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Fred Bailey

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Mid-Winter Lull - 2/22/12



In the wake of Nationals, it is normal for ski racers to have a period of distress and reflection, especially for those who started race 1.5months earlier. This year has been no exception for me; in fact it may be worse than most years, amplified by my lack of good distance races. To take my mind off this, I decided to focus the remainder of January and all of February training for the American Birkie ski marathon. During these weeks I have taken comfort in knowing that Americans are getting faster; it has been really exciting to see the US Women’s XC team putting multiple skiers in the top 15 frequently all season and Russell Currier earning his first top 10 finishes in the Biathlon WC with clean shooting!

I’ve haven’t stayed away from Racing, but it has been a little more low key. I jumped into the Farmington and Stowe Eastern Cups, which both went pretty well. This year’s trip to Stowe is the best I’ve ever felt racing at that venue! I’ve also had great fun skiing some of the Aroostook Cups and it was especially nice to feel very powerful and snappy at the end of the Frostbite 40km. As usual the Karen Sprague Memorial race was a great hit, with big crowds, bright costumes, loads of fun, and of course the sweetheart relays.

I’ve also spent some time skiing with local school teammates and afterschool programs. Most recently I went on a hilarious ski with the Ashland team. It was a costume affair, with many bright skirts, followed by an evening hot dog and marshmallow roast.

Now I’m headed to Rumford to TD the state meet for Classes A and C. Then I head to the Wisconsin for the Birkie!

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West Yellowstone and Bozeman, MT - 12-20-2011

The XC team spent three weeks in Montana over the second half of November and the first part of December. We had excellent skiing conditions in West; the best I have ever experienced! There was over a foot of snow on the ground and nearly three feet when we left. This was my first trip to the West Yellowstone Ski Festival where I have not had to ski on the plateau. New trails and a revised race loop gave me plenty of entertainment. I also got to ski the Windy Ridge loop for the first time at the Rendezvous trails.

Training was definitely the main priority for the trip, but seven races gave us the opportunity to get our legs back under us and comfortable with the feel our skis gliding over snow. It felt great to move fast too, this was definitely the fastest I have ever moved at altitude. The Skate sprint and 10km Classic races went very well, I executed my race plan and was pretty happy with the way my body responded. I came away with a few tactical and mental elements to help me with the second weekend of races.

Unfortunately during my recovery state I picked up a cold and was out for nearly a week, missing the races in Bozeman. I was pretty excited for these, since they were on very squirrly and technical courses. I did manage to get out of bed to watch one of the races with my aunt and uncle. It was the first ski race my uncle had seen, it was very interesting to hear his comments on it as a non-racer observing the sport. I also got to learn a little about what the guys at the front of the field are doing better than the rest of us.

All in all it was a wonderful trip, including my stay in Bozeman with the Kirk’s. Thank you for sharing your wonderful house with us! It was great to be on snow and feel very comfortable so early in the season. Up next is some racing in New England including nationals in Rumford!

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Training, excavators, elections... oh my! - 11-15-2011

Since Halloween life has been pretty jam-packed with activity. Training has been going reasonably well, especially strength testing, where I saw a couple personal bests. In other testing last week I nearly tied my PR on Mars Hill. Going hard and recovery seems to be the name of the game lately, especially with the work schedule I've had in the last two weeks.

Once we finally had a dry spell, which this year was November, I was able to see some real progress on the trail project at NHC. I had an excavator crew there for about a week and a half. During that time, they've installed six new poles and buried wire for additional night skiing, corrected some areas that were hard to maintain and didn't flow well, and created five new sections of trail (all cutoffs that will give more options for a wider spectrum of abilities). For my part, I've been out on the trails most days, watching them work, answer questions, and making sure that the trail adjustments were built correctly. I was fortunate to have two good operators that made quick work of my long list of improvements. Thanks Matt and Steve!

Other recent activities have included Election Day, which turned out to be very entertaining. Toast and I happened to be in Caribou working out that day, so we decided for our cool down, we would ski over to the polls and do our civic duty, of course fully garbed in rollerski gear. The other people that were at the polls at the same time as us, got quite a kick out of our attire. I also made my first trip ever to Washington County. Lauren Jacobs and I went to Danforth to meet some of the people in the community and discuss how to go about developing a trail network in behind the school. Although it was too hazy to see Katahdin from there, it was a beautiful fall day. The East Grand region has many nice lakes and hills that make it one of Maine's most beautiful, but least visited regions.

Now it's time to gear up for another trip. Tomorrow we fly out to West Yellowstone for the first on snow races of the year. It should be really fun, I feel like I'm ready to go fast, a feeling I haven't had at the beginning of the season in a long time.

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Fall Training Camp in Utah - 10-18-2011

I just got back from a very productive trip to Park City, where I was training with US Ski team members and other professional skiers from around the country. All the trips I've made to altitude in the past four years seem to finally be paying off. I appear to adapt fairly quickly to lower air-pressure and can do race pace efforts without absolutely blowing up. We had a couple time trials out there went pretty well, the race plans were well executed and I was able to gain a good idea (after factoring ski speeds) where I stacked up at the national level. It's been a few years since I've been to one of these camps; in the past I would get very frustrated and disheartened, but now I'm excited by knowing that I can stay with these guys, meaning I'm near to reaching some of my long term goals!

Of course the camp wasn't all work; we did get to see some pretty cool places. The amount of development in Park City was almost overwhelming, everywhere you look there are house that appear to be scaling the mountainside. Ski slope condos have an entirely different meaning out there, instead of skiing from your back door to the base of the lift, you take the lift at the end of the day to get back to your house at the top of the mountain. Outside the sprawling mass of Park City there are still some nice rural areas with scenic diving options or biking and rollerskiing if you're so inclined.

The East Canyon road (20min north of Park City) and the Mirror Lake road from Kamas (10miles east of Park City) where two of the nicest locations. Here small A-frames and ranch houses gave way to mixed fir and aspen forests. The aspens were in full color during our visit as well.

The most exciting days though brought two inches of SNOW! Our lawn was well covered for a couple days with more snow up around 10,000ft, some of which lasted for over a week. It was really just thrilling to jog through the fresh snow and breathe in the cold crisp air. It was a wonderful reminder of the months to come and why I love winter so much.

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Last Days of Summer - 9-19-2011

Since Sugarloaf Camp, I have been very busy between trail projects and my highest volume period of the year. I kicked it all off with a short stay on Cape Cod to visit Justine. This turned into quite the adventure, as Hurricane Irene hit New England while I was there. The next day I drove north, along the way I discovered that the major rivers in western Maine were already at flood stage and in danger of flooding roads as well.
Shortly after my return to the County, Welly and I began reroofing the addition on the Sweetser/Dominick household in Stockholm. This was a welcome distraction, it felt good to do some tangible work again. This was quickly followed a trail work day at Nordic Heritage, where about a dozen volunteers did most of the cutting (on the Ft. Fairfield side) necessary for this year's trail improvements. In Ft. Kent some of the athletes gathered for another workday to make some progress on the new bike trails at 10th Mtn. We plan to do more work over the course of the fall, including two days (pick one or the other) at NHC this weekend. Please come out and join us!

On the training front things are going pretty well. We are weathering the highest training volume of the year , which will be closely followed by altitude camp in Utah. We kicked off the current block with a week of testing, 3000m/400m on the track, Canadian strength program, and the Mars Hill Climb. The tests largely said I was still adapting to my training load from Sugarloaf. Fortunately, a couple days later my body signals returned to normal, and my interval times started to look pretty solid again. For now, there's more training to be done and changing leaves to enjoy.

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