Gunstock Nordic Association is proud to have Nina Gavrylyuk, 3-time Olympic gold medalist, as coach for cross-country ski training here in Gilford. We are pleased to be host-housing a young man from the Keene area who is in (very intense) training with Nina this summer.
You may ask, as I did, how does one train in the heat of summer for cross-country skiing? Well, I get tired just hearing about it! Ski-walking (hiking with XC poles), roller-skiing (roller-blading on our local roads with XC poles), strength training, and cart-pulling are just a few exercises in their training regimen. These kids are truly dedicated; our current guest trainee came very close to qualifying for Junior Olympics just last year, and he is only 16!
Nina Gavrylyuk, 3-time gold medalist and 10-time World Champion as a member of the Russian National Team. See Overview of Gunstock Nordic Association, with Bio of Nina and Igor on GNA website.
Per GunstockNordic.com website–
GNA’s internationally-renowned coaches train athletes of all levels and abilities, helping skiers to reach their goals. Cross-country ski coach, Nina Gavrylyuk, is originally from St. Petersburg, Russia, where she graduated from the P.F. Lesgaft State Institute of Physical Culture as a qualified ski coach. As a member of the Russian National Team, her accomplishments include 3 Olympic gold medals, 5 individual World Cup victories, and 10 World Championships. Her 15 years on the World Cup Circuit bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to GNA. Her husband, Igor Badamshin, also a past Olympian and many time Russian National Champion, assists her. He brings energy and enthusiasm with his past coaching experience to us from the Russian National team.
Nina Gavrylyuk (right) pulled ahead early in Jan. 2010 U.S. Master’s XC race in Craftsbury Vermont, to finish first in Women’s division and 16th overall against men and women. [Reported by New England Nordic Ski Association]
Reactions to my own and Hubby’s “Vibram FiveFingers” shoes (if you can call them that!) are either genuine interest (from the outdoorsy types) or “Oh, your shoes are CUTE” from the dubious types, usually said with a raised eyebrow or half-smile. Then comes either “I’ve seen those… where did you get them?” or “Uh, what ARE they?”
I tell folks these Vibram FiveFingers- Flow are my chimpanzee feet! To me, they are like barefoot boots for unshod or de-shod horses… an extra protection which helps enable natural foot function. I would definitely NOT RECOMMEND wearing them around horses though– for obvious reasons!
In short, FiveFingers are barefoot shoes for outdoor uses, and they also happen to make a statement. They stimulate and exercise your toes, feet and legs in a natural way, while you walk or trek or jog or run or climb or do water sports, while protecting your feet from damage by sharp and rough objects. They are a way to simulate being barefooted when you either don’t have– or while you are trying to develop– tough soles. They DO all have TOES!
Hubby and I have both acquired Vibram FiveFingers “FLOW” style, made of warmth-retaining neoprene and providing traction on slippery rocks in cold water; this style is suitable to cooler climates like NH, where they will keep our feet warmer for more months of the year. We have not yet tried them in the winter. These “Flows” can be pretty hot to wear in the south as strictly walking shoes, with the sun beating on them for long spells of time. However, many other styles and colors are available, most having mesh fabric uppers which make them breathable and cooler.
FiveFingers soles are made of molded Vibram material, tough, flexible, yet just rigid enough to give a little arch support. Hubby, who suffers from something undiagnosed– probably a bone spur– on the ball of one foot, has had no pain when wearing his Flows.
Two articles below give some interesting insight into the appeal of wearing barefoot shoes, and also into the challenge of keeping them from becoming overly smelly! Ours were difficult to find but we managed to order them online… even though sold by many outdoor stores and directly by Vibram, they are often out of stock. Find some Retailer links at end of post… Good luck!
THANKS to our friend Faye for letting me try out one of her own pairs of FiveFingers!
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Bare Necessity
By ROB WALKER New York times Magazine June 1, 2010
The sneaker seems like a dumbed-down version of the athletic shoe. As casual wear suitable for use in the yard, a nightclub or the office, sneakers compete (ferociously) on the basis of style and signaling power. Picking an athletic shoe, in contrast, has less to do with, say, drooling over stylish designs than with translating exuberant jargon. The Asics GEL-Kinsei 3 draws on “pure running science,” which evidently involves Spacemaster mesh containing “a nanoscale metal film” that reacts to weather — not to mention its new Propulsion Trusstic. Adidas’ adiSTAR Salvation W, meanwhile, offers ForMotion, which I don’t understand but is trademarked, as well as an Extended Torsion System, surely better than a Stunted Torsion System. Reebok’s ZigTech shoes promise to disburse a “wave of energy” along the strange-looking sole, reducing “wear and tear” on leg muscles by “up to 20” percent. Just figuring out which model to study on Nike’s Web site involves a multistep process concerning running surfaces, the shape of your foot and the specifics of your stride.
But when such rationalist techno-complexity piles up, it inevitably attracts a naturalist and human-centric reaction. In this case: What if the athletic shoe is a dumbed-up version of the human foot? How about, in other words, running with no shoes at all?
The practice has had its advocates throughout the rise of the shoe-industrial complex. But it’s been goosed by the popular book “Born to Run,” in which the journalist (and runner) Christopher McDougall tells the remarkable story of Mexico’s Tarahumara Indians, who run 100 miles or more at a stretch, sans fancy athletic footwear. McDougall does not shy away from the conclusion that the supposed advances in athletic footwear signify not just a mumbo-jumbo-driven ruse but also one that can actually be bad for runners’ feet. This kicked up a fuss that may or may not slow the march of baroque shoe engineering.
But it has certainly been good for minimalist shoe engineering. It turns out that the barefoot idea, appealing as it may be, does bring to mind cold ground, hot pavement and the pointy little objects, man-made and natural, that might clutter the runner’s path. Vibram FiveFingers footwear responds to such thoughts in the form of a kind of glove for the foot: a slim rubber sole, articulated toe slots and just enough fabric to keep the things on. The goal, in other words: almost barefootness.
Like many products devised with a highly specific goal, the shoes look quite striking — that is, they look pretty weird. The word “simian” comes to mind. Which may explain the puzzled tone of a note I received recently from a reader in Seattle. My correspondent “had to do a double take” when first seeing runners and walkers sporting the odd footwear but has lately seen them with increasing frequency. “Just yesterday,” the note continued, “a woman on my bus was wearing a pair while in full business attire.” It concluded with a hint of mild alarm: “These could quite possibly be the new Crocs.”
Scoff if you like, but when Vibram asked its Facebook fans to name “the most unique place or . . . most unique activity where you’ve worn FiveFingers,” it received more than 450 responses. Many involved outdoorsy or athletic activity, but others involved grocery shopping, a wedding, performing stand-up comedy, business meetings, church, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and visiting the Sistine Chapel. The word “everywhere” recurred, often capitalized or followed by an exclamation point. In other words, it could happen here.
Apart from the hey-they’re-comfy mantra invoked by Crocs enthusiasts, wearers of the FiveFingers almost-shoes can cite practical reasons for sporting monkey-suggestive gear in settings others find inappropriate: you’re supposed to ease into the switch from elaborately engineered athletic shoes, so tooling about the mall in performance footwear makes total sense.
Even better, FiveFingers signals an ideology, a defiant embrace of a naked message to, and about, Big Footwear: the emperor has shoes, but I refuse to buy them. It borders on a product-enabled subversive critique of a multibillion-dollar industry’s innovations. But that critique has its own critics, and it’s fair to at least wonder about the dissonance involved in the slogan “Run Barefoot, Wear FiveFingers.” What does it mean when even going “barefoot” requires a $100 object? And one whose naturalness evidently relies in part on technological innovation to boot? As the company’s Web site puts it, the idea is “the exhilarating joy of going barefoot with the protection and sure-footed grip of a Vibram® sole.” The soles are also, in some cases, “razor-siped,” whatever that means.
All of that is niggling and of import only on the question of FiveFingers’ potential to cross over from cross-training to crosstown commutes. In the sphere of athletics, serious people will sort their choices on the basis of serious research. But if FiveFingers shoes come to embody casual comfort, a lifestyle statement, an antifashion identity marker, then they will have escaped the narrow confines of athletic footwear. They will become, in a word, sneakers.?
The Fresh Air Fund is in need of host families for this summer. Host families are volunteers who open their hearts and home to a child from the city to give them a Fresh Air experience that can change lives. Help place these wonderful children into a loving host family for an experience that can change their life by spreading the word.
THE FRESH AIR FUND, an independent, not-for-profit agency, has provided free summer vacations to more than 1.7 million New York City children from low-income communities since 1877. Nearly 10,000 New York City children enjoy free Fresh Air Fund programs annually. In 2008, close to 5,000 children visited volunteer host families in suburbs and small town communities across 13 states from Virginia to Maine and Canada. 3,000 children also attended five Fresh Air camps on a 2,300-acre site in Fishkill, New York. The Fund’s year-round camping program serves an additional 2,000 young people each year.
They also just received a tremendous offer by a very generous donor. Any gift given from now until the end of June will be matched dollar-for-dollar.
For a rower on a BIG lake such as Lake Winnipesaukee, there are precious few perfect rowing days in the summer. Probably if one went out just at dawn (4:30 am), usually there is no breeze then and flat water could be found. However, I am not that ambitious in my old age, although I do wake up for the occasional sunrise and walk out into the front yard of our island camp to take pictures… then I climb back into my warm cozy bed!
A few days ago, about 8:30 am, I set out in my Alden ocean shell across the lake to another nearby island, to see if the bald eagles were nesting again this year. It was my third or fourth row since mid-May so I felt in good enough shape to do a longer row (expected to be an hour or so.) And by 9 am, when I reached the eagles’ nesting island, there was still no wind, not even a breeze. It was truly exhilarating to row so far in silence, on perfectly flat water, and no other boats to be seen or heard (due to being a WEEKday before the summer season has really gotten going.)
Rowing on flat water with Peaches along, camera in the bow of the Alden; Governor’s Island on Lake Winnipesaukee, Sept. 2009.
I should describe what rowing is like in a sliding-seat shell. The Alden is a 14 ft. long “double” (designed to hold 2 rowing stations) but we have only one rowing machine (the sliding seat on tracks with spreaders and oarlocks attached) and one set of oars. The oars are 9 feet long, overlapping in front of you, and you cross your hands one over the other to grasp the handles. Your feet are secured into “footrest shoes” fixed to the front rails of the sliding seat; you do sit backwards in the boat, facing the “stern.” For the power stroke, you slide your butt forward by bending your knees, reach out with your hands to dip the oar blades into the water, then push strongly with your legs while tightening your abdominal muscles and keeping your back and arms straight until your legs are fully extended. At the end of the power stroke, you do a slight “layback” by leaning backwards a bit, pull a last few inches on the oars by bending your elbows, then you release the blades out of the water by cocking your wrists up.
You do a “recovery” stroke with the oar blades “feathering” (skimming) just on the top of the water while you slide yourself forward again by bending your knees, then you are in position to start your next power stroke by simply straightening your wrists to dip your oar blades back into the water. This may not sound all that simple; it is a lot harder to learn than it sounds! But once learned, it’s like riding a bicycle… you gradually improve your skills, and you develop a rhythm and an efficient, smooth technique. You can then travel significant distances (I work up to 3-4 miles by the end of the summer) and you can move at a decent speed, in fact really fast compared to a kayak or any other kind of rowboat. The shell very much resembles a wide canoe and it is very stable in the water, so you can make headway even in quite rough water although that takes a lot of effort. I can also fish from it too!
That’s me and Peaches in the Alden at lower left, off Varney Point last September… Lockes Island at right, Mt. Washington in the distance.
So I enjoyed honing my technique by trying to dip the blades only halfway into the water, and letting them skim lightly over the surface on the recovery strokes, and I really noticed the sound of the bow cutting through the water, which I usually can’t hear at all due to the lapping of surface ripples or chop. I didn’t even have to turn around very often to watch ahead of me, because no other boats were around. Rowing is the best overall exercise I have ever done, while being the least stressful on any one area of your body; you work your leg and torso muscles primarily, and you develop your stamina (heart) because it is of course aerobic.
Arriving at the eagles’ island, I soon spotted the nest with my binoculars. During a previous row over, I had seen one eagle on the nest. This time I spotted two hatchlings in the nest, along with one resting adult, I assume the mother bird. Shortly she stood up and the babies started rousing, and I watched her feed them so I got a good look at two chicks. She apparently either had something already in the nest to feed them, or else she regurgitated for them, because she did not leave the nest before feeding. I could faintly hear the little scree-ing noises the babies made.
The two immature eagles which were raised in same nest in 2009.
I was quite happy to see there were two chicks again this year! I had not, however, seen the other parent on my last observation, so I decided to row around the island and check all the roosting lookout spots I knew of. And lucky me, there still was no breeze at all! It was so great to row alongside shore, stopping periodically to check the trees with my binoculars. I went 3/4 around the island and came to a mini-cove where I knew they liked to hang out, and suddenly there HE was, the magnificent male eagle, perched in a pine tree at the edge of the lake. He allowed me to row right underneath him and he just watched me, as they have done in the past. He was about 30 feet above me; with the glasses I could see the sun, which was side-lighting him, glint off his beak and his talons where he held onto the limb, and shine on his bright white head and tail feathers.
Well this just made my day! I purposely had not brought Peaches along this trip because I had wanted to enjoy the smooth water without her weight off-balancing the boat… plus she might have distracted the eagles, especially if she had seen them and gotten all excited. I sat and ate my yogurt breakfast keeping an eye on the male, who stayed on his roost watching the water. Finally I headed out to row back, and by 10:30 I was back, and even THEN there wasn’t a breath of air stirring. It was starting to get pretty hot by then, and the typical west wind came up later in the day.
Peaches in the rowing shell on a different day– she must sit in the stern where I can watch her, and so she can’t move around all over the place and rock the boat too much!
This had been MY idea of a Perfect Day on the water! The only thing that made it better, was that two days later I rowed back again, and spent more time observing the nest from a greater distance out, where I could see better INTO the nest (which is pretty deep), and lo and behold there were actually THREE baby eagles not just two!! This is a great thing! Judging by their size they are about one-third grown. I got to see both parents on the nest at the same time, and more feeding of chicks by the mother eagle, and dad flying back and forth to perch nearby. The only thing I haven’t seen is one of them actually catching a fish.
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My friend Faye, college roommate from way back– we got to visit recently after 30 years of exchanging Christmas cards and news!
…and luscious-looking tomato!
She is quite the wild gardener and naturalist, in addition to teaching accounting at Georgia State University– and receives a bit of local celebrity in Atlanta!
A little late posting I know, but something else we enjoyed with Antoine, our exchange student from Liege, Belgium. Don’t tell anyone– we let Antoine play hookey from school and took him with friends Bob and Martha to Mount Sunapee.
Skiing (well, some of us snowboarded!) at Sunapee on March 3. Sunapee Lake is below us.
The 4 stooges: Bob, Hubby, moi and Antoine.
Martha is in this one (on left) taken by Hubby.
It really was spring… this is only 5 days later, on March 8 at Gunstock Ski Resort when Bob and Martha paid Gilford a visit. (Antoine was in school this time, much to his regret…)
In January I was volunteered and elected to become President of the Granite State Carriage Association. There are close to 100 members currently in the Northeast, mostly in New Hampshire. The Club is hosting a dozen pleasure drive/rides this year in NH, Vermont and Maine.
- The Plastiki is engineered almost entirely from 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles that provide 68% of the boat’s buoyancy.
- The Plastiki is a modern vessel that has taken advantage of all available sustainable design technologies and cutting edge materials to achieve the project brief.
- A unique recyclable plastic material made from srPET makes up her super structure
- The mast is a reclaimed aluminum irrigation pipe
- The one-of-a-kind sail is hand-made from recycled PET cloth
- The secondary bonding is reinforced using a newly developed organic glue made from cashew nuts and sugar cane
- The Plastiki is ‘off-the-grid’ relying primarily on renewable energy systems including; solar panels, wind and trailing propeller turbines, bicycle generators, a urine to water recovery and rain water catchment system and a hydroponic rotating cylinder garden.
The Plastiki began her adventure nearly four years ago after taking inspiration from a report issued by UNEP called ‘Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Deep Waters and High Seas’ and Thor Heyerdahl’s epic 1947 expedition, The Kon-Tiki. True to Adventure Ecology’s values, a compelling and pioneering expedition was needed that would not only inform, but would also captivate, activate and educate the world that waste is fundamentally inefficient design.
With more efficient design and a smarter understanding of how we use materials, principally plastic, waste can be transformed into a valuable resource, in turn helping to lessen our plastic fingerprints on the world’s oceans.
