MountainMindedHedonism

Falmouth High School Nordic Team

This fall I took the opportunity to work with thirty or so raw High School Nordic student/athletes starting with dryland training right through a compressed on snow racing calendar. During this attempt to refine these teenagers into speedsters on skinny skis I found that giving these kids everything I knew about endurance and speed conditioning as well as the Classic and Skate technique skills I had learned over the years as an athlete myself.

I have worked with a multitude of athletes in my past. Some raw, some stuck with old habits and ideals, some young and some older. Some of the most challenging have been mountaineers (Stephen Koch comes to mind) probably due to their free spirit, lack of a training methodology approach and just because their usually just hard minded humans. Some have been endurance trail runners, endurance mountain bikers to national pro level riders racing shorter 90 sprint races. Regardless, I have really enjoyed working with athletes looking to attain a goal they have in mind. A High School Nordic team comprised of kids between the ages of 15 and 18 unlocked a whole bunch of uncertainty. For one: when I questioned the kids at the beginning of the year what their season goals were, most hadn't really thought at all about this and replied "be faster then ......" (enter a teamates name here). Secondly, while some of these student/athletes had come from a cross-country or track team training regiment they really had not had an idea what a Nordic training effort might look like day after day after day. Well, it looks like hard work even on paper. The one thing they didn't know they had going for them was their untapped ability and their ability to recover quickly. OK, so that is two things, very important things.

Together thirty or so kids and myself started a journey this fall beginning with dryland conditioning on the trails, on roller-skis and in the weight room. I have to say the kids were pretty suspicious after a hard first week that included a daily regiment of overland distance roller-skiing followed up by an hour or so of strength training in the gym.

Skip ahead about 7 weeks to snow being groomed on the trails (basically Christmas break). These student/athletes were just chomping at the bit to end the strength work that consisted of box jumps, tons of thera-band movements, painful isometric work, and hours of core work that involved heavy medicine balls. I have to admit as strong as we were getting I was looking for that wonderful feeling of gliding on snow myself.

Once on snow, smiles returned to faces and the idea of waxing multiple sets of skis became reality for the coaches. Albeit, a good trade off as I really enjoy the technicality of waxing for Classic and Skate skis ending in the reward of making skis go as fast as possible.

Our first few races were a bit hectic as I felt out what the kids were really capable of doing both mentally and physically. They usually started with a good warmup that included a course preview and break down of how we might race the course. This was followed up with course strategy and "openers" about 30 minutes out from start time. By the time we made it through the first races I had evaluated strengths and weakness's and started to develop a training plan to bring those two closer together. As I had been discussing with the kids all season our goal was a steep ramp build up to the Western Maine Championships, closely following by a peak for the Class A High School Championships.

Oxford Hills sprint races mid-season turns out to be a great day for confidence building for the team and a really great manner for the parents to watch Nordic racing. The format was for five eliminator heats, six on the line for 1.2K of snot faced skate sprinting with the first three moving onto to the next heat. Exciting Right! Yup, it really was. The parents and the kids got to see one another race and prepare for the strategy of the next heat. The Strategy is what it came down to in the last heat. Falmouth boys had 4 on the line and the Girls would have 1 on the line. The boys would ultimately play a great game of offense-defense and then offense to come out of the woods with a 1, 2, 3, 4 placing ----Wow! The girls would put one on the podium in 4th place. What a fun day of Nordic.