The carnival season is upon us with the Bates Carnival kicking things of this weekend at Sunday River and Black Mountain of Maine.  We had a nice team dinner last night with virtually the whole team present.  Patrick, Mae, Ellery, Jennie, Jesse, and Cole drove home through a snow storm from the Rumford Eastern Cups arriving just in time for Bill to address the team.  It wasn’t exactly Al Pacino from “Any Given Sunday” (who is?) but it was inspiring to be crowded around tables in the Bostwick Room listening to Bill on the eve of a new college season.  The theme, as it is most years, is don’t blink because the season is over in a hearbeat!

This past weekend was the last tune-up for most of us.  The men’s Alpine team worked out the kinks in Eastern Cups at Stowe.  Patrick had five people sharpening up for the Bates Carnival at the Eastern Cups at Black Mountain where Jennie and Cole were the top Catamounts in the sprint on Saturday and Jennie and Jesse were the top Cats in Sunday’s tough and snowy classic mass start.  Results, Photos.

Closer to home Coreen, Joe Connelly (St Mike’s), and I ran a time trial at Trapp’s on the courses for the UVM Carnival/NENSA Supertour/Eastern Cup February 7 and 8.  Athletes from Middlebury and St. Michael’s joined 11 Catamounts for a 10k and 15k classic on Trapp’s new race loop.  Franz, Juergen, and Chris lead home the men and Caitlin finished a strong third behind Robyn Anderson and Elise Moody-Roberts from Middlebury.  The course is excellent and everyone seemed to enjoy it.  Thanks to Bill Henchey for getting it race ready for us!

Check back for more this week as we build up towards Rumford….

This entry was posted on Monday, January 19th, 2009 at 4:27 pm and is filed under Good times, Racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.