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!