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 excel spreadsheet doesn’t lie! I’ve reached my goal of 100 hours for the summer. Now I’m working on cutting down the volume dramatically and getting more running hours in to prepare for the racing season. My base hours have been established and now I’m transitioning, two things that I didn’t do well last summer. I feel so much more fit and ready than last year.

Today was the first day that my work schedule and training group schedule have conflicted. Practice happened at 10am, which was the same time I had work. So after work, I went to the Williams gym to do a strength workout…because I haven’t really trained in four days because of sickness things and triathlon things. What I did was pretty simple. I warmed up with 10 minutes easy of the stationary bike. I started with 40lb freeweight chest press, 40lb freeweight “lawnmower start cord” motion, and 137lb row weight machine…that was workout block #1, and I ran through that three times. Then I took a 5 minute break and I finished with block #2, which was 1:30 of raised planks (my feet were up on a 20-inch box), 45 seconds of pushups, 45 seconds of kayakers because I’m terrible at them, and 5 pullups. I did that block 3 times also, then warmed down with 10 minutes on the bike. With the rest I took, that entire session lasted about an hour and 5 minutes, and it was good enough to make steering hard when I was driving home. Tomorrow I’m planning on an easy run or bike.

Though I am still recovering from a little illness, I did a nice little 35 minute run and core on Thursday to get back in the swing of things. Tomorrow is really the big day…the Northern Columbia County Triathlon. Yesterday I played a fun round of golf (I shot 87 at Taconic Golf Club) with some friends from Holderness, and I’ll be resting all day today.

“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.

Tonight we met at Linear Park in Williamstown to do a “fun run” with some core. The run was especially fun because we ran along route 2 and some of us had our shirts off…so we got some cars to beep at us. I have some pictures of a nice place at the top of Blair road overlooking the Green River valley.

It’s been three long days since I last posted, I’ve fallen down on the job! I’ve really just been resting and recovering from the early mornings and late nights of the Tour de France. Good job to Carlos Sastre, he really defied all the predictions that Cadel Evans would wreck him in the time trial.

I’m pretty beat right now for various reasons, one of them being that I’ve been consistently waking up before 6:30 AM for stages of the Tour de Fance, the other that I did a nasty double session today. This will be a short post, considering the fact that sitting upright in a chair is pretty hard work for me right now. Here are some links that show what I’ve done today (and what I did yesterday).

Thunderstorms threatened our time outside last night, so the first thing we did was go inside and watch old world cup videos from Oberstdorf. Then we went on a half hour jog and did the “core workout from hell,” which will probably be listed on the Berkshire Nordic Ski Club Blog later. I have had a busy 24 hours, so this will be a short post.

Yes it is, and that means it’s double session time again. I got up early today to go to the gym with my brother, and I did my customized ski-specific gym workout again. I notice that as each week passes, I feel more comfortable in the gym. Most notably, my planks have gotten so much better both technique-wise and lengthwise. If I can keep up a steady strength schedule all summer long, I will be able to go into the winter with a fighting chance on the course. Tonight’s event was a long double pole level 3 interval session out on route 43.