February 9th, 2010 by Coach

This Friday we hosted the annual Friday Fun Race which involved a ski scramble start, an abnormal course and a competition for the best costume.  Costumes included dressing in a trash bag, as a banana, husband and wife, cowboy/cowgirl, the spice girls and all sorts of outrageous spandex.  The best costume though was awarded to Dorian who dressed in a Toga and carried a lit torch that mirraculously made it around the entire 3k course lit and without burning anyone.  Also congratulations to Aven who was 3rd in the men’s division.

Here are a couple of pictures courtesy of Ginger Hamlin:

Also this weekend was the final set of Besh Cup races at Birch Hill.  Special credit goes to Logan, Kyle and Pat for qualifying for the Junior Olympic team and to Mikayla and Stefan for qualifying for the Arctic Winter Games Team.  The men’s mass start classic race was especially inspiring to watch as Logan skied smoothly and relaxed into the second Junior and fourth overall, while Stefan and Pat literally gave it everything they could to gain valuable points and qualify for the two teams.

Here is a picture of Kyle skiing to his third 3rd place finish in the J2 mens Besh Cup races this year (courtesy of Bert Boyer)

February 2nd, 2010 by Coach

Town Series 4 was a great way to wrap up an excellent week of training with warmer temps, positive attitudes and some good race results.

On the women’s side, it looked like a lot of our girls had great parts of races but couldn’t quite put all the pieces together in the somewhat challenging continuous pursuit format.  Claire had an excellent classic leg but ran into difficulties on the transition while Kim was having a great race until taking a spill on Blue Loop.  Overall it was a pretty good day and I’m confident that we can put together the missing pieces over the next couple of weeks.

On the men’s side we had our best race yet as a team.  Initially I thought our guys started slow but when nearly every one of them moved up in the Skate portion I decided that this strategy seamed to work out pretty well.  Very strong transitions by Pat and Stefan left them in first and second and they continued to open up their leads as the race went on. Behind them, Kipp, Dan, Dorian and Connor looked like they all put in a lot of effort to move up throughout the race for some solid results.

Many thanks to the volunteers, parents and coaches that made the day so successful.  Pictures taken by Nick Nugent