10-day Catch-up (In photos!)

The last Saturday before school began we went up Mt. Healy for a hike.

We eventually surrendered to the wind.

After trying to hide from it.

Yep, that hairstyle is courtesy of the wind.

It's always nice up there though, especially when clear.

The following Monday we did our timed interval session on N. Tanana Drive

We saw some good improvement, especially in double poling. 

Apparently Chris is a pretty good artist (but not much of a speller).

At some point we did some plyos... I don't remember when :)

Last Saturday we hosted the Seekins Ford Golden Heart Trail Run - we had lots of awesome parent volunteers!

A couple of racers in the 7 and under race.

Harper - one of the club's Jr. Nordic skiers - had this to say when I asked what he though of the steeples.

Alex skies in the 2.5km while Quinn continues on.

Eric D. getting airborne.

Looks like Van, Parker, Jenna and Hana!

Middle School post-race reactions...

Vanya in the 5k.

To practice back-to-back races we did the Old Nenana TT the next day.

It was wet and slow.  Kevin managed to break a pole tip and a ski in only 30 minutes!

Speed on Tuesday - working on going really fast in V1.

Also Tuesday, the Preps did some plyo work.  We spent a lot of time working on leapfrog - we have some work to do!

Then we did some Fartlek (speed-play) in the woods on a half-mile loop.

Everybody did between 2 and 4 loops.

Coaches at this level have to know how to lead by example!

When did we leave Birch Hill and arrive in Germany?

Neill had a solo workout today, but nailed it.  Here's a bounding speed.

Then 4x 3 minutes bounding up the Black Funk climb

That brings us back to today... we should have some good shots from the weekend coming up - including Swamp intervals with the Prep Team on Saturday.

Thursday and Friday

Yesterday was our last day of the Prep/Devo summer program so we did a traditional mtn bike ride up at the University where we cruise around the trails for a bit while we make our way over to Hot Licks for some ice cream to celebrate a good session and a good summer.  It was a relatively uneventful ride (except for the older boys and Chris getting separated), and we all got to enjoy a nice cold scoop at the end.  No photos unfortunately - tough to ride over roots and take pictures simultaneously (at least for me!).

For the Comp Team athletes we had a good specific strength session last night.  It was kept a surprise, and we told Kyle it was a gift to him as he's off to Michigan Tech today, so this would be his final session.  All upper body, with the goal of giving the legs a rest and building up our upper body strength on skis.  We haven't done a session this extreme yet this year, so I wasn't sure how the group would handle it.  It turned out that everyone was in high spirits and quite energetic, so it seemed to go quite well.  The session included 15 minutes of double poling, then about 20 minutes of single sticking, and then an uphill double pole that is pretty extreme - gaining about 900 ft in elevation over 6 km with sections that are quite steep for a road - V1 pitches when we do intervals up this hill.  Everyone got in a good challenge, getting at least 2.5km of uphill double poling in and some even going onto the rolling terrain along the ridge at the top. 

The moment of the evening was when we stopped to pick up Max, one of our J2s.  We kind of figured it was implied that he would get in for a ride and want to finish the session so we kept chatting in the van.  Max walks over to the van, opens up the back like he's going to put his skis in, but instead just grabs his water bottle, takes a swig of water and then he walks back out onto the road and skis off for more!  Gotta love that attitude!

Single stickin'

And up the hill!

A smile for the van at the end of the ski!

This morning we met at Birch Hill for some plyos, moosehoofing intervals up South Tower, before finishing with some strength.  After a bit of a break in the second half of the summer, we will be hitting the JN courses with some regularity in the next couple of months and making the sessions more and more race specific in terms of both output (higher intensity now than earlier this summer) and tactics (how we want the athlete to approach the hills given their location on the course, etc.).  Should be fun!

Moose-hoofin'

We started a new strength phase this week, which involves a focus on high-force movements with added proprioceptive demand, with the idea being this should help us link our strength better to while we're out skiing.  The goal is always to help our skiing, not simply to be really good at a few strength exercises.  We'll probably feel the greatest soreness in some of our stabilizing muscles at first.  

Here are a few of the exercises we'll be using this month:

Forehead push-ups

Doing dips on the Jungle Gym gives you new appreciation for what Olympic gymnasts do!