It’s been awesome to be back home in the green mountain state. Last week was my first full week home since before June, so I was stoked to be able to kick back a little bit, but it ended up being a busy week. Jess came with me to Vermont from Park City and since she doesn’t get to hang out here very often whenever she comes she likes to do ‘fun red neck stuff’. So we cruised around on the motorcycle a few times, worked out in the rain, and drove up north to help Ryan Foster build his cabin during the weekend. It’s on a sweet plot of land up near Jay Peak in Northern VT and I think it will probably be used as one of our new weekend hang outs and a skiing retreat during the winter.

Ryan had already built the first floor deck before the weekend started but with Ethan and his dad there and me there to mess up some framing, we were able to get a lot of wood up that weekend. I still had some training to do while I was up there so I headed out Sunday morning and did some level 4 bounding intervals up Jay peak in the morning before strapping the tools back on. It felt pretty hard core. We even went down to the local bar Saturday night which was a hilarious experience. This place is in the middle of nowhere so the fact that there was even a bar in this town was unbelievable. It was more like somebody’s house than a bar and there was a DJ playing everything from Alan Jackson to Buckcherry. and all the local girls were out on the dance floor whipping their perms around. it was awesome, pretty funny to go and hang out the some of the good old locals of the ‘kingdom’. 

here’s a look at some of the progress. 

After the weekend I made it back to southern VT in time for a solid week of training and in time to help Sverre out with the Stratton Junior camp. We did some skate roller skiing speeds one day in the rain and it was a amazing that there were only a few minor falls. each speed I was followed by 6 or 8 juniors hammering in behind me. I was impressed by some of the technique and speed of some of the juniors, especially the Stratton kids. On Wednesday the whole camp went to Weston to do some hard double poling and intervals up the ‘three’ hills. Each hill is pretty steep and takes a sold 15+ minutes to get up at Junior level 3 pace. It was a hard core work out. Seeing some of those kids working their asses off is great. Seeing them skiing way harder than they should be, having a severe bonk about to set in, and some serious blisters from the previous three days, brings me back to my junior days at the Stratton camps.

Well I still have a few solid days of training left in this week before I have a slight recovery week next before heading to Whistler for another US Ski team camp. I’ll be sure to report on any more fun ‘red neck stuff’ that goes on this weekend. later 

what up world, 

It has been an epic last week here at the snow farm. With snow continuing to fall every few days it’s made for some wintery conditions and killer skiing. I don’t think we’ve been on klister since one of our first days on the rock. 

I’n the past week we’ve put together one of the hardest training weeks we’ll have all summer long. It will be close to a 25 hour week with two interval sessions, one 10k time trial, 2 gym sessions,  and 2 days of specific strength. Combined that with last week and the beginning of this week and it comes out to around 65 hours of training in the past three weeks. So we’re starting to get a little bit on the tired side. But the past week has been awesome. Our little 10k time trial on saturday turned into a small race thanks to the local ski team… and a few master skiers including Mary, the owner of the snow farm. So that was cool. It felt good to do a real ski race. It turned out to be really hard waxing too, and we all had to race on harries… but it was good practice for Vancouver though.                                        measuring up some poles        photo by Torin Koos

We finished off our camp today with a set of 4×4 level 4 double pole intervals. We always try to do a few of these when we’re all together for a camp so we can hammer on each other a little bit more. It’s definitely one of those workouts that is better to do with some other people. Then this afternoon we went for a recovery ski, and tomorrow morning we’ll start our two day trek back to the US. Having this training block of winter was sick, but it’s time to get back to the warmth and the sun and enjoy the last few weeks of summer. 

Cook, Newell, YT striding        photo by Torin Koos