How Nordic Has Helped Me - Howard Grotts

          Nordic skiing is easily one of the hardest sports. The mental and physical strength required for the sport is enormous. I learned that shortly after joining the DNSC, even before there was snow on the ground. Coming from an athletic background almost entirely composed of cycling, Nordic skiing seemed very alien to me (I mean, who puts ski boots and roller skis in 80 degree weather?). I wasn't used to the precision or the intensity of the training involved.  But now I couldn't imagine not having different intensity training periods or skill specific workouts. I've found it very easy to apply the concepts I learned from Nordic skiing practices to biking. These concepts included having easy and harder weeks of training, technique specific days, and interval workouts.

            While all members of the DNSC were very fun people to be around, it was also my first introduction to young athletes who were truly dedicated to their sport. This was exemplified by the seriousness with which they approached their training and the amount of time they devoted to it. I was inspired by their drive to improve, and perhaps more than a little bit humbled when kids 3 or more years younger than I am were beating me. It was hard for me to embrace the sport at first, despite being around people who loved it, and, even now, I very much prefer biking to Nordic. But I have come to appreciate it, if only for the inspiration it gave me to bike at a brand new level.

Howard placed 2nd at US MTB Nationals in the Cross Country (XC) event and was crowned National Champion in the Short Track Cross Country (STXC) event.

Weekend Adventures

This weekend a few of us on the team took some long adventures up in the mountains.  Saturday was a bit more eventful with some thunder storm dodging and bumming rides, but nothing can compare to the beauty of Sunday's Island Lake/Ice Lake loop.  A few select pics are listed below and you can see them all in the Photo Gallery on our website.

Meadow view from Engineer Saddle on Saturday

More Meadow

Emma and Charlie on Engineer Trail

Thunder Storms rolling in...

Team 'Sweaty Goosebumps' on our way to Island Lake

Island Lake.  Gorgeous! 

Cutting across the ridge between Island and Ice Lakes

Maybe the best view ever

Ice Lake from a distance

Ice Lakes up close and personal

The Sunday crew

Wildflowers were 'wild'

And the waterfalls were raging

We descended like champs

And crossed streams like Olympians  

And ate ice cream like the kids that we are....

REG (part 2)

We headed out into the Wasatch National Forest for a double pole roller ski on Mirror Lake Scenic Byway.  This is one of my favorite workouts from Park City as the road has nice pavement and very little traffic.  It slowly climbs at a steady grade out of the town of Kamas and goes deep into the Wasatch towards Mirror Lake.  Along the way there are spectacular views of mountains, wild flower fields, rivers, a 6 mile long underground irrigation tunnel (longest man made water cave, I think), waterfalls, and Mirror Lake (which we didn’t get to see).  From the coaches, the emphasis for this workout was on ‘high hands’ and ‘explosive power’.  But to get to this point, we were also having the athletes work on their forward swing through of the arms and keeping their hands and hips moving together.

Thursday was the big test of the week, but first, Agony Hill TT.  Agony is about 1.2 miles long with 1,200 feet of climbing.  The start is down in Salt Lake, right behind a medical center.  The rest of the trail is obvious.  If you are not going straight uphill, you made a wrong turn.  The closest thing that we do (that I can think of) is Telegraph TT.  Now imagine Telegraph, but replace the field running with more steep uphill.  That would be about right.  Here are the results:

Boys

Russell Kennedy 15:55
Will Wicherski 15:56
Erik Fagerstrom 15:57
Rogan Brown 16:24
Conor Wallace 16:39
Max Christman 16:39
Austin Meng 16:39
Mike Vigers 16:44
Akeo Maifeld-Carucci 16:57
Tanner Weigand 17:35
Sean Woods 17:37
Ben Westesen 17:41
Johnny Springer 17:42
Henry Austin 17:51
Danny Sundali 17:54
Casey Smith 19:18
Jack Steele 19:35
Alex Hamilton 19:54

Girls

Annie Pokorny 19:34
Jessica Jortberg 19:38
AliciaRose Pastore 20:33
Elena Breed 21:17
Stella Holt 21:21
Katie Gill 21:25
Mikaela Frias 21:47
Anne Miller 22:37
Haley Piske 22:50
Emily Williams 23:09
Kara Baldwin 24:12
Emma Donohoe 24:51

Like I said, now comes the true test of the week.  Who can make it up the ‘hump’ on the waterslide at Raging Waters.  After Agony Hill Climb TT, we piled into the hot vans for a short trip to the water park.  Thursday was the hottest day of the week, with temps reaching into the 90’s, so the water park visit could not have come at a better time.  Right away, anyone who knew anything headed straight for the two big slides in the back, one of which is the ‘hump’.  The slide goes down a steep drop and then climbs back up high, over a hump, then down another steep before dumping you out into a pool at high speeds.  It’s a true test of your waterslide ability because if you are too scared of the big drop at the beginning, you’ll never make it over the ‘hump’, thus forcing you into the walk of shame (exiting the waterslide half way down and having to walk down the stairs the rest of the way to return your slide mat).  If my description doesn’t give you the image yet, I think the slide has less than 50% success rate.  As we stood in lime, the best thing we could do was make bets on who was going over and who wasn’t.  Turns out there is no real science to it.

Friday we were let into the USSA Center of Excellence (COE) for the Canadian style strength test.  In order to not overwhelm the Olympic athletes training in the COE (and the COE staff) the group was broken up by gender.  The girls went to the COE in the morning, ripped out a bunch of pull-ups, sit-ups, push-ups, box jumps, and dips.  We got a chance to chat with John Farra and Simi Hamilton as they were walking around the floor.  My conclusion of the strength: I think there is a lot of room for improvement, but we are not training world champion sit-up-ers (did I just make up that word??), we are training skiers.  So far there is no proven research that shows that winning the sit-ups will make you the fastest skier, BUT strength does play a large role in what we do on snow. 

Saturday was the big Over Distance (OD) workout.  It started with a 1:20 classic roller ski again in the Wasatch National Forest.  This time we climbed up route 65 (east canyon?) to the top of the pass.  With gorgeous views, we switched from ski boots to running shoes and took off on a long trail run that would eventually take up back down close to Park City.  I was running at the front of the pack, helping to ensure that no one made a wrong turn.  Ummm…yeah….I should have had a map.  Myself and 3 other boys ended up running the wrong ridge and heading towards the wrong phone towers.  10 miles later we were finally convinced that we made a wrong turn, spotted a golf course, made a pick up phone call, and took a straight line for the parking lot.  That was cool!

Overall, another awesome REG camp.  Hope you all enjoyed the recap.

Western REG (part 1)

This past week Alicia, Elena, Rogan and I travelled up to Park City for the Western Regional Elite Group (REG) training camp.  We were again set up in condos at the base of The Canyons Resort, which I learned was one of the three largest ski resorts in the country.  It doesn’t look like much from the base, but as we started running up the mountain for training the first afternoon, once you get over the first ridge the ski trails and peaks of the resort seem endless.  So does the winding, climbing single track.  The trails were awesome running, but I bet it would also be sweet mountain biking.  Just ask Alicia about that.

The second day was when the real training started.  We all piled into vans and headed to Soldier Hollow for some roller skiing.  If you think those trails are awesome in the winter, try flying down the hills and around corners on roller skis.  True, the paved trail aren’t quite the same super fast and crazy down hills that are on the Olympic race course, but when you are buzzing along on narrow strips of pavement, it seems fast enough.  And if you ever do get there in the summer to check it out, I have a word of advice.  Follow the DO NOT ENTER signs.  Myself and two other coaches went early to scope out a good loop that would be safe for the kids to ski, but we inadvertently skied past a do not enter sign and quickly found ourselves hurtling down a twisty hill like an out of control missile.  And then we exploded.  All three of us, ending up with matching missing patches of skin on our hips and elbows. 

When the real athletes showed up and showed us how to ski.  We did a 2 hr skate roller ski workout with some speeds and video technique work.  With all the chaos of packing 30 skiers plus coaches onto the trails, doing speeds, and skiing on some rocky roads, there was not a single fall or use of a med kit.  Good job guys!  For the workout we broke down into smaller groups that we would use later in the week to look at the video and discussion about technique.

The afternoon was a pole bounding intensity workout.  This was a combination of short fast intervals (15 sec) with a lot of recovery between each one (2 min).  On these types of workouts, the rest is important to be sure that our muscles are firing at the top end for each interval.  After the explosive stuff, the workout continued with longer (2-3 min) threshold intervals.

Each day we got to wind down with a nice meal from chef Doug and a team meeting to discuss schedule or hear talks from the USST nutritionist or USST member Andy Newell.  I’ll post later this week with more from the REG camp.

Happy training!