Sophie Caldwell: Midsummer Training

We just finished up a big week of training and this morning is the first day of an easier week so we slept in and made these for breakfast!

Waffle Breakfast!

Speaking of delicious food, we've been cooking up some gourmet meals at the SMS T2 house. There are five people living in our house and we each came from a different area of the country and grew up with different recipes, so it's easy to bring a lot of variety to the table (no pun intended). We've also been taking advantage of our farm CSA to make delicious appetizers each night. Annie P. made some tom-ah-toe tar tar as an appetizer before our turkey lettuce wraps, we had fresh cucumbers with my special salad dressing before our fig and goat cheese burgers, and we had caprese salad before our homemade pizzas the other night!

Tomatoe tar tar

Peach, pesto, and sausage pizza

Caprese Salad

Our big training week consisted of a skate speed workout, L3 ski walking intervals up Stratton, very hard and short L4 classic striding intervals, two strength sessions, and a lot of easy distance. There were definitely times during the week where it was a struggle to get out of bed in the morning, but I was pleasantly surprised to still feel great and be able to enjoy our 3.5 hour bike that was the culmination of the big week yesterday. It probably didn't hurt that it was the first day that was cooler than 85 degrees.

Annie and Erika during our L4 intervals

Sophie during L4 intervals

Packer and Ben striding out

Grandpa came to spectate :)

Speed day!

Devo kids!

The Bike group

I decided not to go to Alaska this year because I think I benefit from minimal travel and I wanted to be able to get into a solid routine of training in Vermont. One of my weaknesses is that I tend to get tired out pretty easily when I'm traveling and training a lot, but one of my strengths is being able to recognize that and turn it around before it starts to happen. So, while Alaska would have been a blast, it's a lot of travel and training for me and I probably would have come back as one exhausted pup! It was a tough decision because I really enjoyed my trip to Alaska two years ago and wanted to be with my new teammates, but I believe it's the right decision for me this year and I am really enjoying training and being home with friends and family after a long winter on the road! I will be going to the next USST camps in Lake Placid, Park City, and Canmore, but I'll be training in Vermont with Stratton until then, while making virtual appearances in Alaska over the interweb :).

The girls training hard in Alaska!

Good friends and training partners

Midwest, East, and West!

We also went on some other adventures this week in between training sessions. We went to the Dorset quarry to go cliff jumping and watched our boys do an endless number of back flips off the biggest rocks, checked out the beautiful river cairns in Bondville that have been the talk of Vermont lately, had a photo shoot after our hard classic intervals, and went blueberry picking until our tummies hurt yesterday afternoon! My strategy was to put a blueberry in my bucket for each one I ate and as a result, I lost the blueberry picking competition...by a lot. As if that weren't enough, we came home and had blueberries with maple whipped cream for dessert and blueberry waffles for breakfast this morning. If you think that's gross, read Annie's argument against moderation and I guarantee your mind will be changed. It was an awesome week of training and I am now looking forward to an easier week with some cooler temperatures!