The Final Stretch and Canadian World Cups!

Despite Winter's best efforts we have enjoyed a good final stretch of training in February!  Since the final Easter Cup races we dialed back into training mode and our goal was to put in a solid block before tuning up for the Final races of the season at Junior Nationals and Spring Series.  We did just that and more.  Gatineau Park in Canada may just be our new favorite place to train in Canada...!  We were also lucky enough to travel to the World Cup racing in Gatineau and Montreal and it was an incredible experience.   For now, we are split into two groups, Kate and Chris are in Wisconsin coaching and competing at Junior Nationals while the rest of the crew is in Vermont tuning up for Spring Series.  No matter where we are spread across the country we are a team and we are excited to be together for the final series in Craftsbury.  

The Canadian World Cups, by Carter and Orli
The BMA nordic squad headed north last Sunday to find some skiing and then stand face to face with the best skiers in the world. After a few hours in the car, we hopped out to stretch our legs in Gatineau Park. After a bit of confusion at the trailhead, we ended up on a beautifully groomed park road, wide enough to ski three wide. We took advantage of the great trails again on Monday, logging 3 hours classic skiing in hardwax conditions (a rarity this winter.) Although we were hardly ready to leave we packed our bags and headed into the city for the first race of the Ski Tour Canada. We parked outside and took the shuttle bus in, where we caught our first glimpse of some of our idols. The U.S. Ski team women were all on the same bus headed to the venue (A bit of a contrast from the gold plated private jets that fly them around in Norway.) Even though we were a few hours early, the venue was already filling up, and we staked our claim on a good spot to spectate during the qualification round. The course was two loops, so all the athletes warming up came by quite a few times, and we got some video of Petter Northug, and pictures of Martin Sundby standing feet away from us. The US showed solid results in the qualifier with four US women making the heats, which gave us hope of some top finishes. For the heats we found a new spot near the finish to spectate, within feet of the final corner and finishing straight. The US women had a strong showing, with Jessie Diggins advancing to the final and taking 3rd, despite missing a pole plant feet from our faces during the final 100 meters. The US strength continued in during the Men’s race with Simi Hamilton advancing to the final and grabbing third in a four way photo finish. We were so excited for the podium ceremonies that the fences could hardly contain us, so we jumped over and got in the front row for the flower ceremony, proudly waving the american flag for Jessie and Simi. Both the Americans were very gracious, and happy to take photos with us, as they likely get way less attention in Europe. Contrastingly, a salty Petter Northug, who had finished last in the final, would hardly make eye contact with fans after the race. Sergey Ustiugov probably would have taken pictures with us, but he doesn’t speak English, and Danya didn’t know enough Russian to woo him. All of us had lost our voices by the end of the day from cheering, and we were less than pleased when the Canadian directions got us lost in the final kilometers before arriving at our house. Luckily, said house was within walking distance of the venue for the mass start classic race on Wednesday. We walked down to the venue in full US Garb, I was wearing an American flag as a cape, which attracted plenty of attention in the corner coffee shop. We found a nice spot inside the fence of the course where we could see the sketchy downhill and some classic striding. Sundby totally ate it and it wasn’t on the footage that was published later but it was hilarious. Jessie Diggins had a solid race, finishing in 8th place. The men’s race ended in exciting fashion, with Emil Iverson breaking away from Petter Northug and Sergey Ustiugov to take the win, with Northug surging too late to catch his Norwegian Teammate. All in all it was a fantastic time, and awesome to see our idols in person doing their thing.

Team

Orli

Danya and Carter at Mt Hor

Gatineau! GO USA

Carter and Danya: teamwork.

Chris doing some interval work with JN teammate Adam 

Tubing!

Extreme 

Wow!

"Spring training"

Orli

Perfection in Canada

...and more

Yes!

Spectating in Gatineau

USA proud

Eastern Cups #3 and #4: A mid-Winter update

We've been up to so much since our last post I won't even begin to try to recap here.  Instead, I'll just share a bunch of photos from the winter so far and a note I wrote to the team after the final Eastern Cup.  I am so excited to see what's next for this crew!  We're putting in a good training block and getting ready to rip for the final period of racing this season. -Kate

I love ski racing.  I also love winning.  I’m a competitive person and one of my greatest attractions to coaching is helping aspiring athletes to avoid the same mistakes that I made as a junior racer.  My distaste toward the job comes from the feeling I get when any athlete misses the mark, slips in the pursuit of a goal, or experiences failure.

The reality of this crazy, persistently relentless and also rewarding sport is that failure, at some point, is inevitable.  Life has these same qualities. 

I know what it feels like to be defeated and I know some of you will hate me just for writing to you in this difficult time.  What I really want to say is that I hope this fuels your fire, rather than extinguishing it.  Ski racing is hard.  Losing is difficult.  What you do next is most important.

I hope you guys hold your heads high and whatever team or race you do or do not qualify for, you move forward with humility and a good dose of fire.  You didn't lose. You are all good skiers. You trained well and then raced your hearts out and you should be proud.  There are going to be things you could have, and would have, done differently.  Train harder next summer.  Go to bed earlier.  Ski with no poles.  Train bigger hours.  Get to know your skis.  If there weren’t things that you could change to be better there’d be no sense in pursuing this path.  Be tougher.  Do more strength.  Learn how to handle pressure to perform.  Take rest and recovery more seriously.

The season is far from over and no matter what, there are still major championships to be contested.  I know many of you set high goals that had a lot to do with the ECup circuit.  But, making the Junior National team (in NE, in my opinion) is a difficult task. There are a lot of factors outside of your control that contribute to the outcome. You can still become a successful skier. Just imagine trying to earn your place on the US women's squad or the Norwegian World Cup team.

Ask anyone who’s ever reached the top if the road was easy?  Sundby didn’t win his first 50km race.  In fact, in 2005, he didn’t even finish...11 years later, he won!  That’s a long road.  

Running across the field at Craftsbury from one edge of the 2km lap to the other got me excited about ski racing.  You guys and your fire get me excited for ski racing. I see what you can do as individuals. Put things in perspective.  Re-evaluate your goals.  Get pumped.  This journey is far from over if you want it to be.  Smile, it’s just skiing, and I hope it will always make you as happy as it makes me.

I am proud to be your coach, keep charging!

Eastern Cup #2

We have to start by saying congratulations to Liz Stephen and Ida Sargent for their performances at the Tour de Ski and on the World Cup!  Ida just scored a 5th place finish with teammate Sophie Caldwell in the team sprint and Liz clocked the 3rd fastest time in the final stage of the Tour de Ski (note: Liz's favorite, the hill climb) to finish a strong 2016 Tour where she gained places with every effort.  We're super proud of you guys and are cheering loud from the Kingdom!

It is hard to believe the ECup season is halfway over.  It was great to show up early on Friday afternoon to catch the end of the Bate's carnival classic sprint and cheer on some fast alumni and other college racers.  Its always great to see the next level of racing.  This weekend was a good one for all.  We had some strong performances and everyone should be proud of their individual efforts.  We're growing as a team with every effort and their were plenty of lessons to be learned from this weekend.  We finished off with a fun effort on Monday at Bretton Woods in the Geschmossel classic race.  The crew skied easy together as a part of a bigger over distance day to cap off a big weekend.  It was super fun to charge around in the powdery woods at the base of Mt. Washington as a team.  Now, its time to rest and recover, put in some good training, and then sharpen for our final back-to-back Eastern Cups.  We can't wait to see what the rest of the season brings!

Orli had a great effort in the Mass start CL!

Chasing some pow up Coronary

Women's start

Chris chargin

Danya super focused and pushing hard

Carter is back!

Lots of fresh snow fell during the race on Saturday, making conditions difficult, but everyone powered through.  Here's Chris making it look easy.

Happy 2016 from BMA Nordic!

We returned to school on December 28th and despite mother nature's best effort we were graced with awesome early season conditions (until the last 24hrs--don't worry, its snowing again)!  We're mixing up our training between our campus loop, Kingdom Trails and Craftsbury Outdoor Center and we are grateful for every KM we have logged this wild Winter.  Since November we've skied in everything from 21 below to 50 above, but we've skied, and thats what matters.  As a team we have made massive gains this year and I am looking forward to seeing that hard work continue to pay off.

 Next up is the Maine Eastern Cup at Quarry Rd. in Waterville Maine.  We're excited to check out what will be a new venue for many and toe the line with the best of the best in New England.  Its hard not to get excited when we've been following US Nationals out in Houghton and the Tour de Ski.   A major congratulations goes out to all of the US Ski Team for their inspiring performances and especially to our own Burke graduates Liz Stephen and Ida Sargent who continue to energize and inspirit all of us back home!

Here a bunch of photos of the crew from the last 2+ weeks of training.  Enjoy!  

A rainy TT.  No problem.

Bomber classic skiing.  Love.

A frozen ski on campus.

Team intervals.

Gettin' after it.

Getting ready to get after it.

Danya

Flying fish!