The unseasonably warm temperatures in Cambridge this fall have made for very pleasant dry land training, but by Thanksgiving week the skiers and coaches were all itching to get on snow. Fortunately, both squads found great skiing over the holiday. The alpiners took to the slopes in the Vail, Colorado area. The nordies headed to Craftsbury, Vermont, where a well-timed 8-12 inches of snow fell just as camp began.
Alpine Thanksgiving Camp Report – Liz Strong ’15
Thanksgiving break was the Harvard alpine ski team’s first on-snow training camp this season. Using my family’s house in Frisco as our home base, we trained at Loveland, Copper, and Vail. Beginning the camp with five consecutive days of giant slalom training, we rested on Thanksgiving.
My teammates battled illnesses ranging from influenza to appendicitis to come together and have a great Thanksgiving dinner. [Coach's Note: yes, one of our athletes had to have his appendix out during camp! He recovered well and is back to schoolwork and will be training again soon.] We spent the last three days of the camp training slalom at the U.S. Ski Team’s arena at Copper. Sunny skies and warm temperatures made it hard for us to leave Colorado Sunday afternoon, but we are looking forward to a short camp at Sunday River this weekend.
Senior captain Caroline McHugh posted a fantastic first-person video of a day on snow with the team on our Facebook page.
Nordic Thanksgiving Camp Report – Akeo Maifeld-Carucci ’15
This year marked the beginning of what looks like will become an great new Thanksgiving camp tradition for Harvard’s nordic ski team. This year we went to Craftsbury, VT instead of making the customary Thanksgiving break trek to Canada. In Vermont we stayed at the local outdoor center in an olympic-village like setting, with skiing out the door, weight facilities, and an excellent dining lodge. Our first day was spent dry land training, but thanks to a large snow that night we were able to ski twice a day for the rest of the week. It was such an amazing time being back on snow after the long summer months, and spending so much time bonding together as a team. Our first few days on snow were dedicated to easy distance skiing, with lots of technique work to transition and adapt all our hard work from roller skiing to snow skiing. The week built in intensity culminating in a 4.5km skate race. This was a great opportunity for everyone to push themselves and get a in a really good hard effort.
Akeo and Chris
Off the trails we also had a fantastic time. After a few months of Harvard dining hall food it was a nice change to have home-style cooking. We also had a suite with a nice common room where we were able to spend lots of time together studying, watching movies, talking about skiing and baking pies and cookies! Everyone was sad to leave after such a fun camp, but with only a few more weeks before local skiing, spirits are still high and the air is filled with excitement for the upcoming races.
Thanksgiving snow!
Nordic Team at Thanksgiving
