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Craftsbury Nordic Ski Club Spring / Summer 2008 Newsletter Stories of the Season We’re excited to present the following stories written by CNSC members about the highlights of their 07-08 season! Riding the Rollercoaster to Scando Cup
This past ski season was a bit of a rollercoaster ride for me. I skied some of the worst races of my life, and also enjoyed some of the best ski experiences I have ever had. Ironically, those worst races of my life, combined with one very good result, helped send me to Europe, where I had the most fun I have ever had on any ski trip. The whole ordeal began at U.S. Nationals in Houghton, Michigan in early January. The races at Nationals are used to name junior athletes to the Junior World and Scandinavian Cup teams. Making the Scando Cup team (as it is unofficially named) had been my number one goal for the season. A few days before Nationals four of us from CNSC had competed at the Junior World trials for biathlon in nearby Minnesota. I came into a week of intense racing having just come off a week of intense racing. Not a great start to the week. Things only got better when each one of us racing in Michigan began to get sick. I skied the first race at Nationals, a 10km skate, decently, not my best effort, but fairly good for feeling sick. The next race up was the 15km classic, a type of race that I usually feel strong in. That particular day, however, the race did not treat me well, at all. Throughout the race the only thing that stuck in my mind was how many people were passing me. It seemed like a constant stream of racers were going by me. Upon finishing the race I discovered that only two of the original five CNSC boys who had started the race had finished, me being one of them. Looking at the results only made things worse. I had finished around twentieth to last, my worst result ever (besides being dead last in the first ski race of my life). I was pretty bummed, knowing that my chances of making the Scando Cup Team had just dropped through the floor. The last race of the series was a skate sprint. Sprinting is my strongest discipline, especially when it’s skating. When race day came around I decided to throw down and show everyone I really could race fast. One of my good friends from Stratton Mountain School started right ahead of me, and in the three minutes of racing I did everything in my power to catch him. Although I didn’t quite close the gap, I made up a solid chunk of time on him, and finished very well in the overall results. I was pleased with my race, but knew it wasn’t the miracle I needed to earn me a spot on the Scando Team outright. We began the long drive home from Michigan to Vermont, and I was feeling pretty unhappy about not making the team. Then an amazing thing happened. Pepa called me, asking whether I wanted to go ski in Europe. Apparently my sprint had shot me up the points list to an alternate position for the team. One of the Alaskans who had qualified had decided not to go, and I was in. A few weeks later I was on an airplane over the Atlantic, about to begin two weeks of racing in Finland and Estonia. The time I spent in Europe was hands down the best ski experience I have ever had. We spent a week training at the World Cup venue in Lahti, Finland, and then took a ferry to Otepää, Estonia, where we spent another week racing on the same courses as the World Cup races held there only days after. During the trip we spent lots of time wandering around Helsinki and Tallin (Estonia’s capitol), buying exotic European clothes, eating delicious meat pasties, and even going to a Megadeth concert in the Olympic stadium in Helsinki. The races were extremely intense, and despite going against the best junior skiers in the world, we Americans mixed it up, posting several top finishes. When I returned to the United States I was left with an experience I will remember forever, and also a valuable lesson learned from making the team. No matter what race, no matter how tired you are, or how far from reaching whatever goal you have, always give every race your best effort. You never know where it could take you. -Alex Schulz Freestyle Sprint at World Juniors
The highlight of my winter was definitely the sprint heats in the freestyle sprint at World Juniors. Hearing my name called over the loudspeaker in German, Italian, and then English while going head to head with really fast girls from all over the world was amazing. My day of racing was filled with lots of ups and downs including winning my quarterfinal and then faceplanting in the stadium in the final. I was in complete awe and terrified of everyone at the beginning but gained confidence as the day went on. I even summoned up enough courage after the race to talk to one of the Norwegians who had been in all my heats and she wasn’t nearly as intimidating as her gameface predicted. Above all, it was a really good experience and hopefully there will be more like it in seasons to come. -Ida Sargent Note: Ida was named U.S. Jr Skier of the Year by fasterskier.com!! Journal from Junior World Biathlon Champs in Ruhpolding, Germany 1/29/08 - Today was the individual format race. In this race each athlete has 4 shooting stages that alternate, prone, standing, prone, standing, with a 2.5km loop to ski between each one. Unlike other formats where a penalty loop is skied for every miss, in this race one minute is simply added to your time. This makes the shooting even more important, as that 1 minute penalty can add up fast. I started this race with a plan; I would go at a very relaxed pace for the first 4 laps, shoot well, then hammer the final lap. I felt very good on my first two loops, hitting all five for the first prone and standing stages. At this point I was already psyched!! I skied my third loop just like the two before it and came in for my second prone shooting. I didn't quite take enough time to settle for my second shot, I guess the excitement of the first two clean shooting stages got to me, but I pulled through, hitting 4 out of 5. I blasted out of the range for my fourth loop, this one felt a little harder than the others. I came into the range alone my final shooting; all focus would be on Me. As I skied towards the mat and took off my pole straps I dropped one of my poles! Crap! I stopped, turned, grabbed the pole and scrambled to the nearest point, and took my rifle off my back. I set the rifle in my shoulder, and settled in position… Bang, hit, crowd cheers, Bang, hit, crowd cheers, Bang, hit, crowd cheers, Bang, hit, crowd cheers, Bang, hit, crowd goes wild.!!! I hit all of 'em!! I gave everything I had left to that last loop, and halfway through the USA coaches were yelling that I was only a few seconds out of 15th. When I crossed the finish line I collapsed on the ground and, looked up at the huge TV screen broadcasting from the various cameras on the course… they were playing a replay of me dropping my pole in slow motion over and over again! As I was walking out of the finish corral I heard people yelling my name from the grandstands and turned expecting to see some USA teammates, but it was a group of German kids chanting Ethan! Ethan! Ethan... all I could do was smile. I ended up 20th, tying with two other people for the best shooting of the day. This was way over my expectations, and one of the best experiences of my life. - Ethan Dreissigacker Jumping Long I was on the top of the 50M ski jump in Lebanon NH in the Eastern ski jumping/Nordic combined Junior Olympic qualifier. I had one competition jump down and one to go. My first jump was solid. I had good style with a telemark landing and a distance of 50m that was the longest of the day of any class, men’s, women’s, junior or senior. I just needed my second jump to be like my first. I focused on slowing my breathing down and tried not to over think my jump. I knew this ski jump like the back of my hand. I had jumped it since I was ten. If I just stayed relaxed I would go long. Nina Lussi, the jumper ahead of me, was in her start. She was going from the start one higher than me. So she would get more speed than me and would hopefully (from her point of view) go longer. In any other class competitors would be expected to go from the bar that the longest jumper in the class was going from. But this was the girls class, and for the old boys club of the judges that meant they didn’t care what we did. She got the flag from her coach and with a “have one” to me she slid into the track. Her jump by no means looked short. I blocked out the distance and slid out on to the bar start. I could hear the crowd ringing cow bells and cheering. I was the home town girl and they wanted me to win. No pressure or anything. I smiled. I loved ski jumping I thought. I straightened my back, cracked my neck, took a few more slow breaths and whistled for a flag. I got it and slid as smoothly as I could into my in run, the rush of wind and clatter of my skis in the deep tracks filling my ears. I focused on having a balanced in run, having my weight spread evenly on both of my feet and being relaxed and poised at the same. Then I jumped just as my ski tips hit the lip of the jump. I was in the air now. I pulled my toes up so my tips wouldn’t go down, spread my skis into a V and stayed as still as I could without getting stiff or tense. I could see the meter marks flying by. I was over 40m then 45m then 50m. I knew that my jump was over 50 because I couldn’t see the red 50m mark when I landed. I had won my class if not the whole meet. I heard my distance 51.5 meters - a meter and a half past the k point (where the hill starts to flatten out). The announcer said that there would be a long standing with a cash prize of $50. I didn’t know what to do. If I took another jump from a higher start I would land where the hill flattened out and there would be more G-force on my legs. There would also be a chance that landing on flatter ground would turn my legs and shins to a crisp for tomorrow’s Junior Olympic qualifying cross-country race. I had promised Pepa I wouldn’t take more than three jumps. So far I had kept my word. But $50 was the gas money to get to the race. Oh well I guess I wasn’t going to race that fast tomorrow. I walked up the hill. There were no categories in the longest standing. Whoever could go the longest without touching the ground with anything but their ski would win the $. I waited my turn and then went from the highest start there was on the jump. Here goes, I thought. If I don’t stand this, sit down on the landing and get hurt, Pepa will not be happy and I won’t have $50. But I did stand it. I landed at 52m - half a meter short of the hill record and the longest jump of the day. I just hoped that no one behind me could out jump that. No one did. I had beat all the boys and gotten the $. Well that was fun. I thought I’d better go eat some food and sleep so I can ski tomorrow. The next morning we drove over to Lake Placid from Burlington, where we had stayed the night with my grandma. My legs felt like bricks. I got there, tested my wax, lay down and listened to my iPod till 30min before my start. Then I started to run round the inside of the building to warm up. It was 2 degrees and I was not about to go outside till I had to. I started out on the course and my legs felt like lead. I tried to ski as efficiently as possible. I had no extra energy. I ended up 2nd in my class. The weekend had come off better than I had expected. I wondered how the races in Maine next weekend would go. Right now though, all I wanted was some hot chocolate and rest. - Tara Geraghty-Moats
A Wild Ride from Start to Finish The 2007-2008 season was for me a wild ride from start to finish. It started in the early spring when I woke up and said, "Why the heck have I been training by myself all these years and looking at programs in some-other-country Alaska or off-the-map Maine when there is a full-on high-level program 23 minutes from home?!" I had thought of CNSC as being really only a junior program, but Pepa seemed to agree, in her own way, to letting me train with the group. She also let me know, in her own way, how I was doing, right from the get go. The season started, at least in my mind, with the 1000m and 3000m running tests and the awesome Concept II double pole machine test. After getting my butt kicked on Day 1 in the 1000m by Schulz, Blue Moon junior and Mikey-I-can-lift-9-times-my-bodyweight-with-one-arm, I was able to look a little less pathetic in the next day's 3000m. After leading from the start all 7.5 laps Pepa made sure I knew I was running like I was glued to the ground and had lots of work to do to make up for not doing enough speed and plyos and core strength ever since I was 3 months old. It's hard to argue when your coach, who clearly was doing core strength in the womb, can do triple as many reps as you with the ab "wheel of torture". I think all the juniors who are getting to grow up training in CNSC are going to have a pretty awesome strength and speed base for continuing past high school if they choose to. When I was in high school, I didn't know what a core was and thought doing a few sets of uphill situps and leg raises was pretty tough. And even worse, I won states in California with this kind of preparation. This should never happen. I'm sure it won't in VT as long as CNSC is around. The rest of the spring and summer offered many more opportunities for discovering and working on weaknesses with peerless Bulgarian encouragement several times a week. For every low-point (not being able to run normally for 2 weeks after thrashing some undiscovered leg muscles with 2x10x10sec. max sprints on the soggy upper field, Ida passing and dropping me in 1min. uphill rollerski sprints) there was a more positive sign to balance it out (managing to complete a whole plyo workout on the sledding hill without feeling like a Ben & Jerry's mascot, putting wheels on my rollerskis that weren't three times slower than everyone else's and managing to keep ahead of Ida on a long threshold interval session.) But while it was useful to have some idea how I was doing in each workout, the greatest thing was just being part of a group of people who were getting out there each day. For someone that has spent more time training entirely alone than not, that was really a novelty that didn't wear off the entire year. That and having a dedicated person with lots of experience both as an athlete and as a coach, worry about the big picture training plan and guide us all through, session by session. Race season hit and I wasn't sure what to expect. I knew I'd worked harder and tried harder than anytime in recent years but at the same time it was a type of training regimen that was very different -- almost entirely different -- than anything I'd done in the past. I got to Yellowstone late after finishing up a horrendously big week of recording at home. Racing almost straight off the plane and with only about 2 hours of real on-snow time under my belt, I had possibly the worst sprint race I've had since 1999. The next day I had by far the best 15k race I've had at Yellowstone in the past 4 years despite picking the wrong pair of skis and not having much kick on the uphills. That core strength with Pepa's ankle weights and double poling on the CII machines paid off! The next SuperTour race I did was in Bozeman MT and after feeling so terrible I could barely warm up, I managed to pull ahead of Garrott Kuzzy and James Southam in my quarterfinal and miss the semis by less than 1 second - definitely the closest I've ever come. The next day I really was in such a bad state that I couldn't warm up let alone race. And that's kind of how the races went the rest of the season. There were some low, low points in races where I really felt like an idiot for ever thinking that I had any business prioritizing ski training and racing. One of these, and possibly the most humbling, was in the first several km of the Craftsbury marathon. After much debate I had decided to come home from the SuperTour in Wisconsin to race Craftsbury and have a break from being on the road which was starting to get tiring. As soon as I started driving home, a major storm hit which pretty much followed me all the way home, meaning that what should have been a totally doable 2-day drive turned into a horrendous 3.5-day epic battle with nasty road conditions and extreme cross-winds which tried quite hard to rip the ski rack off the car or at least blow me into oncoming semi trucks. The night before I got home I found myself in probably the worst motel room I have ever encountered in my life. The "non-smoking" room had enough fumes oozing out of every pore of the uncared-for 1950's carpet and furniture to get an elephant addicted to nicotine, and the water smelled and tasted so sketchy I didn't let myself drink it for fear it would end my ski career. I got about 3 hours of sleep on the most crucial night for the marathon, "the night before the night before." After one more day of cramping the heck out of my legs in the car as I navigated through worse driving conditions than I ever, I made it home, said hi to my parents and went to bed without even waxing my skis. I figured unless I got some rest I wouldn't even be able to stand on the start line, fast skis or no. I let myself have a desperately needed sleep-in and got ready to go. With all the new snow I figured there was a 0% chance it would be klister conditions, so I only put my hardwax skis in the car. As soon as I got to the start my FasterSkier.com boss Topher Sabot promptly informed me it was indeed klister covered conditions. Great. Now not only did I not leave enough time to put klister on, let it cool, and then mess with hardwaxes, but the only skis I had to race on had such a low camber that I would be dragging klister the entire way no matter how thinly I put it on. Topher let me borrow his iron and a little purple klister and I put it on as thin and short as I dared. I got a five minute jog in while it was cooling and then as they were making the last calls for the elite wave I frantically smeared on some hardwax which came out nice and chunky and did not cork out very well at all in the 60 seconds I had left. I sprinted over to the start and lined up with Justin Freeman, Eli Enman, David Chamberlain, and everyone else. Looking back I'm not sure why I was surprised at the time, knowing I had the wrong skis, a terrible rushed wax job, and was practically not warmed up at all. But when my early position of tied-for-second started rapidly turning into trying-and-failing-to-keep-up-recreational-skiers-that-have-day-jobs, I got pretty down. If I had been skiing well and finding myself that far back, that would be one thing, but it is incredibly frustrating to train as hard as you can all year only to struggle to barely hobble up a hill at a speed you know is well below some of your 4-hour runs. Although in that case, Pepa was driving around and giving us gatorade every three miles or so, which was unbeatable. And that only makes you feel more ridiculous when you're out there failing to go very fast at all. When you train all year on your own, you at least have fewer people to let down when you do badly. When other people have helped you train day in and day out all year, you feel like you ought to be able to put forth an effort that at least represents to a small degree the amount of work you've done. I had nothing. I knew my skis were terrible and I had no kick whatsover on the uphills, but even the flats were killing me, and there really aren't too many excuses for that. Somewhere along the way, awhile after a guy who looked way too much like Andreas Halvorsen passed me and dropped me, I was really wondering if this would be the first DNF of my life. The only thing was, when you're in the middle of nowhere on a point-to-point course, you can't really drop out because there is nowhere for you to go other than down the race course, or back the way you came into oncoming racers (never a good way to make people happy.) So finally I got it together mentally and decided that I was going to ski each 10-meter section as well as I possibly could no matter what that meant. And I also decided it was time for a major specific strength session, which is what I would have done anyway if I hadn't decided to do the race that day. No more being pissed off that my skis didn't work, I would double pole every darn hill on the course. I put my head down and just started hammering. There were sections in the open fields where the wind was just ripping through and I would only be going about 3mph but gaining on the guy in front of me. Just as I was starting to build a little momentum, I took what turned out to be a wrong turn (or a wrong going-straight when I was supposed to somehow know to take a 90-degree right-hand turn onto an unmarked trail) and had to backtrack after someone finally yelled loud enough for me to notice. The course started to feature more flats and downhills which is always great for fat people with no kick whose legs don't work because they've been cramping in a car for 3.5 days and probably haven't been spending enough time stretching for the past 26 years. People were pretty spread out by this point and I could only see one person at a time, but this was perfect, allowing me to focus on bridging gaps one at a time. I lost count of how many people I passed (probably because I wasn't really counting in the first place) but I was feeling like I could at least try, which is much more fun and inspiring than feeling like no matter how hard you try, you can't even do anything worthy of being called trying. Next thing I know it's time to decide if I still want to drop out and take the 25k cutoff. For better or worse, I decided to keep going. Or maybe I didn't decide in time to take the turn. But about 15 seconds after I went by the turnoff, I looked up and saw...the lead pack?? Justin Freeman, who had been leading at the start, was nowhere to be seen, but I could clearly see David Chamberlain's white-and-blue Maine Winter Sports Center suit and Eli Enman's orange-striped Rossi suit and Jon Arne skiing bowlegged. I was totally shocked. I had thought I was more like nine or nineteen minutes behind them but now it was looking like I might catch them if I was lucky. After a couple more kilometers I came into the soccer field by the Center and all of a sudden there was Chambo drinking down a feed in the lower field just a few seconds in front of me, with the others basically right there. Up that plyo hill I trained with the team all summer (herringbone running never felt so distinctly easy and enjoyable as it did right then) and I was right on Chambo. I double poled up the next hill rather than try to make my slippery skis work, and I never saw him again. I ended up getting to ski several more km with Jon Arne and Eli. I hung on all the way up Ruthie’s using every kind of twisted last-resort technique I could come up with to make my skis work or at least move forward somehow with me on top of them. Then we crested the top and the race really began. Eli had skis that were running about as "fast" as mine and together we watched Jon Arne glide away from us on a 2km long gradual descent as we double poled our brains out helplessly. Soon after, we all caught sight of Justin up ahead on a climb – another shock for me as I had figured he was long gone. Now it was looking like the win was up for grabs. Over the remainder of the kilometers before the final 2km climb to the finish, I did everything I could to get back to Jon Arne, with Eli right behind, or sometimes in front. We caught another glimpse of Justin and Jon Arne in Murphy’s field something like 35 or 40 seconds ahead. I started trying a little harder to get every second out of every turn in the trail and double pole as hard as I dared to with the tough climb coming up very soon, and somewhere around then I stopped hearing Eli behind me. The bonk hit with the first step up that climb. I went from feeling pretty interested in catching up to the front two, to wondering if Eli would catch me within 10 meters or 100 meters. I was now skiing with tour skiers from the 25k who had just now gotten to the turnoff and were heading up the finish climb. These men and women…and children… were proving hard to pass, not because the trail wasn’t wide enough, but because I was having difficulty summoning the raw speed and power to overtake these staunch advocates of 3-pin bindings and pine tar. I didn’t dare look back for Eli but just tried to keep taking steps (of some kind) forward. I actually was able to find a scrawny little last remaining hair of strength and got a little bit of momentum up over the top of one little hill and onto a very short-lived flat section, and then the course turned uphill to the left and came out of the woods into a face-full of blizzarding headwind. The scene ahead looked like something out of a World War II documentary with a long line of figures stretched out across the open field as far as the eye could see, trudging away, hunched against the fierce wind with dim but unyielding resolve. You know when you tell people you’re a cross-country skier and they go “oh yeah, I tried that once! That was hard…” and you know they mean they strapped on some wide 10lb touring boards from 1960 and went floundering around in deep powder on their grandfather’s back 40, making frequent stops to catch their breath and see if there are any animals around to look at, or to see if the hot cocoa in their backpack is still hot, and they have never seen a race or anything else that would lead to them thinking that the sport included anything the least bit different from what they did? Well, if any of those kind of people had been right along the race course on that last hill, their concept of the sport would have been altered considerably; the vast majority of the people carrying liquids had water or some kind of sport drink, not hot cocoa, and a few like me didn’t even have any backpack or drink at all! But other than that, and the fact that a few of the people’s skis were probably skinnier, I doubt their perceptions would have changed dramatically. I certainly wasn’t getting a very noticeable amount of glide with each step to say the least. And the hill just would not stop! I’d skied the same climb a few years before when I did the 25k in nice icy fast super-hard-track conditions, and it didn’t seem like such a bad climb. But in the current major-headwind-blown-in-track-just-skied-a-lot-farther-than-25-k-with-no-kick-wish-I-had-skins-on-right-now conditions, in the middle of a serious bonk, it felt like a pretty epic adventure just trying to make it to the top of the hill. I caught one last glimpse of Justin and Jon Arne somewhere on that incline but it was all I could do to just keep taking steps. After what seemed like 15 minutes I made it onto the flats, across the road, through the fence and actually found some more double pole power to hammer in the finish. Eli came in awhile later, apparently having suffered a worse bonk than I did, which I still have a hard time even picturing, but apparently such a thing is possible. After half an hour of regaining my senses and some fluids, I was alert enough to be really psyched that I finished third for my first podium in a major marathon! I would have been happy about that even with great skis. Mainly though, it showed me, like the rest of the up-and-down season, that it’s all about deciding how you’re going to work, and sticking to that. Let the external results be whatever they are. After all, there were some grannies on wooden skis that crossed that finish line before I did. But I was really grateful I was able to use that race as an opportunity to learn. Sometimes it takes some DOING to learn. After Craftsbury and that cross-country drive I probably needed a big phat rest, but I didn’t know that until I finished at the back of the field in a college race the next weekend. So then I did take a big phat rest, and rebuilt my training for the remainder of the season around tons of super-easy distance with 10 second speeds interspersed, and one or occasionally two races per week. Things started going really well and I had a string of good races. It was starting to be the end of the season and I felt I was just finally getting stabilized and really ready to race all-out, so I was extremely happy when the club agreed to help me afford to do one last trip to some big races at the end of the season. I had one of my most fun and exciting races of the year at the California Gold Rush, and two of the most grueling, discouraging races of my life at the US Long Distance Nationals in Fairbanks, Alaska. But, even there I learned a lot and it was absolutely worth the trip for that. Now I’m waiting to hear the final word from Fischer/Craft and the Factory Team about a spot for next year. Whatever happens with that, I know that I have CNSC to thank for helping me—in lots of ways—get in a position where I could achieve some results good enough to at least have a decent shot at getting some much-needed additional support from somewhere. I know for example that if I hadn’t been able to get out for the Gold Rush, Fischer would not be even a possibility for this coming season. And I definitely couldn’t have made it out there without the financial help of CNSC, and I also probably wouldn’t have had as good a result if I hadn’t had the opportunity to train with the team several times a week all summer and fall, and had Pepa’s coaching guidance. I’m finding more and more though, that skiing can be about so much more than just how well the races went in terms of places and minutes and seconds. If the whole sport were nothing but a self-centered pursuit to get as good as you can, I would be done with it as of this year. But it’s really cool to realize, more than ever, that it can be, and actually is, so much more. It’s easy to see in a group like CNSC that it has so much to do with community – not just geographically but the community of those with similar interests and goals and ways of life, all wanting to work together and help each other. It really helps everyone and it can help give everyone a greater, clearer sense of purpose. That could be appreciating a nice day outside, or helping some young skiers discover more of what they can do, or the camaraderie of a shared activity with people of similar age, or a lot of things. But in all cases it’s about tuning into something bigger than yourself and I think that is the fundamental thing that the world needs a heck of a lot more of today, at least in this country. Long live the Craftsbury Club! And thanks for everything I’ve gotten to see and do and learn this past season. Here’s hoping for an awesome 2008-2009 for all! -Ian Case 2008 Craftsbury Nordic Ski Clubs Kids Ski program a Success By Allison Van Akkeren Excellent snow conditions and mild temperatures contributed to a full and successful season for the Craftsbury Nordic Ski Club Kids Ski program. Over twenty five children from kindergarten through fifth grade from participated in the program. They met two times a week after school to ski from early January to mid March. The coaches leading the groups focused on having fun on skis and improving skills. Ski treasure hunts, games, technique tips, and tours were all part of the fun. Friendships, endurance and ski skills were strengthened this season. For the last session we started and ended on the Common. We met back at the Church on the Common for a family potluck and recognition ceremony including a wonderful slide show (thanks to Eric Hanson and Kevin Gregoire) highlighting the skiing participants and ski events several of the kids participated in this year. Several of the skiers from the club participated in organized events this year. Anders Hanson, Jacob Morse, Kestrel Owens, Benjamin and Lauren Gillott all completed the Stowe Mini Marathon (15 km) in about 2 ½ hours in mid January. They met other local skiers in Morrisville for a 2 km skate race later in the month. The next weekend they participated in a paintball biathlon (ski and paintball gun shooting at targets) at Mountain Top ski area. They hunted for hidden questions along the ski trail in Newport in February and spent a weekend in New Hampshire with hundreds of other young skiers at the New England Bill Koch Ski Festival completing a x-c skate race, a classic relay, a mini marathon and many snowball fights and informal ski jumps. The next weekend Anna Strong joined them to race in the Craftsbury Nordic Centers Spring Fling 2 km race. They also completed several long backcountry ski treks along the Catamount Trail. We are very proud of these young skiers.. Thanks to the wonderful coaches, Anners Johnson, Tim Smith, Cody Sayer, Sarah Carson, Adrian Owens and Allison Van Akkeren who put their hearts and creative energy into the program. Thanks also goes to all of the parents who were involved including Eric Hanson who help match skiers with gear. We are very grateful to Susan Waterhouse who extended her bus route to drop the skiers off at the Center after school and the Craftsbury Outdoor Center for being “Ski central” for us. Allison Van Akkeren and Tim Smith were able to meet other northeastern coaches, get ideas to improve the club and their coaching skills by attending a weekend Coaches Clinic, with cold weather and plenty of snow, the last weekend of March The club members continue to meet throughout the year to do trail work, hike, mountain bike, orienteer, paddle and strengthen their friendships. We encourage kids of all ski levels to join in the fun. If you have any questions about the program contact Allison Van Akkeren at 802-586-7711 ext. 162. We are proud of all the kids that participated in the program they are: Noah, and Micah Coville, Anders Hanson, Patrick and Mathew Lawlor, Jacob and Emily Morse, Eli Poisson, Anna Strong, Kestrel Owens, Alex and Laura Bickart, Aidan and Gibson Moffatt, Jessica Spur, Sage Gongloff, Lydia Brown, Ben and Lauren Gilloit, Levi and Ella Gannon, Kai Gilbert, Kai and Max Wingensiefen, Silas Wood, Elm LaPoint, Eric Weiss, Carol's Craftsbury Club Highlight Snippets for Winter Season '07-'08:
Club Rollerski Order I expect to be putting together a club rollerski order by early June. If you are interested in getting some roller skis, please let me know, and indicate whether you want skate or classic. PLEASE NOTE:Scholarships Scholarships are available for all CNSC Programs. Contact the Scholarship Committee, c/o John Brodhead: brodhead@sover.netFund-Raising Fund-raising is necessary to provide scholarships. Every CNSC family is expected to participate in one or more of our fundraising events or activities. If you would like to be on the Fund-Raising Committee or have a fund-raising idea, please contact the Fund-Raising Committee c/o John Brodhead: brodhead@sover.net. Seeking Photos of Nordic Skiing Do you have photo albums, digital images, old 35 mm slides, or Polaroids of Nordic skiing sitting on your bookshelves or hiding in your attic that you might be willing to share? If the answer is yes, we’d love to hear from you. The Landscape Change Program is looking to add images of Nordic skiing to the collection. We a free on-line, community archive of more than 16,000 historic Vermont images hosted by UVM at www.uvm.edu/landscape. Although the archive holds 140 images of people skiing, only 18 show Nordic skiing. Something is clearly wrong with that ratio! If you are willing to share your images, there are various ways to help the project. If you have a scanner and an internet connection, you can make high resolution scans (we prefer at least 2000 pixels wide so people can zoom in and see details). Then you can submit your images directly at http://www.uvm.edu/landscape/submitting/. Or, if you have lots of images and want some help, we have six interns working with us this summer and we can come to you with scanners in hand! Our work is supported by the National Science Foundation and is heavily focused on training students. We are interested in all sorts of historic imagery as long as it contains landscapes so please be in touch if you have images to share (even if they don’t show Nordic skiing). Paul Bierman and Christine Massey UVM Geology Department and when it’s snowing Hanks Hill Road, Greensboro Summer Programs Kids’ Summer Training Day Camp – ages 7 to 12
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