Happy New Year!

Oh man!  I don't know what's more exciting: skiing three+ hours a day on some pretty awesome trails with a REALLY fun team, watching redneck Canadiens clean up tractor-trailer wrecks, or watching people catapult pumpkins thousands of feet...because that's pretty much all Jason and I have been doing...Sooooooo it's been a pretty fun week so far!!

Doing some V1 drills.

Eli and Will sprinting!

Awesome end of the day skiing!

Kristin and Heidi Halvorsen - Sibs!

Happy New Year everyone!! The team is having a blast in Canada, and we hope you have a wonderful start to the new year!  Cheers.

Perry

First Day In Quebec!

After eight hours of driving, a whole lot of coffee and donuts (Thanks Kalle!), and a couple stops along the way to pick up the stragglers, (most of) the team made it to Monte Sainte Anne yesterday evening.  Everyone is in good spirits and excited for a great week of skiing!  Josh was so excited he decided to eat mayonnaise while staring down Eliza...it was great...

The vans rolled out at 8:15am today for an easy skate ski.  Everyone was little unsure as to what the conditions would be like considering how warm and rainy it's been.  To our pleasant surprise, the skiing is really great!  In the words of Jack Schrupp:

"The conditions are impeccable. Race skis only.  Matter of fact, just take the cutest puppy you can find and strap it to your boots. Then, fill your water-belts with champagne, replace your Williams tights with cashmere long johns, and use maple butter and brie instead of klister."

Jason and I watched as the whole team ditched us as we were getting ready to hit the trails.  It worked out ok though.  We found some sweet terrain to beat them up with for intervals and TT's later in the week.  

Dope tracks!

Trying to read the map...

We headed out this afternoon for an easy classic ski.  Luckily, hardwax kick was bombproof!  

The team gathers for technique.

Josh stridin'!

Skiing into the sunset!

Perry

Eastern Cup At Rikert

This past weekend Coach Jay and I headed to the Eastern Cup Opener at the Rikert Nordic Center in Ripton, Vermont.  We left Williamstown fairly early Saturday morning - at 5am.  A quick pitstop at Dunkin Donuts for breakfast proved to be a big mistake, as whatever mystery "breakfast sandwich" I ate didn't quite sit that well, and the coffee (as per usual) was scalding hot for the entire two and a half hour drive...Nonetheless! We made it to Rikert right on time to obtain the final parking spot to plug the wax truck into the grid.  Apparently, the current trend is to get a trailer and park it at the race venue overnight so as to take up several parking spots and allow no other team to park near the trail for grid access.

Saturday morning sunrise - view from the wax truck across Rikert stadium.

Coach Jay getting ready to test some kick wax!

Pretty legit wax truck set up!

Saturday seemed like a complete blur.  After testing several different kick and binder combinations, the team arrived ready to kick some butt!  The women did a 5k classic, and the men a 10k.  The tracks were solid, and the downhills were fast.  In the women's race, we had Hannah Benson and Olivia Meyerson skiing to impressive 10th and 11th place finishes.  Sarah Becker skied to a solid 54th place, with Rebecca Smith in 71st, and Jenna Maddock in 96th.  For the men, Jordan Fields finished 25th, Eli Hoenig 33rd, Luke Costley 57th, and Josh Harrington 74th.  Before I knew it, we were packing up the wax truck after a solid showing from the Eph's, and preparing for Sunday's mass start skate races.

Jason and I didn't really get a chance to watch any of the races on saturday, so after making everyone's skis faster than rocket ships, we headed out on course to cheer on our athletes!  I must say, I don't think I've ever seen a pile-up quite like the one's that occurred in both the women and men's races.  Two hundred meters into the race, on a short decent out of the stadium, it seemed like the front ten racers decided to just lay down across the trail in front of the other 150 racers as they all skied into each other.  Add on some of the iciest downhill s-turns I've ever skied, and I think it's safe to say that most of the racers spent more time rag-dolling and wrapping themselves around trees, than actually skiing.  Ok, I'm exaggerating...a little...Anyways, the Eph's had another great day of racing!  Benson skied to her second top-fifteen race of the weekend, finishing in 14th.  Olivia made a huge comeback after crashing pretty hard early in the race to earn 27th.  Becker wasn't far behind Olivia, skiing to 33rd.  Rebecca and Jenna finished strong to earn 72nd and 75th respectively.

Start of the Women's race

Becker - Cruisin'!

Olivia - Charging!

The men also turned in some impressive results!  Jordan skied to an impressive 10th place.  Eli finished the day in 19th, Luke skied a great race to finish 38th, and Josh skied to 67th.

Start of the men's race

Jordan getting tall!

Luke and Josh skiing out of the start!

I'm am SO impressed with everyone's racing this past weekend!  I can tell that there's good things to come this year from the Eph's!  Huge thanks to all the parent's that helped out and provided some delicious food.  I wish everyone the happiest of holidays, and I'm looking forward to regrouping in Quebec this weekend!

Perry

And So It Begins...

It has been a pretty crazy couple of weeks here in Williamstown.  When the team got back from Craftsbury, they had one week of classes before a week of final exams.  Nonetheless, most of them have been in "I'm-really-smart-so-I'm-going-to-do-nothing-but-study-for-the-ten-exams/projects-I-have-despite-only-taking-four-classes" mode...?!...Seriously, they've been working real hard to finish the semester strong.  Despite all this "studying" they claim to have been doing, most have been able to enjoy the awesome snow Prospect has right now.  Prospect is notorious for getting good snow.  If Williamstown gets rain, Prospect gets snow.  If Williamstown gets four inches, Prospect gets a foot.  Such was the case last week, and the skiing has been awesome!

The team had it's annual Holiday party at the Lemieux's.  When I was in college (at a school that will not be named...) we would have a holiday party.  Everyone would dress up, eat a lot of food, laugh, and participate in a Yankee Swap.  Well apparently every ski team does this, because I felt like I was back in College.  Though the Yankee Swap gifts were less inappropriate than what I remember.  I suppose that's a good thing, especially considering ALL the Lemieux's were in attendance:

Baby Rogan! Just chillin among the gifts!

Caitlyn and Jayvin also participated in the Yankee swap!

Good Times.  Enough said.

Everyone looked really good, the food was delicious, and the hospitality was gracious!

Chatting with Hannah^2 on a Sunday distance ski.

Found the Hobbit house! My new apartment!

Found these two (Jack and Josh) crushing some speeds the other day!

Campus is pretty quiet right now.  Most everyone has gone home for the Holidays.  Jason and I will be holding down the fort before heading up to Ripton, VT for the Rikert Eastern Cup this weekend.  I'm really excited for an awesome weekend of racing - looks like there's going to be some stiff competition!  Less than two weeks until we are in Quebec!

Perry

SNOW!

Prospect was awesome today thanks to the large amount of snow that has fallen since Monday. After a few quirks were worked out Steve and the P100 did some amazing work!

Perry took this picture looking down 1/3 from the top of
the A Climb

Something new in front of the groomer barn!

HAPPY WINTER EVERYONE!

Williams Ski Team Has Fun!!

Some more shenanigans...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aK_bVSHQlBA

Craftsbury Camp Recap/Back In Williamstown

The team made it back to Williamstown all in one piece last night.  Craftsbury camp was a huge success, and a whole lot of fun!  In the five days that we were in northern Vermont, I estimate that we skied a total of 14 to 17 hours.  Two sessions a day, classic in the morning, skate in the afternoon, and accompanied with a decent snow storm Wednesday night, we were able to get in some spectacular skiing.  It felt like mid-winter for most of the week.  We only had one day of klister skiing; the other three days we were on hard wax.  The skate skiing was even better, as Craftsbury was able to roll out many of their outer trails for some rock-ski adventures.

The new Activity Center and lodge at Craftsbury was impressive.  We mostly spent time in the wax room, which is just below the Activity Center.  However, we did scope out the facilities and test out some of the new SkiErgs.  Right next to the Activity Center is a huge lodge with a ski rental shop and cafe.  This was also the location of our Thanksgiving feast.  Speaking of which, the food at Craftsbury was delicious (as always)!  The majority of what we ate was local and organic.  Needless to say, we ate healthily, and we ate a lot.  A couple of the guys put down two+ plates of food and several desserts at our Thanksgiving feast.

It was great having Harvard and UNH at Craftsbury as everyone was able to reconnect with old friends and ski around with each other.  It also provided some steep competition for Sunday's race.  With that being said, yesterday's 10k skate races were really exciting, and I couldn't be more proud of our team for giving it a good effort after a long week of training.  The men went off first at 9:30.  Jordan and Will took fourth and fifth place, respectively.  Only two seconds separated the two, and they were 17 and 19 seconds out of the win.  A few "safety school" kids took first through third.  Eli was 13th, Vanya 16th, Luke 18th, Ben 25th, and Josh 27th.  The women followed the men at 10:30.  Hannah Benson and Hannah Cole were 4th and 8th respectively.  They were 49 seconds and 1:21 out of the win.  Sarah Abramson followed up with 12th, Jenna 14th, Rebecca 17th, Tsaina 19th, Sarah Becker 21st, and Olivia was 24th.

Jordan cruising to 4th place.

Will skied with a solid group of guys to take 5th.

Benson hammers to 4th place.

Hannah Cole powered through to 8th.

This past week was so much fun!  Too bad all of the snow in Williamstown is now gone.  It would have been pretty awesome to come back to some snow to ski on.  The team has one more week of classes, followed by final exams, so they're working hard on finishing strong for the end of the semester.  Hopefully we get snow soon!

Rock the cow!

Perry