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Summer begins!

If the recent heat isn’t enough of an indicator, the sound of poles clicking away on the rollerski track in Jericho certainly means that SUMMER is here. It was great to start up official summer programming with a crew of 40 athletes working hard. While we started off with mostly games like mini-bike races and tug-of-war, it wasn’t long before we were racing through agility courses on skate skis and busting out some core on the grass with Coach Kirsten.

On Tuesday after practice we held a team meeting in the Jericho Community Center. While not everyone was able to attend, it was still a very good experience and one which I’d like to try and do more often, regardless of attendance. Any number of athletes is a beneficial one when you’re having a good discussion. We talked about team goals, team communication, health and body image, social media, leadership, and group dynamics. While individual athletes may be familiar with their own goal pyramids for a year/season, this time we came up with a goal pyramid as a group that could apply to the whole MNC team.

How does a goal pyramid work? The top areas of the pyramid are often tough-but-achievable goals, and the lower, wider building blocks are goals along the way that all contribute to the upper goals.

I like to try and work backward through a year, with the top of the pyramid representing ski-specific goals and late-season stuff.

I also try to encourage a balance of “outcome” (results, times, tec) and “process” (lifestyle, practice, conscientious) goals throughout.

Here is a typed version of the goal pyramid from this meeting, which is now tacked-up at the Range.

In addition to big-picture things like team meetings and goals, we also continued to work hard in everyday training. On Saturday we did the double pole test for the second time this year, and many athletes saw a big improvement or even PR times compared to May. Doing the test before a lot of rollerskiing (last time) didn’t lead to the best times, but that was important for remembering the perspective of it all…we are training to improve ourselves first and foremost, so I encouraged athletes to compare their May time from this year to their first test time last year, rather than their best time from what may have been a whole summer of rollerskiing.

This past Saturday saw a slew of PR efforts! We had Nico, Elsa, Kai, Taylor, Hattie, and Julia all notch new personal bests, and 8 skiers completing the test for the very first time.

We switched it back to sneakers for Sunday morning, embracing the sun and the summer heat by going for a long run that included a trip out and back on the Colchester Causeway. Often, skiers from Burlington are travelling out to the hills of Richmond and Jericho for training, so it was time to switch it up and venture into the urban lands for some fun and different training. Now time to rest up and prepare for some big volume!

Housekeeping notes:

If you haven’t yet signed up for summer, you can do so HERE

Juniors: sign up for the Lost Nation Roll (Sunday the 3rd) at THIS LINK. We will have a van trip to the race!

We REALLY are looking to fill up our summer camps! Please give them a look HERE.

If you haven’t yet ordered an MNC sports bra and are interested, you can do so HERE…the order is going through Tuesday afternoon!

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