Road Trip to Alpina

Here are a couple pictures from a little road trip last week I took with my sister down to Lebanon, NH - the home of Alpina Sports. We were meeting up with Dorcas Wonsavage, the Alpina race director to say hi, pick up the Peltonen race skis, and try on some boots.

I wore the boots and raced the skis over last weekend at Bolton and Craftsbury. The races went ok for me - a starting point. Northwest Vermont Nordic had good attendance - and Eric Tremble raced really well. It was nice to get the first measure of the season. It lets you know how far back you are and it helps get me motivated to do the training to catch-up to the front of the pack.

Dorcas, myself, Peltonen Supra-X, and a ski tie. The skis are real light.
The Alpina Sports race serive truck...with plow and all. Legit.
This was my lunch...a "Rio" bagel sandwich from Burlington bagel. Sausage, cheese, egg, salsa, on a sesame bagel. Pure Magic.

Hot Cereal - its cold out

That first morning you wake up and its still bellow 10 degrees, all of a sudden regular cereal and cold milk does not sound so good anymore. Its time for some hot cereal - some oatmeal or cream of wheat - anything as long as its hot. Looks like I'm a morning to late, time to go grocery shopping.
Brrrr.

Some boots

Hey There - a couple pair of boots for sale. E-mail if your interested - jakehollenbach@gmail.com

Rossignol X-ium Skate boot Women's (white/orange) - size 38 EU - $225 - new condition

Rossignol X-ium Classic boot (silver) - size 44 EU - $125 - lightly used

Into Ski Season

To get myself jump started on the up coming nordic ski race season I packed my bags and hopped a ride up to the land of Canada for 10 days around Thanksgiving.

Paul Smith and I headed up north of Quebec City and stayed with the team from Burke Mt. Academy. We trained, ate, slept, watched hockey, and goofed off. It was lots of fun. The kids from Burke are a great group...and very solid skiers too. Pete Phillips and Matt Johnson are great coaches. I definitely picked up some very useful technique tid-bits doing workouts with them.

I got to try out a bunch of new equipment from Alpina. Some pretty trick stuff. Everything was new to me so it was nice for the equipment and I to "get to know eachother". I really like the Peltonen skis a lot. I was just using their second level skis, called the Zenith, for training - and I was surprised how many people asked me about them. I've never had a pair of Peltonens before, but apparently many other people had a pair at some point in their ski past - and have good memories. All I know is I like the new ones. I also really liked the Exel WC poles - very stiff. Although, while I was in Canada I was trying out a slightly longer length (162.5) than I've used before. I've cut them back down to 160cm - and it feels much better...amazing the difference a little 2.5cm can make.

Then, the day before Thanksgiving Helen showed up with the cavalry - her mother, father, other brother Evan, and their Swedish exchange student. We skied a couple days together and had Thanksgiving dinner. We even did a day of Alpine skiing at Mont Saint-Anne. We did a day of x-c skiing at Saint-Anne as well - and their nordic center is outrageously good (which everybody always says, but you don't really know until you go there). And they only had a couple of their trails open at the time. I can't imagine what its like there when they have all 214km of trails open.

Racing starts this coming weekend in Vermont - with the Bolton and Craftsbury season openers. I was a little tired after getting back from Canada, but I'm back into a good training groove now. It'll be fun to hit the gas. We got some good snow today - with more coming in the next few days. It's going to be a great winter! Get some wax on those skis...