Private Trails

Being home for a while is nice in a lot of ways, but not so good for skiing sometimes. I'm only a half an hour from school, but I'm half an hour north, which is the opposite direction we drive in for good skiing at Sleepy and Trapps. This means that the 45ish minute drive to Trapps for training turns into an hour 15 min. It's do-able, but I like to be able to actually spend time at home during break. Skiing isn't on the back-burner, but the ski, eat, sleep pattern some people get into isn't for me. I prefer the ski, eat, bowling, game night, sleep kind of day that I had yesterday.

Luckily, St. Albans has more to offer than one might expect. Within a 10 or 15 minute drive max I have three different options for training. (I have pictures that I was going to put up, but I forgot the cord for my camera, so they'll have to wait.)

The first is half a mile down the road at a family friend, Mike's house. Mike, my dad, and my brother spent a good portion of their summer cutting trails at his house a couple of years ago. The result was a solid 5k + trail system that winds its way along Mill River. The system is longer in the summer with fun, windy single track through the trees - a little narrow for skiing. While it might be a little short for a real distance ski there's a particular section of trail that I'm really fond of for a 4 - 6 minute interval. It's also fun to ski by the horses and feed them a bit on the way around the loop. (Again, I have great pictures that are stuck on my camera.)

The second hidden gem is only hidden because it's so new. Hard' ack is a rec area in St. Albans that's been open for years. In the winter there's sledding, an outdoor hockey rink, and a tow rope. Just recently my dad spearheaded the process of cutting new trails for running and skiing. This winter is the first time they've been open for skiing. Like Mike's, the trail system isn't extensive, but for something local and free it's pretty awesome. The trails are nice and wide and ski really smoothly. There's a good sized uphill, which makes for a good interval and if you wind around the trails you can get in a good length ski without feeling like you've done everything 25 times.

Downhill skiing/Snowboarding w/ tow rope to the left
Sledding hill to the right
Nordic trails extend into the trees on the right

The third trail system I'm able to use, which, like Mike's, is private property, is my old high school stomping grounds. With Hard' ack now available and closer to my high school, BFA, the team now tends to ski there more often. However, when I was at BFA we went just over St. Albans hill into Fairfield to use Dr. Dickinson's fields adjacent to his farm. (Note how ridiculously Vermont this is...using a local dentist's fields, on his farm, for nordic skiing. He also sugars. Obviously.) I can't count the number of times I've been on each individual trail. The trail system is a little bigger than the other two, extending into the woods from the three separate fields. Being over the hill, most of the time when all other areas lose snow and are looking iffy Dickinson's is able to hold on and St. A is one of the only parts of VT with actual skiing.

Pictures from my first time back home freshman year.

VT scene with Mt. Mansfield visible-ish in the background.

While it's easy to be a little jealous of people in the Burlington area during winter break (aka Adam when I read his blog...) I have to consider myself lucky. I think it's safe to say that not everyone has three (fairly) private ski areas in their backyard.

It's About Time...

Well then. I've been lazy as far as blogging goes. I've been busy busy for a real long time. Since it's been forever I'll make a list.
Things that have kept me busy:

Finals Week - Ok first of all...ew. This semester I took two math classes and two education classes. On Monday of finals week I had my Abstract Algebra exam. This meant a lot of studying, Mountain Dew, and chocolate on Sunday after the first race of the season, which you can read a bit about on the SMC Nordic blog.

After Abstract, which went surprisingly well after my three hour long study sesh in Alliot that morning, I got straight to work on a presentation for my education classes. Our units had been due the previous week for the Curriculum course (getting that done was insane as well. I've never stayed up until 4:30 am doing work before. I'd like to say I'll never do it again...) so the presentations on Tuesday weren't too intense. After Tuesday things settled down a little bit and I focused on skiing until Thursday when I had to study for Probability and Statistics. Nothing worse than a Friday exam when everyone else is having fun.

People thinking it's ok to leave me: One really cool aspect of college for some people is going abroad. With everything I do this will never happen for me. Next semester, however, it will happen for eight of my good friends. Saying goodbye to so many people was not fun. It will be really weird semester with so many people that I love being gone, but a few will be back from their trips abroad last semester and we'll all be together for our senior year. (Yikes. That seems just a little too close now.)

Roomie pic again. Cants 102!
Abby (England), Lauren L., Sam V., Erin, Carly (China),
me, Lauren S. (Ireland)

My loves in Cants 305. Plus ugly sweaters. HA.
Coligs, Jordan, Liane (Chile), Maria,
Erika (Italy), Cara (S. Africa), Mom/Chelsea (S. Africa),
Brookie (Italy)

Skiing - Things were going relatively well for skiing the past few weeks. We had a few good interval sessions and it was nice to be on snow again. As mentioned, we had our first race the Sunday before finals, which was the Bolton Opener. I wouldn't say it actually went well, but it's always good to get in some starts to try to get the bad races out of the way early. Hopefully.

This past weekend was the Eastern Cup Opener for NENSA. Saturday were sprints, which I didn't do and then Sunday was a 10k four lap (2.5k each) mass start classic in Jericho. I've never been one for mass starts, not that they should be used as an excuse. I was in the very back at the start and feel like I did a fair job moving up in the first chunk of the race. Since I worked so hard to move up I was skiing kind of frantically and was anything but smooth. This put me in not so good a place for the second lap. By the third lap I had pulled myself together and once I was skiing more smoothly passed a couple of people to move up a few spots. My results aren't at all impressive to look at, but I feel good about the way I got things together. Part of me wishes it had been an interval start so that I could have seen what I could do on that course without the crazy start and the bad first two laps.

As of now I've taken a few days off after developing a stupid chest cold/annoying illness on Monday. It's really frustrating considering the amount of motivation I gained from Sunday's race, but I rather get better and have solid workouts after a few days off than be sick for weeks because I don't back off.

Christmas Shopping - That's self explanatory, but as of today I'm done done done!

Our lovely tree

So going through those three things it doesn't seem like I was that busy. Looking back on the past few weeks I'd definitely say otherwise. I think it's just everything I do on top of having practice every day. Now that we're on snow it takes 35+ minutes to drive to snow, which makes for some long afternoons even if they are completely worth it. It's nice to have a few weeks off, but I am definitely looking forward to our team's winter camp.

VOTE FOR CAROLINE!

I may have mentioned that one of my oldest friends in the whole wide world, Caroline Bright, is Miss Vermont.

Caroline and I grew up together, went to college together, transferred colleges together, and now go to SMC together.

This year for the Miss America pageant you can vote for a finalist via YouTube.

Support an SMC student and native Vermonter by taking the link to YouTube and simply liking the video!

Ahhh I can't wait to see Caroline in VEGAS!!

Creepy Santa War

As seen in my previous post, the suite is ready for the holidays. One of the decorations is what I like to call "Creepy Santa." Erin brought this moving Santa from home, mostly because he's one of the creepiest things she'd ever seen. His head and one of his arms move. He doesn't make any noise. Sometimes you have to stare at him to see if he's actually moving because when he does it's sooooo slooooooow...it's really yucky and it weirds me out.

The other night before bed I placed him in front of Erin's door so he could greet her when she came home. I woke up in the morning and opened my door to have him facing me. And waving. Very slowly. Ew ew ew.

As payback last night I tucked him into Erin's bed with his happy little head on her pillow. It took her a few hours to notice and when she did it scared the crap out of her, which was one of the funniest things I've ever witnessed. I was in tears I was laughing so hard.

I got this text from her this morning:

"He will haunt you. FOREVER."

Yuck. So obviously I've already retaliated with a video on her Facebook wall:

We'll see where this goes. All I know is I'm locking my door for the rest of the semester. I am not waking up to that thing in my bed.

As far as the rest of life goes, exam week is just around the corner, which is not something anyone is looking forward to. On the plus side, it snowed all last night and all this morning, so I'm hoping for some actual skiing soon. We skied on the Notch Road yesterday, which was better on the Smuggs side, but that kind of skiing isn't going to get us by forever.

Also, the team blog has only been up and running for a little while and we've already seen a lot of action. My teammates Colin and Larissa have both posted as well as another from our coach. It's nice to see other people getting involved. Definitely check it out. There are some good pictures from our roller ski up the Bolton access road on Saturday!

An addition at 4:00 PM...Winter Storm Warning until 1:00 TOMORROW. Things are looking good in the snow department. "8.4 inches on the way" in Stowe.

Stowe. YESSSS

UPDATE

SNOOOW!!!!!

❄❄❄❄❄❄❄❄❄

Snow?? ❄

Well, last blog post was hopeful for some snow. Not so much today. It's December 1st and the forecast is "56 degrees, windy and mild with downpours." Huh. Remember that picture of Stowe? Here's the current one:

Yikes.

But even if it's rainy and so windy that it almost blew me off of the sidewalk outside, (seriously, I almost fell over...how embarassing) the suite still looks like Christmas (and winter for that matter) might actually be on its way. The roomies, festive as ever, started decorating before Thanksgiving break with the excuse that we only had a little over two weeks to celebrate Christmas and that simply wouldn't be enough.

Snow ❄

It started snowing last night and into this morning. It's not exactly dumping, but it's going to make the rollerski I'm procrastinating right now a little slick...

A view out the front window of my house

It's a little bit white...

I'm crossing my fingers that it looks like this and then some on the mountains...with snow like this in Georgia I think it's safe to say that we'll at least be on the Notch Road at some point this week.

Stowe webcams

Let it snow...

Ski Update

SO MUCH WORK. That's what this time of the year brings. Everything speeds up and all of the end of the semester assignments aren't so far away anymore.

It's also a big time of the year for ski training. I don't know how many times I've heard my dad say, "These next six weeks are really important." It's a lot. Since everyone's heading home for break today we've had a couple of big workouts in the past few days so that the time at home could be fairly relaxed. We ran the Westford Turkey Trot 10k on Saturday. It was a fun community filled race. A lot of the ski club my dad belongs to, Northwest Vermont Endurance, was there, which was fun because it was a lot of people from around my hometown.

NWVE sends out an email after each race. They're usually pretty entertaining. My favorite bit from the Turkey Trot Report:

"With Camille Bolduc (the two-time female driveway dash champion) graduating to the 2 (~1.7) mile event, NWVE had no athletes in the first wave. (NOTE: The first wave was the 50 m dash for kids) None-the-less it was one of the more exciting races in memory with an intimidating stare down between the top two finishers, to a happy go lucky gallop, and the traditional terrified tears created by the phobia inducing tunnel of giant grownups clapping and cheering louder to encourage the emergent athlete in what creates an unfortunate terminal circle of fear and cheer. I was late to the start so no word on how any of the wagering went on in the kid’s race."

On Sunday we did a long double pole roller ski. Today we had an early morning interval session that went very well. It's finally almost Turkey Day and I'm ready for a few easy days.

While the only two boys currently on the team have been finishing up the cross country running season the girls have been working hard. Having only two of us back from last year (Kat and I) it's really exciting to see such a great girls team coming together. We're looking ready for snow!

NENSA races start up as early as the beginning of December, so cross your fingers for that white stuff we love.

I'm really starting to get antsy, so I was looking at ski pics from last year. I stumbled upon these two videos and this great picture, which were from one of my favorite days of practice last year. It was snowing so hard that we couldn't even make it to Stowe so we ended up out in the 3's field building jumps and having snowball fights. Check out Colin, Kat, and Josh below...

Definitely the best picture of the day.

In other ski news, I finally got the team blog up an running last night! Check it out!

29 Hours, 32 Minutes.

I. CAN'T. WAIT.

Neither can the rest of SMC XC...I mean, most of us...some of them aren't big fans. Some just flat out hate it. Erin is one of those. Erin hates HP. Now more than ever, actually. Since she was so the opposite of eager for the movie to come out Andrea and I started calling her a death eater, which just led to more bad feelings toward HP for Erin.

Last night Andrea abused Erin's facebook wall.
I know the pics are small. Click on them to read.

HILARIOUS.

Yay HP oh so very soon!

Erin's Big Day and a Football Game

I feel like I only write about the weekends. It's probably because they're the highlight of every week. It's not that nothing ever happens during the week. Plenty goes on. However, when I look back on every week I think of the assignments I did and the tests I took. When I look back on the weekends I think of the time spent with family and friends. This weekend was a big one for both groups of people that I love spending time with.

Thursday was Erin's birthday, which meant big happenings in the suite. There were lots of balloons, a cake, and a pinata. And lots of Just Dance. Obviously. Unfortunately, I had a big math assignment due Friday, so I wasn't around for most of the festivities. Luckily, I did make it for the initial surprise and pinata full of candy (duh), bubbles, cheap rings and necklaces, and fake tattoos that kept us occupied all weekend.

Us and the Birthday Girl

Sketchiest pinata set-up ever...

Me, MMM, Erin, and Doogs on Friday (XC Love)

The weekend was beautiful, which was really lucky, because my Saturday was spent at Castleton State College watching a football game. My cousin Cylas, who is a senior at my high school, plays on my high school's football team and his brother, Eli, a junior, is the manager. They had an awesome season and went into the championship game as the #1 seed with a 10-0 record. I went down (with a huge chunk of the Martell clan) to watch the game. Unfortunately, they ended up losing, which is a sad way to finish off such a great season, but 10-1 is still impressive.

A proud mama as the Bobwhites enter the stadium
(Aunt Becky)

Now, I love SMC, but being at a BFA football game made me miss high school just a little bit. I was big into school spirit and the way the crowd was screaming and waving the green and gold BFA signs and pom poms when the team entered got me a little nostalgic.


The student section was so unimpressively quiet that I grabbed Cylas' girlfriend and we made our way into it for the second half and got the chants going. It was a little weird considering I knew maybe six people, but I had a great time. I can't believe it's been two and a half years since I last stood stomping, clapping, and screaming "LET'S GO BOBWHITES! LET'S GO BOBWHITES!" Leading the girls that were freshman when I was a senior in my old chants was pretty hysterical.

The boys...cousin Eli is in the green on the left on the field.
#75 Cylas is hiding in the crowd of players.

Proud little Liam cheering on #75

The excitement for this week is Thursday night at midnight. (So that would actually be Friday) Why? BECAUSE HARRY POTTER 7, PART 1 COMES OUT!!! OBVIOUSLY!!! In honor of its premier, that I will be at, with about half of SMC XC, I leave you with this photo.

Procrastiation

With two weeks until Thanksgiving break classes are getting pretty intense for almost everyone. I had a big stats exam this morning, quite a few assignments coming up for my education classes, and juuust before break I have an abstract exam. Somehow, with all of this work, I can't get myself moving!

Here in the Cants we find the time to procrastinate. It's the new Wii game Just Dance II that's really the culprit. Erin just got it for her birthday. My personal favorite is Proud Mary.Sam's favorite is Rasputin, which Abby and Erin were playing earlier tonight (and as I type this, actually). I secretly videoed them. Please enjoy.

is there spring training for xc? if I wanted to run next fall, should I start training now?

Molly does send out a training schedule for the spring as well as the summer. Usually that doesn't come out for a while though, considering we're still in season right now. Your best bet would be to contact Molly so that you're on the email list when she does send out the schedule. Her email is mpeters@smcvt.edu

Ask me anything!

2 Weeks of Halloween

It's been a real long time since the last post. I think it's time for an update.

Pre-race pic of the ladies

We've been celebrating Halloween for quite some time now...The Ooky Spooky fun run was the day after the SMC invite the weekend before last. It was a great course and benefited COTS, a program for the homeless in our area. It was obviously a pretty relaxed run as we had time for a self timer pic on the section on the beach...

Self-timer beach pic. Beautiful.

I love this one. I'm the super star toward the back...

We've been really prepared for the holiday in the suite. I like to think that we might be the most festive suite around. It's got to be a pretty close competition if we're not.

Please note the streamers...that was all me.

Nordic girls! (Silke, Larissa, me, Kat)

On Friday night we got the alpine and nordic ski teams together for a little meet and greet. Our two teams share a ski room, but literally have no idea who the people on the other team are. This makes for some pretty awkward waxing sessions. Hopefully we can continue to get to know the alpine team and, well, i don't know, be friends. Wouldn't that just be a turn around from last year?

Me and Gabbi

It was especially good considering Gabbi and I finally hung out after being strictly blogging buddies for so long. As it turns out we're both big fans of breaking it down, especially to Ke$ha. We're also usually the only ones doing so. This could be the start to something very beautiful and full of far too much dancing...

Abby, me, Lauren, Erin, Carly, Lauren, and Sam

And then it was Saturday night. At SMC this entails costumes in Alliot and the Halloween Dance. Now, I'm a big fan of Halloween. It's definitely up there on my holiday list. One thing I'm not a big fan of is spending money. Some people go out and buy actual costumes for an absurd amount of money. I'm all about using my resources and being creative.

My roommates and I were crayons (as I hope you can tell). I spent maybe $20 and LOVED my costume. We just sat in our common room staring at each other and laughing. We couldn't believe how good they all came out when we put them together!

I loved these whistles.

Doogs, Andrea Bot, and me at the dance

We've been going at the Halloween thing for a while now, so it's looking like it's time to move on. Quite sad. I love this time of year, though. So many holidays! Helloooo Thanksgiving!

How Did this Post End Up Being All About Andrea??

It's been quite the little week here in my life. The homework hasn't been too excessive, although the assignment I had last night was one of those things that seems completely pointless and therefore takes 5 times as long to finish. While this week is going by fairly quickly I'm still DYING for the weekend.

Highlights of my life lately:

Weekends with SMC WXC
As it turns out I absolutely love the girls on my team. Pics from the weekend of XC love:

Andrea, Little Margaret Miller, Doogs, Mary Margaret Miller, me

Brookie, Doogs, me, Andrea, Alli

I really love my roomies too!

Lauren, Lauren, Erin, Carly, Sam, me, Abby (missing Julliette)

Fresh Beats with AP (and a bunch of SMC WXC)

My friend Andrea has a radio show (Sundays 3-5) on WWPV, the campus radio station. I join her every few weekends to guest DJ, meaning I introduce a song or two, and just hang out and avoid homework. This past Sunday was the "All Disney, Almost my Birthday, Best Show of the Semester Show". It's exactly what it sounds like. Playing only Disney music (with the exception of my fave song from Anastasia, "Once Upon a December") along with fun facts from each movie right before Andrea's 21st birthday the next day. Andrea is what you might call obsessed with Disney movies. A lot of the girls from the XC team joined in and we had a bit of a Disney party. She'll be around every Sunday with probably at least one or two XC girls so tune in!

Just a few of the guest DJs

Mary Margaret Miller, me, and Elyse (who is being super cute)

Texas Roadhouse mmmmmmm....
Peanuts, yummy bread, steak, baked potato, apple sauce, cherry limeade. YUM. Happy 21st birthday to Andrea!

Pure joy.

The birthday crew

Time for lunch and then class. And then practice. And then it'll be Friday. Give me the weekend!

First Nordic Tracks in NE?

My friend Adam probably loves skiing more than anyone I know. Every single year he watches the web cams for any hint of snow so that he can hike asap for the first ski of the season.

With the ridiculous amounts of rain we've had here came some snow toward the top of the mountains in Stowe. Adam grabbed a group of skiers in the area and headed up yesterday for what could potentially be the first nordic ski in New England for the 2010/2011 season. They even ended up on The Weather Channel! Check out his blog for pics and details.

I'm not sure if this is a record for the earliest ski of Adam's, but I know that the amount of snow doesn't beat out the snow we got in Canton, NY my freshman year. The following pics are from October 29, 2008. Craziness. Cross your fingers for this much snow very very soon. I would love to get some real skiing in!

Pepper, a junior at the time finding his way through the snow

Gorgeous pic...stolen from Adam

The snow in front of my dorm