Summertime

Hello Everybody,

If anybody cares about what I was up to this summer, then this post will not be in vain.  I spent my summer in Sun Valley, Idaho training and chilling with a lot of skiers from around the country.  Being close to home was great, and so was having a really high quality training group with a bunch of affable people.  There were about 20 college age skiers there for the summer, with lots of nationally and internationally successful athletes in the training group, as well as the Sun Valley Gold Team, who let me hop in on some of their workouts.

Most of the summer crew, some really fast skiers.

 Way back in May though, I flew straight from Albany to Bend, Oregon, where I stayed with the Gold Team and had a training camp with them and the USST.  Conditions were great, it actually snowed most of the days we were there, and the training was really high quality.  I got to jump in on a lot of intensity workouts with the national team, including a sprint relay and some speeds which were a ton of fun.  Skiing behind Newell and Simi on some of the distance workouts was really beneficial as well to see the way they ski.

Start of the team sprint relay, one member of each team had raced a world cup, and one had not.

Me on a sweet crust cruise on my birthday

A lot of the summer was spent hanging out in Sun Valley and hanging out with the big crew, doing lots of activities.  Sun Valley also has a great running and biking scene, and I got to check out Mt. Bike nationals and jump in on some fun running races with fast fields.  Also caught some rodeos, just like Isaac and Ian.  I got a job at a wrap restaurant and basically trained and worked when I wasn't chilling out.  One of the highlights though, was spending time in the Sawtooths, which is one of my favorite places in the world. 

Shredding volleyball (that's not me)

Canoeing on Pettit lake in the Sawtooths at sunrise

On Sunday I just got done with a training camp with the National Training Group in Park City, Utah.  The point of the camp was to get some good testing and training done and basically to get us in touch with some of the amazing resources the USST has at their disposal.  We got to talk to nutritionists, strength coaches, USST coaches, and the famous physiologist Jim Stray-Gundersen, all of whom were very helpful.  We also spent a ton of time at the Center of Excellence which, aptly, is very excellent. They have everything you could ever need for training, from a rollerski treadmill, to a foam pit and trampolines, to contrast bathing pools and a locker room loaded with Paul Mitchell products.  All in all it was really useful and was a great camp, except now my legs are real heavy going into my flight east.  

L3 work up Hermod's Hill on the rollerski trails at Soldier Hollow, site of 2013 US Nationals!

Paddy Caldwell sending the V02 max test, pretty sweet technology.

Now I get to spend a few days in northern VT before jet setting to Williamstown for the start of the fall semester.  I am super stoked to see everybody and get down to business again!

Moose's Tooth Marathon

On Sunday I raced in the Moose's Tooth Marathon in Anchorage.  It was a rainy day but the engery among racers and spectators was great.  I finished in second place, first Alaskan, with a time of 3:19:56.  This was a 10 minute PR over last year.  Also racing were two other Ephs, Maia Dickenson '12 and Brian Kirchner '13, both in the half marathon.  I am now resting some very tired legs before switching over to more ski specific training.

Sprinting at 26.1 miles.

After the race with Maia and Brian.

Colorado, Part 2

Sadly, our field season is almost at an end. Before I fly back to Williamstown on Wednesday, I have just one day left of collecting data (Tuesday), and one day of presenting my preliminary data to a committee of professionals at the CU Boulder Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (tomorrow). Real training time comes and goes out here, but really every day I'm doing something active, and anything extra I can do at the end of the day is a bonus. I've been getting a good mix of aerobic stuff (hiking a lot) and strength (digging soil pits to see how deep saporolite—essentially weathered bedrock—is).  I feel super fit, so I'm excited to return and see how hard I can push an interval week at lower elevation. The one downside of digging is that I have developed a healthy collection of blisters. As Prof. Dethier says, "perhaps they'll translate well to skiing when they heal?"

Also, I've been told I'm featured in the new Williams calendar. Can anyone confirm this?

There's a lot of cool stuff to share, but I'm going to have to limit it to a few pictures because I've got to work on this presentation. Enjoy. Phil, get ready to rock some intervals.

Our humble abode

Measuring discharge

My Office

Pondering life on the Divide 

Just another day at the office 

My favorite running trail, Sourdough. No skiing this time of year, though.

The result of several hours of pit digging. Amazingly, this was only the second-deepest one we dug.

Band of Horses and My Morning Jacket at Red Rocks, August 4, 2012

Band of Horses

Overlooking Lake Isabelle

Williams Geology poster children 2013, with an earth-shattering thunderstorm in the background

Keck Geology 2012, plus some. LtR: Juliane Huber (PhD candidate, Technical University of Munich), Julia Reich (Carleton), Ian Nesbitt (Williams), Tim Boateng (Amherst), Hannah Mondrach (UConn), Claudia Corona (Williams), Annette Patton (Whitman), Gabe Lewis (Williams), Ben Purinton (Wesleyan), Neal Shea (Masters' candidate, UConn), Chris Halcsik (Beloit), Dr. David Dethier (Williams). Not pictured: Dr. Will Ouimet (Williams '01, UConn), Dr. Matthias Leopold (Technical University of Munich), Dr. Jörg Völkel (Technical University of Munich)