Apples on Apples

It got cold here!  We went from wearing sports bras and shorts to long sleeves and capris in just one day...definitely a shift but now we are entering my favorite time of year and I am psyched.  I absolutely love fall.  The leaves are just beginning to turn, the air is nice and crisp leaving everyone all rosy cheeked at the end of workouts, and of course lots of apples!  Following a couple hard workouts--the double pole test, a 50 mile bike ride with ridiculous head wind, new strength, and some L3 skate intervals--we all went apple picking at the Mad Town Orchard near Manchester and MAN did we bring back a lot.  But I'm getting ahead of myself--


First the double pole test.  It was my first time doing the Stratton double pole test, and it was HARD.  It was about 4 minutesish I think, and there is a steep pitch right at the beginning, followed by some rolling parts and finishing with a nice gradual hill that feels really hard after 3 and half minutes of pounding.  It went well, I PRd (well obviously with it being my first time), and 20 out of the 23 people who did the test PRd.  Obviously they are doing something right here! Following the test we did some speeds, working on quickness.  I had the pleasure of doing a couple with freshman Scott Mooney (pictured below), and he is a quick one!

After the test I hustled up to Middlebury to do the Kelly Brush ride.  It is an amazing event filled with lots of wonderful endurance athletes all fundraising for the Kelly Brush Foundation.  Kelly suffered a severe spinal injury while downhill racing in one of the carnivals, and lost the mobility in her legs.  But instead of just remaining dormant, she picked up hand cycling and help found the Kelly Brush Foundation, which aims to encourage safe ski racing, help those athletes with spinal cord injuries, as well as support research into curing paralysis.  The course was wonderful, minus the absurd head winds.  It took so long to do 50 miles, but it was definitely worth it!  Here is the link to the organizations website if you want to learn more! http://www.kellybrushfoundation.org/

Following the ride, I bustled down to Stratton to do day 2 of our new strength program. HOLY BUCKETS.  My bum is still so sore from some lunges, but I definitely feel my self getting stronger.  My bum continued to become more sore as the next morning we put on a bit of an interval show for the NENSA coach's symposium.  We did L3 skate intervals at BMD, and they were quite nice.  We had a large audience, so I think we were all trying extra hard to look our best, but it was a quality workout at the perfect temperature. After the intervals I got to have lunch with Cami--my coach at Dartmouth--and it was so nice catching up with her.  Makes me miss school ! (well not the homework part necessarily but everything else :)

Here Jessie, Erika, Sophie and I lead Scott down the hill.  The intervals were awesome especially because the younger girls would hop in for a couple minutes to ski with us as part of their workout.

Here we are finishing an interval, Sophie and I (with Jessie) are both checking our heart rates to report to Sverre who did a great job tracking our average and max heart rates along with how long each loop took.  Both of the above photos are from the SMS blog!

To recover from the the intervals, we all went apple picking.  At first I didn't have to walk, because Jessie just carted me along.  It was quite nice, but it turns out going downhill is a lot easier than going up hill (who new??).  But either way we got a LOT of apples, and so last night for dinner every item (except for the bread) had apples in it.  Sophie and her boyfriend Dan made us some really good butternut squash apple soup, then we had pork seared with apples, an apple goat cheese salad, and then to top it off apple crisp!  Needless to say, I think we are all set on apples for awhile.

                 This is me in my cart.  Eric Packer photo this one and the next two)--he's     really good!

Apples!

Erika and I have matching boots, and we both really like wearing them. Twinsiez! 

And now Jessie, Eric, Skyler, and Andy are all headed up to Lake Placid for the USST camp, and Erika, Sophie and I will join them there on Thursday!  So its just us girls for a little bit, and tonight we are going to Sophie's house for a sure-to-be delicious dinner, followed by waffles in the morning!  Yum.  And I'm sure some more baking will commence in the next couple days--gotta stock up on yummy goods before heading to the olympic training center in Placid!

hugz and kissez!