There are many different ways to think about the ending of an old year and the beginning of a new one. At some point we stop, take a deep breath, settle the events of the past year in our mind and move on to sketching a rough outline of plans for the upcoming year. For some it's based on nature-- blooming crocuses and new energy for life and all those introspective musings. Some use the calendar year-- throwing a big party one night to indulge in all sorts of vices and resolving the next day not to do so again. Birthdays mark the cumulation of another year of gleaning wisdom while the close of each fiscal year hopes to see us also expanding our financial wisdom. For most of my life thus far, the years were divided into school years with the start of a new year falling on August 30th, or thereabouts.
Now, however, there's a little noted day in late April or early May that signals the demarcation between past and future. I want you to be cognizant that for some of us, April 28th marks the first day of our year. For us skiers this Monday is the first day that gets written down on the 08-09 training log. The 07-08 log has been polished off and filled out to completion and now stands as a historic document instead of the daily news. All of the training and racing from last year gets added to the satchel of lifetime base training and now is nothing more than a platform from which to jump into the upcoming season.
It's time to stop bemoaning that bungled pursuit exchange, that race missed due to sickness, or that beautiful day when you absolutely, positively, and regrettably could not find the time to go outside and enjoy it. It's also time to stand up from where you may have been resting on your laurels and acknowledge that it's time to get back to work since no one next winter is going to step aside and let you beat them merely because you made the top ten, attained your goal on that one course or finally and painfully qualified for the elite wave at the Birkie. Nope, starting today it's time to learn from your mistakes, and your successes, and apply that to the next workout and the next year of training and racing.
The first day of my new year started off with a mélange of training activities. There were rock hard ruts in the trails at Hilltop this morning so we reconvened with running shoes and did about 45 minutes worth of uphill running, bounding & ski walking just below threshold. Along with a warm up and cool down, that amount of running to kick off the season is sure to make me sore this week! Then in the afternoon when the trails had softened up to a sopping wet, klister-demanding slush we classic skied and did five one-minute double pole speeds and then some more fast paced distance skiing. It feels good to start off the 08-09 season with some focused training... Happy New Year!
Monday, April 28, 2008
Friday, April 25, 2008
Interviews with Sand Lake Elementary Students
Mrs. Price's class is really working a lot with technology this year and Ashton conducted some short interviews with her classmates on video. The following video gives you a glimpse of some of the delightful students I get to work with every day!
Saturday, April 19, 2008
When it's 8:30pm on Friday and you get the following email from your coach, you know it's going to be a good Saturday...
"Let’s meet at Glenn Alps at 8:15 AM
Skate-classic-touring…bring it all!
Looks like it will be cold overnight and warm tomorrow
We will ski 2-4 hrs…bring a little food-H20
Van will depart 7:45
See you in the AM
Erik"
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Recess!
Now that I'm in Anchorage again I've started going back the Mrs. Price's class in the afternoons to help out with her 5th & 6th graders.
Today I talked to them a little bit about what it takes to get into college and why they should go. Then, since they'd been doing Anchorage's standardized testing all morning, we got to go outside for a short recess!
It was a great opportunity after being gone so long to get to reconnect with the kids one on one. Being in the classroom and helping with the academics is great but it's nice to just get to play too.
It was also great to see that I was still fairly competent on the monkey bars!
You can see that there's the added excitement of having a nice puddle of April slush below you if you were to slip!
Today I talked to them a little bit about what it takes to get into college and why they should go. Then, since they'd been doing Anchorage's standardized testing all morning, we got to go outside for a short recess!
It was a great opportunity after being gone so long to get to reconnect with the kids one on one. Being in the classroom and helping with the academics is great but it's nice to just get to play too.
It was also great to see that I was still fairly competent on the monkey bars!
You can see that there's the added excitement of having a nice puddle of April slush below you if you were to slip!
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
"Can girls get six-packs?"
At home for a week between races, my sister asked my to come to track practice with her at the high school.
"We train hard," she said, in an effort to pique my interest, "Monday and Wednesday are really hard, Tuesday and Thursday are pretty hard, Friday's our easy day-- but even Friday's hard."
Unable to resist the opportunity to run with my sister and visit with my old running coaches, 3:20 on Monday saw me driving too fast over Skyline Drive and pulling up to the back side of the Wenatchee High School track. I spotted my sister's ponytail and joined her along with the rest of the distance runner clan. I was on a break from focused training to get a little mental rejuvenation after the World Cup season and before Canadian and US Long Distance Nationals in the following, consecutive weeks. Along with extracting my promise to do a level 4 interval session on Tuesday my coach, Erik, had given me the following instructions, "don't do anything too unusual, like going for a two hour run." I'm sure if Erik had even been able to imagine that I'd be tempted to run 600m intervals on a track he would have explicitly banned those too but seeing as how he hadn't...
After intervals and a cool-down jog we regrouped for stretching and abs. It had been my first time running fast since intermittently sprinting around a golf course to cheer for my sister in a cross country running race last fall and that had been on nice soft grass. By the end of our cool-down I could already feel my calves starting to think about cramping. They would have been fine if I hadn't tacked on those last 4x200m sprints, but how could I say no to a seemingly innocuous 200m? During our last set of ab exercises I was informally fielding some questions from the rest of the girls' team and willing my calves to unclench when one of the girls asked, "Can girls get six-packs?"
I was momentarily speechless and she followed up her question by commenting, "because my dad says they can't." I laughed because of how absurd I found that theory and quickly reassured her, supported by several other girls on the team, that anyone could get a six-pack with enough determination. Then I sobered up because after two months of brushing elbows with the women racing on the World Cup I had forgotten that the "women are weak and fragile" myth was still out there. There are a lot of girls, even girls who are already participating in sports, that still have yet to discover that women can be as tough and as strong as they want to be.
And dads... don't tell your girls that they can't have six-pack abs.
Kikkan Randall
"We train hard," she said, in an effort to pique my interest, "Monday and Wednesday are really hard, Tuesday and Thursday are pretty hard, Friday's our easy day-- but even Friday's hard."
Unable to resist the opportunity to run with my sister and visit with my old running coaches, 3:20 on Monday saw me driving too fast over Skyline Drive and pulling up to the back side of the Wenatchee High School track. I spotted my sister's ponytail and joined her along with the rest of the distance runner clan. I was on a break from focused training to get a little mental rejuvenation after the World Cup season and before Canadian and US Long Distance Nationals in the following, consecutive weeks. Along with extracting my promise to do a level 4 interval session on Tuesday my coach, Erik, had given me the following instructions, "don't do anything too unusual, like going for a two hour run." I'm sure if Erik had even been able to imagine that I'd be tempted to run 600m intervals on a track he would have explicitly banned those too but seeing as how he hadn't...
After intervals and a cool-down jog we regrouped for stretching and abs. It had been my first time running fast since intermittently sprinting around a golf course to cheer for my sister in a cross country running race last fall and that had been on nice soft grass. By the end of our cool-down I could already feel my calves starting to think about cramping. They would have been fine if I hadn't tacked on those last 4x200m sprints, but how could I say no to a seemingly innocuous 200m? During our last set of ab exercises I was informally fielding some questions from the rest of the girls' team and willing my calves to unclench when one of the girls asked, "Can girls get six-packs?"
I was momentarily speechless and she followed up her question by commenting, "because my dad says they can't." I laughed because of how absurd I found that theory and quickly reassured her, supported by several other girls on the team, that anyone could get a six-pack with enough determination. Then I sobered up because after two months of brushing elbows with the women racing on the World Cup I had forgotten that the "women are weak and fragile" myth was still out there. There are a lot of girls, even girls who are already participating in sports, that still have yet to discover that women can be as tough and as strong as they want to be.
And dads... don't tell your girls that they can't have six-pack abs.
Kikkan Randall
Friday, February 15, 2008
Laura Valaas & Kikkan Randall, Otepää, Estonia.It's a long time away from home when you're racing the World Cup circuit so I have been thrilled to have Miss Kikkan Randall around to show me the ropes and lead me through my first winter of World Cup races. Kikkan's a 2002 & 2006 Olympian and recently bagged her first World Cup victory.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Photo by Phil Bowen, Competitive ImageOn January 23rd & 26th I kicked off my World Cup tour with some "local" races in Canmore, Alberta, Canada. For World Cup races I would consider anything on the North American continent to be local. These races didn't go as well as I had wanted so I'm looking forward to getting another chance to race the same girls at our next venue- Otepää, Estonia.
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