No Shave November

Hey Everyone,

First, a house keeping detail.  Spencer no longer blogs for us. Instead he contributes to the Far West Nordic Farm Team blog, which he is a member of after all.  I've put a new link in the side tab.

Ok, back to business.  No stories this week, just a challenge.  As many you may have realized, five days ago the world kicked off 2012's month of November.  As with many ski teams world-wide, the Bowdoin Nordic Alumni are participating in the time honored tradition of No Shave November.  For those of you unfamiliar with No Shave November the rules are simple:

1. On Nov. 1st, shave (if you missed the date you can shave now, you'll just have a little bit of a late start).

2. Do not shave for the remainder of the Month.

3. At the end of the month, whomever has the most facial hair wins.

While No Shave November has traditionally been a male dominated contest, we live in the 21st century now and have opened it up to female participants with leg hair entries.

More excitingly, this year, there will be prizes as soon as I figure out what they are.  So, if you haven't already, shave, start growing, and then send in some pictures to at the end of the month for your chance to win fabulous prizes.

Stay shaggy my friends.

Desert Adventures with Dippo

Hey Everyone,

Below Wilson shares with us his latest adventure, some great photos and a few new work out ideas from a soon to be coach, no spoilers though:

I spent the last week down in Southern Utah.
It was fantastic!

My week started out by paddling Westwater Canyon on the Colorado River. Westwater is quite
possibly the best (non dam-released) whitewater in the country in October. From there I stuck around
Moab for several days, and I hiked, ran, and relaxed for several days.
At the end of the week I headed down toward Canyonlands National Park for some solo
adventuring. My first day down there I climbed Cathedral Butte on the Southern edge of the park (to see
those pictures check out summitsunday.blogspot.com). The next day I headed down into the Salt Creek
Wash (in the Park). The day involved about 16 miles of hiking and running, several ancient Puebloan
ruins, a slot canyon cave, and “The All-American Man.”
Here is a smattering of photos from that day.

Notice the “pac-man ghost” in the upper left

Hoodoos!

The All-American Man (USA USA USA!)

Current Ski-Team members, Spencer, and those of you who still harbor athletic goals should stop
reading now as I am about to talk about two awesome master-blaster workouts.

The first I call the “Sunset Showdown”

Park your vehicle approximately 1.5 miles away from an awesome viewpoint.
Wait until the sunset is 10-15 minutes from peaking (I’m sure that NOAA can help with sunset times)
Sprint as hard as you can to view said sunset
Stop and enjoy view for just a little bit too long
Realize that it is about to get dark (be sure to not bring a headlamp)
Sprint back as hard as you can, knowing that if you don’t find your car immediately you may not find it
until morning.

The benefit of this workout is that it keeps you honest – no one sandbags their way through it. I also find
additional benefit in the adrenaline and stress matching real race conditions, because let’s be honest we
will be arriving to the starting line within 2 minutes of our start for any given race (unless you are Chris
who has already floro’ed his skis and lined up for next years Birkie).

Who do you think won this workout… me or the sky?

Workout two “Natural Bridges, Natural Intervals”

This workout is tricky in that it is only really designed to work at Natural Bridges National Monument
(though suggestions for adaptations are certainly welcome).
Natural Bridges has four main attractions: The bridges Sipapu, Kachina, and Owachomo as well as an
overlook of the Horsecollar Ruins.

The workout involves running to Sipapu and back, drive to the Horsecollar overlook trailhead –run
out and back, drive to the Kachina trailhead –run out and back, and finally drive to the Owachomo
trailhead –run out and back. This workout has two main components. The downhill sections challenge
your quickness and agility. The climb should be full on lv 4/5 burn. While the total sum is only around 4 miles of on time, those four miles do involve around 1000 ft of vertical (oh yeah and you get to see some pretty spectacular sights… or sites).

Depending on how you are feeling you should probably be considerate of the other tourists as they
may be providing you with encouragement and showering you with praise (I was asked *Insert German Accent* “Are you some kind of professional” as I passed one such tourist… duh).

These photos hardly do the place any justice, it is really spectacular. That said, there is very little
exploring to be done in the immediately surrounding area.

Sipapu (The second largest natural bridge in the world)
You can get all the way down to the bottom, but this is the better photo.

Kachina (The “youngest” of the three bridges)

Owachomo (I couldn’t physically orient myself in such a way that I could get the whole bridge into the
photo without being about a quarter mile away)

Now that I have thrilled you with a story of adventure I have to reveal some terrible news.

This winter I will be working for Bates College as the assistant nordic ski coach.

I hope I’ll still be invited to alumni functions.

Bates Blows,

Wilson

Nation Nordic Foundation

Hey Everyone,

This week I want to hold off on a story from one of our Alumni and instead address you directly about something exciting happening in the ski community.  Some of you may have heard of the National Nordic Foundation.  For those of you that haven't, its a foundation that helps support our athletes so they can race at the international level.  Not only does it provide funding for stars like Kikkan Randell and Andy Newell, but it also sponsors events like the J1 Scando trip, which brings United States high schoolers overseas to compete against their European counterparts.

 Every year the NNF runs a "Drive for 25" fundraiser to make this sort of sponsorship happen.  However, this year is special.  This year, a generous community member has pledged to match every dollar donated with five, up to $50,000.  So, for every $1 you donate, the NNF receives another $5.  The math here can overwhelm you pretty quickly once you add up much a $25 or $50 donation can mean to our skiers.

Now, before I go on, I want to make clear that I totally understand how these alumni outreach things can be abused.  Any recent Bowdoin grads are probably pretty familiar with this kind of misuse.  I promise not to let this blog go that direction and to keep my posts requesting donations few and far between.

However, this is a really cool and really unique opportunity.  Its like having a 5x bonus multiplier on life.  Just a little bit of money can make a huge difference.  You can donate to the NNF directly here: https://www.grouprev.com/nnfdrivexc  or, even cooler, you can find your favorite ski athlete and donate directly to their site.  For example I donated $25 to Kyle Hanson's site.  All I had to do was google "nnf kyle hanson" and the first link that came up was his site: https://www.grouprev.com/kylehanson.  I had the pleasure of working with Kyle this summer in Alaska.  He's a stellar athlete and a great kid.  Find your favorite athlete, and make a donation.

My Thanks,
-Chris

Wilson Visits Spencer

Wilson Dippo of 2012 sent in this post about the recent reunion of two of the ski team's closest friends.  He gives some insight into the life of a pro-skier from the outside:

I just spent a week in the Truckee area with pro-skiers Spencer Eusden (Bowdoin ’12) and Beth Taylor (Bates (blows) ’12). Spencer thought that I was coming to visit so that we could reminisce about the good times at Bowdoin, maybe drink a beer or two, and have a generally jolly time. He was, however, gravely mistaken. My actual plan was to experience their lives for a couple days, and write this exposé about the life of a pro-skier.

Don’t worry – post college I hate reading too, so here is a photo that should clarify any questions that you have about pro-skiing.

The quick version:

A Slightly More Texty Version.

Plain and simple Spencer is a pro and I am still way better than him (just ask the shirt). Some things that, despite calling himself a professional, Spencer still doesn’t understand:

1)      Sure you can do 4 X 12 minutes at threshold – well if I do 12-8-12 at lv 4 I am getting a better workout. (36 minutes lv 3 verse 32 minutes at lv 4 – doesn’t take a math minor to figure that one out).

2)      Sleep is an essential part of any good training plan. Spencer seems to think that waking up at 7 to get in a 2.5 hr rollerski is a better use of his time than sleeping in until 10:30.

3)      Rollerskiing is hard and stupid.

Sure he beat me by something like 40% in an uphill time-trial. But come on, it’s only a time trial… on foot… uphill. No one can prove that means anything.

Spending even just a few days in Truckee was fantastic. Any skier – past, present, or future – should be envious of what Spencer is doing right now. He is getting after it, and doing it in style. When I first walked into his house Beth yelled down from her upstairs loft, “Spencer………… will you make us pancakes?”  A typical day for me this past week involved waking up early as Spencer headed out for his first workout, and promptly falling back asleep. Somewhere between 2 and 3 hours later I would wake for a second time when he returned. Our mornings and early afternoons were filled with vigorous activities such as lounging on the docks at Donner Lake, napping, reading, watching Southpark, and eating at Tacos Jaliscos[i]. As the afternoon approached we would dress in brightly colored tanks, short shorts, and running shoes and head off into the mountains. In the week that I spent in Truckee I put in eight hours and fifteen minutes of training which effectively doubled my volume for the training year (also… I skipped both strength sessions, and 2.5 hour rollerski, and a bikeride).

Spencer and Wilson head out to an afternoon workout. Spencer may or may not run with a helmet these days.

Spencer demonstrating how to properly crush chocolate milk as a recovery drink

PS Spencer is going to crush face this winter – I’m calling it now.

---

[i] In all seriousness, if you care about Spencer you have two options. A) buy him credit toward Tacos Jaliscos so he doesn’t go broke. Or B) hold an intervention as approximately 82% of his diet consists of tortillas, cheese, beans, rice, and beef tongue all from Tacos Jaliscos. I am afraid that he may actually become a taco.

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