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What a difference a year makes. We went from hiking up the alpine trails and skiing down them in the pitch black, to skiing on freshly groomed trails. No dodging snowboarders this year! This year, I rode with Mr. Cooper, Dan, JC, Greta and Ian. The ride was fun other than the smell from JC’s barbecued corn nuts. The only one that didn’t mind them was Ian because he was sleeping.
As soon as we arrived, we parked then ate. The brunch was good. We had stuff like French toast, bacon, pancakes, home fries and scrambled eggs. Then we got back in the van and changed at the XC center. We skied for 2 hours working on skating technique. We took a short break and skied for another hour and a half. Kristen, Julia, Tiffany, Corrine, Cecily and I skied with Alexei and Kate Newick.
Kate is a former GNA member who has been in Italy for the last few months. She helped us with technique and drills. A lot of the drills that they did in Italy she had already learned from Alexei.
We finished skiing the 5K loop which had a really hard uphill with no flat breaks in between. But after reaching the top of the hill, there was a nice downhill that seemed like it lasted for a really long time.
When skiing was finally over with, we got to the condos. I roomed with Kristen (who I roomed with last year), Corrine, Cecily and Emily. After unpacking, we took the Vermont Academy bus to dinner. There was a large screen TV and Alexei showed us filmage of us skiing earlier in the day. He critiqued our early season skiing and it was hilarious! He kept rewinding and playing not so flattering moments, but we all had a good laugh!
Saturday 6:40 AM, Alexei called to say the bus would be arriving shortly before breakfast. Fortunately, the bus was late and Cecily had time to dry her hair. After breakfast, we had 2 hours of classical skiing and played "sharks and minnows". Dan broke his pole and we all ran out of kick wax. After an afternoon skating session, we got to go to the pool and the outdoor hot tubs! It was awesome because we got to roll around in the snow and have snowball fights! We crammed 11 people in the 4 person hot tub though it was short-lived. Alexei kicked us out and we had to take refuge in the inside hot tubs (which were a lot hotter).
We were exhausted that night. We played Jeopardy, watched a little Food Network and went to bed. Sunday morning came fast. Kristen answered Alexei’s wake-up call with a comatose voice and it was off again for another day of skiing. We did more skating technique work. Andrew was accidentally impaled during the group work but he survived. After skiing, we had lunch and chocolate at the XC center.
The relays were after lunch. It was skating technique made up of mixed teams of 3. The relays were fun, nice and short, about 2K. On my team was Dan and Laura.
The ride home was uneventful, pretty quiet, everyone was tired. Next year let’s hope for even more snow and more pool time! Thanks Alexei and Mr. Cooper for another successful Sugarloaf camp!

Friday November 23 at 5:30 am, Alexei, Victoria, Pavel, Kressley, Katrina, Joe, Grayson, Alex, Ian, Marshall and I left for Sugarloaf, Maine. The ride was five hours long, including many stops at gas stations along the way. On the ride up we played the "alphabet game", and it took three hours to find the letter Q (Alex spotted that one). Once we arrived we met up with the rest, Dan, J.C., Greta, Winthrop, Irene, Heidi, Kristen, Greg, Ben, Nicole, Heather, Ann and Dan's dad Ed. We checked into the condos which were awesome, then we played Frisbee and did stretching for an hour. After we loosened up we were ready to ski. Unfortunately the cross country trails were not open due to lack of snow. So instead, we hiked up the alpine trial, which was very, very steep. At the top, we had to dodge the snowboarders and skiers while trying to ski loops. Fortunately no one was injured in the process. After skiing, we went to the pool and out-door Jacuzzi. I have been in hot tubs before, but nothing compared to this.

On Saturday, we did intensive skiing, and we were filmed. We also went to a waxing clinic and learned EVERYTHING there is to possibly know about waxing skis. That night everyone piled into the girls condo to watch the movie of us skiing, as well as the trip to Finland that Katrina, Winthrop and Pavel went on last summer. We watched Alexei's friend Vladimir ski and do some funny poses.

On Sunday I had a most difficult time getting out of bed (too much fresh air!!!). There were socks all over the girls condo, most belonging to Greta. We ate and climbed back up the hill for some relays. My team consisted of Alex , Grayson, and me. The relays were fun, beside the fact that ropes were put up at the chair lift. Joe did a great job skiing over the rope and not falling. After skiing down the hill, we went back to the condo to pack and watched the National Clogging Champs on TV. Very exciting... we should add that to GNA workouts! The last thing we did before leaving was cram all of our bags into the van and play soccer. Alex drank two cappuccinos before we left, the caffeine kicked in 15 minutes later on the ride home.

Katrina Howe of GNA reports on her experience in Finland
On July 10th Winthrop Smith, Alexei Sotskov and I left Logan Airport for
15 days of training camp and traveling in Russia and Finland. Before this
trip I had never been to Europe or anywhere over seas. Let me tell you, it's
an experience I'll never forget.

First we spent a few days in St. Petersburg, Russia, Alexei'
hometown. The city is very nice but very different from any place I've
ever been in the U.S. Alexei and his wife Victoria took us all over the
city. We visited the Hermitage and a few other churches and palaces in the
downtown area and were also exposed to some of the wonders of city life
including the subway. (Winthrop and I both had to learn how to get on an
escalator moving at an unbelievable rate of speed.) Well, needless to say,
the Russians who were lucky enough to catch us getting on and off had a
pretty good laugh. On our last day in St. Petersburg we went to the
Russian Nordic Training center and skied some very, very nice roller
skiing loops. The trails were arranged just for that purpose, so the
corners and down hills weren't too difficult. When we got there we also
got to watch a roller skiing sprint race. The Russians, however, have very
long sprint courses compared to ours in New England.

The next day we left St. Petersburg at four-thirty am and
headed for Vuokatti, Finland in a car just barely big enough for the five
of us (Pavel, Alexei, Victoria, Winthrop and I). The drive took us about
eight hours. When we got there I knew I had reached a place I wouldn't
mind staying for a long time. Vuokatti is like a little athletic community
in the middle of nowhere. There are sidewalks, as wide as one lane of a
road all over town. It seemed as though everyone owned roller skis, a
bike or roller blades. The air is unbelievably clean, making it a
wonderful place to train for skiing or other sports.

We stayed in an awesome little cottage not too far from the tunnel (an
easy walking distance). The cottage had two bedrooms, a kitchen, living
room, ski closet (perfect for our skis), and a huge bathroom with a sauna!
The people in Finland were very nice and seemed happy to have foreigners
visiting their area. We also met some friends of Alexei 's including
Vladimir Dratschev, a skier from the Russian Biathlon team and the coach
of the Finnish Nordic Combined team. I also got to ski behind Nina
Gavriliuk, one of Alexei's good friends who is a member of the Russian
women's Nordic team.

At night we watched skiing movies or tried to find something in English
but that didn't 't always work; most everything on TV was always in Finnish.
We also went to Kaijanni, a nearby city, on our day off for some shopping
and Vladimir took us fishing on my birthday. We also got to watch some
high quality karaoke performed by Winthrop and Pavel.

In the mornings we usually skied in the ski tunnel for up to two hours.
That ski tunnel was so cold the first day; I thought I wouldn't survive
the next week and a half. Ok, so I survived, but 26 degrees is pretty cold
when you've just come in from 86 degrees outside! The mornings in the
tunnel were my favorite times. They groomed the tunnel each night so the
morning skiing was always the best. We got to ski behind some of the world
best skiers. Alexei's friend Vladimir was there during our stay training
for the up coming Olympics. We met up with him and he gave me a ton of
tips about my skiing and even led us through a strength practice in the
gym. That was a long, hard practice but I learned a lot! On another
occasion we went to watch him practice shooting and he showed us how to
shoot his biathlon gun. That was something new and different but it was
fun.

Our practices routines usually started off with about 2 hours or less of
skiing in the tunnel at 8:30 in the morning, in the afternoons we skied
most of the time. For the first half of the camp we did skating then we
switched to classical for the remainder. Once we went roller skiing to
Sotkamo, a town about 5 km away. Another day we had a double poling
session where we skied up a 1mile hill twice. We also had two strength
practices, 1 running practice and tons of stretching sessions. Vladimir
told us that he believes he wouldn't be as good if he wasn't as flexible as
he is (he's REALLY flexible) On the whole, I think I gained a lot out of
this camp. I believe that during the camp my skiing has improved greatly
and I would definitely do it again anytime.