US SKi Team in Lake Placid

Hey y'all-

Hope everyone is doing well back at school. I thought I would use this opportunity to get this blog rolling again for all those people who are interested in what we are doing as part of the Bates Nordic team (which this summer consisted of mostly Sam, Harry, and I with some other posts here and there). However there has been some interest from my family and I'm sure everybody else's families would love to see what their kiddies are doing with nordic skiing.

So anyway, as most know, I am here in Lake Placid training with the US Ski Team, CXC, and Sun Valley. I will keep it short but here is kinda what we have been doing:

Friday: short run with the US Ski Team...got a chance to talk with Andy Newell for a good half and hour about World Cup stuff, Jordi St. John, wanting to spend more time in Rangeley, and keeping it real in the nord skiing world.

Saturday: VO2 max double-pole intervals (3 x 4 minutes (equal recovery) then a 10 minute break, then another set of 3 x 4 intervals). I ended being able to hold onto the front guys for first two intervals of each set but the last one would kick my @$$. This was about 2 hours. In the afternoon we did strength led by Whitcomb which is no easy task when he talks about how much more other good skiers are doing than us right at that moment. This was about 1 hour then we played a huge game of soccer for about 1.5 hours after that.

Sunday: (not yet arrived) We are double poling for 1.5 hours and then running for another 1.5 and then nhave the afternoon off in which I will be sleeping and attempting to study for my Oceanography test.

Monday: THE BIG DAY...time trial up the Whiteface toll road to the top of Whiteface Mountain, the 4th highest mountain in the Adirondacks.

What I learned from this camp: US Ski Team members are monster double polers and skiers in general, Bird and Newell can put time on people whenever they want, whenever they put it into their brains that they want to go faster. They are also a lot stronger. They are also this way because of their schedules. They sleep, train, eat, take ice baths/spin, nap, eat, train, eat, rest (watch baseball), and then sleep, making money the whole time. It has been really good training as well and also being able to talk to people like Freeman, Newell, Cook, Whitcomb, Igor (SAm's old coach...who you still cant understand what he is saying).

I put some pictures of the camp in. See you soon. THE SEASON STARTS ON TUESDAY!!! SHAKE AND BAKE!!!