It was off to Pine Hill Park today for our big day of rocking singletrack trails and pushing our limits. Pine Hill is located in Rutland so it started with a 1 hr + bus ride. The kids were coming up with riddle after riddle during the trip so my brain ached by the time we arrived.
We split into three big groups – expert, intermediate and beginner. Coaches Colin & Joe along with Counselor Zack took off with the experts to warm up on some smooth singletrack before heading to the expert trails named Stegosaurus and Broken Handlebars. The intermediates b-lined it to the Rock Pond and Overlook where they found cool bridges to ride. Along the way, some of the comments heard in the woods were…
“That was insane!”
“Take the hard way, challenge yourself.”
“I don’t think I let go of my brakes once!”
“That was so much fun!”
“I really admire Lance Armstrong. How does he do this?!”
“Ahhhhhh… I got it, I got it!”
“That was really hard! Whoa! I’m so proud of myself.”
I was with the beginners and we started our ascent gradually. I was very impressed with my group of Audrey, Carly, Meaghan, and Caroline. Our beginner group definitely transformed into intermediates in about an hour, and we enjoyed the long downhill singletrack called Svelte Tiger all the way to lunch.
Unfortunately, the trails did “bite” one of our athletes after lunch when Jake took a small gap jump and crashed, breaking his collarbone. Jake is an experienced mountain biker with excellent skills who helped a lot of the new riders learn and improve their mountain biking technique on campus on Monday and Tuesday in preparation for today’s ride. We will miss you Jake, but look forward to seeing you next year at ELITEAM. Heal fast!
We left for campus at 1:45pm and almost 50% of the crew was asleep for a portion of the ride home, exhausted from the hills and pushing it to the limit. Upon arrival, we got in our second rotation of games, climbing and cooking.
To finish off the day, we learned the Dance and held our World Cup Soccer Tournament. It was a strong field of Team Japan, Team Canada, Team Jibouti, and Team Ivory Coast. I think Ivory Coast won, but I do know that Team Japan won Bronze in an exciting penalty kick shootout that went to the 11th shooter from Team Japan to decide.
Tomorrow is Circuits, Testing and our new ELITEAM Biathlon competition, complete with paintball guns and targets.
FYI- Cell phones are not permitted here at camp. The kids were asked to hand in their phones today. They’ll be returned to campers on Saturday morning.