New And Improved!

Friends!

I can't believe it's almost November - time flies!  Jason and I are bringing skis to get ground this week, and evaluating fleets and talking skis with the team is definitely getting me pretty jacked-up for the season.  Speaking of Jack-ed:

Sophomore, Jack Schrupp taking advantage of our new torture chamber!

Along with ski grinds, Jason and I have been finalizing a few projects including our Ercolina set-up outside our office.  We added six Ercolina's to go with our two SkiErgs.  This allows us to incorporate more, and varied workouts into the training plan, as well as broaden our specific strength capabilities with six different resistance settings on the Ercolina's.  We added mirrors on either end of the Ercolina set-up, to allow for technique changes.  You can also see a couple bundles of exercise bands in the above picture, which have been great for specific core and mobility.

It's hard to see, but in the far left corner, there are three Ercolina's (and a punching bag!), and on the right are three more ercolina's and two SkiErg's.  The "gerbil" track allows us to run a lap or two before, after, or in between sets.

After many decades, we finally updated our men's and women's ski rooms.  There's new paint on the walls, extra shelves for gear and rollerkskis, refurbished wax tables with new Swix forms, and fancy name plates!

The women are super happy to have their own room back! -The men and women had to share the men's room for a month, while facilities finished working on the women's room.

So fresh and so clean!

With so many new toys, facilities, and training ideas, it's great to see the team progress and succeed.  We are so proud of all of our athletes and all the hard work they do - everyone is looking really fit and making huge gains.  This is going to be an exciting year!

Freshman, Sonya Jampel follows the ladies down "farm road" during a distance skate yesterday evening.

The boys take a water break, and enjoy the scenery.

Perry

Mountains Upon Mountains

It seems that in our sport we spend more time running in the mountains than we do skiing -- and I certainly can't complain. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE to ski, but what better way to spend your time outside of the season than in the mountains? So, in this blog post, I'm going to give you all a quick look back at my summer in the mountains of the West as well as an insider's look at the infamous Schnell hill climb up Mt. Greylock. The 2015 race was held yesterday with impressive performances by many and large amounts of pain for all.

 From left to right: South, Middle and North Sister from the summit from of 9,175' Broken Top Mtn in Bend, OR (where I was living for the summer training with the Bend Endurance Academy).

 In July, we had a training camp in Trout Lake, WA and climbed Mt. Adams (12,281') on the final day of the camp. We departed at 5am, ascended 7000' in a near record time of 3 hours and 15 min and glacaded down (a combination of sliding on our shoes/butts) in 1:20, in time for an early lunch.

 South Sister peaks through the clouds as we stood on the summit of Middle Sister (10,047').

 The Crooked River winds its way through the impressive formations of Smith Rock outside of Bend. 

On the way home from Bend, I drove across the country with my friends Patrick Anderson (Williams '17, lacrosse team) and Asbjorn Eriknauer. Along the way, I fell in love with Jackson, WY and was lucky to fit in a quick sprint up the 12,804' Middle Teton -- one of the coolest climbs I have ever done. Here is a few of the Grand Teton from the summit.

THE 2015 SCHNELL: Men's Team Memories

I asked all of the boys for one sentence summarizing their reactions to the race, here they are:

Josh Harrington ('16): "It was kind of peaceful. When you're racing, you don't need to think about anything except what's right in front of you."

Evan Carr ('19): "The first climb up Prospect may have been the hardest part of the course, but the hurting didn't let up until the end."

Luke Costley ('17): "Its an epic race - the history of it, the difficulty, and the setting. Today lived up to the billing!"

Nick Gardiner ('19): "The hair flapping in my face cost me at least 35 minutes." (Note: Nick ran an impressive 58:22.00, almost good enough for the honor roll as a freshman, 35 minutes ahead would have been an impressive 28 minutes ahead of the current record -- look for big things out of Gardiner in the coming years.)

Hans Halvorsen ('17): "Besides Bud Fischer, [the Schnell is] probably the longest standing tradition with the ski team and it's fun to be part of such a challenging and rewarding history."

Eli Hoenig ('17): "I'd like to dedicate the race to our fans: Caitlyn, Jayvin, Rogan and Perry."

Braden Becker ('19): "Pretending to be sick is the best strategy for surprising your opponents."
And, "We need a team mascot, like a real one... maybe a goat? What do you guys think? We could name him Speeder."

Jack "Joey" Schrupp ('18): "I believe in two things: God and Perry Thomas."

Parting Shot: We missed our alums at the Schnell, especially Vanya Rybkin. The selfie below is me on the summit of Middle Teton in Vanya's, now famous, social media posture (please see Vanya's Facebook and instagram accounts for plentiful shots like this of him running in Chamonix this summer). Miss you Vanya.

Mountain Day Recap

Although another great week of training has gone by, we couldn't resist sharing the mountain day experience from the women's team!

Enjoy the faces and the foliage!

A beautiful view from out first peak of the day

Elowyn, Sonya and Olivia drinking and admiring

Olivia deep in thought?

Some of the women's crew

One of these is not the same though... (Elowyn, hi)

Yet another view of Elowyn's style

Last but not least a Mountain Day selfie courtesy of Tsaina, Becker, Elowyn and Sonya!

A week in the mountains!

Another great week of training is in the books! 

Finished ski rooms, three trips up Mount Greylock, Mountain Day, brunch at the Harrington's and our first SNOW made this an unusually exciting week for the team. 

In the words of the great Braden Becker, it's always "a great day to be an Eph."

The women's ski room looks beautiful, capping off a summer of repairs to both rooms.

It's a pretty professional set up these days, Perry is loving it.

Perfect reading period run.

Boys enjoying fall. Eli has exhibited a full range of emotion this week...

Turns out he loves classic 30x30s up Greylock.

Jury is still out on Joey's attitude towards skate ODs.

Jay gets it right.

“It would be no small advantage if every college were thus located at the base of a mountain.” Who said it?

Mountain Day!

Frosh Profile: Sonya Jampel

Since many of our blog readers haven’t had the privilege of running the trails and roller skiing the back roads of New England with our new first years, I thought it would be fun to interview one of them so you can all get to know her a bit! Sonya is one of three new-comers to the women’s team this year (along with first year T Wynn and sophomore Elowyn Pfeiffer).

Here's her beautiful smiling face

The other morning, we grabbed a classy Paresky breakfast together, and I tossed some questions her way, some skiing-related and some utter (or udder?) nonsense.

We’ll start with some basics...

LS: Where are you from?

SJ: Just outside Boston... Newton, MA.

LS: What entry are you in?

SJ: Willy E

LS: When did you start skiing?

SJ: 8th grade

LS: Classic or skate? and distance or sprint?

SJ: Classic… if the wax is good. 10k mass start is my favorite.

Sonya is proudly carrying on the CSU --> Williams tradition

LS: Obligatory interview question: you’re going to dinner with 3 people, alive or dead. Who are they?

SJ: Okay, so these would all be individual dates.

1- My great grandmother. My middle name is named after her and I never got to meet her

2- Taylor Swift. I was really upset that she didn’t come to the campaign announcement the other week.

3- Hermione Granger, my fictional role model.

LS: Will Friday be Mountain Day?

SJ: YES. Everyone I’ve talked to said so.

LS: 3 words to describe the ski team experience so far

SJ: Intense, Beautiful (specifically, getting outside and off campus so much), and spunky (because that’s a better word than just ‘fun’)

LS: What is your go-to pump up song?

There’s a lot, depending on what mood I’m in. Currently, it’s Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice.

LS: What are the best and worst parts about eating in dining halls?

SJ: The best is that somebody makes your food for you. You just show up and there’s food. Oh, and I really like Goodrich.

The worst part is that I have to leave my dorm to get it.

LS: You’ve already started planning your Carni crush, right?

SJ: No I haven’t, I’m still a little bit confused about the whole process…

LS: Tell me something obscure about yourself.

SJ: When I was little, I competed in race walking. It was pretty ridiculous.

LS: Got any funny race stories?

The worst one was freshman year at Eastern High Schools… I was the opening leg for our relay team. My ski fell off and I just left it and tried to ski on one ski… Not a good decision. I thought it was like running where you can keep going if your shoe falls off.

This winter, I had a rough weekend… In one race, both my contacts fell out. In the other I got frostbite.

cute.

Thanks for choosing Williams, Sonya! We've loved having you around, and we can't wait for the adventures to come!

Colors, Close-Ups and Cows

This week brought us many new adventures! (It's Olivia here). It was hard to not be distracted by the beautiful foliage and blue bird weather. With a new workout in the gym, lots of long distance rollerskiing, and a focus on rest and recovery, we are well on our way to rocking the cow this winter! Speaking of cows, we made new friends on Stone Hill during a spenst workout (I guess spenst is not just for skiers).

Not a bad day to be enjoying the fall colors

Spenst makes Rebecca super happy:)

Liza eyeing the cow (close-up #2)

Sonya smelling the cow (close-up #3)

Cow being the cow (close-up #4)

Carr avoids getting stepped on by our new friends

Our school mascot leading the workout

Our new yoga instructor Perry shows us how it's done

It's fun to have the team together out in the fall sunshine!

Getting ready for some sprints this winter!

This week we celebrated two birthdays (Liza 22 and Sarah 21), only 2 days apart! 

First Week Wrap

Our first week of practice with the coaches is in the books. Jason and Perry seemed excited to be back out piloting vans and pounding the pavement. Perry in particular really wanted to show off the strength he built pulling weeds this summer.

Mother Nature also seems to have gotten the memo that it’s fall training season and brought out her colors for us. The hills are going red and the backdrops to our skis have been beautiful. The team is looking fit and ready to put in some long skis followed by hot apple cider. We've got some big weeks coming with a few solid interval sessions and Mountain Day this Friday. It's a good day to be an Eph!

Jack and Evan lead the charge on Rt. 43

Hancock Elementary brings out the inspiration

Jack, Eli, Evan and Jordan with Jiminy Peak in the background

Surprise? Fear?

First Practice!

First official practice in the books!  Pretty excited to be working out with the team again!

Jason putting some thought into the design of our technique session/first official practice!

Nice Hans!

Sophomore Elowyn leads Freshman Sonya.

Jason explaining some drills to the team.

Gettin tall!

Tyra's got some hops! Thanks Costley's for letting us use your driveway!!

Men's team Captain Josh keepin it real.

Jordan leads out the boys on a beautiful Fall afternoon!