One thing we do every summer with the training group is benchmark ourselves. Every first week of training includes a medals testing routine, usually involving situps, pushups, box jumps, and pullups. Today I worked till 4:30 and then headed over to Topher’s house with my Fluid recovery drink in one bottle and water in another. We started out fairly easy, with a :40 minute run, then moved into the testing.

Testing runs in a specific way for all the exercises: do as many as you can for one minute, then rest for one, then do as many as you can for another minute. This way both raw body strength (mostly the first timed amount) and endurance (the closer your two numbers are, the better) can be measured. I was happy with most of my exercises, save one…because I’ve never been good at push ups.

I did not have the most situps, but I was okay with that since the guys who were beating me were like eighth and ninth graders with short torsos and no weight on their arms…:) no offense to them. However my situps were the most consistent (I can’t remember but i might have had a difference of 7: 48-41 i think?) We’ll find out in Matt’s next email to the group.

Pushups were also more consistent than most of the group even though I didn’t have the highest total.

What I really love are box jumps. My personal best is 73 in one minute, so my goal was coming relatively close to that for both minutes today. I had 61 and 64 consecutively even though I tripped and had to stop a couple times because we were doing them on tree trunks instead of boxes. I was happy that I was able to get more the second time because that shows my endurance is still in excellent shape after not doing intervals in a while.

Pullups were fairly good as well. I think I got 4 and 2 at the beginning of last year which was just pathetic so being able to hit 7 and 3 was a whole lot more reassuring. Not at all where I want to be for arm strength, but showing signs of hope.

I’m really looking forward to the 1k uphill double pole time trial so I can compare last year’s times. I feel like there’s a void in my life from not skiing, so getting out on rollerskis consistently again will make me happy.

I have been looking at FasterSkier’s rollerski reviews and they could not have come at a more opportune time for my buying convenience. Here’s what I plan on buying: The Pro-Ski Roadline Tech. They’re reviewed on FasterSkier here: http://fasterskier.com/2009/06/pro-ski-roller-ski-reviews/ and there is a FasterSkier YouTube review video available here.

I also am planning to buy a new set of wheels for the Ski Sketts since they are quite good skis, but the wheels aren’t quite the speed I’m looking for.

I’ll post when the new stuff is all ordered.
Ian

PS: Here’s a link to yesterday’s run: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/6949792

Yes it’s been a long year. I think senior year was actually worse and more stressful than junior year at Holderness because even though I was into college early decision, the teachers kept pressing and giving more work, especially my non-AP classes. That made me a little frustrated because I couldn’t blog and barely had time to train. I’ve taken some days off from doing anything after graduation to decompress and get back my sanity. I don’t think I left the house more than twice the last three days just because I was so exhausted of running around doing stuff for school. It became that cycling was my rest from the day’s hardships and it helped me focus before starting homework every night.

Graduation was bittersweet; I knew I was ready to leave, but I had made so many connections at Holderness that I had a hard time giving up. Holderness gave me an opportunity to do everything at once and I took it, knowing that it would be a lot of work, but not knowing just how much. It allowed me to work on my academic achievements, my skiing, my spirituality (not necessarily my religious beliefs but my knowledge of myself) and my social life. I learned a lot more from Holderness than how to V1 both left and right. What I learned most was balance. Balance on skis, yes. But also, more importantly, the balance of schoolwork, sports, spirit and socialization.

For graduation I received a giant poster from Steve at http://www.flyingpointroad.com/ which was quite nice of him considering that I didn’t give him proper photo credit at the beginning of the year and a few times at Eastern Champs got a little bit in the way of his shots of the finish line. The poster is this picture from my lonely Exeter time trial, with “Holderness School” and the school crest in big print at the bottom, reminding me that I’ll always bleed blue. Right now it is sitting in the plastic packaging above my desk waiting to get framed. Thank you Steve, and thank you to all the awesome Holderness people who helped me get to where I am today. To name just a few of my coaches and mentors, Phil Peck, Lindley and Tiaan van der Linde, Peter Hendel, the Teafords, Peter Durnan, Randy Houseman and Michael Carrigan. There are many more that should be mentioned but these are the ones who helped me with running, skiing, and cycling especially.

I found three interesting things today. The first I found on johnnyklister.com. It is a trailer for X-Country.se previewing their new movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73XmR0pptTo
I really want spend the €19.95 it takes to get it, but at the current exchange rate I think that would almost be $30.00. I’m reading all these reviews saying it is well worth the money, but currently it’s worth money I’m saving for other more worthwhile things, like zero skis and better rollerskis. I wonder if anyone on FasterSkier has seen this video?

The second interesting thing I found today was posted on the fasterskier.com twitter feed this morning. The first picture (that introduces the article) isn’t fit for the front page of FasterSkier, and if you don’t mind a bit of colorful language and humor then check it out: http://www.johnnyklister.com/post/114350045/you-can-imagine-a-similar-headline-thats-ski
That wonderful piece was followed by a truly fantastic article about collegiate skiing in the US. Basically the article explains that we aren’t competitive in the Nordic world because there is very little support for collegiate and post-collegiate skiers in the US, but says it much more eloquently and convincingly than I just did. The original was posted on www.johnnyklister.com and is absolutely brilliant: http://www.johnnyklister.com/post/114347144/the-curse-college-and-believing-in-skiing

That got me thoroughly inspired, so I kept looking down the johnnyklister.com website and found the first video I posted and a link to Phil Bowen’s photo site. Phil, as is explained on Johnny Klister, is a former Factory Team skier with a few really nice cameras and a stunningly good eye for photographic beauty. There were some amazing photos, of skiing and other things, put up there at a frequency of a couple every few days. This inspired me some more, so without stealing the idea completely from Phil I decided to do this a little on my own. I thought, “why not…I have a few extra great photos and some webspace.” So now if you visit my old blog  nezzysblogski.blogspot.com you can find average quality cool photos from my DSLR. I posted three today, all from the Holderness senior class trip to Boston during which we took a riverboat tour of the bay. Check my improved old blog out!

And finally, from Phil Bowen’s website, a finish line bootstretch between Ola Vigen Hattestad and Petter Nortug in Lahti. His comment (in a link below the picture) explains a lot about the difficulty of photography at ski races.

I’m excited for my track workout tomorrow to get ready for the 3000m test.
…
Ha, I wish.

Ian

Prospect Mountain may not be open, but it’s got some decent skiing right now. After light lifting and playing squash, I went up to push my luck and seek a fourth day in a row of skiing. I was so lucky to be able to get on skis. The snow was pretty crusty, as if it had been rained on, but overall the quality of skiing for this early in the year was phenomenal. I could skate here and there, and some people had already laid out some classic tracks. Here is a map of what I did. I will head up there as often as I can while it lasts so that I can get some early season on-snow experience.

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