Another great week in the books! This was a recovery week, which meant some easier terrain chosen for distance workouts but no shortage of adventure! Our one tougher interval session was at the venerable Mills Riverside Park, where a few hardy souls met up for an evening of ski bounding in the thick forest. Here’s a short YouTube compilation…there are some funny looks because for a few of the clips I hid in the woods (Russian-style) to try and capture the athlete’s technique when they didn’t know I was watching!
At the end of the hill the trail turns into singletrack and climbs a steep grade. I snapped this shot of Will in black and white and it looks like it could be set in any era. You could superimpose Bill Koch or Martha Rockwell onto that background in the mid seventies and it wouldn’t look a bit out of place. That’s the great thing about ski bounding: it’s required basically the same tools and physiology for the past 50+ years!
Will bounding through the woods. 1970 or 2015?
On Friday we took to the suburbs of Williston for a skate rollerski in Southridge. Sometimes there is a dedicated structure and plan for practice, and other days it is nice to just pick a few technique elements to work on and set off on a nice long cruise. The hills at the Range are mostly short and steep, and there is kind of a lack of flat ground. For that reason I often try to seek out different goals for workouts outside of those loops. On gradual hills you can work on efficient V1, skiing ‘big’ on long gradual downhills, and medium-gear techniques like kick doublepole. Oh…and you can work on your skatepark skills:
Greg drops in for some gnar
Chloe embraces the shred-factor
We have been capping our weeks with some adventurous sessions, and that continued on Saturday with a trip “down South” to Kingsland Bay. We ran for almost an hour, then switched into rollerski gear for a 1:20 double pole on rolling farmland. There were some intermediate sprint preems along the way to keep it interesting, along with some fierce and violent farm dogs…it was a beautiful day and after the ski most of us stuck around for some fishing, slack-lining and picnic-ing at the town beach. We were joined for the session by Callie Douglass, leader of the VT Eastern High School Championship team!
Coach Callie tests out her balance
The Burt boys and coach Adam went out to fish and caught some big weeds and sticks
Post-workout picnic on the lake!
After a nice relaxing week of mostly easier sessions and beautiful summer weather we are due for a change. Next week will be a volume week and rain is expected…time to toughen up!
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