So, Sunday was the Lobster Roll. I wrote up a report for the Maine Winter Sports Center that I’m going to include below. It’s a little hokey because I was trying to make MWSC look good (a worthy cause, I promise), so please forgive me–I’ll try to make the next post a little more sarcastic and biting to compensate…

Also, a brief quick plug–MWSC is really cool–they’ve done a lot for cross-country skiing and biathlon in Maine in the last few years. They’ve got a number of excellent programs, but one to keep in mind is a college summer training group that they run during the summer in northern Maine. I know northern Maine may not sound sweet, but there’s more to do than you’d think, and it’s a beautiful area with a good community of athletes training together. I think they’ll even help you with housing for the duration. For more info check out mainewsc.org, or e-mail the xc coach Will Sweetser at will@mainewsc.org.

I first realized that this wasn’t going to be a normal day as I was trying to change into my race suit in the ferry bathroom. Spandex is so tight that it’s hard to put it on to begin with–the ocean swells and cramped space complicated things even further.
I’m a college cross-country skier. Before most races–on snow, on pavement (using a special training tool called rollerskis), or otherwise–I’m usually comfortable and relaxed, holed up in a ski lodge or in the team van. Today was different–instead, I was sitting out on a ferry deck, trying to stave off the stiff Atlantic sea breeze.
Along with students from Bates, Colby, UMaine Orono and UMaine Presque Isle, I was on my way to the island of North Haven for the second annual Lobster Roll, a 15km rollerski race. Organized by the Maine Winter Sports Center (MWSC), the race serves as the state’s collegiate championship for rollerskiing.

An hour after departing the ferry terminal in Rockland, we docked at the island. I’d been to North Haven once before on vacation ten years ago, and the town was a lot like I remembered it–a tough-but-friendly place. All the athletes and coaches walked off the ferry, and we walked in a sort of odd parade up to a schoolhouse near the starting line.

North Haven’s roads are a rollerskiers dream: rolling and smooth, with only the occasional car to worry about. I warmed up for half an hour with my teammates, and then the racers started to go off–one at a time, every fifteen seconds.

The course was 15 km, essentially circumnavigating the island, and it was tough. I had a tailwind for the first half, and the course was mostly downhill in the beginning, which I think lulled me into a false sense of security. Once we hit our furthest point and started to turn back towards the school, a stiff headwind and challenging terrain made the going really painful and slow. Fortunately, headwinds and uphills are equal opportunity obstacles, so I don’t think that anyone else had it easier than I did.

Following a quick cool down, we all headed back down to Waterman’s, North Haven’s community center, for some delicious tomato soup, salad, and sandwiches prepared for us by the island’s residents. As my parents can certainly attest, feeding just one ski team is a big challenge–feeding five must have been an epic undertaking.

After lunch, as part of the day’s program, MWSC President Andy Shepard had enlisted North Haven State Representative and House Majority Leader Hannah Pingree to talk to us athletes for a few minutes about island life and lobstering. Pingree told us about her life growing up on North Haven, and discussed some of the challenges facing its residents, especially those in the lobster industry. Shepard finished the talk picking up where Pingree left off–asking us to think about how to revitalize the economy of Maine’s islands and rural communities using the skills we’ve acquired at college.

Before heading home, most of us suited up again for one last spin on North Haven’s roads. It was nice to be able to enjoy the island scenery at a more relaxed pace, as opposed to the head-down, teeth-grinding effort of the race. After a snack and a quick change, I got on the ferry totally exhausted, but also exhilarated–knowing that I’d just had a unique and unforgettable experience.

Bowdoin ski team members on the way to North Haven.

It seems that every year we schedule some sort of time trial or test with a few of the other college teams. This event always seems to fall on a frigid morning, be excruciatingly painful, and end with the other team(s) gleefully stomping on us.

Last weekend we had our obligatory event of the fall, a classic time trial with Colby College. Surprisingly, we held our own, taking second, fourth, seventh, and eighth. Rollerski races are obviously very subjective, with ski speeds and other things to take into account, but it’s heartening to see that we can be in the mix with some of the East’s best skiers–Colby sent three guys to NCAA’s last year, and I’m pretty sure they even qualified four.

Another exciting thing that happened this week was lactate testing. We’ve all done some treadmill/heart rate testing to get a general feel for where our training zones are, but doing a blood test in the middle of a workout is just another objective measure of how hard you’re working, and it keeps you honest. We were shooting for a threshold level of 4 mmol/deciliter of blood, and while many of us were pretty close, others had pretty valuable learning experiences.

Tomorrow the Bowdoin team is braving the waters of the frigid Atlantic (in a ferry, mind you) for the Maine State College rollerski championships. We’re catching a ferry to North Haven, a small island off the coast, and banging heads with the other Maine colleges in a 14.5 skate course that apparently circumnavigates the island. Rolling terrain and sea breezes supposedly make it pretty tough. I spent about four hours today switching the wheels and shafts of my skate rollerskis, so if they don’t work for me tomorrow, it might be worth it for any coastal readers to check the beaches over the next few days if they want a free pair of Marwes.

Speaking of free Marwes, I’m still not yet sponsored by anyone, so Mr. Marwe, if you’re reading this, I could use four new wheels if you’ve got any lying around.

That’s about it–as for the lactose, a few of my teammates are planning on tackling the gallon challenge tomorrow once we’re back from the race. We’ve had some pretty impressive finishes in the dozen donut challenge, so I’m looking forward to a spectacular contest. I’ll be sure to let you know how it goes…

All photos are again products of assistant coach “Outrageous” Ollie Burruss. Also, check out this sweet youtube video of sprints in practice. My arm wave is not a victory salute–I almost fell over…

Sunday morning I met the Bowdoin ski team at the Irving station in Augusta for the drive up to Sugarloaf. Not having learned from previous mistakes, I pounded a liter of water and a cup of coffee on the way, and though I almost made it, I had to force a van stop just 2 miles from the mountain for a pee break.

I’d never participated in the Sugarloaf Uphill Climb before, but this is an extremely gnar, extremely sweet event. Though I was hoping to contend with some of the Colby men’s skinny–sorry–ski team, I ended up duking it out with one of their women and a middle-aged man. Bowdoin did place a number of finishers in the top 20, however–check out the photos below.  A tasty lunch of pasta and chocolate chip cookies preceded our descent.

Yesterday, we set out to tame the Long Falls Dam Road, a 20-mile stretch of secluded pavement in the Maine woods. No moose, but fog and fall foliage abounded. We classic rollerskied for about three hours. Final tallies included a whole bunch of funny looks, like five ridiculously jacked up jeeps and other cars, one gigantic camper van that had no business being out there, and one middle finger (not mine, to be certain). 

Since yesterday’s drizzle nixed the epic run-hike the team had planned, we made up for it today with a four hour combo rollerski-running workout. We started with two hours on skate skis, alternating between smooth and unfinished jigsaw-puzzle-like pavement, before packing into the van for a quick drive over to Bradbury Mountain State Park–otherwise known as Radbury. Radbury is where I usually go to shred the gnar mountain bike style, but today we had to settle for shredding the gnar running style. The most important tally from this workout was the number of sandwiches I consumed at the dining hall upon my return, which was six.

Pictures are from Sunday’s Uphill Climb, and the Long Falls Dam rollerski. The photographers are “Outrageous” Ollie Burruss and “Nonstop” Nathan Alsobrook…

           So, it’s October 6^th, and I’m pretty sure the last time I posted on this blog was some time in September. I’m hoping this won’t be quite the infrequency at which I will post in the future, but I have a feeling that anyone who reads this might not be hearing from me as much as you did over the summer.

            School does make things a bit more complicated—I’ve been working on a paper for the last few days, and before that, it was a long article for the newspaper ( orient.bowdoin.edu—if anyone wants to hire me as a reporter when I graduate, I’m game, as I don’t think I’m going to be working as an investment banker any time soon). The way I’ve come to view college is that it comes in spurts—I’ll be on go for a week, maybe two, but then eventually things have to relax at a certain point.

            Training with the Bowdoin team over the past few weeks has been excellent. We’ve had a really good group coming out to optional captain’s practices, including a whole bunch of new freshman (see previous post), and they’re super motivated—the culture of the team has really shifted for the month of September from “we practice if we feel like it” to “we practice 6 days a week, and are super serious about it.” One of our freshman has been rollerskiing with us despite a broken wrist.

            Some highlights of the past few weeks: a sweet uphill time trial at Morse Mountain, which has a cool trail system that ends at a beach; a lot of rainy rollerskiing; and actually, that’s about all I can think of. Other than that, training has been pretty conventional—we’ve been sticking to the plan, and that’s been fine.

            A bunch of us are heading up to the Sugarloaf area this weekend for the Bowdoin team’s fall break camp. We’re planning on doing the Sugarloaf Uphill Climb on Sunday, a sweet hike in the Bigelow range on Monday, and a totally rad rollerski on one of the nicest, most secluded roads in Maine, the Long Falls Dam road.

           As for the poison ivy in the title–I got that after a lab I was doing for one of my ecology classes (see photos below–we went to an island in the middle of the Bay of no-Fundy). It really, really sucks.

           As a wise man once said, “keep ‘em pointed straight ahead!”