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

The storms held off - and unfortunately so did my running form - for the 4th annual Northern Columbia County Triathlon. It was a beautiful morning in East Central New York today. The water was warm, the air temperature wasn’t too hot, and the triathletes were ready.

“Better days are shining through,” indeed. I have time to post again, I finally have a day to relax, the old Windows computer has stopped giving me 3 errors (now it gives only 2), and the MotionBased uploader seems to be working again, though the site is still spotty. I think the people at MotionBased are really busy completing the move from being “MotionBased” to being “Garmin Connect.” It’s been a wild couple of days at my house with work, summer homework, training, and life.

Races have always motivated me to go really hard, even if they mean nothing at all. Today for practice, we held a time trial down on a quiet road in Columbia county, NY. ((much to my dismay, I FORGOT my GPS…so I don’t have any sweet maps for you to look at. Sorry!!)) Topher or Matt will post the results…and maybe a video…on the BNSC Blog at some point. It was about 8k long (though we’ll never know now that I forgot my GPS) and it was mostly uphill. The weather did not cooperate during the race, but we didn’t really care…we skied right on through a torrential downpour and lightning.

After being completely destroyed last week, I decided to go on the Tuesday Night Ride again this week. We headed up to Bennington again for another time trial. This one was much flatter than last time, so I decided to strap on the aero bars and have a little fun.

Today was one of those fun, supposedly informal group training days that turns into a mildly heated competition. We hadn’t really planned this triathlon out for that long. There were a few emails at the beginning of the week from the coaches outlining it, but no detailed descriptions of the schedule or the route were given out until about a half hour before it started.