August 3, 2009 (Craftsbury Common, VT) – We’re excited to introduce the Craftsbury Green Racing Project as they join the Skier Blog section re-launching soon at skitrax.com. Chelsea Little has prepared a brief team bio and the Project’s first blog as the group of six skiers share their hopes and dreams with readers.

Craftsbury Green Racing Project
Hometown: Craftsbury Outdoor Center, Craftsbury Common, Vermont
Inception: Spring 2009
Team members and previous affiliations:
– Matt Briggs (Colby College, Cambridge Sports Union)
– Ollie Burruss (Harvard University, Cambridge Sports Union)
– Hannah Dreissigacker (Dartmouth College, Craftsbury Nordic Ski Club)
– Lauren Jacobs (Skibec, Bates College, Gould Academy)
– Chelsea Little (Dartmouth College, Ford Sayre)
– Tim Reynolds (Middlebury College, Green Mountain Valley School)
– Coach: Pepa Miloucheva (Craftsbury Nordic Ski Club)

Bio
The Craftsbury Green Racing Project was founded in the spring of 2009 to further the mission of the now non- profit Craftsbury Outdoor Center: “To support and promote participation and excellence in lifelong sports with a special focus on rowing and Nordic skiing; to use and teach sustainable practices; and to protect and manage the surrounding land, lake and trails.”

All of this sounds abstract, but after only a few months, the team is very real and already going strong. Comprised of recent graduates from the best ski programs around the East, the team includes NCAA qualifiers and one All- American, several former captains of college teams, and up- and- coming skiers who, with some success in their pockets, are looking forward to much more now that they are training full- time with coach Pepa Miloucheva.

While joining the Green Racing Projects means that many of the athletes will be adjusting to changes, one thing remains the same for all them: an unwavering determination to ski fast. The team’s early season plans include the western SuperTour races and U.S. Nationals in Anchorage in January. Chelsea Little, a former columnist with the White River Junction, VT based Valley News, will be writing updates on the CGRP’s activities.

Eco-choices, Training, Dreaming
Hi, my name is Chelsea and I’ll be your guide and narrator for the story that is the Craftsbury Green Racing Project. I suppose you might want to know why you should care about the Green Racing Project. Who are these chumps, anyway, who think they can just start a team and be taken seriously?

Well, we’re six recent college graduates from around New England, and we’ve decided to stick around and support the community that raised us as athletes. We are teaming up with coach extraordinaire Pepa Miloucheva, who sometimes seems to have higher goals for us than we ourselves can imagine. We’re also teaming up with the Dreissigacker family, which means we’ll probably be the first pro team to regularly row for cross-training (I hear that trying to get back into a flipped rowing shell is great core strength practice). And we’re trying to save the world, too, by raising awareness about environmental sustainability and making responsible eco-choices in our own lives.

So to get back to the question, you should care because we are ambitious. Sometimes we’re afraid we are too ambitious. Which leaves you, dear reader, two options. First, you can laugh at our ambition and read these posts for entertainment, just waiting for us to fail. Since we won’t, your second option might be better, which is to watch as our team grows and develops towards success.

So far, this path towards success has been unremarkable, filled with days of training, napping, working three hours, and maybe training again. When I tell people that skiing is my job, they usually have two reactions: one, that my life is extremely exciting, or two, that my life is really cushy now that I’ve “made it.”

Well, none of that is exactly true. To start with, it isn’t “making it” just to be named to a team like this. That’s just the beginning of “making it”. Now that we’re here, the work starts. So, no, our life isn’t exactly cushy. I’m training more than I’ve ever trained in my life; that’s the whole point of getting on a team like this. And while it’s true that we don’t have to hold down a job, we do owe the Craftsbury Outdoor Center a certain number of working hours per week, and in a volume or a speed block that number can seem difficult to attain. Do we have it good? Yes. Does that mean it’s easy? No.

Secondly, our days are not that exciting. There are three places with pavement you can ski around Craftsbury, and one is so short that we only do intervals there. So we find ourselves rollerskiing, over and over, from East Craftsbury, over the “Johnson Hill” (as in Andrew), through Greensboro, and towards Greensboro Bend, or Hardwick, or East Hardwick. Most people would think that this is decidedly Not Exciting.

But actually, I’ve never been so excited about a not-exciting, not-cushy job before. Each workout is done with a sense of purpose and opportunity. Each rollerski on the road through Greensboro takes me a tiny baby step closer to fixing my abominable skating technique. In fact, today during our threshold workout I got my first “This is actually looking much better” from Pepa. I still have plenty to work on, but, after a month and a half, I am beginning to feel like I’m getting somewhere.

Although it sometimes feels like we have to make a concerted effort to make life exciting, we do succeed. Our games of volleyball with the rower boys are almost always exhilarating (neither group has particularly great hand-eye coordination). Almost flipping a rowing shell over gets your adrenaline going. Our team members have been trying their hands at triathlons, adventure races, mountain bike races, and hill climbs, even though Pepa is usually pretty sure that these things don’t fit into the training schedule. I biked a century and took a “vacation” to Colorado to hike and play an ultimate frisbee tournament.

The quiet side of life is also, in its own way, exciting; we have each brought a collection of books from home, established a library, and suggested favorites to each other. It’s nice to be able to catch up on reading. The black raspberry bushes are full of berries, so yesterday Hannah made jam and I’m planning on baking a pie this weekend. We check out the local farmers markets and, sometimes, outdoor concerts. There might not be much to do in the northeast kingdom, but we sniff out what events we can find and try to sample them.

In future posts, I’ll be writing about specific events, training, and activities, but I hope this gives you a good introduction to life at the Green Racing Project. Visit again soon to hear more!