So the last time I checked in on this blog, I was in the middle of a three-month intensity block of journalism training in Manhattan at The Nation magazine.

NYC from the 68th floor of the Empire State Building. Thanks to Britt Harwood, who smuggled me up here as allegedly a participant in an LSAT prep class…

But to make a long story short, the internship ended on December 18th, and since winter is for skiing, not sitting around in an office, it was time to get in gear. I left New York the day after my job finished, on the 19th, got home, went to bed, got up, packed up all my stuff, and drove off in my sister’s car. No sooner than 2 miles into a 3100 mile journey (for the record, that’s less than one tenth of one percent), the dashboard starting flashing a big, red, all-caps light that said STOP! BRAKE FAULT! YOU’RE F—ED! (Okay, maybe not the last part). I pulled over and used the brakes to stop. They worked. I kept going and tried the brakes again. They still worked. The light turned off. I performed a quick cost-benefit analysis of continuing to Williamstown, Massachusetts, which resulted in me continuing to Williamstown, Massachusetts.

After a night at FasterSkier world headquarters (editor Topher Sabot’s house), I continued on to Ithaca, then Chicago and Minneapolis. Minneapolis was sweet–good skiing and really good food, courtesy of my friend and former teammate Jeff Bush and his family. When the fourth-largest snowstorm in North Dakota history decided to block my path for a few days, they graciously allowed me to celebrate Christmas with them, too (somewhat of a novelty for the EISA’s fastest Jewish skier [although--and I hope no Jewish Olympic Committee officials are reading this {something tells me there aren't}--I have celebrated Christmas before with my dad's Episcopalian wife]).

From Minneapolis, I spent my one night in a very cheap, only moderately dingy Motel Six in Fargo, North Dakota (no wood/body-part chipping, fortunately), then moved on to beautiful Glendive, Montana, where I spent the night at a friend’s house. Oh, wait, I raced in Minneapolis. And lost six minutes to Matt Liebsch in a 10k. Fortunately, there are no fitness requirements for being an xc ski journalists, and also fortunately, I have some room for improvement with my training, given the two hours per week that I got in New York.

Also before reaching Glendive, I got a chance to visit the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, in Western North Dakota. For those of you who think there isn’t anything cool in North Dakota, you’re wrong. There are actually 16 cool things in North Dakota: Theodore Roosevelt National Park and the 15 elk inside it.

Unfortunately, I didn't have my biathlon rifle ready for the elk, but fortunately, my friend's dad shot one (in a different location), and I got to have elk lasagna in Missoula.

In the park, I drove about 10 miles down the plowed scenic road to where it became unplowed. Then I strapped on a pair of my classic rock skis, and headed out for a quick tour. There was one other person within a 10 mile radius, and he was about 250 yards down the trail. Once I passed him, there was absolutely nobody around, and the scenery was spectacular.  The road was unplowed, but most of the powder had blown off, leaving a 3-inch deep layer of packed snow on the road that was perfect for extra-blue classic skiing. I skied out for about an hour, climbed a hill, took some pictures, and skied back.

Some baller skiing. Theodore Roosevelt=the man.

After the park and eastern Montana, I drove to Missoula, and then to Seattle. This is a spectacular stretch of driving, and I highly recommend it to anyone with a lot of time on their hands and a fuel-efficient vehicle (there are a lot of uphills).

No, I do not condone shooting pictures while driving.

The only bad part about this section was that I’d finished my book on tape (John Krakauer’s “Where Men Win Glory”, about Pat Tillman–I really recommend it, except for the parts where he tries to tell the history of the Cold War) and there were no radio stations, except for one that had these really dumb, obnoxious DJ’s talking about the club that they were building (?) inside the radio station, and they would NOT shut up. I was very frustrated. In other places across the country, radio was actually very good–the public radio network across North Dakota and eastern Montana was great. Especially entertaining was the “Thomas Jefferson Radio Hour” in North Dakota, which features scholar Clay Jenkinson in character as the third president, talking about things like his relationship with his wife, and how it compared to John Adams’ relationship with his wife…for a whole hour. Okay, so actually, in this particular case, maybe the concept was better than the execution, but who cares? Two other choice (and/or shocking) quotes that I heard on the radio west of Minneapolis (and by repeating them, I certainly am not endorsing them):

1. “Those funbags of hers are really quite remarkable.” –Some DJ referring to the anatomy of Dog the Bounty Hunter’s partner.

2. “100 percent of the Islamic terrorists coming at us are Muslim.” –Some conservative commentator. Profound, and needing no further analysis.

In any case, I made it to Alaska, and I’m now chilling (literally) there, waiting for things to start happening. Hopefully the stories that come out of here in the next two weeks will be decidedly more professional and less inane than this blog post.

So, in addition to working for FasterSkier, I’m also employed as an intern at The Nation magazine in New York City. For those of you who have never heard of The Nation before, it’s very, very important. We have lots of very important people in the office (some of them are on TV sometimes), we talk to other important people and write stories about them, and then even more important people read the stories in the magazine about the other important people.

Friends, enemies, skiers–it has been quite a while. A lot has happened–far too much to explain in this small space. But rest assured that I am back to update you on the travels and trials of the 2009’s top-ranked Jewish EISA skier and one of the country’s top ten cross country ski journalists.

I’m currently working as an intern at The Nation magazine in New York City, and I had a chance to report on the 350-related festivities here on Saturday. It was quite a thrill to see Middlebury Ski Team Advisor (yes, that’s his most important job) Bill McKibben up at the podium in the middle of Times Square, and I also got to catch up with his colleague and Middlebury Head Coach Andrew Gardner.

I thought I’d post some pictures that I shot of the event–these are of a march across the Brooklyn Bridge and a rally in Times Square. The story is here…

Climate change activists rally in Brooklyn Bridge Park (I think the guy in the middle is picking his nose…Hey–everybody's gotta do it…even 350 die-hards…)

Rob Lateiner makes a pretty convincing case of the need for global climate action

The march on its way to Brooklyn Bridge Park for a photo-op

Greenpeace volunteer Stephanie Corrado on her way across the Brooklyn Bridge

The Manhattan skyline made for a pretty nice backdrop for a demonstration

Eva Erbskorn, the Greenpeace communications coordinator for New York, addresses the participants

This guy is definitely a huge baller activist

McKibben getting into it in Times Square

Another shot of the group in Times Square

After a delicious birthday dinner of Finnish Mushroom Pie at the A1 Diner in Gardiner , I set off in my trusty station wagon toward Craftsbury, Vermont. Well, actually, since in Maine (insert accent here) you can’t get there from here, I probably set off going more towards Middlebury, but Craftsbury was my ultimate destination, for what was sure to be a scintillating, controversial story on the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP, which always gets me thinking of the AARP, but enough with the asides…).

It was already eight o’clock, and I wasn’t expected at Craftsbury until the next day, so I was planning to find a place to camp somewhere past Bethel. I knew that there were a number of campsites in the area, and I figured that I’d just stop at one when I got tired.

Somewhere around Wayne, I remembered that one of my ski teammates, who will remain unnamed to preserve his reputation, had a house in Gorham, which was about where I was looking to spend the night. Given that I’m a extremely well-respected member of the nordic ski writing community, I figured it wouldn’t be a problem to give him a call at nine o’clock to ask if I could spend the night. An hour later, as I was contemplating where there was enough shoulder on Rt. 2 to pull over and set up my tent, he called back and told me he had a place for me to crash. After some gymnastics with directions, I arrived at the house where he lived.

Among my close circle of friends, which consists of one other former varsity nordic skier, one category two cyclist, and one extremely snide non-endurance athlete, a constant source of amusement and pleasure is making fun of triathlons, and triathletes.

There are a lot of reasons that triathletes are the butt of our jokes. $5,000 bikes. Hundred dollar race entry fees. Weenie shoelaces. Level-four group rides with aero bars. Sleeveless jerseys. Triangular water bottles. The list goes on and on and on. 

While my friends’ sport-centric jokes was originally centered on triathletes, their circle of consideration was broadened after I started getting neurotic about my training last summer–one might call it “No Obnoxiously Self Centered Athlete Left Behind.” Whenever I started to get too anal about recovery, fret over the duration of my threshold intervals, or generally take myself at all seriously, my friends–particularly the non-endurance athlete one–would instantly seize upon the opportunity to put me in my place, warning me about how they could easily see me becoming “weenie-triathlete” as I aged.

Now that I am no longer a member of a division one, varsity NCAA ski team, I may not immediately be at risk to become a “weenie-triathlete,” but I certainly see within myself the potential to become a “master blaster”–master blaster being defined as someone who takes their athletic pursuits extremely seriously and spends a lot of money on their equipment. Every time I get on my bicycle, I start thinking about what kind of ride I should be doing.  Overdistance? Intervals? Hard riding? Recovery? Once I’m riding, I usually don’t worry too much about how fast I’m going or how high my heart rate is, but these are definitely things that are on my mind.

Recently, in response to a previous blog post, one of my old assistant coaches, Adam St. Pierre, offered to give me some coaching advice and put me on a plan to make me a huge baller of a biker or skier. Adam is highly qualified, with a masters in something-ology that has to do with training and exercise physiology (if you need a coach, you can write Adam at st.pierre.adam.d@gmail.com), and initially, I was very intrigued. I’d love to upgrade to Cat. 2, or even to Cat. 1 and get a pro cycling contract, or get top 50 in the Birkie, or even qualify for the Olympics, so Adam’s offer was enticing.

After thinking about it a little bit, though, I realized that I wasn’t sure that I really wanted a coach. In fact, paying for a coach is actually one of the tri-attributes that my friends and I dislike.

Oh, dear. I’m about to get into Patrick Stinson-introspective territory. But bear with me.

The reason that I’m skeptical about having a professional coach is that I think that physiology and exercise and athletics is simple enough that for someone at my level (and for someone at the level of most middle-aged triathletes),  I should be able to figure out my own training plan. One of the things that my former coach Marty Hall always said was that a large part of my college athletics experience was preparation for the rest of my life as an athlete. To me, what was implied in that statement was that by the time I graduated, I should know enough about the sport and about my body so that I didn’t need a coach any more. I mean, for goodness sakes, my roommate Nick Crawford IS a coach now, and he’s certainly not any smarter than me, so I should be able to do it myself. (Okay, Nick does know more about some things. Mainly rocks [he was a geology major].)

Furthermore, since the ski season finished, I’ve very much enjoyed the opportunity to go outside and use my mind and body however I want, without concern for the ultimate consequences of sprinting for a town line. Today I went rollerskiing and spent a large portion of the time contemplating slugs (major questions that arose: how many slugs are there in total on top of the 6-mile stretch of road that I skied out and back on today? how many slugs are there in maine, total? the world? has anyone ever done research into slug populations? are slugs carnivores or herbivores? where do slugs go when it gets hot outside? don’t they dry up? all of these questions could be easily answered by google and wikipedia, by the way, but I chose not to look them up so that I could ask them in earnest in this blog entry). Last week I rode 85 miles and rode just about as hard as I could up every single hill, and instead of using Cytomax or Gatorade, I just drank an entire liter of Coke.

In a nutshell, what I’m trying to say here is that there’s a time and place for sport to be serious, and for me, it seems like I should probably be concentrating more on finding a reporting job and doing other things, given that I just spent the last four years of my life taking skiing very seriously. And when it’s time for me to start taking things seriously again–whether that’s in 20 years when I’m trying to win the 45+ age category in the Putney Cyclocross race, or in five years when I’m trying to kick butt in the Birkie–my feeling is that I should be able to rely on my own accumulated knowledge and expertise to improve, rather than hiring a coach to figure it out for me or spending my money on equipment that will shave a quarter of a second off my 40-kilometer time trial. And, from this perspective, anyone who does spend money on a coach or on sweet equipment is overly serious, a big weenie, and unable to think for themselves.

Except, I’ve realized, that there’s a slight problem with this philosophy, and that’s that I’ve just spent the last 4 ski seasons shelling out $40,000 a year for a coach, for ski wax, and for equipment. Yes, I guess I also got a degree and learned some academic mumbo-jumbo as well, but that’s secondary–kind of like the triangular water bottle that you get when you spend $5,000 on your Cervelo P3. Which means that I’ve actually already had four years of being a weenie-triathlete (a cross-country ski version), just within the sheltered environment of a college where I can blend in because the majority of the rest of the people also happen to be weenies about about something, too. I’m not entirely sure about this, but I think that the large majority of weenie-triathletes are people who discover athletics in the middle of their lives, and who haven’t yet had the opportunity to take their athletic selves extremely seriously, build up a stockpile of sweet equipment, or learn enough about their own bodies and about the basics of physiology to coach themselves. I know my mom, for instance, never had the luxury of being able to compete in an endurance sport at a young age, and I don’t think I could begrudge her if she decided to take up triathloning and get a coach. Although I still sincerely hope that she doesn’t. 

So I guess that I’ve carved out a (very small) place in my heart for triathletes, even if they are weenies about the sport. And, yes, it should be acknowledged that there are plenty of triathletes who approach the sport in an entirely healthy manner. However, this whole thought experiment still hasn’t gotten me very far in determining what my own athletic approach should be for the immediate future. Should I be training to be a cyclist? Skier? Weenie triathlete? Who knows where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing in six months, so it seems pointless to follow a long-term plan. I guess I’ll just keep rollerskiing and contemplating the slugs…

One thing that I’ve discovered, through my years and years of accumulated training wisdom, is that there’s absolutely and unequivocally no such thing as an easy group bike ride.

Let’s back up. Yes, it’s June now, and I probably should be rollerskiing. But: NEWS FLASH!! I GRADUATED FROM COLLEGE! This means no more enforced boredom or misery in the form of OD classic skis with Walt, rollerboarding to exhaustion, or time spent with the baseball players in the weight room. Not that I would have been doing too much of that anyways in the last few weeks, what with the end of the semester, senior week (read: college-sanctioned and enforced drinking), and a slow-to-heal knee injury. But what this means is that my training for April and May  largely consisted of short, easy bike rides.

Over the last couple of weeks, however, my knee has finally been feeling good enough to start riding hard again. Two Sundays ago I got to jump in a fun little training criterium, and then this last Saturday I did the storied “Saturday Morning Ride” in Portland. If you’ve never heard of the SMR before, it’s the real deal–anywhere from 40 to 70 guys (and the occasional intrepid girl) hammering around Portland at about 25 mph, using up the entire lane, sprinting at regular intervals, and generally making mayhem. It’s totally awesome, and I recommend it to anyone who has the constitution for that kind of thing (which is probably anyone who’s reading this blog to begin with…).

In any case, with the Auburn races this coming weekend (more on those later), I’ve been ramping up my training from 3 hours a week to more like 6 or 8 hours a week. This means I’m serious, legit, and that the Freeman brothers should probably watch their collective back (on a who-does-the-most-badass-training basis, rather than actually having to be worried about losing to me in a ski race), because my hours are going up, and my splits on the track have been going down.

Thus, yesterday, after the SMR and another good ride on Sunday, I opted to go on the thrice-weekly pedal with “the old men of Augusta.” Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, these 10 crusty older (over-50) dudes meet up in the parking lot of the Augusta Career Center and ride their $5,000, Zipp-404-equipped bikes on a 30-mile out-and-back loop on Route 27. In and of itself, riding on Rt. 27 makes little to no sense, given that it’s dominated by semi trucks on their way to Farmington and tourists on their way to Belgrade Lakes. But then again, most of the things athletes do make little to no sense, so I just enjoy it for what it is–usually a low-key, moderate-paced excursion with a bunch of friends.

However, at this point, I’m pretty sure that the Old Men of Augusta Ride (henceforth OMAR) only exists as a “low-key, moderate-paced excursion” in my mind, along with unicorns, jackalopes, and me winning the Tour de France (both the overall and the final stage on the Champs-Elysees [has that been done before? b/c if so, that would be awesome]). Though yesterday before heading out I recalled that the OMAR was usually nice and slow and relaxed, upon further reflection I’m pretty sure that of the 20 or so times I’ve done this ride, that has only actually been truly easy like once or twice, if that. In fact, I’ve had similar experiences numerous times on the Brunswick Tuesday Night Ride (BTNR). The BTNR is–in my mind–a marked contrast of the Portland Tuesday Night Ride (PTNR), a preposterous 50-mile epic undertaking that seemingly tries to conquer every single vertical foot within a 20-mile radius of Portland. The Brunswick ride is–again, only in my mind–much easier: only 30 or 40 miles, with a lot less people and much more limited firepower.

In most of my BTNR experiences, as well as with last night’s OMAR, this is what happens. First, I arrive at the designated meeting place thinking mostly about how much better a rider I am than all of the other silly fools assembled around me: I’m a Cat. 3, these guys are all old and tired and don’t deserve their $5,000 bikes, my legs are totally jacked, etc. Then I sit quietly in the cool cyclist-pose on my bike (one foot on the ground, the other foot clipped in and resting my thigh on that side on the top tube) as all the old dudes or Brunswick regulars make small talk, and, depending on my mood,  I either plot out how I will utterly humiliate and embarrass these individuals, or relax into a Zen-like state in preparation for the calming, soothing experience of a pleasant, easy ride that will not at all tax my well-developed calves.

What inevitably happens is this: one of the old guys on his $5,000 bike actually turns out to somehow be ridiculously strong. Yesterday, this old guy was the dude rocking the sweet Garmin-Chipotle bike with carbon wheels, and whose nickname, I discovered at the end of the ride, is “F—— Jeff,” with the “F——” pertaining to the intensity at which he pedals. In addition, also present yesterday was another old guy with a foot-long beard, a fanny pack, and a mirror on his handlebars, as well as a pudgy-looking triathlete–complete with aero bars–on his first-ever group ride. For the first half of the ride, I spent about 75% of the time suffering on F—— Jeff’s wheel, periodically checking behind me to confirm that yes, in fact, beard-dude and triathlon guy are still there.

This lunacy continued on the way back. We did ultimately manage to drop beard-dude and triathlon guy, but I had to dig disturbingly deep to make it up the one big hill and not get dropped by F—— Jeff.

Humbled and only slightly disappointed, I returned home last night and drowned my sorrows in a delicious dinner of baked penne with 5 cheeses, prepared by my sister. The only thing that makes me feel marginally better is that on Saturday I get to race in the Pro-1-2-3 race with Mark McCormack and Ted King. I’m pretty sure that cycling is the only sport in the world that can offer this degree of ego inflation and reduction: you can ride shoulder-to-shoulder with the world’s best one day, then struggle to to keep up with bearded-dude the next.

It has been with interest that I have been reading the accounts of professional skiers, elite juniors, and master blasters as they resumed their lives of toil over the past few weeks, because my life has been decidedly toil-free.

I really have nothing interesting to report. My major accomplishments since March have been primarily academic, but unfortunately, even these major accomplishments have been inconsequential. While the rest of the state has been concerned about swine flu (we have at least five confirmed cases), at least one case of senioritis is currently raging at Bowdoin, and shows no signs of abatement until May 23rd (graduation). I spend most of my time sitting in class staring at the wall, ignoring my professors, and thinking about skiing and the Olympics.

My knee still does not work correctly, although it does seem to be very slowly improving. Most disturbing are the small explosions that sometimes occur when I straighten my leg or stand up. I am hoping very much to be able to begin bicycling normally very soon.

Okay, enough of this drivel. I have a selection of pictures from a recent training session with Walt and my roommates. I would like to point out that although my aerobic fitness leaves much to be desired at this point, my Wii skills are still sufficient to soundly defeat an Olympic biathlon hopeful. And there’s also one more shot of an average day in the life of a huge baller… Important things to keep in mind are that on the scoresheet, I am Tiger Woods, and also that I did not drink all of the beers that were once in the PBR box. At least, not all at once.

One more thing–Bowdoin got a few solid recruits from this year’s applicant pool, and Nathan was talking a whole lot of smack yesterday about how his team is going to embarrass everyone else on the circuit. I think his exact words were, “Ruff, Tracy, and all you other EISA coaches, prepare for TOTAL BOWDOIN DOMINATION! Resistance…is…futile. Purple is the color of sexual frustration!” He said a few more things, but unfortunately they cannot be reprinted here, as this blog is a family publication. 

The last time I updated this blog, I think I mentioned something about how my knee was slightly messed up, due to an excess of riding and hiking in California. Unfortunately, it hasn’t gotten much better, so I’ve been doing a lot of sitting around.

Some of you might wonder what kinds of things injured, retired skiers do. Allow me to enlighten you:

1. Get my wisdom teeth out. The best part of this activity was when my roommate took me to the grocery store to get ice cream while I was still messed up on anesthesia. I saw my independent study advisor with his kid, and excitedly told him through 4 bloody wads of cotton that “I feel like I just drank 10 beers.”  He seemed to appreciate it.

2. Focus on growing out my facial hair. Before I shaved today I had achieved previously inconceivable levels of manginess.

3. Read everything in existence on the internet related to skiing, cycling, and everything else, especially things related to Somali pirates and my friend’s high school basketball coach (yes, the ship captain was my friend’s AAU coach). And watch youtube videos.  Recent highlights include some witty repartee between Zach Caldwell and Andrew Gardner on twitter (would this be “twitty repartee?”); cat vs. printer; and ECCC cycling results.

4. Swim. If you could come to the pool and watch, this would probably be the funniest part of this blog post, since I am a comically bad swimmer. It looks something like this, but with more coughing and water going up my nose. I usually swim for half an hour at a time and make it like ten laps.

5. Sit around and pick my nose and feel sorry for myself for not being able to bike race. And complain about it.

6. Skip class. Okay, I’ve actually only done this once (I think it was the first time all year), and it was today, but it was pretty sweet. First, I walked all the way from the dining hall on one side of campus to Sills Hall on the other. Then, when I got there, it was really sunny, and the voices in my head told me that I had to turn around and walk to the Quad instead. There was honestly nothing I could do to resist (parents, if you’re reading this…uhh…sorry). On the way to the Quad, I walked by my professor on her way to the classroom. Oops. Well, even though she is elderly now, I sure she was young once and probably understands.

Aside from doing homework, I honestly can only think of a couple of other things that I’ve actually done over the last few weeks. The one actual disappointing part about my predicament is that I’m going to end the year at like 490 hours of training, which is tantalizingly close to the much more rad number of 500. Or maybe sometime next week I’ll go out for a ten-hour double pole…

Northug to Enroll at Bowdoin, Join Nordic Ski Team

April 1st, 2008

BRUNSWICK, ME–In a surprising development, Bowdoin College President Barry Mills announced today that Norwegian superstar Petter Northug Jr. will be enrolling at the College starting next year.

“After seeing the unfair advantages of the Western schools at NCAA’s with their imported talent, I decided to do something about it,” Mills said. “Given that our college has an obscenely large endowment, I would like to apply it to something useful, for once.”

In order to entice Northug to Bowdoin, Mills said that the school had put together a $20,000,000 scholarship package, which also includes incentives for both academic and athletic performance. In addition, Mills said that the College will be purchasing Casio Eyewear for all students working in laboratories.

Northug will be allowed to race in the EISA circuit due to a rule known as the “Shepard exemption,” which allows old people to participate in NCAA competition if they have previously been on a national team.

In an interview, Northug said that he didn’t expect to have very much trouble with eastern collegiate skiers.

“In the Tour de Ski this year, I made Axel Teichmann my b—-. What makes you think that I’ll have any trouble with Dartmouth?” he said through a translator.

Northug added that he would be double majoring in gender and womens’ studies and art history at Bowdoin. With uncharacteristic humility, he also said that he was glad to have the opportunity to tap into the rich history of nordic skiing at the school.

“To have the chance to learn and ski at the same institution as the great Nat Herz–this is a true honor,” he said. “Nat is known far and wide in my native country as one of the hugest ballers, ever.”