Following in our adventures with the porcupine earlier this week, Friday's training at Trapps on the race course gave us a close encounter with some young deer. For all you Carnival skiers coming to race next weekend, keep your eyes out between the 2.7km and 3.4km points of Morty's Maze. As Bear and I were skiing down the hill after the 3k mark, he suddenly pointed to the right, where no more than 6 feet off the trail a young deer was just sort of hanging out. Being a conscientious college ski racer out for training, he didn't stop. On the other hand, I'm a slow coach, so I'm more than happy to throw in a tele stop to check out the critters. For a couple minutes we had a stalemate. Maybe the deer was aware of the "no walking on the groomed trails" rule? A few minutes later Sam and Larissa came along at the 2.7km mark. I'm sure they wondered why I was just standing in the middle of the trail looking back up the hill. Once I tipped them off to the deer, who at that point was just starting to move across the tracks, we did a collective "check it out" for a few minutes. And then they noticed 2 more deer just 10-20 yards in front of the first one. This trio was showing no fear, as we were no more than 30-40 feet from them at times.
I'm sure the collective energy of a few hundred EISA skiers and their coaches and fans will chase the deer deeper into the woods during the races Friday and Saturday. But for those of you coming to train Thursday, if you're here late afternoon keep your eyes open and you may get your own close encounter.
Oh course, just like the porcupette, no pictures! Someone on this team needs to start training with their camera.
By the way, wanted to send a Thank You to Patrick Weaver and the UVM team for setting up the opportunity for a time trial with them yesterday on the Trapps race course. Very useful workout for our crew, hope we can do more of this in the future.
And finally, from the entire team to our assistant coach Lary Martell - Congratulations on a good race in the Craftsbury 50k yesterday.
(posted by Joe)
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