November...

My least favorite month. Dark, rock hard pavement, hunting season, and the memory of last season's snow at its most distant. Its also the month where training hours are the longest, and Justin and I beat back the November blues today with a sparky double pole workout. Justin has skied for me for years now, and I've never seen him in better shape. His running times from the fall were blisteringly fast, he's strong, and he's chomping at the bit. We circled Wilson lake and talked about hip lean in the double pole stroke. Justin is VERY methodical about form; he thinks about it contantly, and is very diligent about refining his technique. We're trying to get more power out of the double pole by pulling his body weight forward to come down on the poles. Its a tricky adjustment; in my experience, the most common technical challenge for upper level high school skiers. Indeed, when I asked David Chamberlain, a fews years back (as he was returning from a World Cup event), what the key to good form was, his short answer was "hips forward". Justin made some good progress today, as my horrible pictures completely fail to show. Once the snow starts to fly, the real fine tuning can begin.

Maybe this post should have come first, but... Welcome to the CVA Nordic blog, where we will be chronicalling this, our first year as a nordic program. More specifically, we are a weekend program, intended to be complementary to being on a high school or middle school ski team. For younger athletes, we want to teach the sport through games and races and just generally having a good time on snow, which is just about impossible NOT to do in my opinion. For older kids, we will have a strong JOs focus: this is a program to help put kids on the New England team if that is their goal. For some athletes, that may be a goal for a few years down the road, but that doesn't mean we can't start laying that foundation now. And, of course, good skiing is good skiing, so if your goals are to do as well as you can in high school racing, thats also a great reason to join the team. We want anyone who wants to ski, preferably those who are as nuts about this sport as we are. : )

Anyway, the blog is just so parents, athletes and friends can check in with what we are doing and stay in touch with the team. Please, PLEASE leave comments for your kid/friend/kid's team/ etc. We love comments, and we are giving a prize to whoever gets the most (not really, but still, drop us a line). Also, thanks to recently aquired modern technology, I am always available to chat and love to do so, so call (207 491 3983) or email (marpa_lotsawa@hotmail.com). You can also email Abby (aweissman@gocva.com), shes the one who usually knows whats going on.

CVA Nordic! Duathalon debut

What a great day for our first event as CVA Nordic. I weas worried about the hurricane lousing things up, but it was a beautiful day. This early in the season, we weren't able to arrive "en masse", but it felt good to be out as a team nonetheless (our actual contingent of competitors was one past-his-prime coach (*raises hand*) and senior Lindsey Mathes, who took pity on me and did the running section so I didn't have to). Bowdoin puts on an awesome event: a 5k run, followed by a quick transition to ski gear and then a 6k rollerski. Lindsey and I shamelessly took advantage of doing a no-time-lost handoff instead of switching to ski boots, but alas, it was not enough to move us up to the podium. Actually, Lindsey ran quite well; shes coming off a good xc running season and is in great shape. It was also nice to see former athletes of mine like Sam Mathes (who skied to a blistering 4th overall), and my old coaches Becky Woods and Bob Flynn. New Gould head coach Jeremy Nellis (congrats are in order for succeeding the legendary Dick Taylor) was also present, shaming me by doing the entire race himself. In all it was a nice day to ski and catch up with friends. Our next team event will be the Atomic sprints
in early december, where we *do* hope to arrive en masse, with our younger skiers and Coach Weissman (who is currently with the school in Switzerland). But there will be some blog posts before then from training sessions, or whenever I get bored on the weekends. Yes, I really do sit at home tapping my toe waiting for the snow to fall...