A Visit to Maine

I thought I might give you guys a little update on what Keith and I have been up to. Last Thursday I cruised over to Jackson and we caravanned to Cumberland, Maine (via a ridiculously overpriced romantic dinner with live music on the Old Port wharf) to meet up with a bunch of skiers from around the Northeast. We set ourselves up in a 'man-cave' 1-room palace at Sam Tarling's house, where we had as many as six boys sleeping amongst unwashed clothes, computer equipment, towels, and tour de france highlights. Female attendance was not encouraged.

A google image search for man cave brings this up. ours was similar, just without the snacks, the clean carpet, the weights, or the middle aged 5-o'clock shadows.

Day 1 was our most amibitious training day: we began with some light soccer, which only lasted for 2.5 hours and resulted in just one day-ending injury. After thoroughly exhausting ourselves with two full 4 on 4 games on turf that must have been 100 degrees, we decided that we could forgo the scheduled plyometric workout. Fortunately we had a big enough group that someone was bound to feel guilty about skipping the workout for soccer, so we ended up doing a solid run-through of the Stratton plyo routine. Average weight loss for the 3.5 hour morning was 8-10 lbs.

An emaciated, but photogenic, crew post-soccer and plyometrics.

After pounding fluids for four hours, we embarked on an afternoon doublepole session, then played basketball and seriously considered playing a game of volleyball before succumbing to fatigue.

Competitors on snow, best friends everywhere else.

The next day we put on a clinic in pre-race preparation. A 5 mile road race began at 8:00 and was fifteen minutes away from Sam's house, so we woke up at 7:15 and departed at 7:35. Fortunately we made good time and showed up 12 minutes before the start, just enough time to not warm up and not register. We planned to go easy, but with 450 men and 350 women behind us, getting sucked in was inevitable. I ran the first mile in 5:25, settled in to go through the 2 mile in 11:20, then smugly checked behind me to see how much I had gapped Keith and Harry Poole, who were running together, only to realize they were right on my heels. 15 minutes later Keith made a devastating uphill move and I couldn't catch him in a photo finish.

an epic finish must be accompanied by a tongue flapping in the wind.

Our time of 28:30 would have placed us about 25th, only 5 minutes behind Ben True, who set a course record by 20 seconds. Since he is a professional runner now, we should be sure to note that we were the first skiers in the field.

An eager crowd watching, not us, but a bicycle race the next day. we watched too.

After that we did a fair amount of lazing around, visited Bowdoin, Freeport, Cape Elizabeth, and Portland, and did mostly light training on the side. As soon as I began to drive home it began to rain, but now I'm back in Williamstown and ready to join the gigantic fraction of our team that is in the area for some good training. Here are some more photos from our excursion:

Keith ruins the first photo...

... but manages to get into position for an instant tie-dye classic.

sunrise is at a prepostrous 5 A.M., but is totally worth it.