this race last year, and it was cool to see that on the same skis and in the same weather conditions, those that raced prior (Elsa, Anders, Niko) all had significantly faster qualifying times than their 2022 efforts! Spoiler alert: the same would hold true for the next day!
Video from the qualifier, featuring mostly MNC skiers (+ a few special celebrities and guests)
Sunday brought the epic Climb to the Castle. In contrast to a speedy sprint with a rapid downhill finish at max mph, Sunday morning was a grueling 5-mile ascent of Whiteface Mountain.
This year, everyone was greeted by clear skies, which can be rare at this event! The MNC squad had another great day…some tagged onto World Cup skiers to claw their way up the hill. Others joined packs of fellow Juniors or Masters, and some spent part of the race in between groups stoically grinding their way up the hill.
In all cases, the efforts were incredible and inspiring. A special shout-out to Duncan who competed in his first rollerski race this day. What a way to kick things off! Most hills this season will feel quite short by comparison! Duncan even scored a podium in the 5km race to start off his rollerski race career on a strong note.
