It seems as if it’s been raining here at Holderness for the past two days straight. We haven’t had any honest sunshine since late on Tuesday, but everyone’s spirits seem to defy the weather. Winter sports started yesterday, and since it seems about half the school participates in snow sports, we are all hopeful. The rink is already operational, and though the ice is pretty soft, varsity hockey tryouts are still going.

The nordic team seems to have swelled this year with new recruits and beginners wanting to stay in shape for another of their sports. We held our first official practice today. We went on a small warm-up run and did about a half hour of strength.

It’s a little scary that the first race is less than a month away, (December 10) but I finally feel 100 percent again after my illness. It started on the Monday, the 6th of October, with a little sore throat at lunch. By dinner, I was essentially bedridden. I spent the next three days practically useless, lying in the nurse’s ward. I missed three xc races, and did quite poorly in two more. I had what the doctor described as Adenovirus, a very aggressive and persistent illness that strikes hard early and goes away very slowly. I had a stinging, sore and swollen throat, headache, a cough, conjunctivitis, and a thyroid infection all at once. I had to sit out for three weeks, and when I started running again, I was constantly gasping for breath, even when my legs weren’t burning. When I started racing again, I coughed like you wouldn’t believe and had my first three asthma attacks ever. When I saw him again about this, the doctor originally didn’t know what was ailing me, but then he told me that the virus had swollen some mucus-producing cells in my lower bronchioles which in turn caused my airway muscles to contract, causing the asthma. He prescribed me Singulair to clear up the swelling and the mucus over time and an Albuterol inhaler to control the asthma on the spot if needed. It has taken me about five weeks to really get back to full health. I think I would have preferred Mono.

Anyway, NEPSAC XC running Championships were at Vermont Academy, on sort of a rainy, overcast day quite like the one we have in Plymouth, NH right now. I finally had an inhaler, and I had been on the Singulair for about a week and a half, which both turned out to be good decisions. The race course at VA was in decent condition because it is fairly sandy soil, which made the race a lot easier to run in the rain. I would say the thing I did well that race was not go out too hard. I was still testing my body because I was only about 90% healthy, so once I knew I felt good I started passing kids. As I came down the last hill though, a top 20 place got snatched from me as a KUA kid dove—I mean laid out—to just get the place by a hair. I didn’t feel too bad though, I had 24th place in last year’s race, and I wasn’t even full strength this year. Where our boys team wasn’t full strength, the girls team shined. Kelsey Nichols, and Andrea Fisher (reppin my hometown!!) both nordic skiers, placed second and sixth individually and led our girls team to a second place finish overall. (Thanks to coach Mike Carrigan, who was awesome all season long, assuming two coaching positions for almost 30 athletes when the assistant coach had to take a medical leave!)

In other news, I celebrated my 18th birthday on Wednesday, officially making me an OJ skier.

And that’s it for now. I hope to post much more frequently now that ski season is nearly upon us, so keep checking in.
Ian

…they aren’t joking around. It’s worse if you get sick for a week and a half like I just did. I still have to finish my college apps, do my homework every night, run, and ski. And eat, sleep, shower, etc.

I just came home from college visits, and got rid of more than a week long sickness. I’ll discuss that in a post this weekend hopefully. If things happen as planned, which usually doesn’t happen around here.
Till then,
Ian

It seems every fall I get sick at the same time. About a month and a half into school I tend to develop some type of ailment. This time around every illness possible seemed to happen at once. It started early last week when I had a cold and pink eye…then on Monday I had the beginnings of a sore throat, so I went to see the Holderness nurse and I didn’t go to practice. Of course even then at 7 p.m. I had developed discolored phlegm and nasty stuff, and an earache. I went to bed after taking both decongestant and acetaminophen, and drinking tons of water. I woke up about 5 times throughout the night with both a splitting headache and a stinging sore throat, and could barely stand up to get a drink of water. Yesterday morning I woke up sweating with chills. It turns out I had a sinus infection coupled with a sore throat, 102.5+ fever, a headache and conjunctivitis. Yesterday I spent more than 11 hours in the health center just lying around feeling miserable.
Needless to say I didn’t race today, but the team stepped it up. The number 2 and 3 guys on our team were 3rd and 4th consecutively, resulting in the first Holderness win at a full 10-team Lakes-Region meet this year.
If I am well tomorrow, I may rollerski, but it’s doubtful right now because I still have a bad sore throat.
I’m going to bed to try and sleep it off.
Ian

It’s been awhile! As you can probably tell, blog posting time is really hard to come by at Holderness. A lot has happened in the two-plus weeks that I haven’t posted, so I’ll give a brief overview:

This week, the first week of our senior year, has been absolutely jam-packed. Homework assignments are flying left and right, and we have our first cross country race on Wednesday. The time-trial went well, I finished with a time of 19:22, which is almost :30 better than last year, and only :30 off of the big Lithuanian Vytautas’s time from last year. Our first race this year is at home, and is a small meet, which should be a crowd-pleaser because Holderness can typically place really well in the three-school meets.

I’m currently sitting in Plymouth, NH, unpacked, decompressed, organized, and psyched! I’ve arrived with some of my fellow seniors(wow!!) for leadership training and to take the new students on orientation hike. Campus is a little different than last year…most noticably so in the newly redone Weld Hall dining room.

As the funny AT&T commercials say: “I have found the internet!” It was hiding in the Block Island Library and I had to go seek it out to be able to post to FasterSkier again.

The summer is almost over! I have one last week of vacation, and I’ve already finished my summer job. My first Holderness CC race of the year is in about a month, and I don’t quite know yet how I’ll fill graduated Lithuanian senior Vytautas’s shoes. (short 2008 scouting report below)

The BNSC group gathered at Torrey Woods Road once again to do some quality level 4 intervals. Patrick and I also had to do the 200m sprint and 1k time trial, since we both missed the day when the rest of the group tested these things.