Greetings From New York!

We just got done waxing skis.

It's after 1AM.

We have to get up early so we can wax more skis.

Race tomorrow - 10K skating for men and 5K skating for women.

No time to write.

Look at these pictures.

Here's Alex getting acquainted with the racing trail.

Andrew

Clement

In the basement.

Casa UAA.

Team dinner at the Alpine House.

Fourth Annual UAA NCAA Trivia Game at the Alpine House.

Everybody wants to be Eric Heiden in Lake Placid.

Kathi and Mackenzie

Our Nordic team: Manon, Alex, Kathi, Etienne, Mackenzie, Clement

The entire UAA Team

The Wildcard came prepared with a lot of lumber.

There's nothing wrong with the ski conditions here.

Paradise. (I can't believe I just wrote that)

Hey you guys -  I found Sara!

Here's a UAA Ski Team trivia question:  When and where was the last NCAA's where the waxing area got flooded and we were all walking around in deep water with high-voltage power cords submerged? Tonight in the waxing basement it was deja-vu all over again. 

Your Seawolf Starting Lineup...

We've arrived at our team house in downtown Lake Placid New York after an overnight journey across North America by air. It's great to see snow again, and we're exhausted from the lack of sleep on the plane but happy to be here and ready to race!

Mid-load-out at Logan airport.

Saddle up.

Head Coach:  Andrew Kastning
Coming off a week of little sleep as the host of the RMISA Championships last week in Anchorage, Andrew's goal for the day is to stay awake until 10pm before going to bed.

Assistant Coach: Sara Studebaker
Sara knows Lake Placid like the back of her hand after spending more than her fair share of time at the Olympic Training Center here. Sara is our local guide to everything Adirondack.

Clément Molliet comes to the NCAA Championships off a bunch of top-five finishes in RMISA races this winter.

Alex Mahoney aka Wildcard. One of the most exciting guys out there - you never know what's going to happen when Alex goes to the starting line.

Mackenzie Kanady.  Having a breakthrough year. Caught a cold during the RMISA Championships.  Then got healthy again. Ready to race!

Manon Locatelli got off to a frustrating start to the college season, but has steadily gotten faster and faster all winter.  Third place in the RMISA Championships last week shows the upward trend continues. The timing could be perfect... 

Étienne Richard. He's finally back among his beloved maple trees!  Étienne obviously feels at home here, and is relaxed and ready for some fast Adirondack skiing

Kathi Schratt. Her freshman year of college. Her first NCAA Championships. Her first trip to New York. Her best races of the year were last week at the RMISA Championships.  Kathi is ready. 

That's me, the team's porter and waterboy. The last time I saw this much snow in Lake Placid was around 1982 during a mid-winter camping trip in sub-zero temperatures at the KOA Kampground north of town in our family's 1971 13-foot camper that we towed behind the station wagon.  We were probably fortunate to have escaped carbon-monoxide poisoning on that one.

Home sweet home.

The Week That Was

Seven days ago at this time, we didn't have hardly any snow on the ground and we were in the middle of three days of steady rain. We'd scrapped our original plan to race our first two (of four) races on the new Girdwood racing trail because there was no snow at all in Girdwood. Not even a thin film of ice. Just brown dirt and gray rocks. Skis hardly glide on that kind of surface. Clearly,we'd have to move all the races to Anchorage.

We did have a thin sheet of ice to work with at Hillside, and there was the snowmaking loop at Kincaid. Unfortunately, the rainstorm was flooding Kincaid's ski stadium, turning it into a stadium-sized lake.

There was some nervousness among race organizers and coaches. There were many questions, but few answers.

Seven days later, we can look back at four successful cross-country races on good racing snow conditions. The alpine team also reported perfect racing conditions at Girdwood - a frozen tilted sheet of ice - the kind of racing surface alpine ski racers prefer.

Anchorage Daily News articles and lots of great photos of the week's racing are available at these links:

Monday's Skate Race at Hillside (I posted this one earlier this week - you might have already read it)

Wednesday's Classic Race at Kincaid

Friday's Skate Race at Kincaid

Saturday's Mass-start Classic Race

UAA Athletics' Website

And Bob Arnold's Race Videos Are Here (thanks Bob!)

The regular RMISA season has concluded and now six athletes, two coaches and I (the team's porter, navigator and cheerleader) leave for the NCAA championships in Lake Placid, New York in just five days (Friday afternoon)! It looks as though UAA's cross-country team at NCAA's will consist of Mackenzie Kanady, Manon Locatelli, Kathrin Schratt, Alex Mahoney, Etienne Richard, and Clement Molliet.

We've had a season in which we've produced a lot of results that are close to the top, but not quite at the top... yet. Several of our skiers have shown a clear improving trend over the past few weeks, with some top-five placings very close behind the winners, and we're very optimistic about this positive trend going into NCAA's.  Stay tuned!