Archive | Junior Blog

Eastern Cup Primer

By Adam Terko on 27 November, 2023 in Junior Blog, Uncategorized

Looking to find out more info about the Eastern Cups this year?

Curious how things will look from the MNC side of things?

Trying to navigate which licenses and memberships to get?

Want to sign up for the food table and contribute tasty snacks on race day?

All of this and more can be found in the 2023/2024 MNC Eastern Cup Primer! It’s time to get excited for race season!

MNC Eastern Cup Primer 23/24

Wheels to skis

By Adam Terko on 21 November, 2023 in Junior Blog

In years past, November was nearly a full month of grueling workouts in cold rain and sleet. Bounding in a snowstorm, rollerskiing in full winter gear, and training inside when the outdoors were too slippery…part of the reason New England skiers were tougher than the competition was a November full of challenges.

Don’t get me wrong, we are still absolutely the toughest skiers out there (personal opinion)! But a combination of global warming and snowmaking seems to have shortened our window of really brutal workouts. The temps stay manageable deeper into the fall season, making for comfortable (and safe) running and rollerskiing. Is this good for our planet in the big picture? Certainly not. But it has made a noticeable change to training as I think back to years (and decades) past.

To counteract the drought of early snowfall, ski areas have gotten more and more advanced with snowmaking or snow-saving techniques. With their big pit of last year’s snow stored over the summer, it’s pretty much a given that there will be SOME sort of skiing during the week of Thanksgiving at Craftsbury.

So instead of slugging along in the sleet and snow on rollerskis or on foot, we’ve been granted a reprieve from the worst of November for a few seasons in a row now. The training stays comfortable for longer, and yet we also have more security of early snow to ski on. Is that really the best thing? Are we losing something quintessentially “New England” that builds character and hardiness? Probably. But even more concerning is the fact that this weather seems to be only trending warmer. The current “window” of November is in a sweet spot for the dryland-to-on-snow transition, but there is a limit to everything. Even now, snowmaking opportunities with cold air are scattered throughout warmer and rainier days.

Is there a call to action here? Well for one thing, we live in a part of the world with lots of awareness of rising temperatures and ways to get involved. It’s easier to motivate for nearly anything when you are directly affected.

To zoom in much closer, we should all be very grateful and thankful to the hardworking ski areas, grooming staff, and snowmakers who are always working harder than they need to in order to give us more snow than nature is providing. Be sure to let them know how much you appreciate their work! Donate a little extra to a ski area when you buy your season pass, bake some cookies or buy a cup of coffee for these folks, and if nothing else give a wave and a big “thank you” when you see them!

Here’s a short video from our first ski of the winter. Thanks to Sleepy Hollow for creating a pretty sweet 120m loop of groomed snow!

Stoneground skis are back

By Adam Terko on 12 November, 2023 in Junior Blog, Masters Blog

If you sent your skis down to Caldwell Sport to get ground, they are back! The stonegrinding fee is $75/pair thanks to our volume of skis and can be paid via the link below:

Stonegrinding Payment 2023

This form can also be found under the “Registration” page on the MNC website.

Our $75 price to MNC members is based on a combination of ski volume discounts from Caldwell Sport, time and fuel to/from Putney 2x (once for drop-off/once for pick-up), time spent batching/organizing/labelling/spreadsheeting skis for grinds.

Retail cost of stonegrinding through Caldwell Sport is $100/pair.

To coordinate ski pickup or drop-off, please email coach Adam.

To take care of your freshly-ground skis, you should put in several layers of wax. There are a few different methods listed online, and some seem complex. For a simple solution, try the following:

Scrape off the thin travel wax rolled onto the stoneground skis
Apply a layer of cold wax like Toko Blue or Swix PS6. Then scrape and brush.
Repeat that step one more time (cold wax, scrape, and brush)
Apply a warmer layer such as Toko Yellow or Swix PS10. Then scrape and brush.

Repeat that whole cycle (2 cold, 1 warm) at least twice. Then finish or “harden” your bases by applying 2-4 layers of your coldest hard glide wax such as Swix PS5, or Toko Blue with X-Cold Powder, to make the bases more resilient.

As long as you are consistent with waxing your bases throughout the winter (using traditional paraffin layers, not just liquids or sprays) your skis will be in great shape!

Fans of the Food Table

By Adam Terko on 12 November, 2023 in Junior Blog, Uncategorized

4pm is a tough time to exercise. A little reading into training literature will go so far as to recommend 3-4pm as the least ideal window for exercise within the realm of a normal day. This is especially true for teenage athletes in high school.

Take the great book “Roar” for example, which states:

“Most everyone has a lull around 3:00pm.; it has to do with our circadian rhythm, which causes a dip in core temperature.”

Lunch is far enough in the past that the fuel you got in the cafeteria is no longer sufficient for training…and dinner is quickly approaching, sending signals that the body needs more food, and fast.

But there’s psychology at play too, which goes beyond the body’s needs from a fueling sense. Mentally and emotionally, by 4pm athletes have dealt with the busy schedules and anxiety of a long school day (plus travel to the training site), and having to switch to “go time” for ski practice is not always easy. What’s an ideal way to set training off on the right foot? Get some fuel in the tank!

Again, from Roar:

“You want that preworkout snack to accomplish three goals. One, provide fuel so you can go into your workout fully energized. Two, help minimize the muscle breakdown that occurs during your workout while maximizing the training adaptation (getting fitter and stronger) you want. Three, make you feel good mentally and physically.”

Armed with some scientific information on the best pre-workout snacks, what kind of snacks teenagers are likely to pick up and eat, and the cost of certain snacks, the food table was born earlier in the fall.

What is the food table? It’s not complicated…in fact, it’s just what it sounds like! A folding table placed prominently trailside, near a common gathering point. Sometimes when it is most important to consume different types of fuel over the course of a workout, such as carbs and a little protein before/sugars during/carbs and more protein after, the table will be divided into “BEFORE/DURING/AFTER” sections. But mostly it’s just a table of snacks, and people stopping to eat at any point in the workout is better than never stopping at all, or having the “perfect ratio” of nutrients.

Food table early in the fall

It probably took me too long to realize this, but to play around with an old adage, “sometimes you just have to provide someone the fish, rather than teaching them how to fish.”

I’ve tried the route of sending emails and posting recommendations to athletes and parents extolling the virtues of having a snack in your bag for the ride to practice, and a snack for the ride home as well (teaching how to fish). But life is busy and those seem to be easily-overlooked concepts.

As an alternative, when you put a box of Teddy Grahams, some Nutella and pretzels, and a box of fruit snacks on a table next to the trail (giving a fish), it’s amazing how many skiers will fuel up before, during, and after the session. When there’s a cooler with a bottle of chocolate milk ready for after the workout, nobody walks away without having some recovery nutrition in their system.

While this takes some ownership off the athlete, in my mind the trade-off is worth the extra effort and cost to provide snacking options. Food is fuel, and we all need it to survive and thrive. Having a table of snacks omnipresent at training sends a positive message: we SHOULD be eating before practice, during practice, and after practice. And this fuel doesn’t have to always be expensive, trendy, or perfectly balanced in nutrients…if you need fuel, something is better than nothing. Whether you bring fuel for training or not, something will be available to you. No workout needs to be done on an empty stomach.

But there’s more. The food table had an unintended benefit that started to become apparent after a few weeks of its presence. In short, the food table became the “water cooler” of the ski training office. It became a gathering point, a socializing area, and a catalyst for putting people in closer proximity to one another. For a team coming together from different schools, towns, and backgrounds, that ends up being extremely powerful.

When you are at the food table you are stopped: there’s no difference in skier speed or ability. Food brings people together, whether it’s a group of hunters trying to nab a buffalo to provide sustenance for a year, or a group of skiers passing around gummy bears between a set of intervals.

So when we had some team space at the Community Center last week, I got some paint and set out the food table: it was time to make it our own. Where will it go next? Wherever we are training!

Skiing “home” from NY

By Adam Terko on 23 October, 2023 in Junior Blog

Last year I took a day in the fall to do a scenic drive around northern New York. Armed with a coffee and apple fritter from Stewart’s (opinion: Stewart’s makes great apple fritters, but not the greatest coffee) I spent a few hours zig-zagging through towns you likely have never heard of…Lewis, Reber, Boquet…with a phone map on the dash, a notepad in hand, and an eye for wider road shoulders and safe downhills, I created a route that would take us from Elizabethtown all the way to the Essex/Charlotte ferry.

When we held our fall training camp in Lake Placid a few weeks later, the final workout was to ski all the way home from camp. It was a success with beautiful weather, amazing new roads to see after so many trips to Cochrans and the Range, and a fun challenge to conquer.

It was a memorable enough endeavor that the consensus was that this ski should be an annual event, even if we aren’t at a camp in the area.

Although the weather and foliage hasn’t been as epic this fall, we nonetheless got up early on Sunday and drove over to Elizabethtown. One thing about an long early drive: when you’re skiing all the way back to Vermont, it makes the return trip in the van a lot shorter (well, if you’re an athlete doing the skiing, that is!).

We experienced chilly temps, with some donning long spandex for the first time this year. But we met some new fans, including a friendly resident of Hyde Road near Lewis, who came out to say hello and tell us her son was an XC runner at Bates. She was therefore somewhat familiar with rollerskiers, which was not what we expected for the area! She was even kind enough to offer us hot coffee or water, which we politely declined and continued on our way.

Starting off fairly bundled-up with temps around 40F. This is the climb up from Elizabethtown to Lewis, NY

We gradually made our way down from the hill High Peaks region and into the west side of the Champlain Valley, where we saw some of my favorite houses and spots ever on Leaning Road near Wadhams. The temps were now comfortable, and the kilometers were ticking by.

“Leaning Road” in Wadhams, an area full of beautiful colonial-era farms and houses

Emily and Virginia cruising along! The foliage was still hanging on nicely in spots

After crossing Rt22 at the Whallonsburg Grange, we approached what is possibly one of the most scenic roads in the valley. Whallons Bay road steadily climbs out of town, and enters rolling fields for a few miles as it crests and then trends downward to the shores of Lake Champlain. If you’re heading east, you ski into sight of the Green Mountains and the lake. Behind you, the Adirondacks ride majestically in the distance. You can’t beat it!

Now THAT is a view for your workout! You just have to remember to turn around if you’re the one skiing!

The squad taking their “album cover” photo upon a farm fence

From Whallonsburg it’s all flat and downhill to the Essex Ferry. We timed it perfectly…or, almost perfectly. But the kiosk attendant was nice enough to hold the boat for us as they were JUST getting ready to shove-off. We enjoyed the 25 minute break across a smooth ride.

We made it into Charlotte in the early afternoon, but our ski wasn’t over just yet. From the eastern shore of the lake everyone popped their rollerskis back on and began climbing out of the Champlain Valley from the Vermont side, heading up Church Hill in Charlotte and toward the foothills of the Green Mountains. We then turned north and made it to the Linseisen home in Shelburne where we were greeted by hot cider, baked goodies, and other snacks! What a great day!