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

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

-I’ve trained for just under 150 hours as of now. The rate at which the hours are coming is ever so slightly decreasing, because now we are getting into the intensity part of the training. We do more speed workouts per week, which means shorter practice and shorter mileage.

-I won the first race of the season, a small, 4-team meet at home, in a time of 18:43. That is my best 5k time so far, ever. It felt really good to win at home, and it showed what I was capable of on the home course. (which is good, because the Lakes Region Championship is at home this year)

-The second race was a 10-team meet at Brewster Academy, in which I felt really good up until the end. I was cruising in second with half a mile to go, and then had a really bad cramp develop. It was so bad that I hadto come to the finish holding my side. I always feel really good at about 3k into the race, and then sort of drop off and can’t kick very well at the finish. I’m working on it, though. I think it’s a habit that’s developed from Nordic, because I always feel like I’ll have a downhill to recover on. But of course it never happens, and running downhill actually feels worse to a non-runner than running uphill.

-The same thing happened today at New Hampton School in a 3-team meet, when I was leading going into the last 400m and got passed by three runners. I just don’t understand how they all have so much left at the end.

-Garmin sent me a brand new Forerunner 305 because mine broke and it was still under warranty. It made me very happy.

-I just got this year’s USSA license so that I can try to qualify for JOs. It’s sort of exciting because now I’ll be able to have a national ranking. On that note, there is talk of some kids from the east heading out to Senior Nationals in January, but that’s a very very preliminary plan.

And that’s it for today. I have two free periods in a row on Friday, maybe I’ll catch up with my posting then.

In the meantime, check out all my new MotionBased data.

Till next time,
Ian

The team has already gone through a speed workout. And what’s more, it was right after the school’s required fitness testing. I ran a 14-1 in the beep test, which beats my 13-9 from last year fairly soundly. (Of course, during cycling season last year, Vytautas scored a 15-5, which is just absurd)

Today is really just a relax day for most of the team, so most of the kids here are bound for Wal-Mart.

Yesterday the Running team climbed Welch and Dickey, two peaks along the western side of New Hampshire route 49, which travels from Campton to Waterville Valley, NH. The highest point on the hike is only slightly more than 2700 feet, but the views are amazing. From several points, you can see the 4000ft+ mountains of Tripyramid, Tecumseh, and several others. You can also see most of the Mad River valley, and on down to the Pemigewassett River.

See you next week,
Ian

So the day after I posted from Block Island, I had a time trial planned. I wanted to make it 5k, but my family and I didn’t know exact miles>kilometers conversions (typical Americans). So we eventually settled on 3.3 miles, or now that I’ve calculated it: about 5.3k. The race was pretty uphill…I think the net elevation change was a little under +200 feet. Anyway, I warmed up for half an hour by jogging into the town of New Shoreham, then did some warmup sprints, and started. The first 3k probably contained the most uphill, and there is one really killer hill right in the middle of the course that is just a wall. After that the road goes up for about another 7-800m and flattens out slightly to the end. My time was 22:32 for the whole thing, which isn’t as bad a race as I first thought. Considering the distance, the elevation change, my lack of real training for running so far this summer, and the conditions — it was like 87ºF and the breeze was at my back — I think I did alright. That time will improve though…hopefully in three weeks time when I have my first race.

I’m really bummed that I didn’t get to do the 2nd BNSC tri on the 31st! It sounded like a blast! I had to pack my stuff into cardboard boxes and do boring stuff like that. (See funny picture of boxes, left) Sounds like competition at the race was pretty fierce. If I had done it, my one goal would have been to do the run well and not let Jen catch me…but I’m not so sure that would have happened in reality. Anyway, time for bed. Maybe some running tomorrow.

Ian

Continuing the commercial theme:
You know those NewBalance commercials with the tagline “LOVE/hate”? In my old shoes, I could hardly run on roads because of the shock to my feet, ankles, and knees. Well, now that I have new shoes, I’ve discovered that NewBalance is quite right. My old shoes were so old that they were causing me slight knee pain at intervals throughout some training runs. Even in the woods. Doh. The new shoes are more comfortable, aren’t falling apart, have better arch support, and don’t cause intermittent knee pain. Plus, running on road surface is now bearable. If only I’d known, I wouldn’t have hated running so much. But I made the mistake of wearing really low cut socks so now I have a big blister on my heel and I don’t know how I’m going to deal with that yet.

Vacation started with a pulled muscle in my quad from the bicycle crash on the 22nd. I ran with it the next day thinking it would go away as my legs warmed up, but it really only faded a little bit. So I took the next two days off from running…one for travel to Block Island and the next to just enjoy the beach. The third day I got up at 7 with my dad and the dogs to go for a three-quarter hour run on the beach, and I didn’t notice the muscular pain at all anymore. The fourth day was devoted entirely to study and the beach, then yesterday I made myself get up at a reasonable hour and go for a long run (1 hour 30 minutes around the southwestern half of the island. At the end of that run I decided to try and finish the last 4k with a kick that was just about equal to a 5k pace. In the last 250m I made a finish kick, just to test it out. If I wanted to call it what it was, I’d say it was a time trial. I don’t have exact times or distances, but I will say that both the attempted 5k pace and the finish kick were a little slow for my liking. Today I woke up at 7:45 and went on a 1:45 run (link coming soon). Probably the most uncomfortable part was when I finished the last 20 minutes with a stitch in my chest.

Running is sort of an odd sport. If at first you feel like all you can do is a slow half-jogging pace, you might be wrong. Running uses a lot of energy, but instead of the body’s workload getting consistently harder as the pace goes up, the energy required to do a faster pace is sometimes equal to the energy required at a low pace. If you’re in shape, the graph of how hard the run is compared to the pace is definitely not linear. A slow jog sometimes feels like all hell, but the next minute a pace with a longer, more relaxed stride can feel amazing.

I should try to keep that in mind if I end up doing the proposed 2nd BNSC triathlon this Sunday. Rumor has it that the race would start at Pontoosuc lake and go up route 7 to Margaret Lindley. That’s a tough bike course…maybe an increase of 2-300 feet over the length of the whole thing. However all the hills until the two near 5 corners in the last mile are quite mild. That should make the run pretty interesting if all of us still have lactic acid built up from those inclines.

Anyway, I’m off to the beach again to try to finish Silent Spring and the corresponding essay for Ap Enviro class.

Ian

Yesterday a few of us braved the streets of Central Berkshire County on our bicycles. We were only out for about two hours, but that didn’t stop us from having a slew of mechanical and judgmental errors. It really started when I noticed that Matt’s rear wheel was way (dangerously) out of true. Usually you can’t detect untrue wheels when riding, but this was an extreme case. Then after a somewhat disgusting mishap (I’ll leave out names) involving someone blowing their nose off of their bike, Patrick sprinted out to the front of the group and began to cross to the left side of the road. I didn’t know this…I thought he was just pushing the pace. So I kept going straight and he kept going left. We bumped tires, I tried to correct but was unable, and I went careening off and t-boned Ben’s back tire causing a broken spoke and a very bent rim on his bike. And to cap it off, I did a spectacular attempt to stay upright that failed miserably, ultimately causing me less road rash than I probably deserved. I escaped with just a few scratches on my pedal and handlebar tape, and a minor strain in my quad from the handlebars hitting the muscle. Ben however had to stop riding and call his dad to pick him up because his back wheel was in such bad shape. I kinda feel bad for doing that to his bike…because it was kinda my fault too. We had to stop for a while, but we got back in time to have dinner and watch the end of the Legacy Banks USCF Pro Category 1-2 Criterium in Pittsfield. Will Dougan, a former skier(I think?) at Lenox Memorial High, won the event by a long margin. It was really exciting to see a cycling race so big come to Pittsfield, and hopefully it will be an annual thing. It was also exciting because one of the Prime Sprints for the cyclists was sponsored by FasterSkier.

Today I went on this run, around the Blair Road Loop, about 7 1/3 miles. It took about an hour and a half for me to do.

Preliminary 2008 “Scouting Report” for the XC team at Holderness:
Vytautas (pronounced Vee-tas) was first and foremost a standout basketball player, but he was also sixth at the New England Prep School XC Running Championship, and first in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region. He was probably the hardest athletic worker that I’ve ever known. Every day it seemed like he did an extra workout or two in addition to our regular xc practice. He was always in the gym shooting free throws and lifting weights, or out dragging a tire around the soccer field. I think he will be a huge asset to the basketball team at Brandeis. However now that Vytautas is gone, our running team has a huge hole at the top of the lineup. Since last year was my first as a competitive runner, I don’t feel like I have enough experience to come up from the second spot on the squad and lead a team that has been as successful as ours in the past. Our team really isn’t built like a powerhouse should be…we have a lot of hockey players training for their season, a lot of skiers—alpine and nordic—trying to get fit for winter, and even some freestyle skiers, but no one that really has a solid background in running. With any luck, we may have gotten some fast new kids, but we won’t really know until the first time trial. My fellow skier Nate and I will try to hold down the good results with the rest of the team, but if that top spot in our lineup is not filled, the team will have to really gain some depth to be a contender in the Lakes Region and NEPSAC races.

So we’ll see. More on that to come.

I will actually be away for the next week and without internet, my next post could be as late as the 30th of August.

Ian

I didn’t feel all that relaxed or in control of my poling in the sprint, but my time of :31 seconds was a small improvement over the :32 at the beginning of the season.

Times from the BNSC blog entry earlier in the summer:

——–1000M——- 200M
Ian——5:40———-32

My real improvement came in the 1k, where I absolutely crushed my previous 5:40. I posted a 4:56, 12 seconds back of Patrick’s 4:43. I think that’s a decent improvement. It was actually inside the pre-2008 course record time. The current course record is shown here. Evan D. was the one who had the blazing 4:38 a couple of weeks ago, a long way inside the previous record of 5+ minutes. My brother Andrew was also inside that. He had a 4:58. Of course, I do have lightning fast rollerskis and two weeks ago my brother and Evan were racing on a wet road, so that’s two strikes against me. Regardless of the immediate conditions, I did improve my uphill 1k by :44 seconds, which is ultimately what this training group intended everyone to do.

Tomorrow, what’s left of the group is planning to do an easy bike ride (something new) and then possibly go watch the cycling criterium near Pittsfield. And for Friday, there’s been talk of holding a water polo match(!?) somewhere. If that happens, it certainly be an exciting new activity for us. I imagine the sport is pretty sweet, but it’s probably quite hard. I’ll be pushing for it to happen though, because I always like trying new sports. Especially when they are covered on NBC at the Olympics.

Later this week I leave for vacation, and with doubtful wireless coverage I don’t think I’ll be able to post too many updates, if at all. I will be training though, so I might make up a single post full of what I do. I can say that it will be mostly running on the beach, swimming, and cycling. Three days after vacation ends, I go back to school…and five days after that, I start running practice for real. It seems like a ways away now, but I’m sure that that time will pass much quicker than I expect.

Ian