MTU Christmas Classic

This past weekend I raced in the first ski race of the season, the MTU Christmas Classic in Houghton Michigan. The race was at the MTU Nordic skiing training center, and let me tell you, there is a reason so many big races are held there every year – the trails are phenomenal! They are all very wide, well lit for night skiing, and the trails flow really nicely.
That’s not to say that the course is easy. No sir the race course was also one of the most difficult I have ever raced on. There is a lot of climbing, and most of the course after the 1k mark is either up or down.
I had a decent skate race on Saturday. I was feeling a little flat and really did not feel like I could crank it up to that next gear, but this is the first race and we have not even begun to do much speed work. I finished the skate race 6th on the CSS team just being beaten out by Stefan Hupperts. In the classic race on Sunday I felt much better. I think that the skate race the day before helped prep me. I finished 5th on my team after the classic, just ahead of Stefan this time. I think that our being so close to each other will help us both, not to mention the team.
My team is now adding some more intensity blocks to the program, so I think the rest of the season is looking good for me – especially with faster courses like Mt. Itasca and Telemark coming up!

West Yellowstone Ski Camp

Over Thanksgiving I traveled with the St. Scholastica ski team to West Yellowstone Montana for the West Yellowstone ski festival. The location is great for training - it is at about 7000 feet of elevation and normally has very reliable early season snow. I say normally because this year for the first three days of training we were snow-less in town and so we had to go the extra 1000 feet up to the plateau for any real snow skiing. But never fear on the third day of camp we got almost a foot of snow in town.

The camp was 10 day long and consisted of the usual early season base training. Most days I did a morning run, and AM hour too two hour workout, and a PM hour too two hour workout for a daily average of between 2:45 and 3:00 hours of training. After peaking for Cross Country, it was great to get back to the base endurance training that I really enjoy.

Not only was the training good, but my girlfriend Meg also happened to be in West Yellowstone. Between getting to chill with her (which was amazing) and training at altitude the camp could not have been better!