An Ode to Pork

This morning we headed out the Steese Highway, about an hour from town to enjoy the new pavement, and quiet roads for the last 30 or so miles leading to Twelvemile Summit.  Right now, this has to be the best place to rollerski in the Interior.  Rolling roads with varying pitches as you work your way up the Chatanika valley, almost no traffic (even less in the fall), and great views over the valley.  The crew skied 30-50 KMs with some adding an hour or so run at the end up to 12-mile summit and then out part of the Circle-Fairbanks trail.  It was an awesome OD, and a great way to finish the first month of our base period over the summer.  Well worth the drive!

Now it's time for a recovery week, to recharge the batteries before another solid bout of training in July.

Getting to Know the 'New' Race Trails

The layout of our racing trails at Birch Hill has undergone some subtle yet significant changes over the past couple of years after a good 4 or 5 (or maybe 10?) years of pretty common routes and trail combinations.  With the coming Junior Nationals in Fairbanks, we intend to know these trails inside and out.  The dryland season is just as valuable and perhaps even more valuable for learning the subtleties of the courses, as the variety of activities (bounding, ski-walking, running) can give us another lens to learn the pitches, lengths and relationships of the various climbs. 

This morning we did a steady 5-10km L3 run on the trails which took between 25 and 55 minutes for athletes to complete.  The courses were tough, in particular some of the downhill sections seemed to take a bit of a toll on the legs (note to self for next time), but hopefully it was also a valuable piece of information which the athletes can use to their advantage come winter. 

Tom carves the new top of White Bear 'A' Climb that brings racers in the Mass Start 5km course up to stadium level with about 1.5 km to go.

Liza, Skeeto and Helen lead the ladies up South Tower

Jewel rounds the penultimate turn on S. Tower

Vanya put Chris through the paces

Up to the sprint wall for the boys

Helen was running really well today

True dat.

Preppy Devos

Coaching at the Prep Team and Jr. Devo Team level is a very active engagement, so I often don't get a chance to pull my camera out and snap some photos, which I always feel guilty about.  Yesterday, I made a concerted effort to at least shoot a few photos.

The plan was pretty simple yesterday, with a warm-up, 3 different strength stations for 10 minutes, and finished with some relays.  For once I didn't try to cram more in than we had time for, so we even got to finish with some stretching before it was time to go home.  Definitely a good session.

The rookie coaches try to figure out how to set up the slackline

Early birds get lots of time to work on their balance

Gus looks like he's about to go over

Colin has some experience with this

Maggie showed up already covered in mud!

Tipping Ti

Warm-up run

My strength station worked on lateral agility.  Here's Ari and Alex

Colin H.

The Sway Drill

Ethan keeps an eye on Ryan

Abigail

Relays are always a high-energy way to finish a session

This kids brought their fighting faces!

We did equalizer relays where the runners slap hands halfway around the loop and then (theoretically) return to the start at the same time.

Chris leads the group through some stretches