Cross Country Program

The Maine Winter Sports Center Cross-Country Program serves as a nationwide model for developing international caliber racers in a community-based support system. Athletes are provided with coaching, housing, health insurance and professional development opportunities while training full-time to achieve the highest level in the sport. Each athlete is responsible for assisting with school and club-based ski activities, providing support to younger MWSC athletes, and offering healthy lifestyle programs within the state of Maine. Through coaches' education, club leader internship opportunities and community outreach, the MWSC Cross-Country Program aims to steadily increase the number of Maine residents who experience a positive cross-country ski outing each year.

TD Bank Eastern Cup Maine Weekend
January 17, 2012

Titcomb Mountain, Farmington, Maine - Despite the rain, the Maine Winter Sports Center team traveled in full force to Farmington, Maine this past weekend. Seventeen athletes accompanied the Development coaches Sarah Kamileiwcz and Amber Dodge from the snowy north. The caravan included athletes in age classes ranging from J2, J1, OJ, U23, to SR as well as five fellow Southern Maine Team members for the Eastern Cup race at Titcomb Mountain.

Luckily, the temperatures dropped and the rain turned to snow for Saturday's classic sprint competitions. The classic sprint course proved to be an intense double pole competition for the athletes around the 1.2 KM loop.

The temperatures continued to drop for Sunday's skate distance competition on the side of the downhill area at Titcomb. Development Team members joined the Eastern Cup racing series after competing in either the Junior Sassi at Rumford and the High School race at Rumford on Saturday. There was a total of 21 MWSC athlete's climbing the downhill at Titcomb in the bitter cold mid-morning temperatures.

A few of the standout performances on Saturday's classic sprint were Hilliary McNamme, Erik Rupert, and Sarah Doak for qualifying to the final heats. On Sunday's grueling hill climb Mike Lessard and Fred Bailey finished top 15 in the senior men's field. Erik Rupert climbed his way in Eastern Cup standing points in the OJ Men's division and during the J1 girls 6k race, Zoe Donahue-Chase looked strong on the course. J2 boy's finishers Ryan Washington, Brendan Cyr, Gannon Therrien, and Rylee Knox all showed true racing spirit on the uphill climb while first time Eastern Cup racers, Sarah Doak and Anna Soderberg had impressive finishes in the J2 girl's field.

This weekend was a valuable experience for the younger team members as they received encouragement and advice from older members of the team.

To view complete results, check out NENSA

-Sarah

Nationals - A Rumford Recap
January 11, 2012

It has been an unusual winter in Maine. With freezes and thaws, snow and rain, skiing conditions have been inconsistent. The organizers at the Chisholm Ski Club in Rumford seemed to have foreseen these fluctuations however. They began making snow as soon as Mother Nature permitted in anticipation for US National Championships, which were held at Black Mountain last week.

The MWSC cross-country squad left for Rumford just before New Years with high hopes, and rightfully so. We've put in a good season of training, and early season results showed that we were in our best form. We were greeted by a man-made loop of just over three kilometers on which all four races would be held. This wasn't the original plan, but we were thankful for the hard work that had been put in to get this new loop ready for skiing.

Throughout the week, MWSC athletes had impressive performances. BethAnn Chamberlain cracked the top 30 twice during the week, and Hilary McNamee posted a top 20 in the classic sprint. Michael Lessard and Fred Bailey were both able to crack the top 50, and Welly Ramsey made a big impression posting a pair of 14th place finishes in the 30km classic and the classic sprint.

After a solid week of racing, the team is now back in Aroostook County. We're looking forward to Eastern Cup racing in Farmington this weekend and some solid training after that.
-Austin

Thanksgiving Update 2011 - Montana
December 7, 2011

Welly Ramsey

Race season has finally arrived, and the MWSC cross-country athletes have been relishing the opportunity to get on snow and test their fitness. For the past two weeks, the ODT team has been training and racing in Montana. Members of the biathlon squad also joined us for the portions of the trip, which is always fun.

MWSC Athletes: Hilary McNamee & Derek Rowe

Our first stop was in West Yellowstone, where we were greeted by sixteen inches of new snow. All the trails at the Rendezvous Nordic Center were open, which gave us a solid 25km of groomed terrain for training. During our two weeks in West Yellowstone, we competed in the opening SuperTour races of the season. During the week, six different athletes posted top 30 finishes with several athletes posting their personal best finishes in SuperTour competition. In addition to racing and training at the Rendezvous Trails, the team took a morning to ski into Yellowstone National Park, where Derek, Mike, and Sam Tarling checked out hot springs and saw a herd of bison.

MWSC Athlete: Hilary McNamee

It is also worth noting that the team had an awesome Thanksgiving dinner complete with multiple turkeys and all the fixin's! We were also happy to have David Chamberlain and the other Boulder Nordic Sport guys join us. It was a great atmosphere as the group dug into a big meal.

MWSC Athlete: Michael Lessard

The final portion of our trip took us north to Bozeman, MT for another three races in two days. The weekend saw more strong performances despite a big week of training. Now it's time for a bit of well-deserved rest. Our preparations are looking good as we travel back home before the Eastern Cup openers in Craftsbury, VT in two weeks!
-Austin

Training in the County
January 23, 2012

Most of the XC Team is currently taking a break from traveling and racing and taking the time to complete a solid training block before the next bout of racing. After a fun Eastern Cup in Farmington, the team returned north to find the best skiing in the state! The training at all the venues around the County, as always, are fantastic places to ski, both day and night.

This past weekend, I (Mike) and Will took a trip back down to Rumford for to race in the 10K Freestyle event, which was day one of the Bates Carnival. Despite nearly 5 inches of fresh snow falling the night before and pretty soft conditions, I skied to a solid 10th place finish, and just 5 seconds away from 7th. The next day, I tried my hand at biathlon, but abruptly learned that it isn’t one of those sports you can just go out and do well without practice. As it was my first ever biathlon race, I managed to hit 2 prone and 1 standing target, leaving me with 7 penalty laps to ski…OUCH!

The others in the group are full out training. Fred and Austin are racking up the K’s as they prepare for the American Birkie on Feb. 25th, a 53km race in the Midwest. This weeks goal for the pair was 250km of total skiing, which included 2x10km intervals today!

Hilary is keeping it quick and working on sprinting as she trains for starts later this season in the Midwest, then again at SuperTour finals at Craftsbury. Welly is getting the time in and resting up before his big trip to Estonia at the start of February, where he will be taking part in the U23 training group and racing in the Scando Cup!

I hope everyone is taking the time to get out and ski, and we hope to see you out on the trails!

-Mike

11/11/11

Since the Lobster Roll, we have all re-assembled in the County and been in a fairly intense training phase. Last week was a rest week and now we dive right back into a week of hard training before departure for Montana. We've been meeting 3-5 times a week and team up with the juniors and biathletes on the weekend. Two weekends ago, we were supposed to do a bog-bounding workout in Stockholm, and were sorely disappointed when the coaches decided that getting sopping wet at 26 degrees F was unwise. So instead, we did an uphill race-pace bounding workout. Still got the training benefit, without the sniffles and sore throats. And as recovery, a sauna at Will's.

This week, the cross-country team heads into testing. On the docket: Canadian strength tests, VO2 Max, Mars Hill run, world record attempts for the 500m/ 1km double pole ski erg, and a distance or sprint time trial in Fort Kent. Though this time of year is unique. Will has afforded the luxury of choice for this round of testing: which tests make the most sense for you to do? At this point in the game, with race season nearly here, some tests will be more informative to particular athletes than to others. Five days till we get on snow, and 13 until the first race. The boys head out to West Yellowstone, MT Nov. 16! And I follow on the 21st. With racing that soon, it is time to lower the stress levels. That means less extraneous life stresses, heightened attentiveness to recovery, and slightly less testing than normal. The objective being to ward off illness and make sure we feel physically and mentally ready to race on November 23rd. Some information gathered in the tests doesn't aid the cause and could in fact be more of a confidence killer. For example, seeing a low VO2 Max result, often leaves me feeling hopeless; that my season might be lost before its even begun. And even though I can rationalize the numbers and convince myself that for sprinting, low numbers aren't the end-all-be-all, my energy would be better spent attending to the details that will make me the fastest sprinter I can be on Nov. 23rd. So for me, VO2 Max testing didn't make sense. It seemed like more of a risk. Each of us is doing his or her own assessment of the testing options and selecting the most beneficial.

Everyone has showed marked improvements so far in the VO2 Max and strength testing. Welly had his best VO2 Max test ever, and everyone improved in strength testing-- Mike made a 13% improvement on his late August results and Fred doubled the number of pull-ups, Derek did more dips than ever, Austin improved in each category... Yes indeed, its looking as though MWSC might see the strongest group of cross country racers it has perhaps ever seen. We are all ready to go!

West Yellowstone has 4 inches of snow currently and more in the forecast! Cross your fingers for us-- flying over half way across the country to ski on grass and dirt mixed with a dusting of snow, is no fun. Trust me, I've done it before. -Hilary

November 1, 2011

Fall has truly fallen. It won't be long until we are skiing once again. It seems that as I age the summers pass by more quickly, as does the fall, and sadly the winter. This is not an issue though, we must simply learn to enjoy each and every day. Enjoy the cold rain of October, the melting snow of Spring, the beauty of a summer sunrise.

Since our last update we have finished our Utah ski camp and have headed home. Two days before we left we did a sprint time trial to simulate one which the U.S. Ski Team would be doing on the day we left while we would be sitting in an airport waiting for our flight. The time trial went well with everyone putting in a good effort and most of us achieving the goal-time were shooting for (there is still plenty of room for improvement though!). The next day we did a speed workout with the the USST and I'll tell you what, when it comes to top end speed we're not far off the best in the U.S., we just need to figure out how to go as fast as them for 1.5km... or 15km.

From camp, most of us headed back to our homes in Aroostook County, but a few, myself included spent our recovery week at our homes where we grew up. I cannot speak for the rest of the team, but I can say that my recovery week was great. I got to see my family and helped them get firewood in for winter.

From our homes we traveled to North Haven, a small island off the coast of Maine, about an hour's ferry ride East of Rockland. The island is absolutely beautiful, and the island community is great. We weren't just there to see the sights though, we were racing. Every October, North Haven plays the host site for a fun event, the Maine Lobster Roll roller-ski race. The race is a good opportunity to see how you stack up against the best skiers in Maine. Good results were seen from all team members.

The Lobster Roll was the first workout kicking off a block of intensity. An intensity block is a set of days (or weeks) which include intervals of various effort every other day or in some variation like, two days hard, one day easy. We will be doing a few of these blocks before we head to West Yellowstone, Montana in the middle of November. Check back for updates on how our intensity is going!

Welly Ramsey

October 11, 2011

The last days of camp approach! Since our last update we have had about 5 more workouts with the US ski team; some simply easy distance, some uphill threshold (or harder) intervals, and some speed work. But the common goal in all these sessions has been to ski with other people from across the country. Being such a small group and somewhat isolated in the County, our opportunities to ski with our competition are limited to occasions like this and race season. Everyone has been doing a great job maximizing this opportunity.

Fifty plus athletes from all over the map showed up for Monday's uphill threshold intervals on East Canyon Road. The protocol for all was 4-6x 8 minutes. For some of us Maine Winter folk, that meant slightly harder than threshold effort in order to learn from skiing with someone faster than us. Skiing with the best skiers in the states is not exclusively a physical challenge. You've got to put in a fair amount of mental work too. While we ski, we watch other skier's technique-- perhaps match their tempo or stride-- all the while, trying to figure out the most efficient way to move ourselves forward.

Some of us have seen that we can indeed ski with the best, right now. Others found that we have more work to do. But then again, that's kind of par for the course in skiing: There's always work to be done.

Utah Camp Part 1

Day 1: Science experiment is under way. Each morning we are testing our heart rates, oxygen saturation, glucose, and lactates. In addition to our normal indicators several days of the science experiment will better help us to understand how we are adapting to altitude. After some early morning bloodletting, breakfast, and prehab, we got our first workout underway. We did some skate rolling with V1 drills on pretty gradual terrain lower in the valley. The skiing wasn't very challenging; however keeping the heart rate low enough was another story. In the afternoon we did some classroom time chatting about altitude adaption. After our brains were expanded, we did a little jogging and some partner resistance lawn strength. It is definitely way harder to squat a twitchy person than a squat bar!

Day 2: Repeat morning routine, followed by epic hike. The biathletes did the hike a couple days before us, and had been telling us how sweet it was since then. The scenery was definitely worth it. We started near the Canyons on Colin's Trail, climbed up to Mid Mountain Trail, along the way passing through nice aspen and fir forests, gradually leaving the mountainside mansions behind. From Mid Mountain we took the Ridge Connector to the Wasatch Crest Trail. This rolled for 9miles along the top of the mountains overlooking Park City, with views to the west of the National Forest and an occasional glimpse of the Great Salt Lake. After a couple hours of dodging mountain bikers and jogging at 10,000ft., we reached Guardsman Pass via Scotty's Bypass. We polished off the day with some NFL and a visit form Sam Tarling.

Day 3: Rest. Though we may not have been moving very fast, yesterday's hike did a number on most of the XC crew. We opted for some recovery time and a little sight seeing around town, while the biathletes spent the morning at the range in Soldier Hollow. Hopefully we will be feeling good enough tomorrow to join the US Ski Team for some rollerskiing intervals at SoHo. But for now we're enjoying the warm sunny weather of Utah. Check out Facebook for more photos from the camp. - Fred

September 27, 2011
Ready for Altitude

After two hard weeks of training, it's time to rest up in preparation for our camp in Park City, Utah. The MWSC Olympic Development Team is headed out west to get in some quality training at high altitude. The national team is having a concurrent camp, and many other top racing programs will have a presence in Park City as well. This is a great opportunity to test ourselves against the rest of the country. It will also be a chance to push ourselves against some different training partners. We are excited to see several members of the MWSC biathlon squad during their camp in the area as well. It promises to be a very productive two weeks.

download the Halloween Party Poster here [pdf]

Personally, I'm excited to spend some time in the mountains. I always enjoy the rugged beauty of big mountains, and the aspens should be near their fall peak while we're there. With a little luck, we might even get to enjoy some fresh snow! I'm also looking forward to a solid dose of Mexican food while I'm out west. El Chubasco, known to many in the skiing world as 'El Chub,' is a stand-by Park City taqueria, and I plan on making several visits while I'm in town!

Looking ahead, the MWSC XC and Biathlon teams are planning a Halloween dinner, silent auction, and dance slated for October 29. We are thrilled to be hosting the event at the Presque Isle Inn and Convention Center, and it should be a really fun night! Tickets are available for purchase from members of the MWSC ODT Team, or from several local merchants. Check out the poster bellow for more information.

Also, look for us on Facebook under Maine Winter Sports Center Athletes for pictures, videos, and updates on life as an MWSC racer!

-Austin Ross

For more info on the MWSC Cross-Country Program Contact Will Sweetser.

Hike during the Sugarloaf Camp on Burnt Mountain

Top of Sugarloaf after bounding intervals.

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