Dan Weiland and Nordic coach/athlete Sylvan Ellefson are currently in Lake Placid, New York for a USST Camp. Sylvan has been blogging about his time there! Here is a portion of his blog.
My time out here has been great so far. Dan and I flew out on Wednesday and while the weather was not so pleasant when we got here, it has made a change for the best since we have been in Keene Valley. We have had glorious blue sky days with temperatures being in the 50s and 60s.
We have been training in Lake Placid for the last two days now and things have been great. Yesterday we did the Climb to the Castle which is a skate rollerski to the top of Whiteface Mountain in Lake Placid. It is 5 miles long and goes up about 2000 vertical feet. In short, it hurts, a lot. And not only does it hurt your muscles, it hurts your sweat glands, your fingers, toes, ears, nose, and lips. Everything hurts. And as if it wasn’t hard enough to ski up an average 8% incline, the last 2 kilometers is headwind which they calculated at about 50 MPH. Enough to make a 6’1″ man like myself stop mid-stride and go, ” maybe it would be faster to walk.” Regardless, my race was great compared to the last time I did it. I felt much stronger and fit. If it hadn’t been for a lapse of about a minute where I thought my left leg was going to detach from my body, I would have finished with the likes of Billy Demong (Olympic gold medalist), Garrot Kuzzy, (former US Ski Team member), Tim Reynolds (just some guy), and Mike Sinnott.
-Sylvan
For more information on the blog, please go to:www.teamhomegrown.blogspot.com
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