What Are YOU Doing?

Its been a long time since I've posted anything. The question I have for you is what are YOU doing to train this spring? Any adventures to tell the rest of us about? Let me know and I'll post your stories.

As for me, I've been canoe and kayak racing quite a bit, as has Wes Denering and Michael Melnikov. We've been going at it in C1 canoes at the Charles River Wednesday races, run on the same format as the Tuesday Weston races. Start your watches and go 1 minute later. Great fun when you have 5-10 C1s racing with each other all in a row drafting and looking like little mini battle ships. Aims Coney has been good enough to lend me a C1 racing canoe. This is a great test of your upper body strength and endurance. In addition, Wes and I raced a C2 at the Mystic River Race which, after 12 miles, left me tired! I had to take a nap, but then what else is new... Then I wandered over to do the Essex River Race in Ipswich, this time kayaking and had a great duel where I managed to hang on by 2 seconds after nearly 1 hr. of racing by making sure I had the inside of the corner on the last bend in the river. Weston tactics even on the water! In the photo the guy in the red kayak on the right is in my class and I'm on the left. The other boats are surf skis which are way faster and in a separate boat class. Got to get in one of those soon!

I see that others have been busy too. Rob, Olga and Hannah, Donna Smyth and Lisa Doucett and Alex Jospe all ran Mt. Wachusett and all had good races and Alex enjoyed kicking Rob's butt. Last weekend Rob, Donna and Lisa raced the hardest 10 miler in New England, the Pack Monadnock race which is a really difficult, mostly uphill race for 7.5 miles and then it gets hard, climbing 2.5 miles up Pack Monadnock to the top at an average grade of something around 10-12%. Its a real leg killer. All three ran well once again and were ahead of last year's times.

CSU Jr Michael Goldenberg has been burning up the track in the two mile, dipping below 10 min. while Ellen Goldberg has taken up discus and tossed it 99 ft in one meet!! Jonathon Shefftz has of course been sking down all the gullies in Tuckerman's ravine and on a few big mountains out west. I stole one of his pictures of his routes down Castle Ravine on the back side of Mt. Jefferson. Send me your stories and fun training stories! jdoucett@comcast.net