Fall Camp: Where we are, more on where we've been, and maybe a little on where we are going

Senate Meadows, Galena, Idaho

The "High Piney Country" my Dad called it, and he loved it. I do too. Something deep and enchanting lies here. At the same time it makes you feel small it draws you out and into it. There is an almost visceral connection with wildness. In spite of the warm breeze and the soft dryness of early fall some thing still and unspoken suggests survival, and predation, and patterns of life and death. A small breath of air at the same time can caress and comfort and still raise the hair on your neck.

The day before yesterday the team ran the ski trails at Galena Lodge. It was a low intensity workout and designed give each a metric of how altitude acclimatization is coming along. Galena is high at 7200'. I have often felt I noticed the difference between Ketchum at 6000' and Galena more than I noticed the difference between sea level and Ketchum. The trails are a mix of dirt roads, and broad meadows and when the roads dissolve into forest track it is not always easy to follow them. There is a lot of relief to the land. The team connected two or three of the trails for a 90 minute level one to two run and everyone seemed to tolerate the additional altitude well.

We have the luxury of time to get used to the lower pressure up here, and to spend enough time to have a natural training effect take place. It will be interesting to measure times and numbers in certain set tests we use after we come back to Burke. Another factor that seems to be playing a positive role this year is that everyone on the team has been healthy and seems to be able to build on the fitness level with which they came. While we still haven't put down a serious interval session today's morning work out was a series of speeds finishing with 8 times up a steep 100 meter section of trail. Kate and I were pleased with what we saw and the efforts put in. Tough work well done.

This is Steep!

The Girls do Speeds at Lake Creek's South Bench

We have had Burkie Sam Tarling with us for the last week and that has been good fun for the whole gang. Last night we hosted alum Evan Martell who is spending the year with Sun Valley's post grad program and three of his housemates. They come from programs in Montana, the Northwoods of Wisconsin, and of course,Vermont. A fun and hungry bunch.

SAT tests on October first for five of our seven. That will close a chapter and we can turn our attentions to the last full week. Hopefully there will be some pleasure reading. there will be plenty of good training. On the list is a run around Redfish Lake, two or three more long roller skis, moose hoof intervals, a time trial and whatever else we can squeeze in.

All the best and more soon.

BMA Nordic is Back! Back on the Blogspot and Back in Sun Valley



Sun Valley Coach Rick Kapala and BMA Coach Kate Barton
explain the drill to both teams.



Greetings! A lot has been going on with the BMA Nordic Team and since our return from Norway and what turned out to be an excellent camp, enough balls have been in the air that THE NORDIC BLOG has not received much attention. We will try to bring things up to date over the next little bit and perhaps the easiest way to do that is to start in medias res and work backwards!

OK, here we go. It is about 8:00 AM Mountain Standard Time and the sun has not quite hit the peaks to the west of Ketchum and Sun Valley, Idaho. There is a little chill in the air and it promises to be another bluebird day. We have been blessed with perfect Indian Summer weather. It seems as though the seasons are two weeks behind here, with the trees still green, no frost at night, and long warm evenings. Last night we enjoyed a special meal courtesy of the Great Expectations ranch in central Oregon. The ranch owner is Robert Siceloff who is an old chum and who enjoys meeting us here in Idaho. He provided enough fresh pheasant, and antelope to make a true Game feast. Amazing!



Tom Rabon in the SV Strength Room
One of the best we've seen for XC work!

Today at 11:00 we will join the Sun Valley team for a classic roller ski OD/technique workout. The first week on the ground here is almost over and the team has logged good and varied hours as the acclimatization process from 900' to 6000' does its work. Sun Valley's team has an excellent strength facility and we've taken advantage of that. The hiking trails are perfect for steady uphill work and some of the lower angle loops make for good early at altitude runs. A network of miles of paved bike paths make roller skiing a pleasure.

Yesterday the gang hiked up the main alpine hill, Bald Mountain, which starts at 6000' and rounds off at about 9300, to watch the "Baldy Hill Climb", a run up the north side of the mountain. It is a level 4/5 tough one that wasn't quite right timing wise for our schedule, but the level 1/2 hike was ideal.Proctor Mountain and connected tops to the east was the scene of activity the day before and the guys, including BMA alum Sam Tarling, put in a 3 hour high altitude adventure. Sam attended the summer term at Dartmouth so he could take the fall off to train. He is here with us in the Valley and is providing a good rabbit to the team and a good example of the attitude it takes to get it done.We will be here in Idaho until the 10th of October. It is a perfect amount of time as we will begin to truly enjoy the training effect of living at altitude. There is time to put in a lot of low intensity volume work to properly adjust to the lower pressure, and then there is time to throw in our camp-within-a-camp intensity week before we come home. It is a perfect spot to train before shifting to snow.

There have been big changes on the team in the past few months as well. In short Matt Johnson has moved on to take charge of the Nordic Program for The Utah Nordic Alliance, a junior program based in Salt Lake City. We hope Matt joins us up here in Idaho for a couple of days. Everyone is excited to see hime and to get the latest on his new job. At first it looked as though the assistant coach's position at BMA would have to be a 5 month show, but in July things rolled to together and we were able to offer it as full time. We are lucky to add Kate Barton to the roster filling that role. Kate is from Cape Elizabeth in Maine, attended Middlebury and skied there for four years. She joins us as the assistant Nordic Coach and also is zeroing in on helping with admissions and recruiting. Kate has fired up a BMA Nordic Facebook page which will take the place of daily blogging, and gives a venue for the posting of quick news and pictures.This Blogspot piece will stay up and we promise to keep it more current. The thrust will change a bit to more in depth bits about our year, our approach to camps, academic work, and other Nordic News.

Give us some feedback on what you would like to see, and news you would like to get, and do check out the Facebook Posts...they are pretty fun!