The Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) Gold Team hiking down from Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak, in early September. (Photo: Paige Schember)
For this week’s workout, we turned to Mary Rose of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) Gold Team. On Sunday, Rose, 24, won the ninth-annual Climb to the Castle by 32 seconds over US Biathlon’s Annelies Cook. After two weeks of dryland training on the East Coast, first with the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team in Vermont, then with the National Elite Group (NEG) and U.S. Ski Team in Lake Placid, N.Y., Rose sent us this workout — Level 4 uphill rollerski intervals — from her travels.
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Sun Valley’s Mary Rose (l) leads Katherine Ogden (SMST2/USST), Annie Pokorny (SMST2), Erika Flowers (SMST2), and Paige Schember (SVSEF) during a sprint simulation at the Olympic Jumping Complex rollerski trails in Lake Placid, N.Y. (Photo: Colin Rodgers)
Every individual has his or her strengths and weaknesses when it comes to cross-country skiing. It is important to train your weakness because there is usually a lot of room for improvement.
The Sun Valley SEF Gold Team spent two weeks out East in Stratton, VT and Lake Placid, NY for a low-elevation training block. This camp was extremely productive for all of us because we were able to train some of our weaknesses: speed and pacing at low elevation, and rollerskiing in steep terrain.
One of the most beneficial workouts during this training block was a Level 4 uphill rollerski interval session. This is a great session if you don’t have a strong V1, are not strong climbing in skate, or if you need to build capacity in your legs. For me, this was an important workout because living in Sun Valley, ID, we lack the super steep, sustained uphill terrain (for rollerskiing) that can be found on the east coast. This is ironic, I know but the roads in Sun Valley are in the bottoms of the valleys and there are not very many of them.
The Workout: Uphill Rollerski 4-6 x 4 minutes at L4
Where: Find a location that offers a long uphill climb (8%-10% grade)
Warmup:
Rollerski easy (Level 1) for 20-25 minutes. Start the warmup on rolling terrain and then gradually move onto steeper terrain to get the body used to climbing.
Do 5-10 minutes of mobility/stretching exercises, targeting every major part of your body. This part of warmup is important to help get the blood flowing to all parts of your body and to get all the muscles ready to work hard. Think of this as injury prevention!
Rollerski easy for an additional 5-10 minutes.
During warmup focus on where you can make technique gains and apply that to the workout.
Now the fun part: 4-6 x 4 minutes at Level 4.
The first interval should start at threshold (Level 3) or right above it and gradually work into Level 4. Take full recovery (4 minutes) between each interval. Make sure to ski very easy during the recovery. Intervals 2-6 should be at a solid Level 4 the entire time.
Try to complete at least four intervals, but listen to your body and take a moment to assess where you are at. If you feel completely drained and your technique has taken a turn for the worse or your pace has dropped off, call it a day and cool down.
Cool down: Should consist of 15-20 minutes of easy skiing. Once your cool down is complete, you should hydrate, eat and sleep!
During this workout, I did a total of five intervals and left one in the tank, meaning that I could have done one more quality interval, but I held back due of the amount of intensity sessions I had already done that week and the amount of intensity sessions yet to come.
You want to feel good for all of the intervals, so remember that before pushing yourself too much. There is no need to do all six intervals if you are feeling tired. In this case, less is more. Important thing to remember is that ALL the intervals should feel great!
Sun Valley Gold Team members Paige Schember and Mary Rose after the 2015 Climb to the Castle on Sept. 20. (Photo: Mary Rose)
Paddy Caldwell (black shirt, yellow helmet) of the U.S. Ski Team D-team and SMST2 Team chases Rogan Brown (l) around mile four of five in Sunday’s Climb to the Castle up Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, N.Y. Caldwell won the race, followed by biathletes Russell Currier and Tim Burke in second and third, respectively. Brown (SVSEF) placed fourth and Kyle Bratrud (CXC) was fifth. (Photo: Tim Cowan)
Note: Two photo captions have been corrected to reflect the leader of the men’s race around mile four in the 2015 Climb to the Castle. Rogan Brown of Sun Valley led the pack at the time.
For years, U.S. Nordic Ski Team athletes and their coaches trucked themselves up to the start of the Whiteface Veterans Memorial Highway, clicked into their rollerskis and allowed an ample amount of time for warming up before ascending New York’s fifth highest peak.
Before it became an official race nine years ago, it was a workout: a five-mile grind to the summit of Whiteface Mountain, 4,867 feet above sea level in Wilmington, N.Y.
Now, for many top-level skiers, especially those based on the East Coast, the annual Climb to the Castle an offseason staple. And if you win, you get a T-shirt and a medal for your efforts.
Mary Rose (SVSEF) leads US Biathlon’s Annelies Cook up the Whiteface Mountain toll road during the annual Climb to the Castle. Rose won and Cook finished second, 32 seconds later. (Photo: Tim Cowan)
“Climb to the Castle was a blast this year!” wrote women’s winner Mary Rose of Idaho’s Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) Gold Team. “My goal going into this race was to have good energy the whole time, focus on technique and hopefully put together a good effort.”
She reached the top on Sunday in 45:15.1 and topped her competition — the closest of which was US Biathlon’s Annelies Cook — by 32.6 seconds.
“It was a fun, tough effort,” men’s winner Patrick Caldwell of the U.S. Ski Team D-team and Stratton Mountain School (SMS) T2 Team said in an interview after the finish.
The 21-year-old Caldwell outlasted biathletes Russell Currier and Tim Burke by 5 and 11.5 seconds, respectively. Caldwell won in 37:05.2, Currier was second and Burke was third.
“Right from the start, we stayed pretty much together against a decent headwind,” Burke said after the finish. “I think a lot of us were fatigued at the end of a big camp, so I didn’t really want to push like crazy.”
The US Biathlon and U.S. Nordic teams spent at least the last week training in Lake Placid, N.Y., with biathletes like Burke logging five race efforts in nine days preceding the Climb.
“I decided today instead of going for time, I wanted to go for the win,” said Burke, a defending multiple-time Climb to the Castle (C2C) champion. “So I decided to sit in and push that last half mile.”
Rogan Brown (l) of Sun Valley leads Tim Burke (second from l) and Paddy Caldwell (third from l) and Russell Currier and Kyle Bratrud around mile four in Sunday’s Climb to the Castle up Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, N.Y. (Photo: Tim Cowan)
He said he “did a lot of pulling and got some help towards the end.” Rogan Brown (SVSEF) led around mile four, and Burke explained that five men battled in the lead pack for the last two miles.
“I broke my pole in the last couple hundred meters, that kind of took me out of it,” he explained.
Caldwell took the blame what he called an “unfortunate incident” in the final 200 meters. “I broke Tim Burke’s pole,” he said. He did so when Burke made his final attack toward the finish.
“Aside from that, it was a good, solid race,” Caldwell said.
“It’s a good way to end it,” Burke said after 10 days of hard training.
Currier, who placed second, called it an “entertaining race” with five men contending throughout.
“For a rare change I was able to be on the better side of tactics and consistently stay in the back of the pack,” Currier wrote in an email. “On the other hand, the final 100 meters came up a lot earlier than I expected and didn’t give much time to react. The pace picked up and Tim Burke lost a pole tip. The next thing I knew there was an opening for the lead. I’m not much of a sprinter and didn’t do much to challenge Patrick, but was I was still pleased to break out of the back of the pack just in time for the podium.”
A former US Biathlon (USBA) B-team member, Currier, who trains with the Maine Winter Sports Center, was not renamed to the team this spring and is working towards making the cut via a series of trials ending in October.
“The status for the National team is still very unclear,” he wrote. “… All I can do is make the best of every training session and go for better results. The second round of trials is coming up in October. A couple of good enough results there should help my cause for the coming race season.”
Brown placed fourth in the men’s race, 4.3 seconds from the podium and 15.8 seconds after Caldwell. Brown edged Kyle Bratrud of Central Cross Country (CXC) by 0.3 seconds, and behind them, another CXC skier Duncan Douglas placed sixth.
USBA’s Sean Doherty and Lowell Bailey finished seventh and eighth, respectively, Miles Havlick (SVSEF) was ninth and developing biathlete Max Durtschi finished 10th of 61 men.
The start of the women’s race at the 2015 Climb to the Castle up Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, N.Y. (Photo: Peter Minde)
In the women’s race, Rose and Cook pushed each other to the top. Rose recalled it being just the two of them shortly after the start. A perennial contender, USBA’s Susan Dunklee had some pole issues at the very beginning, Rose explained in an email.
“I knew I needed to break away about 1/2 mile to the finish because I can’t beat [Cook] in a sprint,” Rose wrote. “I fought pretty hard through the ‘wind tunnel’ and I think that is where I broke away.”
Overnight rain left the toll road wet, and wind dried out its lower sections. From about the halfway point to the finish, skiers pushed through mist on wet pavement and faced a steady wind blowing 10 to 20 miles per hour throughout the race. After starting in temperatures around 47 degrees Fahrenheit, they met temperatures in the mid-30’s at the top.
“It sounds weird to say it aloud, but I actually had fun doing the climb to the castle,” Cook wrote in an email. “Mary and I skied together the entire time and switched leads back and forth. I usually get bored doing the climb and lose focus and switching back and forth with her kept me in the game mentally.
“She got me at the last turn right before the finish when I suddenly flooded with lactic acid and had no chance,” she added. “But I don’t really think of myself as a climber and so it was fun to be the two people leading the race. That doesn’t happen too often! Of course, the usual suspects were not there and that obviously made it difference.”
With the exception of Paddy Caldwell, the U.S. Ski Team (USST) skipped the Climb this year for the first time in years.
“As hard as it is to miss it because it is a fantastic event, it just didn’t play well athletically for the needs of the group,” USST Head Coach Chris Grover said on the phone last week. “We wanted to do more sprint-specific training and short intensity as opposed to giving up a whole workout or two to do the Climb to the Castle.”
The USST camp was also only a week long, compared to the two weeks the team usually spends in Lake Placid this time of year. On the other hand, the largely Lake-Placid-based US Biathlon team did either time trials or Level 5 (race-pace) workouts for last 10 days.
“I had my personal best by quite a lot and I felt strong skiing,” Cook said of the Climb. “It felt good to end a really tough ten days on a good note. … I think we are all pretty glad to be done.”
The Climb marked the end of a two-week training block for Rose and her Sun Valley teammates, who were in Stratton, Vt., with the SMST2 team for the first week.
“We had some super hard intensity sessions over the past two weeks and all were very productive,” Rose wrote.
USBA’s Hannah Dreissigacker, who placed third, 2:05.9 after Rose, explained in an email that the women’s race broke up quickly.
“Mary and Annelies started off a little faster than I really wanted to be going, and I tried to hold on for a bit but then gave up pretty quickly and lost contact,” Dreissigacker wrote. “My goal in the Climb to the Castle is always to not start too fast and then blow up. Then I skied with Susan for a mile or so and then slowly inched ahead of her a bit. Eventually we skied into a cloud and I lost sight of Annelies and Mary and just skied the whole second half by myself.”
She finished 1:10.9 ahead of Dunklee, who placed fourth, while wearing a figure-skating tutu she wore the first time she did the race.
“The lacy elbows really allowed for added breathability and the rhinestones gave me some extra motivation on those long hard stretches when I was all alone,” Dreissigacker wrote.
Another biathlete, Clare Egan finished fifth, Paige Schember (SVSEF) was sixth, Erin Perryman (St. Lawrence University) was seventh, Jackie Garso of the local New York Ski Education Foundation (NYSEF) was eighth, St. Michael’s assistant coach Silke Hynes was ninth, and Stratton U16 skier Anna Lehmann was 10th of 25 women.
WILMINGTON, NY — The New York Ski Educational Foundation and the Olympic Regional Development Authority invite athletes to the 8th annual NYSEF Whiteface Climb to the Castle Rollerski Race on Saturday, September 6 at 8:00 am. The course starts at the Whiteface Toll Booth, climbing for 5 miles with an average 8% grade up the Whiteface Memorial Highway to the castle on the summit of Whiteface Mountain, New York’s 5th highest peak with an elevation of 4,867 ft. The race is freestyle technique and athletes will be greeted at the finish with a 360-degree panoramic view of the Adirondacks, New England and Canada. Participation is expected from the US Ski Team, the US Biathlon Team, the National Elite Group and many top senior and junior racers from around the country.
The Whiteface Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway, where NYSEF’s Climb to the Castle has been held for the past seven years in Wilmington, N.Y., as seen in 2011. The toll road is undergoing construction this summer and fall.
There’s a race each year scheduled in line with the end of the U.S. Ski Team’s fall camp in Lake Placid, N.Y. You might have heard of it: the Climb to the Castle. Hosted by the New York Ski Education Foundation (NYSEF), the freestyle rollerski race starts at the entrance to a paved toll road, the Whiteface Mountain Veterans Memorial Highway, and stretches five miles up with an average 8-percent grade. The finish is marked by the castle at the top of New York’s fifth-highest peak at 4,867 feet above sea level.
Try to rollerski up there now, however, and you’ll likely run into some heavy machinery.
Construction has already begun on the eight-mile highway as part of a larger project to completely resurface the road over the next several months. The Adirondack Daily News reported Thursday that the upper, toll portion of the road — where the Climb to the Castle (C2C) takes place — will be closed weekdays during May, June and September, but open on weekends. It will be open on weekends and two holiday Mondays during these months: Memorial Day, May 26, and Labor Day, Sept. 1. Throughout July and August, the road is scheduled to be open during daytime hours, with work taking place at night.
US Biathlon’s Tim Burke (l), and U.S. Ski Team members Kris Freeman (c) and Noah Hoffman (r) lead the 2011 Climb to the Castle race in Wilmington, N.Y.
According to Chris Grover, the U.S. Ski Team will hold its Lake Placid training camp from Aug. 25-Sept. 8. So while there’s a chance construction could impact it, there’s a better chance the toll road will be open on Saturday, Sept. 6, when NYSEF scheduled the race.
Margaret Maher, NYSEF’s head nordic coach and C2C organizer, wrote in an email to FasterSkier last week that they were “trying to figure out how the road work will influence the race. Hoping we can still have C2C!”
In all, the highway is expected to be closed 54 days from this week until the end of the season, and open 88 days over the same period, according to the Enterprise.
While the toll road has been patched periodically since it was opened in the 1930s, it has never been completely resurfaced. Whether rollerskiing, cycling, or running to the summit, it’s riven with frost heaves and cracked pavement. Regardless of what state the road is in this year, its sure to be a superior surface for rollerskiing next summer.
Rifenburg Construction, based out of Albany, N.Y., will resurface the entire eight-mile length of the road, from the four-way intersection in the center of Wilmington to the summit. They’ll also rehabilitate rock walls and make repairs to the castle.
The men’s start of the 2009 Climb to the Castle.
Rifenburg earned the project with a $11.2-million bid, and the company expects to complete the work by the end of 2015.
Project manager Russell Huta said that the goal is to have a base layer of new pavement from the tollgate to the castle by the end of this fall. In 2015, the toll section will be finished, and all work on the section from Wilmington town center to the tollgate will be completed.
“Each project has its own set of unique challenges,” Huta told FasterSkier, when asked about the difficulty of working in the narrow confines of the toll road. When road work is in motion, the toll road will be closed to traffic.
In September, Huta said, his company will have “full access” to the toll road Monday through Friday – except for Labor Day. “By the end of the day Friday, there will be a paved surface for [use by] cars, buses, pedestrian traffic” until Monday morning. “On Monday morning, it’s ours again.”
If for some reason, the C2C isn’t possible this year, Grover wrote in an email that it won’t be the end-all of camp.
“We typically run a sprint or team sprint time trial along with the Climb to the Castle,” he explained. “If the Climb is not ready this season, we will employ other alternatives.”
Before the C2C, a time trial was previously held up Gillespie Drive, now a warmup for athletes. The event is entering its eighth year. USST veteran Liz Stephen won the women’s race the last three years, setting a new course record last year in 42 minutes and 4 seconds. US Biathlon’s Tim Burke won the 2013 men’s race in 37:13.
A look at the Whiteface Memorial Highway, site of the annual Climb to the Castle.
NYSEF CLIMB TO THE CASTLE ROLLERSKI RACE
Saturday, September 15, 2012
WILMINGTON, N.Y. — The New York Ski Educational Foundation and the Olympic Regional Development Authority announce the 6th annual NYSEF Whiteface Climb to the Castle Rollerski Race on Saturday, September 15 at 8:00 am. The course starts at the Whiteface Toll Booth, climbing for 5 miles with an average 8% grade up the Whiteface Memorial Highway to the castle on the summit of Whiteface Mountain, New York’s 5th highest peak with an elevation of 4,867 ft. The race is freestyle technique and athletes will be greeted at the finish with a 360-degree panoramic view of the Adirondacks, New England and Canada. Attendance is expected from the US Ski Team, the US Biathlon Team, the National Elite Group and many top senior and junior racers from around the country.
Pre-registration closes Thursday, September 13 at 9 AM
Day-of-race registration from 6:30 – 7:00 AM at the Whiteface Toll Booth
Bib pick-up from 7:00 – 7:30 AM at the Whiteface Toll Booth
START TIMES
8:00 AM Women’s Mass Start (all age classes)
8:10 AM Men’s Mass Start (all age classes)
The race will be timed for 2 hours. Any competitors not able to finish in this time window will be picked up before the finish.
RACE DIVISIONS
Women’s and Men’s age classes for the following divisions:
Open/Elite, OJ/U-23, Junior (J2/J1), Master (30+)
EQUIPMENT SAFETY
HELMETS ARE REQUIRED! All rollerskis must be inspected by competitor and be in proper working order.
COURSE DETAILS
Freestyle Technique. 5-mile hill climb with an average 8% grade up the Whiteface Memorial Highway. Course: start at the Whiteface Toll Booth in Wilmington and finish at the Castle on the summit of Whiteface Mountain (elevation 4,867 ft)
Disclaimer: Inclement weather may limit the race distance. Course is closed to rollerskiing before the start. Pre-race warm-up on rollerskis can only occur in a designated area. All post-race cooling down must be done on foot.
VEHICLE TRAFFIC AND POST-RACE INFO
Please carpool to the race start, parking will be limited. The Whiteface Memorial Highway will be closed to the general public during the race. Coaches and spectators who will be watching the race will be able to drive up and park off the road until 7:50 AM. All traffic must be parked off the road from 7:50 AM until 9:00 AM. There will be no moving traffic allowed during the race. All competitors will be shuttled back to the race start. No athletes will be allowed to ski back down after the race. Competitors may place a bag in the NYSEF van with post-race clothing that will be driven to the finish line.
AWARDS
Awards at the Whiteface Castle immediately following the event at 10 am.
Prizes awarded to Top 3 Overall and Top 3 in each age class.
Questions? Email Margaret Maher margm@nysef.org or call the Nordic office at (518) 523-1900.
![The Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) Gold Team hiking down from Mount Mansfield, Vermont's highest peak, in early September. (Photo: Paige Schember)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/09/unnamed-22.jpg")
![Sun Valley's Mary Rose (l) leads Katherine Ogden (SMST2/USST), Annie Pokorny (SMST2), Erika Flowers (SMST2), and Paige Schember (SVSEF) during a sprint simulation at the Olympic Jumping Complex rollerski trails in Lake Placid, N.Y. (Photo: Colin Rodgers)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/09/IMG_0206.jpg")
![Sun Valley Gold Team members Paige Schember and Mary Rose after the 2015 Climb to the Castle on Sept. 20. (Photo: Mary Rose)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/09/IMG_0199.jpg")
![Paddy Caldwell of the U.S. Ski Team D-team and SMST2 Team won Sunday's Climb to the Castle up Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, N.Y. Here, around mile four of five, he's seen leading the pack, which includes biathletes Russell Currier and Tim Burke, and Rogan Brown (SVSEF) and Kyle Bratrud (CXC). (Photo: Tim Cowan)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/09/FullSizeRender.jpg")
![Mary Rose (SVSEF) leads US Biathlon's Annelies Cook up the Whiteface Mountain toll road during the annual Climb to the Castle. Rose won and Cook finished second, 32 seconds later. (Photo: Tim Cowan)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/09/FullSizeRender1.jpg")
![Paddy Caldwell of the U.S. Ski Team D-team won today's Climb to the Castle up Whiteface. Here he's seen around mile 4 leading the pack, which includes veteran biathlete Tim Burke (who placed 3rd). (Photo: Tim Cowan)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/09/caldwell-leads-pack.jpg")
![The start of the women's race at the 2015 Climb to the Castle up Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, N.Y. (Photo: Peter Minde)](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/09/20150920_075958.jpg")
![Climb to the Castle 2014](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/08/image001.jpg")
![The road well traveled...](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2011/09/Climb-to-the-Castle-33-web.jpg")
![Tim Burke (USBA), Kris Freeman (USST) and Noah Hoffman (USST) leading the men's race.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2011/09/Climb-to-the-Castle-16-web.jpg")
![The men's start.](http://fasterskier.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2009/10/men-start.jpg")
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2011/09/Climb-to-the-Castle-33-web.jpg" "The road well traveled...")
![](http://images.fasterskier.com/2012/08/NYSEF_climb-to-the-castle2012.jpg" "NYSEF Climb to the Castle logo - 2012")