Sophie Caldwell: Lake Placid Update

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Lake Placid Update

Five of us packed into Annie's car on Thursday and had a lovely road trip to Lake Placid complete with a stop at Up For Breakfast in Manchester for brunch and the GNC in Rutland for some Muscle Milk (strict orders from Gus).

Annie

Before coming to Lake Placid, we trained with the SMS high school team for a few days. We had a couple of very easy days and had some fun doing balance drills and a double pole workout with the SMS girls. Brian Fish and Jason Cork from the USST accompanied us for some workouts and I think everyone welcomed their words of wisdom.

Pip getting some technique advice from Brian Fish (Liz Kantack Photo)

Bungee Pulls

I'm confident Jessie would add to think pink theme of this photo (Liz Kantack photo) Sophie - Erika - Annie

Stratton Ladies (Liz Kantack Photo)

We also had one day with Stratton that was particularly hard. It was an 8.8 mile running time trial that started at Ball Mountain Dam and finished in South Londonderry. It was a good workout that definitely made us tougher but it was exhausting and left us all looking forward to an Off day before the Lake Placid Camp started.

Happy to get that out of the way! Erika - Annie - Sophie (Liz Kantack Photo)

Since we arrived in Lake Placid, we have done a few easy distance workouts, a speed workout, and this morning we did the annual Climb to the Castle. The speeds workouts were a lot of fun and video from the women's workout can be found HERE and men's HERE. It was really fun for me to be able to ski with people like Ida Sargent who has a super fast tempo. We took turns leading and following and I think we were both able to learn a lot from skiing behind each other (at least I was!). This morning we did the Climb to the Castle. I hadn't done this race for a few years and hill climbs generally aren't my favorite races - in fact, they're probably my least favorite races but NYSEF does an awesome job putting this race together and it's something I need to work on so I was excited to put in a hard effort and hopefully improve on my not-so-stellar performances in previous years. Rollerski races are funny because everyone has different ski speeds so you really can't get caught up comparing yourself to others but it's good practice to put on a bib every once in awhile and try to remember how to race. The weather for the 5 mile climb to the castle was not ideal but it rarely is. We had some pretty windy sections and the mountain seemed to be trapped in a cloud so it was damp and cold but we put our heads down and went for it! I think I had a solid race and it was a much more positive experience than previous years but I am very relieved to be finished with that. We just finished a strength session and drank our muscle milk! I am very sore and looking forward to an easier day tomorrow. Here are some more pictures from the Climb. Off to dinner!