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)

The Passing of Eric Tietze '03

 It is with a heavy heart that we relay the news that a member of our ski family, Eric Tietze '03, died in a climbing accident at Grand Teton National Park on Thursday, July 12th.  Eric was a longtime Bridger-Teton National Forest employee who had worked 10 seasons on the forest’s trail crew. 

We read an email from Peter Leonard, who described Eric as the "consummate adventurer, finding adventure around him no matter the locale."  Peter recounted several stories of their time together.   He concluded by saying:  "We lost a great man on Thursday, but it seemed he was so true to himself and in choosing a path that fit him in his too short years with us.  I have immense respect for that authenticity, and I'm glad we got to share the times we did."

If you would like to be in contact with Eric's parents or long-time girlfriend, here are the addresses:

Chris and Becky Tietze

4453 E Hagoth Circle

Salt Lake City, UT 84124

 

Zinnia Wilson

1147 Stratford Avenue

Salt Lake City, UT 84106

Colorado

Hello team! I've gotten to speak with several of you, and for the rest, I hope you are collectively having excellent summers. I'm going to show you a little about mine so far.

Lake Albion, Ward County, CO

I hear it's amazing working on lobsterboats in Maine. I imagine Williamstown to still be hot and humid but excellent for theoretical math and physics. I presume it must be nice to train with a group as committed as APU, CSU, or the Bend kids, and I learned volumes from Isaac's lengthy report on how "it's nice" in Truckee. But I can't imagine anywhere I'd rather be right now than where I am currently. 
How lucky I am to be doing something I love while I'm here.

Morning light shines down on a town in eastern Colorado

I flew into Denver about midmorning on Saturday and immediately made a dash for Boulder, perhaps the best big town in America. Great views, great people, and great research education are just a few of the things to be found here.  I met up with bear-related rival-team members Tommy Gaidus, Wade Davis, Max LaBerge, and Peter Drews (whom they still affectionately call "Petan"), who graciously offered to put me up for a night in their rented home. They live right near the University, which gives them opportunity not only to run in great areas, but also perhaps to engage to some extent in the social life of the town (or, as one of the runners said, "girls everywhere.")


Upon arrival I was informed of plans to go to a rodeo near Winter Park, west of the Continental Divide, almost a two-hour drive from Boulder. Almost immediately was heading back out the door for this new adventure. We brought not much more than running clothes, which turned out to be slightly foolhardy given the thunderstorms brewing in the mountains and our intent to stay most of the way through the event. (The event included a junior rodeo at 4, and the real deal at 7. Lots of rodeo.)

Gazing down the road towards old gold and silver mines

Running at altitude my first day was not as hard as expected and surprisingly I was able to keep pace with the runners on their warmup before some sort of interval workout, which Tommy and I thankfully skipped. However Phil and I had done a nasty double session the day before (Petersburg skate 30/30s plus a Livingstone workout), so my legs were feeling pretty wrecked despite only going for about 45 minutes.

The Crew

After it started raining and our poor choice of clothing was fully revealed to us, we decided to find a spot in the grandstand. It wasn't long before our underdressedness and clear out-of-town look attracted the attention of a rodeo clown and we were invited to compete in one of the crowd-pleasing intermission games where they try to pick some hapless Easterners to compete/make fun of. We did some sort of relay race with an inflatable bouncy horse thing, which was introduced something like this: "Hey Frasier, put your hands together for the three college boys from Massachusetts. And here to challenge them, these cute high school girls from your very own Frasier County! Who are YOU rooting for?!?"

Eyeing our competition

Max quieting the home crowd

After beating the Frasier high schoolers handily, we decided to use our tickets, which doubled as buy-one-get-one-free coupons to the Frasier McDonalds, and call it a night.

The next day (Sunday), I met up with Gabe Lewis and David Dethier (father of Evan '11) to make our way into the mountains. It was already fairly late by the time we got there, but we still managed to get set up and make friends with the REU kids, who we discovered were mostly studying marmots, pikas, and flowering plants of the alpine tundra. Monday morning we decided to check out the area and hike up to the lab in the tundra at which they do most of their research. The tundra lab is located at about 11,800 feet, and once we got there we couldn't resist walking the extra bit to get to what's called the D-1 meteorological station, which is located at 12,200 or so feet.

Gabe eyeing D-1

Gabe eyeing Kiowa peak

A view towards Aikaree glacier

Lake Albion and the abandoned township of Albion, once a mid-sized tungsten mining operation

The next morning, we took a jarring truckbed ride into the City of Boulder Watershed area 

This time, we found ourselves in the abandoned township of Albion. A decommissioned mine exists just to the left (south) of the Lake Albion Dam.

Roads are sketchy at best...

A long way down

Taking measurements at my field site

Theoretically, most of our snowmelt comes through here

Today's hike through upper Fourmile Canyon and surrounding area proved that we finally seem to be adjusting to the elevation

I went on my first hour run today (it reads 0:54, I forgot to start it until almost a mile into the excursion) up to the C-1 meteorological station, which actually went much better than expected. Gabe and I did a 3 hour hike loop this morning to find a glaciofluvial outwash channel that fed into Fourmile Canyon, the drainage area directly north of the research station.


Gabe and I go sit in an alpine stream called Como Creek every day after we get back from the field, which provides a pretty nice ~6-8ºC ice bath. 


More updates are coming soon. My bounding poles arrive in the mail tomorrow, and there is PLENTY of terrain to use them on...

California

                                         I'm out in Truckee right now.  Its nice.

                                                                              Pete Cowan, Spencer Eusden and I went on a long run this morning along the pacific crest trail. The Reno Rodeo is currently taking place.  Sadly I was unprepared for the cowboy dress code in my crocs and shorts, and the pictures don't do it justice; however, it was a pretty sweet scene.

Before the bull riding a series of five your old kids rodeod some sheep.  You can see the sheep after they have bucked their riders off, there might be a kid riding in the background as well.

Impressions from the Critérium du Dauphiné

Greetings from Switzerland.

A couple days ago, my parents and I went to see the final stage of the Critérium du Dauphiné, which was ending near my town, just across the border in France. 

Here some highlights:

A special Europcar supporter

The "Groupe Maillot Jaune" w/ leader B. Wiggins

Hurtin...

The Mountain King (having a not so royal day...)

The Boss: Samuel "Samu" Sanchez

Vinokourov out of retirement

The "Gruppetto"

Scenes from the finish

Fitting right in... (I even got asked for my autograph)

Keep up the training. As the Germans say, cross-country skiers are made in the summer.