September 20, 2008 – The New England Nordic Ski Association is offering a spot for an intern coach at the NENSA/USST camp taking place during the week of October 1-6th, Lake Placid, NY. If you are new to coaching Nordic Skiing, or would like the opportunity to observe and work with high level athletes and coaches in action, please contact Janice Sibilia at janice@nensa.net. Female coaches are strongly encouraged to apply.

Coaches Mini-Workshop at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid

Join us Sunday October 5th for this Mini-Workshop. Three topics will be presented on, by CXC and USST coaches….

Workshop Agenda:
– The USST Athlete Pipeline (USST coaches to present)
– Training planning (CXC’s Bryan Fish will present)
– Strength Training (USST Staff)

Workshop begins at 1:30pm at the Olympic Training Center. Each presentation will be approximately 45 minutes long. This is a great chance to get together with some of the top coaches in the Country for an afternoon of informative discussion. There is no charge for this workshop though participants are welcomed to make a donation to the US Ski Team. We hope you can join us!

Please contact Janice at Janice@nensa.net for more info or to sign up or register online. Deadline to register is October 4th.

Dryland Training In Quebec City

Lauren Jacobs former Bates skier, shares her recent training experiences with the Skibec Club in Quebec City:

Last Tuesday night I did running intervals on Québec City’s famous Plains of Abraham where the course of North American history was changed after that fateful battle between Wolfe and Montcalm. But I wasn’t thinking so much about that. Mostly I was thinking about going harder and taking inspiration from the cheers of “allez allez” yelled by my teammates.

After graduating from Bates in 2007 and taking a year in the “real world” I decided to head back to school. Now I am a student at Université Laval in Québec City where I am working on a master’s degree and speaking lots of (broken) French. Luckily I have been able to hook up with the local ski club, appropriately called Skibec. It’s a large team with plenty of high-level juniors and seniors; after a year of training mostly on my own I am really happy to be working with a team again!

As I mentioned above, Tuesday night running practices are held on the Plains. There are lots of trails, hills, and stairs. This past Tuesday we climbed one of the long sets of stairs from the lower city up to the Plains during our warm-up. We also stopped at on overlook above the St. Lawrence for a quick round of dips and push-ups. The Plains are certainly wonderful for training this time of year, but I am already getting excited about skiing on them this winter.

Québec is a very skier-friendly city, though it is hard to get used to not being able to ski endless miles of perfect roads like in northern New England. Here we have one bike path in the city where we meet for Thursday night team roller skis. On Fridays we head up to the Parc de la Jacques-Cartier for over-distance skis. The park is only about 40 minutes north of the city and provides a great place to work on hills and take in some beautiful scenery. Our team roller skis also give me a chance to become thoroughly confused with some French skiing terms. The most important thing I’ve learned? Their “1 skate” is our V2 and their “2 skate” is our V2 alternate. You can imagine the look I gave my coach when he asked me to “1 skate” on a flat.

On Saturday a regional 10 km running and roller ski race was held on the Laval campus. There were more than 400 runners and only about 20 roller skiers but it was still a great time. It was an exciting atmosphere with some well-known Canadian skiers there to run the race (Alex Harvey came in 7th). A fair amount of skin was lost by some skiers so I was really happy to have stayed on two feet!

So far my new adventures in Québec have been “excellente” and I’m sure there will be many more to come! Now I just have to wait for the first snow to fly…

NENSA Announces Paperless Membership Option

It is with great excitement that we share with you our Climate Change Task Force recommendations for membership review. We welcome your comments to the general and specific recommendations outlined in the statement below. To make commenting easy for members, we have set up a category at www.NENSA.net/forums for your use. Please take advantage of this and share your thoughts.

As part of our continuing commitment to the spirit of these recommendations, NENSA is pleased today to announce the option of paperless membership! You will receive the same great benefits (Winter Event Guide, event brochures, etc) by email, helping NENSA to reduce our carbon footprint by eliminating the need for paper, printing, and mailing in the membership process. Plus, you’ll get NENSA publications immediately, instead of having to wait for them to show up in your mailbox!

With an anticipated 3,100 members this year, NENSA stands to save a considerable amount of waste from paper, printing, and transportation of printed goods. We have tested the new system extensively and we think you will find it easy to use and efficient. We encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity to opt for paperless. The paperless membership option still allows you to receive the New England Nordic News via regular mail. Later this year we will also allow all members the opportunity to opt for electronic delivery of this important NENSA publication.

Help us go green and do our part to ensure snowfall in the years to come! Choose Paperless!

In addition, NENSA is working on having NENSA-branded reusable shopping bags take the place of plastic bags for racer packets at several of our major events this winter. And, we will support members with resources, ideas and opportunities to change their daily lives to limit both our carbon footprint and overall environmental impact.

Thanks sincerely and we look forward to hearing your ideas,

Patrick Cote, NENSA Executive Director
Judy Geer, NENSA President