My BP stands for Blogpost

Spencer sent this post into me the other day.  While not a workout accidentally turned hunting story, its still pretty epic:
 

Hi all you Polar Bears!

This is Spencer of the class of 2012. As briefly mentioned in previous posts, after 4 of skiing at Bowdoin I still wasn't ready go give up racing. Right now I live in Truckee, California and am training with Far West Nordic http://farwestnordic.org whose senior (or as I like to call it "pro") racing team is small but growing. I've been very lucky in the coaches I've been working with, Martin Benes, Ben Grassechi, Jeff Schloss, and Glen Jobe are great coaches and a lot of fun to be around. 

I plan race at West Yellowstone over Thanksgiving, senior nationals in Utah, most of the western supertour races if you ever find yourself at one of these events be sure to say hi. Also my ski club has the illustrious honor of hosting spring series the first week of April this year, but more to come on that later. The real reason I wrote this is to share an awesome bike ride I did last week.

In coping with the pretty significant increased volume of training I have been doing this summer, I've been using road biking as a way to get easy distance hours in and give my body an occasional break from running and rollerskiing. Unfortunately since I spend most of my time and money on skis, my road bike is "a little" dated. A little in this case means a 1985 steel frame trek I inherited from my grandfather. Since my bike isn't the fastest I have developed a preference for climbing over cruising flat mile after flat mile. I decided to make a loop out of some two of the best climbs in the area Martis Peak and Blackwood Canyon. I started from where I lived just north of Truckee and climbed out of the valley the town is in to Martis Peak, at 2,600 ft vertical climb.  Here is the view from the top of the north shore of Lake Tahoe. The peak on horizon far right is just above the top of the second climb. 

Then I cruised down along the north shore. At this point I got passed by a couple other pretty good road bikers who I resisted the urge to chase after. One thing that has been reinforced for me this summer is the importance of keeping workouts that are supposed to be level one in the right zone. It reluctantly let the bikers go reminding myself that I had passed a road biker during some roller ski intervals the day before. The second climb up Blackwood Canyon is really scenic and a little more gentle then Martis at 1,500 ft of vertical. 

On the way home I jumped in lake Tahoe to 1) soothe my legs and 2) to clean myself up for work. I found a great job working in the produce section of a local health food store and have since received all the slightly mushy organic produce I could eat. Here is a map and elevation profile of the bike I made on mapmyride.com, a pretty cool tool for tracking epic bike rides. All in all it was a 70 mile bike that took about 5 hours and had some awesome but hard earned views.

Guest Blog: Jake Scheckman

Hey Everyone,

The other day I received an email from Jake Scheckman.  He skied for Bowdoin and graduated with the Class of 2006.  From Northern Vermont originally, he lives in Minnesota now and this past weekend he helped pace Adam St. Pierre (a former Colby skier and Bowdoin's 2005-2006 Assistant Coach) in a grueling 100 mile ultra-marathon.  He writes about it here:

http://talesofadventure.posterous.com/running-through-the-woods-at-night-pacing-the

I've put a permanent link to his blog over on the right, with Nat's blog and the Bowdoin Ski team's blog.

Enjoy!
-Chris

Buy a Bowdoin Uniform!

Hey Everyone,

You may have already received an email from Nathan about this, but here's a sick opportunity to pick up some Bowdoin Nordic swag.  The ski team is buying new uniforms this year.  They look like this (click on the link):

https://docs.google.com/open?id=1RPy887rOGjIVz8_Dn2eqcy-XYq1vXArNlYqyIYP6HVPDK2KSK7lJyJa_SmAu

The cool part, aside from how they look, is that the team is making them available to alumni to purchase.  For a smooth $175 one of these bad boys can be all yours.  You may not skiing as fast as you did in College (or maybe you are), but you can definitely look as good.

Sizing and other information is here:  http://mtborah.com/product/pro-xc-suit/

Email Nathan Alsobrook at nalsobro@bowdoin.edu by Sept. 18th, with your sizes, if you want a suit.  Make the check out to "Bowdoin College" and send it to:

Nathan Alsobrook

114 Buck Center

Brunswick, ME

04011

Price includes Shipping, to ANYWHERE in the US!

All Best,

-Chris

Class of 2012 Playlist (According to Erin)

My former teammate and fellow recent grad Erin Hatton was kind enough to send in this post.  Here she recalls some of the social aspects that go along with being on the ski team:

Hi everyone,

Erin here, class of 2012.  I’ve just moved to Troy, NY where I have a cool teaching fellowship at the Emma Willard School; it’s a private, all-girls high school with about 200 boarding students and 150 day students.  As part of my fellowship, I teach one biology class, one chemistry class, work in the dorms 2 nights a week, take graduate school classes 2 nights a week (toward an MAT), and have weekend duty once every 3 weeks.  It’s going to be busy!  I’m also the assistant cross country running coach, which I am loving (and is the real reason I got into teaching, so I can coach)!  The people here are amazing, everyone has been extremely helpful and supportive in my transition into the real, working world.  I’ve received lots of lesson plans and notes for what I need to teach.  The students here are great too, they are so enthusiastic and hard working.  And crazy.  I forgot how dramatic high schoolers are, everything is reaaaallllly hard, or reallllllly exciting, or reallllllly boring, or realllllllly cool. 

I live in a gigantic apartment in a beautifully restored old building with two other fellows.  They are really fun; we have a contingent of about 8 woman under the age of 27 that all hang out together.  The only problem is the lack of male presence around here, I miss my dawgs! Luckily, we are already making friends with the RPI grad students…

So, my life has mostly consisted of running 2-a-days for xc preseason and attending meetings and lesson planning during the rest of my free time.  Classes start on September 4^th.  Once I have some real coaching or teaching stories I will write an update, but right now I’m going to reminisce. 

Last Thursday I went for a run by myself after taking my xc girls on a short recovery jog.  I grabbed my iPod and just turned it onto an old playlist titled something like, “Oh yaaa.”  The air was crisp (surprisingly) and it felt like fall, and I immediately got this chilling, deep inner feeling that I was back at Bowdoin in fall training.  It felt so real.  And then all our favorite ski songs started playing, I think my pace went from a 9-minute mile to a sub 8-minute mile from the great memories I was having.  So here it is, the 2012 Bowdoin Nordic alum’s collegiate ski career in song hi-lights.

Freshman Season 2008-2009:  Ollie Burrus had us listening to Girl Talk and Wale every van ride.  We hung out before Quinby’s 80s party while listening to TI’s “Whatever you Like” and “Live Your Life” featuring Rihanna.  And then came this song: “I Love College” by Asher Roth.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYx7YG0RsFY  Freshmen! Freshman!  And thus the class of 2012 began its epic rise into Bowdoin social life.  By the end of the season, after the Colby carnival at Sugarloaf, Olivia had us dancing to TI’s “Swing Ya Rag” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=790q8JRFDo8 -- our original chest-baring song.

Sophomore Season 2009-2010:  While Olivia left us, the revealing of our 6-packs didn’t.  Enter Timothy (Tim, Timmy, TimTim, Timbits, AsMan, Twhit) Whiton.  Thank you Tim for the introduction to this song, I think “Shirt Off” by Young Ivy and Blank will now forever be the Bowdoin Nordic’s theme song. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E-EdfPOMM8

Another season favorite was “Sexy Bitch” by Akon.  Or, “Sexy Bobcat”  as we sang it to the Bates boys at the Darmouth Carni Crush.  Which was stellar, but really had nothing on Matt Bower’s Burt Renold’s picture…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JG_yeP8JA4

And let’s not forget “I Gotta Feeling” by Black Eyed Peas, although this song was incredibly overplayed, you can’t deny its rally ability.  This one led us through a great ski season, and spring season.  And no one can forget when we rolled up to Farley field house after the Middlebury EISA championships playing this song before sprinting (literally) to the tower.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSD4vsh1zDA

Junior Season 2010-2011.  Maybe the second best email I received at Bowdoin included this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mC2ixOAivA and the instructions to pay special attention when the video is 34 seconds in.  “Hey, it’s Wilson Dippo!”  And then we all had to say, “Hey, it’s Wilson Dippo!” every time we hard the song again (and I still always think it in my mind when I hear the song…).

Senior Season 2011-2012.  This season started off well with the popular “Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO hailing us into the school year.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ6zr6kCPj8 And the season only got better as we threw LMFAO’s “Sexy and I know it” into the mix. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wyx6JDQCslE Wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle wiggle, yaaa. 

Our theme song for the season was probably Macklemore’s “And we Danced,” which was played on just about every van ride and social gathering, with many dramatic accompanying hand gestures/dance moves. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlrdvfBjSEg Of course, “Shirt Off” was just a ever present as it was before, and a little Carly Rae Jepsen “Call me Maybe” helped finish off the season.

So there’s the summary.  There are many more songs that bring me right back to the “best years of our life” but these are the most prominent in my mind right now.

Thank you Chris, and all the other contributors to this blog.  Reading over the posts, I couldn’t help but smile and laugh out loud at the humor and whit you all wrote with.  Bowdoin treated us well, I’m so glad to see everyone moving on to new and exciting adventures, and that we all still embody all the great characteristics that Bowdoin skiing taught us!

**Note: The best email I received at Bowdoin was from Walter Shepard in 2008 explaining his predicament with the missing keys to the ski room.  Email from Walt:

  Subject line:  Whittier Resolution (Note: our ski room was located in the football teams locker rooms at Whittier Field in 2008-2009)

“Funny story - Nat's an idiot.  Here's why...

So, let me give you the day's events surrounding the Whittier incident in bullet-form/chronological order:

9:00 - Walt tries to leave condo, finds his car stuck under 9 inches of snow - for the third time in like, 14 hours.  Crap.
9:25 - Walt is finally able to get out of his driveway. Walt is  really annoyed.
9:30 - Walt arrives at Whittier.  Locked box has no key.  Walt is really pissed.
9:31 - Walt calls 725-3000 because he doesn't know the number for security.  "Is it an emergency?" the operator asks.  "No." Walt replies.
9:39 - Operator discovers that if it's not an emergency, she doesn't know the number for security.  "You don't know the number for security?  Are you even at Bowdoin?" Walt asks.  "No." operator replies.  "Well that's helpful." Walt says.  "I think I'll be hanging up now."
9:40 - Walt calls Nat Herz to get the number for security.  "725-3144" Nat says.  "What do you need that for?" he adds.  Walt explains the key predicament.  "Haha!  That sucks for you man!" Nat exclaims.
9:50 - Security can't make it over for a while.  Walt has successfully wasted twenty minutes.  Damn-it!
2:45 - After some class and a heat seeking email to the Bowdoin Ski Team regarding missing keys, Walt walks to Whittier hoping to find Ollie with keys.
3:00 - Ollie finally shows, after Walt has been standing in the cold for 15 minutes creeping out the neighbors. Ollie forgot his keys.
3:02 - Walt, Ollie, and Matt drive back to Ollie's place to find his keys in the snow outside his apartment.  Bad day for keys.
3:10 - Finally inside Whittier, no keys.  Walt is so F-ING pissed he can't control himself.
3:20 - Walt sends heat-seeking email #2 to entire team saying what an idiot Chris Sanville must be.
4:20 - Walt recants on Sanville lynching after a pretty accurate and hilarious reply.
4:55 - Walt heads over to Nat and Nick's place to try and get to the bottom of these shenanigans.
5:00 - In recounting the events of the day to Nick and Morgan, Nat (who overhears this conversation next door) realizes that he, in fact, is the one who has the missing Whittier keys (approximately 7 HOURS AND 20 MINUTES from original notification!!!)
5:01 - Nat spontaneously combusts from extremely high levels of idiocy.

Nat is an idiot.

Best,
Walt”