UVM Journal: Coming Home, Training Up

by Eric Carter
November 3, 2005

When I wrote my last update from UVM, the team had just completed the heaviest volume week so far. Following that, we were given a week entirely without formal practice. Before the week off, I wondered what I would do with all my free time. It was like I had an entire extra day! However, as the week went by, I felt like I was as busy as before. I had a semester worth of English journaling and portfolio work to complete by Friday. Fortunately, I was able to finish up all my work and got the chance to take a quick trip home over the weekend. Despite the fact that I usually really enjoy practice, having all that free time was great.

Everyone asked why I was flying all the way back to Minnesota for a long weekend. I had to explain that I wouldn’t be going home for Thanksgiving because of a training camp and that my Christmas break would only be about two weeks long because of racing. I was really glad to be home for the weekend because I was able to get together with a bunch of my friends, most of who go to the U of M. I was also able to have a nice birthday party with my family. I stopped by Southwest to say hi to my old coaches, as well as Hoigaards to pick up a few things, say hi to everyone, and drool over the sexy new Atomic skis. It was kind of hard to head back out to Vermont with such great weather in Minnesota. Coming down through the clouds to see that it was still raining was a bit depressing.

The next week was incredibly busy getting back into the swing of things, even though it was a relatively low volume week at 11.5 hrs. Our next cycle will build up to a 20 hr. week for our Thanksgiving camp. Training, combined with my second physics exam of the year made for a VERY busy Monday and Tuesday.  On Wednesday I took my physics test and got an 80%, which was a pretty good birthday present. The team also gave me a tasty chocolate cake.

On Saturday morning, we woke up for a 5k walk for breast cancer research. Our team is backed by Excel poles so we all wore Excel t-shirts and used their Nordic walking poles. I was actually surprised when I started to sweat walking up the hill. Maybe there is something behind Nordic walking after all…
During our Friday morning bounding session (in the rain) I got a chance to work with Al (our coach) on my bounding technique. Doing some bounding without poles really helped improve my bounding all around. I really worked on trying to concentrate on dropping down and then letting my body react and bound up rather than just trying to push off. I can’t believe the technique advances I have already made since I got here. Al has had me make changes with everything from bounding to classic and skate skiing. I feel like a beginner skier when we analyze the videotapes from practice and go over all the things I need to work on. I think it just kind of occurred to me that I will always be improving my technique and that it will never be 100% perfect.
    
Sunday morning was our first classic time trial of the season. When I looked out the window at 6:00 am it was raining steadily and the temp was just below 40 degrees. We did a two 5 km classic races, reverse pursuit style up Bolton Access Road. Bolton Valley Ski Area is a downhill area on one of the mountains and the access road just goes up and up without any breaks. As we drove out of Burlington, we noticed a few cars coming towards us that actually had a few inches of snow on them! As we got further into the mountains we saw more and more cars with snow on top and started to get excited. When we got to the base of the mountain we could actually see the snowline up in the trees. We convinced our coach to drive up to the downhill area to see how much it was snowing there. The whole mountain was covered in clouds so we couldn’t see. At the top of the access read, there were at least 6 or 8 inches on the ground and it was still coming down hard. We took a few minutes to throw a few snowballs and I took a few blurry pictures but then it was time for business. We mass started the first race about half a kilometer from the base of the mountain so it was an all out double pole sprint (for me anyway) to get across the flat to the mountain. I was trailing about 10 meters behind the rest of the guys when we hit the first hill and then started to catch up. Over the next few k I caught two of my teammates but started to cramp up as I chased for 4th place so I dropped off the pace.  I ended up taking 6th (out of 7) in the first race. The second race went even better. We started right at the base of the hill so I didn’t have to worry about the double poling. I tried as hard as I could to catch the guys in front of me and managed to take 5th place. After a quick cool down we were back in the van in warm dry cloths. The workout was a pretty good indicator that while my striding is all right, my double pole needs a lot of work.
    
Last week, we increased the volume. I had 12.5 hours scheduled and ended up very close to that. On Tuesday night, the rain that soaked us to the bone in the morning turned to snow and it started began snowing heavily. Wednesday morning we drove to Bolton Valley Ski Resort. At the base of the downhill ski area there was about a foot of fresh powder. Unfortunately, no grooming had been done so we weren't really able to do a workout but it was fun to crash through the powder as we skied in tracks for a small 5k loop. The kick was a little tough to dial in but it was very cool to be skiing before Halloween! After two hours of fun in the snow, we headed back to UVM so people could get to class. We made it out to Bolton again on Thursday afternoon, but already the snow was starting to melt. The tracks were fast but little streams running down the mountain cut big holes into the trail.

Over the weekend, we had lots of fun getting dressed up for Halloween. My pirate costume was fairly simple, but it took about 45 minutes of shredding sheets and wrapping to get Chris’ roommate Anders, looking like a Mummy. We also had two high intensity workouts this weekend. On Friday morning we did a bounding workout at the Ethan Allen National Guard base. We did 5 x 3 minutes bounding uphill at max effort. It was a very tough workout and was designed to get our lactate levels as high as possible. Most of the team was testing around 9 – 10. I was not feeling as good because of a lack of sleep and scored a 5.5, the lowest of the day. Sunday was skate intervals at Ethan Allen. We did 4 x 3 km at max effort. My times were about the same as the last time but I was still suffering from not enough sleep. (Due to some roommate issues, more on that later)

Hopefully the snow will stop melting here and we will get another chance to ski again soon. Thanks for reading and watch for Chris’ entry next week. Enjoy the pictures!