Weston EC: one coach's perspective

We say that CSU organized an Eastern Cup at Weston, but really, Amie and Peter and their crew of volunteers. They were all hatted in neon green, and you could see them everywhere, making sure everything went super smoothly. I was über impressed. Amie ran a tight ship, and as far as I could tell, from the perspective of both a coach and a racer, things went off without a hitch! Now, she can start sleeping again. Although I did hear her utter the words "next time..."

Rob is showing us here that you have to keep doing your "podiums" through the winter, so that you're strong enough to step onto that top podium when the time is right. Did anybody mention that he won his [very competitive baby boomer] age category at the Craftsbury marathon yesterday?

CSU huddle at the results area.

I believe what just happened here is that Rebecca licked Hannah. Hannah's face is priceless.

Part of the CSU girls team - everybody raced quite well!

What goes up, must come down. What a great course for spectating! I have trouble not getting too excited when I can see this much of the race course, what can I say - I just love screaming at people.

The neon hats get some lunch at the absolutely fantastic CSU food table. Thanks so much to Sandra Meyerson for organizing that!

And I caught a couple shots of some of the boys finishing the sprint race. I was too far away to figure out who those are (I think Greg and Ryan and Max are featured?), but if you recognize yourself, claim some credit in the comments.




And from the racer's perspective, it was also a super fun day. The sprint course is pretty sweet with all the snow Weston has been making. Most of the girls and I spent a solid hour touring the course yesterday, and having done all the hard thinking work the day before is great, because you just line up and know that your body will do the rest for you - press go and stop thinking! The course was the sort of thing that skis really well if you can ski transitions, and it turns out our team ain't half bad at transitions. The home course advantage also probably helps. I found the sprint course very hard, physically; by the time I got to the flats I realized that my legs were just swimming in lactic acid and I had some actual skiing in front of me, not a fun realization at all. But I tried to do all those technique things that I'd been telling the CSU skiers to do, and combined with our rocket-fast skis I came in 10th. Pretty good for a coach!

Side note - our wax team had things dialed so well - Rob, Jamie, Bob H, Tom, Henry, and Victor just rolled through the whole team's skis like nothing. Oh, we're changing the top coat and the rill? No sweat, we can do that in the 25 minutes left before the start. They define PRO.

The afternoon's race was a 6km mass start for the ladies, and I really should know better than to do short mass start races. It was an absolute mess, with some dirty, nasty racing out there - real contact sport. The front group was jostling around a lot, since it was windy enough that nobody really wanted to lead. Props to Anya Bean who finally took the lead on lap 1, I spent some time in that wind and it was NOT easy. The whole first lap of that race was really tight - elbows were being thrown, poles were being stepped on, people were kicking my skis - honestly, it was not that much fun. Coming past the team tents on lap 1, I felt like we finally started skiing a bit to spread things out, and then I got tangled up on Mt. Weston, right in front of Olivia and Hannah, who got caught behind me. Luckily they were able to close the gap, and I thought I'd do something noble and lead for a while into the wind, but they were all drafting Emily Nice instead, and she's taller (thus makes a better draft), so I spent a good bit of time in the wind unable to get back into line. Things were finally spread out enough that you could ski a bit, but back into the rollers in the middle of the course it jammed up again. Going up the last hill before the finish I'm pretty sure two girls fell, having been skied over or because they were skiing over someone else. It was a tough day, because it was much more nascar than ski race, but that's short distance mass starts for ya. I thought our girls fared pretty well despite the jostling, but we're just too nice as a team to be any good at that sort of racing!

In all, it was a beautiful day, on a really fun course, with a super fun team. I'm still smiling. Thanks to everyone who made this day possible!