Saturday at 6:30 in the morning we drive down a one and a
half lane road with no guard rail. The boys are smashed into the backseat of my
mom’s Subaru Forester talking about rollerskiing up this road, or even worse,
down it. As we navigate the cracks and bumps, Trace launches into a discussion
of GoPros and chickens. Chicken’s have incredibly stable heads, he tells us,
therefore strapping a GoPro onto a chicken would be your best bet for catching
any sort of bumpy ride on video. This is the kid that duck hunts on the
weekends, has (finally) chosen Nordic over football, and has been known to wear
full camouflage long underwear as his race suit. Connor eats a Cliff bar and
laughs along, his hair sticking straight up from oversleeping and almost
missing the workout. Earlier in the summer, he considered dying his hair blue
(we luckily talked him out of it). Calvin sits in the middle, ever prepared,
but not prepared for the bonk awaiting him several hours down the trail. I
can’t stop laughing and I exchange a glance with my mom, knowing it’s going to
be another one of “those days”.
We met up with the younger group at the trailhead and split
up- Nancy and Laurel with the older boys and Bryce with the U16s. Our day would
consist of a run/hike loop that we had been preparing for all summer. It ended
up being a success for both groups. I finished the day with the realization
that I only have one more week left of the best job ever.
When people ask me what I’ve been doing this summer for work
I respond, “Yelling at kids to get their hips forward,” which is basically my
summer job in a nutshell. In reality, it’s more complicated.
Two summers ago, I got an assistant coaching job through our
local club working with my mom and Bryce, one of her former athletes. It was great,
so this summer I decided to try it again, but with a little more vigor. I
wanted to be more involved in the planning and execution of the workouts than
before, which was a little nerve racking as many of our athletes aren’t much
younger than I am. With some confidence and careful planning, I earned the
respect of our athletes and continued to have the best summer of my life.
Mammoth Lakes, California is known for its alpine and
snowboard culture. Nordic skiing is very small here. All of the junior programs
were initiated by my mom, including our small club team that operates
separately from the high school program. Our club had eight athletes in it this
summer with a very wide range of abilities, personalities, and levels of
dedication. High school is challenging, at least it was for me. In the midst of
going to three different schools, skiing was the one thing that was always
there. Although our athletes are very different, they are friends and have
enormous respect for each other. Skiing is there for them too.
High school athletes are at a pivotal moment in their skiing
careers. They are starting more intense strength programs, learning nuances in
technique, figuring out how to pace, and generally training harder. Amidst all
of this, they are realizing that dedication pays off. They are learning how to
be a team. They are starting to grow into the people they will become. And
coaches? They do their best to teach, laugh along with the hilarity of it all,
and enjoy the ride.
Yes, I did spend a lot of time on the side of the road
yelling at kids to get their hips forward. I also taught them how to navigate
the mountains. I watched them make technique breakthroughs. I saw them blow up
in intervals and learn the hard lesson. I tried to motivate and push them
through hard strength and interval workouts. It paid off seeing how much they
have all grown. One of our younger athletes who weighs 95 pounds, wears glasses,
and will have his AA degree when he graduates high school, completed four hill
repeats last week, smiling. At the beginning of the summer, he could barely run
a mile and complained on a daily basis. That alone is reason to celebrate.
People often ask my mom, a two time Olympian and fourteen
time national champion, why she no longer really competes. She responds that
she loves coaching and hanging out with teenagers. While I am very much still
in my own college career and am still trying to figure the whole darn sport
out, coaching has done something special for my own skiing. Teaching technique has
allowed me to work on fine tuning my own in order to demonstrate and better
explain. Sometimes I have to suck up my ego and do the right thing when I am
doing a long ski or intervals with them in order to lead by example. More than
anything, coaching has given me the opportunity to give back to a sport and lifestyle that
has taught and given me so much. Watching our athletes undergo that same process
leaves me inspired. Their smiles when they have PR’d or finally kicked at the
right time in classic reminds me of something familiar.
I am looking forward to going back to my own team and
coaches at Bates. As our team’s season approaches, I will wish my team back in
Mammoth the best for their own season. I know the hard work will pay off in
more ways than they can imagine.
Happy training!
-Laurel
Happy training!
-Laurel
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| Roll/hike overdistance |
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| Post ski walking intervals aways called for rope swinging (and capes apparently?) |
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| Adventuring with the older boys |
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| The dysfunction of a typical day |
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| Trace on top of the world |
