2:1 Coach/Athlete Ratio

It was Etienne's worst nightmare over the weekend.  He wanted to go for a nice peaceful hike in the Chugach front range on Saturday morning, but Andrew and I wanted to come along, too.  So instead of relaxation and quiet, Etienne ended up with drill sargeants coming at him in stereo.

Andrew started us off with a little bushwhacking, but eventually we got above treeline and were able to look down on Anchorage on a sunny windless morning.

Anchorage from Peak 3

Grasshoppers

I haven't seen much of Coach Andrew this summer.  That's partly because lately I've been flying all over the state at record pace as a passenger in various aircraft. But it's also partly because Andrew has sequestered himself like a monk this summer, immersed in his studies of the martial arts, perfecting revolutionary new methods of training our UAA Nordic Team next fall for unprecedented success. It can be easy to follow the tired old training formulas that everyone else is using. But it takes real guts and imagination to find a completely new way of doing things. This is the journey that Master Andrew has embarked upon this summer.

Though I don't have all the details, it sounds as though our team will be following the ancient methods of Master Lee come September. Here's a little video montage of the Master himself in the 60's, wearing his white ski suit (he'd been out rollerskiing all morning) and using the same training methods and exercises that our team can expect to see on the program this fall:

Be water, my friends...