Summer Adventures: Lizzie

Lizzie (JNT alum, Colby sophomore)

My summer was filled with a variety of fun adventures. Some highlights included awesome spring skiing in Vail, Colorado with a couple of my college teammates, scenic road bike rides around the Upper Valley, hiking in the White Mountains, including a trek up Mt. Washington for the first time, and returning to Wednesday morning strength with Ford Sayre. Have a great fall, Ford Sayre JNT, and I look forward to seeing you on the trails this winter!

spring skiing in Vail

Summer Adventures: Emily

Emily
This summer I spent a month at a Spanish immersion camp in Minnesota. The goal of it was almost complete immersion, so we weren't allowed english books, or music, and had to speak as much Spanish as possible. The first two weeks or so were quite difficult for me because I didn't know any Spanish but I caught on pretty quickly. I tried hard to do as much ski specific training there as possible, but I had to search to find a hill anywhere, which made it hard. After Spanish camp my family and I went to Alaska for two weeks. We spent 5 days 90 miles into Denali National Park. There were did lots of hiking, and we even found snow! Looking out from our cabin we had an amazing view of Mt McKinley, which looks absolutely enormous. Seeing all the snow there made me very excited for skiing.

Summer Adventures: Caitlin

Caitlin

I spent this summer at St. Paul’s Advanced Studies Program near Concord. Besides learning a ton and becoming addicted to coffee, I learned how to row in an eight which was pretty exciting and a lot harder than it looks. Rowing is actually a very technical sport and rowing all together is quite a challenge - especially in a boat full of novices. By the end of the summer, I discovered that I love to row. It's a great team sport, awesome for ski training, and really hard. This fall, I decided to continue with my rowing and I’m now part of the Upper Valley Rowing Foundation’s Fall Junior Crew Program which meets three days a week in the mornings.

Caitlin in stroke seat

Summer Adventures & Intro: Sarah L

we welcome Sarah L, a junior at Rivendell, to the JNT!
Sarah L

For those of you who don't already know me, I'm Sarah L.

I've been floating around from school to school for the past couple of years. I orginally started out at Rivendell and spent K-5 there. Then went to Crossroads Academy for middle school. And finally high school wise, I was at Kimball Union for 2 years and I'm finally settled this year at Rivendell.

There's been a lot of opportunities for me to play different sports and find out many of my current intrests. For many years I was playing basketball in the winter. But, honestly, who wants to be stuck in a stuffy gym for 4 months? So freshman year at KUA I decided to try nordic. My dad skied and competed when he was in his 20s so I guess you could say I wanted to try it out for myself.

Last year I met up with the UNH ski team when I was up at Trapps and got some direction with V2/ V2 alternate. Classic however…

This past summer I've spent a lot of time working at an inn. I'm officially a pro at cleaning toilets and weeding gardens. While I wasn't working, I was riding my bike. Something I've also recently gotten into. Competed this past spring and won my championship first time out… it was pretty sweet. 

This fall is soccer… and I'm making my way through my fifth concussion. Fun.

But that's pretty much all everyone needs to know about me for now. I'm looking forward to starting training and getting on some snow!

Rivendell girls soccer Jamboree 

Profile School bike race (a hilly 27 miles!)

Cardigan 5k CL race, 2011

Summer Adventures: Beth (and Phil!)

Beth (JNT alum, Bates senior & 2011/12 Bates ski team captain)
I spent the summer in Truckee, CA with Phil (and a visit from Cate). We were part of a 12-person collegiate training program comprised of skiers from Bates, Williams, UVM, Bowdoin, St. Lawrence, UNH, and Middlebury, coached by former Bates assistant coach/current Sugarbowl Academy coach, the legendary Martin Benes. We were able to ski on snow, on trails groomed by Auburn Ski Club (where 2005 & 2009 Truckee JOs were held), until July 4, which was incredible. We even had a sprint race with the local high school teams on July 3rd! After the snow melted, we put in a lot of rollerskiing, hiking, running, and biking, along with backcountry skiing, cliff jumping, barbecuing, and general fun. Highlights were a 3.6 mile race up Squaw Mtn, 17 mile ridge run from Sugarbowl Mtn to Squaw Mtn, doublepoling up Donner Pass (named for the historic Donner Party), and a 14-mile run down into Royal Gorge to cliff-jump. North Lake Tahoe is a fantastic  and beautiful place to train, with a great nordic community. We were also able to train with both the Sugarbowl Academy team and the Far West team and their awesome coaches, Jeff Schloss and Ben Grasseschi, on a regular basis. We had very competitive weekly soccer and ultimate Frisbee tournaments with the younger teams (usually getting our butts kicked by the Californians). All in all, it was a fantastic few months, and I can't thank everyone who contributed to the success of our group enough.

gorgeous snow... perfect tracks... in late June!

Beth - drifter time trial

Phil - backcounty on July 4th

Beth - July 3rd sprint race

Phil - July 3rd sprint race

hiking in August

skiing in June

Phil - squaw mtn run

Summer Adventures: Jennie

Brentrup

After spending the winter helping coach the JNT skiers, my career as a Nordic ski coach came to a grinding halt when I decided to attend graduate school at Miami University in Ohio, (oddly not Florida) a place where snow and skiing are quite foreign. However, I hope to be spending a lot of time at high altitudes to study the effects of UV radiation and climate change on alpine lakes. This past July, I traveled to the Beartooth Mountain Range in eastern Montana to collect water samples. After a winter with the highest snowfall record to date, our research was put on hold when we noticed the 7ft high snow piles on the side of the road and discovered that the majority of the lakes were still frozen. Needless to say, climate change seems to be altering seasonal patterns, but maybe this would not be all bad if New England gets plenty of snow all winter long! From Montana, I flew to Sweden to attend a workshop on aquatic sensors used to study long-term changes in water quality on lakes all over the world. Although a trip to Sweden in the winter would have been ideal, the long hours of daylight and Swedish saunas made it a wonderful time to be in a gorgeous country. I hope all the JNT skiers have a great upcoming season, train hard, and make sure not to snowplow on the S-turns!

Beartooths, Montana

Lake Erken, Norrtälje, Sweden

Summer Adventures: Dennis D

Summer was busy with a large list of chores at home, at Scottie's with Sam Rossier and other JNT members, and at a our family camp in Colchester, VT. I spent a half day with Sam R as he felled about 20 trees in her backyard to allow more sun to hit the solar panels. My job was limber - a challenge because I could not keep up. Other skiers split and stacked - Paddy Caldwell was the most productive with the maul. Late spring my daughter received her PhD in Public Health from BU. Her thesis was about the law in Maine that prohibits junk food advertising in ME schools!! Early summer my son Stephen cut down an over grown cedar hedge at our camp; late summer my son Chris, his daughter Nora, and I removed the stumps with an excavator. I also was given a tour of the trails and biathlon range site at the future Strafford Nordic Center. Jere Linehan is one of the prime leaders of this project; he skied for Hanover and was on the nordic combined B team. A great end before Labor Day weekend was a visit from Liz Stephen for a brief dry land drill demonstration followed by a slide show which gave us a glimpse of her life as a World Cup XC racer. Thanks to Liz for making time to visit Ford Sayre and to Greg DeFrancis for the Montshire space.

Summer Adventures: Sam M

Sam M

This summer I did a lot of camps and each was fun in its own way.  The NENSA Regional Elite Group Camp in Craftsbury, VT was fun because I was able to train alongside the best skiers in New England and some of the best in the country. Youth Biathlon Camp in Lake Placid was fun because I was able to do a lot of training and eat a lot of frozen yoghurt at the Olympic Training Center over the course of the two week camp. The National J2 Camp in Sun Valley, ID was awesome because I trained all week with the fastest J2 skiers in the country and was able to meet a lot of new people. The SMS Junior Camp at the end of the summer is always fun because I've done it since I was 9 and I know every workout by heart. This summer was awesome and I can't wait for the snow to fly so I can get on skis again!

Summer Adventures: Spencer, Noah

Spencer

This summer I was fortunate to be able to travel to the Peruvian Andes. Although it was not a training trip, the chance to ski in the southern hemisphere was too good to let go. At 5,700 meters (18,700 feet) nothing is easy. A thirty second loop felt like a full sprint race, and I would have to admit the snow wasn't very good. But I wouldn't complain about July skiing anywhere.

Noah

I started my summer with a family vacation to Maine, which consisted mainly of relaxing, rollerskiing, and running. Although I was worried about it, the J2/EHSC Development Camp was a success for me and I learned a plethora of new training tips/theories. Kenya can be summed up in a list: early mornings, red dirt, crazy Kenyan second graders, bumpy roads, small taxi vans, insanely fast (and skinny) runners on dirt tracks, needy orphan kids, hippos, wildebeests, lions, and, of course, lots and lots of RUNNING.