Happy New Year

21 athletes and 2 coaches....headed from MSA to Craftsbury for US Nationals tomorrow!

The first time all 23 of us
have been together.
What a great group and
a great camp!

Last Race of 2018

The Hoenig brothers Rocking the Cow toeing the line together in the CSU time trial:

Alums from the class of 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 are all present here at MSA, plus many parents and Eph Skiers to be. It's been a great couple of days of skiing. One more day of training and we're off to US Nationals at Craftsbury

Greeting from MSA

We are loving MSA!  The Williams Ski Team past, present and future is here enjoying winter. 

Quebec has yummy poutine.

It also has better wifi than the airport.

Hello From Colorado

Emil and I rocked the cow at the Frisco JNQ classic sprint. Hard to breathe at 10,000ft, glad we only had to race for three minutes. 

Emil is quite the sprinter, coming in second! Here we are looking good in the Semifinal.

Meet my great friend Nathaniel, who is a freshman at Bates this year. 

We also did well in the skate. Off I go...

Really tough conditions here. If you look close you can see that someone skied these runs before me. UGH!!!

Out skiing with mom and brother. 

Gave my bib away. 

I can't wait to see you all in Canada!

The Return of Sparkle Season

As Jessie Diggins wrote in her blog post last week, sparkle season has returned.  Ephs across the country are donning their cow suits and rippin' down the trail.  This weekend Marika, Isaac, Braden, and I headed up for the Craftsbury Eastern Cup Opener to test out the courses for Senior Nationals.  The Massey-Biermans were kind enough to host me and feed me up at their house near Craftsbury.  CSU waxed some super fast skis as well!

Here the girls are on their way to the race!  My good friend Clara (now skiing for Harvard) kindly drove me up to the Northeast Kingdom.  Marika and Quincy (Lil 'Q) are also pictured.  Lili Q' was kind enough to show us Marika's high school highlight reel.  There is some quality footage there.

Marika's dad Paul took some great photos of the team.  Saturday was a skate sprint.  Kind of wet at first but transitioned to snow for a very fast course.  Some Olympians were in the mix as well.  Lil 'Q and I made the open heats and Isaac made the U18/U20 heats.  

Getting after it!

Don't forget to be groovy.

Let's go!

 

I got to face off in the quarters and qualified for the Semis after Ida Sargent failed to show up and two girls tripped themselves up out of the start.

Good friend Leah Brams (she is one of the reasons I started skiing) and I racing again in the semis.  I sadly had skis so fast that I caught up to the UVM skier in front of me on the down and my ski ended up in between her legs.  Somehow in the fall my binding came off the the ski disappeared.  I searched for my ski and eventually found it in the river next to the trail. This is what happens when you do not snowplow out of principle. Not the first time I have lost a ski in a race (that would be the relay freshman year at EHS) but hopefully the last. A great learning experience whipping around the course with friends.

Isaac off to a fast start!

Day Two was 5k/10k skate on the North course.  Sadly the mass start was cancelled due to lack of snow but we still had fun.

Braden makes an appearance.

Isaac with the U20 podium!

I also ran into some alumns this weekend.  Jordan showed up to race for the Williams Gentleman's Ski Team.  Heidi came for a brief ski at Craftsbury since there was no snow at Stowe.  She won the wall sit contest this fall with a time of 45minutes and many extra kg of weigh added.

Hannah Cole raced on Saturday and we look forward to seeing her at Senior Nats.

Earlier in the week, I enjoyed some time at home including code names, sleeping, socializing, watching a horror movie and visiting Josh and Olivia's apartment in Cambridge.  My OD included ~40 loops (0.8k each loop) at the Weston Ski Track and then a run along the Charles River.

What a beautiful 45F day with no snow in sight!

I also found Carmen in the city and she planned quite the date...

Go Celtics!

Looking forward to seeing everyone oh so very soon! Merry Christmas!

Sonya

Back in Anchorage

After Anchorage's long fall of ice and earthquakes, it was good to arrive home and find the town blanketed in snow and in a not-destroyed state.  The five hours of daylight up here means plenty of time to catch up on sleep after a challenging week of finals. In the short time that the sun is up, I've been getting out to enjoy the snow and get some good training in before senior nationals.

I got to demo the purple cow suit in the first race of the Besh cup series

15k sure seemed longer than I remember

Alyeska, our local ski resort, received several feet of snow in the week following my return so I figured I had to go ski a few powder laps.

Trying to remember how to ski with my heels locked in

 As it turns out, Jack, Maggie and I aren't the only cows out on the ski trails in Anchorage. Rumor has it that a steer escaped from a rodeo this summer and has been living in one of the parks on the outskirts of town. Deep snows and lower daylight hours have pushed it onto the groomed and lit ski trails in the past few weeks, where it has been sighted frequently. No word on whether fish and game plans to round it up, so I've started skiing with a lasso in my water belt just in case.

This photo was posted on Anchorage's nordic ski association website with a caption that read "cow"

Speaking of Jack, he just returned from a semester in Norway and we got together to crush some intervals this morning. Looks like the Norwegians might've taught him a thing or two about skiing and it'll be great to have him back training with the whole team in less than a week.

After stopping to pillage a few coastal villages in England, Jack's longboat sailed into the port of Anchorage on the 18th

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

Gearing up!

Reporting here from northern MN with many many hours of sleep and lots of snow after a long and exhausting finals season. Yesterday in the afternoon my family went for a ski on the beautiful Burnside lake, and the light was really something!

Our dog Zipper just loving it!

Before heading up north, my brother and I joined Ingrid at a local Wednesday night race series where we lit up the track. Ephs took the win in every race they entered! It wasn't the best night for photographs, but here are two that the Gardner cheer squad managed to capture of the purple cow suit in action.

Looking forward to MSA and finally race season!!

Davos World Cup

I was lucky enough this year to make it back home in time for the World Cup races in Davos this year! It was so fun and inspirational watching all these really fast skiers, so I thought I'd share a few photos and videos to get everyone in the mood for our own race season starting in just a few weeks.
Saturday was a skate sprint, which is always exciting to watch.

 

Rounding the corner in a men's quarterfinal heat

Starting the second lap of the heat

Start of the women's final

Finish of the women's final (Sophie Caldwell in 2nd!!)

Start of the men's final

Sunday was a 10/15km skate. It was another good day for the US women with both Jessie Diggins and Rosie Brennan coming 5th and 6th respectively!

Jessie crossing the finish line of the 10k on Sunday

A semester in Argentina: Strikes, Mountains, Wineries, and more

Hello from the Buenos Aires airport! I last posted on the blog shortly after I arrived in Argentina, and I thought it would only be fitting to do a little reflecting on all that has happened since as I now depart the country. 

The past four months I've been living in Mendoza, Argentina which is at the base of the Andes foothills right across the border from Santiago, Chile. Mendoza is known as the "land of sun and wine" and has many beautifully irrigated vineyards even though the climate is actually quite dry.

My first month was quite an adventure as the professors at the public university where I was trying to take classes were on strike because their 8% raise didn't match the country's nearly 40% inflation rate. This caused much chaos as they kept pushing off the start to classes so then the students started to protest as well and repeatedly shut down the entrance to the school. It got to the point where our program told us to find new classes at the private university, so I was finally able to start all of my classes at the end of August. I did make some use of all my free time by joining a local trail running club. We went on some great runs and found some snow in the foothills!

One of the many protests through the streets. I think this one was mostly professors.

Some spring snow in August!

Once my classes got rolling I was able to get into more of a rhythm of every day life. I started taking guitar lessons and began my volunteer work with the program at a local school for people with special needs. In September, we had a week free for spring break, so I decided to pop over the border to La Serena, Chile to visit my friend and high school host sister Fernanda and the rest of her family. It was surreal to be back in the house that I lived in freshman spring of high school and it was so great to catch up with Fernanda and her family. I visited them again this past week to say goodbye and there was much talk of them visiting the US sometime soon so I hope that happens!

Here I am with Fernanda on a hike up Cerro Grande, the big hill that makes up the backdrop of La Serena.

By October, things were starting to warm up and spring was in full swing. The leaves were starting to come out as you can see in the picture below of a spontaneous zumba class I happened upon while on a run in the park. One of my personal highlights was the cooking class we were able to take through our program in which we learned how to make empanadas, a tomato/scrambled eggs type goodness called tomaticán cuyano, and potato gnocchi (or ñoqui in Argentina). Around 60% of Argentinians are of Italian descent so there was lots of ñoqui to be eaten which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Nothin like a mid run shake out to "You're the One That I Want" from Grease.

The fruits of our labor. It was delicious.

The first week of November we ended our classes at the private university. It was weird because I had started so late but then some of the finals weren't until the end of November. One of my classes also just didn't meet for almost all of October for various random reasons so that was interesting. I did enjoy my (surprisingly rigorous) Argentine history class as I learned a lot of context behind why Argentina has the governmental and economic problems it does today (six coups d'état followed by dictatorships in a span of 50 years will mess some things up). I also decided to do the Cerro Arco trail race with the running club. Even though they tried to convince me to do the 50k, I opted for perhaps the more reasonable 15k that climbed straight up and down the 2,300 foot hill in 90 degree heat. It was a scorcher but I had a lot of fun!

Out for a little course preview the week before with the running crew.

Getting my pain face on for the first time in a while!

My parents were also kind enough to pay me a visit and I was able to check many things off my Mendoza bucket list with them such as climb to the Aconcagua base camp, go to some wineries, and go mountain biking. We also had a lovely dinner with my host mom and her partner.

On our way up to the Aconcagua base camp. The peak was covered by clouds but it was still cool to see most of the highest mountain in the southern and western hemispheres! 

I thoroughly enjoyed wine tasting with my parents. 

The rents enjoying the view from Potrerillos where we went biking.

My host mom Carmen and her partner Hector. I now have two Carmens in my life!

I also joined a choir for my last couple months and had a lot of fun singing with them! Friday night was our final concert and it was sad to say goodbye.

All smiles after a great last performance of the year!

My Spanish has certainly improved and I learned a lot about myself this past semester and how I deal with situations out of my comfort zone. Although sometimes I had a hard time understanding the different rhythm and occasional chaos that is Argentine culture, I'm glad I went and I'm going to miss it. I'm definitely happy to be headed home and am beyond excited to get on snow and see everyone in a few short weeks!

Sending love and good vibes for all the folks headed into finals! 

Lucy