Winter Begins

It’s been quite some time I last wrote any kind of post for the UAA Nordic Ski Team blog. A few people have reminded me that every time they check out the website, there’s nothing new there. I appreciate the fact that they bothered to look. I don’t have any excuse for it. That’s because I don’t have excuses; I have reasons. And I guess the reason is because every time over the past six months that there’s been a choice of whether to write a blog post or do something else, I’ve chosen the other thing.

But recently, as I was swatting a hockey puck around an alpine lake with a couple of Seawolf alumni and telling them how excited I am about the training and team culture in the group this fall, it occurred to me that I really ought to document our Seawolf experiences in the blog. After all, it’s a special thing to be on an NCAA athletic team, and most of us only get four years of it, at most. 

This fall, we took an already-kind-of-big Nordic team and made it a little bigger. Our new skiers have brought nothing but enthusiasm to the group, and from what I’ve seen this fall, the members of our group aren’t afraid to challenge each other. I’ve seen interval workouts where every one of the boys was leading the group at one point or another during the hard stuff.  They go after each other in workouts, but they also support each other, and there is no established “pecking order”. Seawolf alumni will know what I’m talking about when I say Trond gets that gleam in his eye when he talks about how excited he is about this group, and the direction we’re going. Coaching is really fun!

Clearly, training was done during the summer break. There were lots of PRs in the standard fall time trials, indicating that our skiers not only want to ski faster – they also are willing to do the training to make it happen. And our new Seawolves have fit smoothly into the team culture – they’re fully on board.

But fall training officially ends tomorrow. Tomorrow is our first race of the season. It’ll probably be our toughest competition of the year, too. Gus Schumacher will be there. You may recall he won a World Cup last winter. Rosie Brennan will be there. She’s ranked seventh in the world. If our Seawolves want a low-FIS-point result, this weekend is the time to get it.

Racing season starts tomorrow morning. With this crew, I’m really excited to see what happens during the next five months!

Marlie & Beth. Earlier today. At Government Peak. Preparing for tomorrow's race - our first of the season. Are we ready? I guess we'll find out tomorrow morning around 10am.