Post From New Skier, Sam Hammond '15

Hi my name is Sam. I’m a freshman skier from Minnesota and today on the blog I’ll be talking about Minnesota rollerskiing vs. Vermont Rollerskiing.

            Imagine one trail. It stretches for 12 miles in one direction and 9 the other. This is the only rollerskiable trail in the entire state. You ski it for 2-4 hours at a crack, every day, even twice a day. It’s flat as North Dakota and about as lonely. You get to know the trail so well you are a hundred percent sure you could do it blindfolded. The only people you see are the occasional biker or runner. They gawk at you like you have a second head or some other odd new appendage. This is Rollerskiing in Minnesota. That’s it.

            I get to Vermont and the first trail I ski on is a short art/nature trail. It’s rolling and beautiful. It’s also packed with pedestrians almost to the point of being irritating, but the sound of something other than my own labored breathing is enough to make it worth it. The trail is smooth and well kept and I already feel my training making a noticeable difference in my training and I know that rollerskiing will not be a chore like it was back home. 

SMC XC Love!

This past weekend was the Vermont State Meet at SMC. It was a gross, rainy day, but I still went out to watch with Emily, one of the new members of the team. We met up with Lar-Bear (assistant coach and my dad, Lary Martell, for those of you who are new to reading this blog and seeing our phenomenal nicknames) to watch in the wind and cold.

The first race was the women's 5k, which was extremely exciting. Our girls (the runners who are also skiers) looked really good from the beginning. Gabby and Chloe were up at the front running with two Middlebury girls. Going into the last mile through the woods loop Gabby and the two Midd girls moved ahead and were right together going into the finishing sprint. Gab kicked it in for an amazing finish and beat both girls to the finish winning the race! You can check out the article on Gab HERE and watch the video below from the SMCPurpleKnight's channel on YouTube.



We also had some boys racing with Bear and Colin finishing together and new skiers Alex, Sam, and Isaiah finishing later on. Their race was even colder to watch, but it's always fun to have a race on campus.

Check out all of the results HERE!

All in all ski training's been going pretty well for the last couple of weeks. There's only a small group of us that isn't running, but we've been getting in some good workouts. I'm sure there will be more blog posts to come as XC wraps up and we start all training together!

-Sam