Leaf Peeping and Rain

After a beautiful summer and start to the fall, we finally started to get a little rain. It's a little harder to motivate yourself to go out and train for two hours when it's pouring but we were getting a little too spoiled with the perfect weather so I think this will toughen us up. In the last week, we have had a lot of easy recovery workouts to get us rested up for Park City, two time trials, an SMS T2 reception, and some leaf peeping when the weather clears up! Last Thursday was a beautiful day so Annie, Dan, and I decided to hike Mt. Equinox to look at the foliage. Our training plan called for an easy hour run and we figured an easy hike would have the same effect so we left more than enough time before dinner and set off on our adventure. We made it to the top with a quick stop at Lookout Rock on the way up and had some awesome views full of beautiful fall colors. We were very excited and took a lot of pictures.

Made it!

Lookout Rock

A Perch

This is when it starts to get embarrassing. We should have had no trouble making it back down to our car because all we would have had to do is take the same exact trail we came up on. Welp...we decided to follow a "shortcut" trail that spat us out about 1/3 of the way down the access road so we climbed back up the access road to the top and then caught a ride down with some kind people because we were already late for dinner at that point. It was a fun adventure and we met some very nice people but our 1 hour recovery run turned into a hike that took a bit longer. Oops.

Since then we've had a lot of rainy and cloudy days but the training has been going well. We had a 5k classic timetrial on Saturday and a 10k L3 skate time trial today. Here are some pictures from the workouts we've done in the past week.

Annie and I demonstrating some good technique at BMD. Just kidding - don't do that

Sophie - Eric - Annie - Sky - Jordan

Lots of jumping photos this week

Skate speeds at BMD with Brooke Mooney

A long rainy ski in NY State with Molly Hoopes

Some pretty VT foliage before the start of our 5k classic Timetrial

Final hill in our 5k timetrial

HERE is a video of the girls during the 5k classic and HERE is a video of the boys during their 10k classic.

We also had a SMS T2 reception Sunday evening and we had a great turnout. Thanks to everyone who showed up!

Gus, Erika, Eric, Sophie, Andy, Annie, Skyler

Eric, Skyler, Sophie

Yesterday we had the afternoon off so I went up to Middlebury to check our Barney Hodges' apple orchard, Sunrise Orchards. Barney gave us a tour of the place and we got to choose our favorite apples and bring some home. It was very nice of him and I highly recommend his apples - they were awesome!

We leave for Park City very early on Friday morning and will be there until the 18th of October when we head to Canmore. Stay tuned for more updates!