I traveled from Vermont to Park City on Monday for the start of a one month long altitude block. This is something I started doing last year and I think it helps a lot during these base building months. Some top level athletes use tents and stuff to achieve the same thing, but I prefer to keep it natural and just ‘live high’. It works out well too since my girl friend lives here in PC and there are a million people around to train with so it’s a pretty sick situation.
So last year I started staying at this house that is up on top of the Canyons ski resort… it’s owned by this family that I was introduced to, and if I can use this opportunity to use some Vermont slang…. it’s wicked! Probably  the biggest house I’ve ever seen. The dude just rolled in his 5th motorcycle last night and those are just the ones he keeps at 18,000 square foot vacation home. So I’ll admit it, its nice. but thats not the reason why I stay up there. When I do the altitude blocks I try to sleep high and train low…. and as it turns out the only houses in PC that are above 8,000 feet are the really nice ones. The pad that I’m crashing at is around 8,600 feet so it takes a little bit of getting used to for a sea level guy like myself.
The first few nights of sleep are kind of rough, and to be extra careful during this period I do a lot of heart rate and O2 saturation tests.  The ideal range for building red blood cells is to have your O2 sat. around 92 to 93% while you’re sleeping… So we try to keep it right around there, but as the weeks go on I’ll start to see the O2 sat gradually go up and my morning heart rates gradually go down. 
regardless of the altitude PC is a sick place to train. The new training center is ridank! Pat and I have been hitting the snowboarders skate park a lot. hopefully I’ll get some pics of the training center and some skateboarding up sometime this week. I headed out today for a roller ski at Soho with Hoff, all the PC residency athletes, and a REG group all ripping around the trails at once. good times.

The past ten days of training have been pretty epic here in VT.  The SMS group has been continuing to meet three times a week for distance training, specific strength (we’ve done the ‘westin’ workout twice already. it involves a 2 hour doublepole with 3 big hills.. one of which we have to single pole up a few times) and intervals on Saturday. This past Saturday the group met at Stratton for some level 3 ski walking intervals up the mountain. The work road up the mountain is perfect for doing long intervals and it really brought me back to my SMS days. The plan called for 4×7 minutes at threshold which can basically bring you all the way up top the top. It was one of those wicked humid eastern days too so we were just dripping sweat by the time we were done with the intervals. pretty much a classic bad ass workout. The training day got even better when we returned to school and the man, the legend, Bill Koch was there to unveil to us a roller board he’s been working on. It’s still in the development stages now but  it seemed to work really well to me. He brought 2 rigs in… one of which was the exact roller board he used to train on during his racing years. and the other was a modified version of that. So it was pretty sweet to strap into the same machine that Bill had used to win medals back in the day. The roller board can also be pulled apart and used as a slide board. We were lucky enough to see Bill slip on the old  socks and give it a go…. it was awesome. The legend still has it. I’ve never seen anybody move so fluid, gliding back and forth in a no pole skate technique. Unfortunately my jaw was hanging to low at that point to take any pictures. but I did snap a few of Bill going over the roller board with the group and a quick video (sorry the quality is crappy). The Koch master wants to dial in this roller board and hopefully make some more for people to train on. so stay tuned on how the testing goes and maybe in the future you’ll be able to get your hands on one. 

               Sverre and Bill talking shop

         The legend still has it.

For a lot of my friends around here in Vermont it’s the summer of weddings. I’m not really sure why, I guess I’m starting to get to that age where my friends start dropping like flies. Anyway, this past saturday was the first of many wedding fiestas around here. I woke up on Sunday after one of my high school friend’s weddings and instead of laying low and resting I decided to drive all the way up to burlington and buy another motorcycle. Quarter life crisis? I doubt it. I just think there’s a little something in all of us cross country skiers that tells us to throw our money away old crappy vehicles. For a lot of skiers it comes down to old Subarus. OK, for most xc skiers it’s all about crappy Subarus…. it’s a little weird. But I tend to go for more of the classics which is why I ended up driving to burlington and impulse buying a 1970 Triumph Bonneville.

I think it’s going to take a little work to get the bike where I want it to be, but I have to find some way to satisfy that weird red neck, cross country mentality that tells me to waste money on things like this.

So it’s a new bike and a new week for me here in VT and also the start to some new training partners. Tuesday was the official start to the SMS summer training group. Even before my days at Stratton Sverre has been meeting with the local athletes for summer training at least two times a week during the summer. It’s a great way for the young athletes to keep in close contact with their coach and have a bunch of good people around to train with. These days the training group is getting even bigger. There are tons of high school athletes in the area along with some older skiers like myself and college age kids. From this week onward we will be meeting at least three times a week for intervals and distance training. If you’re in the area and want to join contact Sverre and get into it! It’s pretty awesome to have such a big group to train with a few times a week.

                                          SMS training group……. fired up to roller ski