Mansfield Nordic Club

Congrats to Ava Thurston who is the Burlington Free Press “Athlete of the Year” for the second year in a row! Hattie Barker was an honorable mention, too. Awesome work by these two across their high school careers.

Both are on their way to the next steps in their career as Ava will be skiing for Dartmouth, and Hattie for UNH, in the upcoming season.

You can check out a scanned version of the article below (thanks to Heidi Hill)!

AvaBFPAthleteofYear2022

Ava and Hattie finishing 1st and 3rd at Junior Nationals in the 5km Freestyle!

One of the big goals this season is to really treat each type of week (Intensity, Medium, Volume, Recovery) like it is designed to be…last year we got to the end of the summer and had a few cases of overtraining, which was honestly new to me. This group was motivated like no other, and that was actually getting a little dangerous.

A way to avoid burnout and overtraining is to vary the type of stimulus and amount of training. This season we’ve needed to be even more thoughtful about how this is done, since several NENSA camps and programs came out later than usual…meaning all of a sudden weeks are out of alignment with the MNC training plan. I’m really grateful for a communicative and pragmatic group that’s willing to make adjustments: for example, REG camp was a lot of intensity, so with 6 MNC skiers attending that camp (and needing recovery after) it meant a good amount of athletes sat out the uphill run test this past Wednesday and have rescheduled it.

For those that attended Bolton on Wednesday, it was a day of many PR efforts and even a few stellar first-time attempts! We were even joined by UVM skier Libby Tuttle for the day. Always cool to have older and experienced skiers giving our tests and sessions a go and getting to say hello to the crew.

One of the pro teams in Norway, Team Elon Vests, likes to make posts of skier videos with epic, inspiring, often silly and over-the-top quotes…so I wrote them down on some pieces of paper, and while I went to the top with my pencil and paper to record times,Sara read them to the team before starting the race. If you need some inspiration, some of our favorites are:

• WE DO NOT STOP WHEN WE ARE TIRED, WE STOP WHEN WE ARE DONE
• THE SHORTCUT IS A LIE
• THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO DO THINGS: THE RIGHT WAY, AND AGAIN
• UP BEFORE THE ENEMY
• WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH, YOU DON’T RISE TO THE OCCASION, YOU SINK TO THE LEVEL OF YOUR TRAINING

So silly quotes, aside, the group really did things the “right way” and showed that the hard work of the summer is paying off big-time.

With some resting from training camp and other giving it their all, everyone got back to the same page right on Saturday, when the group had some L3 classic intervals at Road 101. And when I say the group, I mean the GROUP. I don’t know if we’ve ever had this many skiers attend a weekend session that wasn’t a race…I made a quick video of the start of our first interval below just to illustrate. With a workout this big, I reminded everyone that a key element would be just the logistics of dealing with the van shuttle from the top of the hill, and staying on task. Props to Rick who spent the whole workout just driving up and down in the van shuttling skiers back to the start. Meanwhile I tired my legs out biking back and forth up the hill to capture video.

Of course, with Mountain Camps now beginning this week, everyone is bound to get out of sync again. But it’s ok, as the hard work is being done regardless. I’m very excited by how well the team has been communicating and thinking about their training both in the big-picture sense and in relation to individual small goals.

With COVID affecting so much of the past few years, it has felt like a loooong time since we’ve had what I’d deem a “quintessential” week of MNC training. That means sweaty (and black fly-infested) morning workouts at the Range, groups gathering for snacks and lunch at the Jericho Town Green after practice, squeezing in some emails or other work in the early afternoon, meeting-up for a PM workout in Richmond or Williston, and refreshing the list of training logs to see who has recorded/reported on their activity for the day.

I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was about last week that felt so odd, and then it hit me. Last week felt like our first normal or just ordinary week of summer training since probably early August of 2019. Like everyone else in the world I just lost track of time and space over the course of the pandemic. How nice to feel a sense of normalcy even at such a strange and unique place as the Range!

Group shot: over 40 skiers strong and closing-in on 50 with signups trickling in!

Shoutout to our Tues/Thurs coaches Rosemary, Emily, and Rick. And don’t forget about Sara and Kirsten!

Being in a bit of a routine at the Range has also meant bringing back some of our favorite workouts and drills. From grass skiing to agility courses to relay races we’ve been able to incorporate a lot of different activities. With a really big group and a really wide spread of abilities and backgrounds, there needs to be a lot more emphasis on WHAT happens each day.

You can’t just show up and ski, and for some athletes the Tues/Thurs sessions may be the only rollerskiing of the week. So coaching becomes a puzzle piece trying to put together:

• A session that will be fun and engaging for everyone
• Drills or skills that provide a lot of learning for newer skiers, and challenge for returning skiers at the same time
• Components that add excitement or “hype” like relays or team challenges
• Work that provides the kind of fundamental ski skills that can be carried into fall sports and/or winter teams (even if they aren’t MNC)
• Workouts that teach more than just technique…for example a mock pre-race day so skiers can have a sense of what a warmup or a course preview might look like in the winter, rather than learning it on-site at an Eastern Cup!

A unique thing we like to do is the “wet leaves striding” drill. Maybe someday I’ll come up with a better name for it. Basically, rollerskis always have perfect kick because of the ratchet, and you can get bad habits always skiing with kick. In order to counteract that, we do an activity where I spread ferns all over a hill on the trail. Then I soak those leaves in water. THEN I spray [biodegradable] camp soap all over the leaves to make them even more slippery.

Skiers do some speeds next to the leaves, then try going right through them.

The drill has evolved over time, and I’ve learned better ways to teach it: what to describe, how to order the operations, the cues to remind people of. As we’ve done one activity, the athletes have become better skiers (I hope) and I’ve become a better coach (I hope).

Wet leaf cruisin’

Of course, we’ve still found time for some unique adventures. This past weekend we managed to fit 14 bikes into the MNC trailer (not just for winter use, mind you!) and scoot on up to Craftsbury where we met their Juniors for a triathlon of skiing, running, and biking. It was a super sunny and hot day that ended with some old fashioned ice cream churning to beat the heat. Thanks to the Craftsbury coaches and Juniors for having us over!

No wax, just bikes for now

Homemade ice cream!