Lord of the skis

Jake, Hunter, Matty and Pepper before the OD today.


My inner nerd is taking over on the Sunday night before exam week starts up as the final Lord of the rings movie is playing. Pepper Matty and I have watched all of them fri sat and now tonight.

The fellowship of the skis had a good weekend. After finishing up a solid week of training, Ethan the Enthusiastic had us do a 17.5k (yes .5) TT on Saturday. Middle Earth was cold so Hunter Baggins had to wrap his cloak around his neck and face. Felt pretty good double staffing, a little slow prancing up the hills but held on to second place 4 seconds behind the not slow dwarf scuba. Felt pretty good, still had some energy at the end even though it was as cold as Mordor is hot.

Saturday night back at the Shire as the team dined in the great hall, the fellowship of the nordi' ski decided to have the manliest of bonding experience of all. An old fashioned sleep over... haha Beano is back at home and Pepper and I are lonely young men so we pillow fought and tickled until the wee hours of the morning before we headed off to tour the enchanted Higley Forest.

K after K, Jake, Me, Matty and Pepper ran into magical friends like the Ent named Lanky and Axtel the Amazing, searching the lands for the best Chinese downhills and steezy jumps. Skiing the land the travelers began to grow weary. Thankfully Knut the Knowledgeable allowed the travelers to ski a less than the prescribed 3 hours.

Ok that was a little lame... I don't know, with finals coming up I need a little fantasy to escape the hell that is coming this week. For real though, this week has been good, going to try and keep up my hours next week and then push for some quality over Christmas break. Thats about it from here. Its been awesome watching the US results on the world cup. Congrats to Kikkan for an awesome result in Russia! And for Newell who continues to be in it regardless of what happens.

Good snow

Tuesday was a pretty good workout, 5 mass start intervals on a fixed loop starting hard and holding on. Missed the hole shot the first few times. 32 degrees and snowing made for interesting kick for the rest of the guys, luckily I had to be that guy that buys waxless skis. I was kicking well, felt ok, the speed isn't there but the fitness is I think... With me its hard to tell, I was looking at old video tonight of last year and I was killing it in some of the intervals but raced not so well mid season. Who knows anymore. Today was a good easy skate, started off warm but when the sun went down the snow set up so nice and fast, we were hauling up to the van at the end. Then I had to rush to class.. blah. Actually I am in class right now waiting to do a critique and I and I had some downtime.

Finals are almost in full swing and I am in the senior slump. I am really sick of schoolwork. I need this semester to be done. Anyway tomorrow I have to miss practice for class so I might lift in the morning and ski the golf course in the afternoon. Thats about it for now.

I had to upload some raw footage for my media class, here is some vids of me skiing. I am a goofball.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-LONT7Klpo

It's mostly from last year. I hope to take some video from this year and make a legit movie.

Hunter looks pretty when he dresses up in pink shirts

Wow Hunter looks fast in this picture. So fast in fact that the camera couldn't keep up.

After pouting all of yesterday afternoon sitting in front of the TV eating ice cream in pink sweatpants and Power Ranger shirt watching lifetime's made for TV movies while doing his nails Hunter crawled out of the man cave (closet) for some fun. He blew off some steam dressed up all nice at the running teams Christmas formal. After a great night Hunter had a good ski this morning thrashin' the gnar gnar with the boys in the woods on a classic OD. Hitting jumps, doing tele turns, talking about the nights gossip and stories makes bad days like yesterday go away.

Anyway Hunter is going to go take another nap.

nothing good came of that

(Photo of start stolen with no regard from Midd site)




Hunter felt good about his fitness. Then Hunter decided to do a ski race. He tried to win the race. After leading for a K or so Hunter didn't feel very poppy. Not tired, out of breath, or crappy, just not fast. Hunter kept falling further back. He still beat Ziz and this made him smile. Ziz had many of the same things go wrong as Hunter.

Beano wins race killing Tim Reynolds who deserves much worse since he makes fun of Hunter a lot. SluSki in general did quite well in Placid but there is an I in the way that Hunter spells team.

Hunter got great sandwich at the lakeside deli on the way home which made him feel better.

Now Hunter is going to nap

Hunter would like to thank the McClelland family for being such great hosts last night. He thinks his results would have been ever worse if he hadn't eaten like a king last night and got to chill by the fireplace. And the pancakes this morning were sooo dope, nothing like waking up to the smell and taste of home cooking.

Hunter is going to push over freshman girls girls at practice in the morning to make himself feel better.

And so it begins

It has been a long wait for the race season to start. From feverish dreams all summer to the first TTs of the fall it begins tomorrow. I have been feeling pretty good but I never know how this stuff is going to go. My left calf is still bothering me and I have this REALLY strange feeling in my back. The skin on my lower back is wicked sensitive to the touch with a little bit of muscle ache. Anyway some of the mens team is heading down to Placid at noon so we can ski the course and spend the night at Matty's which will be sweet not having to drive very far in the morning. So yeah I don't know, I'm not super nervous but I really want to see what I can do. Time to pack. Peace.

Good shtufffff

Another good ski on Saturday, a few sets of thirty second skate pickups to finish off a solid weekend. Went for a quick snow run with Ziz before my Monday ritual of the sauna with old sweaty men. gross. Tuesday Ziz and I tried to sneak in a ski in the morning before class but my skis were in a van that was getting worked on and we couldn't find and by the time I found it, it was locked, and we were out of time. Went back and did strength and focused on my calves the whole time. haha. I got out of class after the team left so I tried to go on a trail run in knee deep snow... sorta worked. sorta sucked. Anyway my calves are killing form either the toe raises or the dumb run.

Today went well even after my sore calves. Slept in beyond late, was lazy till I got hungry, ate, went to practice, got in a REALLY good skate interval session with Knut. Finally feeling pretty good, lots of stuff to work on but it felt good. I need to work on the initial power phase of my V2 even if it mean slowing down the tempo. On the ride home I went over the video that Ethan took then waxed up the boards so they are fast for this weekend. I am doing the 10k in Placid. It will be my first on snow test of the year. Sorta nervous. I don't usually race well at the beginning of the season but I want to see what I can do.

On a sad note, again I had issues with the Vdub last night going to the store. After a half hour of ice scraping my exhaust fell off before the cherrybomb and then my wipers stopped working... blah. Still runs at least.

SO the snow is good. Finals haven't started. I have been sleeping a lot. Been eating too much. And I might see those dirty Midd boys this weekend at the race.

Can't complain too much

I say good

After being grumpy the other day things are looking up. Friday we had a really good set of long hard bounding intervals. Pretty badass icy hill with snow falling like crazy with the boys getting the job done working real hard. I had clam strips for lunch and thought I was going to color the snow but kept it down.

After a lazy night staying in I got a good nights sleep and we drove up to Gatineu Ottawa and got in a solid 2.5 hour classic ski. Zizz and I branched off in the beginning and skied some crazy ungroomed Backcountry trails tearing up the rock skis and committing to some sweet rock riddled lines. I forgot my wind briefs though and paid the grimacing price when the ski was over. Feeling good back on snow though. Skate ski tomorrow.

Oh yeah and pretty cool that Newell got 4th today along with the dope biathlon and combined results from this weekend.

Off to a warm Rodeo Chicken Quesadilla. yummy.