FasterSkier

Category: XCFeeds

A collection of live feeds from cross-country ski blogs around the web.

  • insurmountable opportunities

    The last thing before walking out the cabin door for the race tracks in Beitostolen I found a parchment of paper and wrote the words “insurmountable opportunities.” After the race ended with me fighting for the top spots at the Norwegian Cup and a dislocated shoulder, I’ve remembered these words. “Insurmountable Opportunities:” It’s become a little mantra of mine.

    After five days of lower-body centric skiing, today Scott and I headed to Sandvik, Norway for an appointment with the MRI machine some very nice people working for Norge’s IdrettToppen- the country’s high performance of sport center – helped set up for me. Ten minutes after I set foot in the hyper efficient clinic I was getting strapped down, and sent off on my way towards the blinking blue light of the several million dollar magnetic resonance imaging machine. For twenty minutes I lay there as motionless as possible while this giant white contraption whizzed and whirred, with sounds emanating around my head; the audio sounding a bit like a cross between a pinball machine and the old-school video game Astroid.

    A couple minutes later I left with a CD for my doctor to look at. It seems the dislocation has caused a bit of fluid to enter the tendons surrounding my rotator cuff and there’s bruising on the humurous head, but -and here’s the beautiful part – there’s been no tears in the ligament or tendons. I’m clear to race in a week’s time at the World Championships in Holmenkollen.

    “This is Great news!” writes my physical therapist Michael Hansen. “It is typical to see bone bruising like this after a dislocation on an MRI because they are so sensitive. And inflammation in the cuff is also normal being that those muscles hold the humeral head in the socket along with the ligaments. The key is no severe tearing or fracture of the bone. Yes, it is going to be sore, weak, and vunerable. But the good news is that it is a first time dislocation, it self reduced, you are young and healthy, and with proper taping/support, and avoidance of extreme positions, and rehab you can continue to compensate and compete. If you are too unstable, then stop. You will know. You are not going to loose much fitness in the next week for World’s. Train within your limits and go crazy when you compete. Let me know how you are doing. I want to help.” Because of people like Michael Hansen, the MOD and people of this character and quality, I am doing better than alright. I am doing Great.

  • Birkie Snow Watch Has Begun!

    It’s that time of year again!  The time of year where we find ourselves waking up with night sweats over whether or not there is going to be a Birkie.  Over the last few days here in Chippewa Falls, we’ve had temperatures consistently up in the mid forties and even low fifties.  Suffice it to say that the local snow cover has been disintegrating rapidly.
    However, although the snow is in a

  • Sweetheart Sprints

    On Wednesday GMVS hosted the third annual Sweetheart Sprint Race on a fast and twisting track around the soccer field.  Sixty skiers, between the ages of lollipopper and parent, participated in a team relay and an individual challenge.  Teams were created with the hope of having many “like” speeded teams – to make the racing exciting to watch and participate in.  Each team had a GMVS skier or a coach as a captain – that helped keep order and also gave the younger skiers a chance to be on a team with a fast racer!
    Opening Ceremony
    The event was full of cheer and aimed to be on the fun side of competition.  There was an Opening Ceremony with flags from five nations, many festive outfits such as cowboys, valentines, rabbits and a fox, and awards for the top three teams and individual performances.  The Headmaster, Dave Gavett, who spoke to the character and energy of Nordic skiers, greeted the parents who were in attendance.
    After all the snow settled an all-female team took top honors in the relay event.  Elena Luethi captained her three-skier squad of Isabel Jamieson and Chloe Riven to victory in the “A” Final.  Second place went to Bear Simmons team of Tanner and Elliot Ketchel and Tristen.  Taking the bronze was Devlin Shea’s team, the Snow Leopards, composed of Noah Williams, Julia Brophy (who knocked her dad’s team out of the medals), and Ani Williams.

    Lydia gliding after Holden.

    Coach Beckwith escapes the start of the first heat.

    Isabel Jamieson

    Julia Brophy

    High speed tag!

    GMVS’er Dani LeBlanc taking charge.

    Looks like a snow dance to me.

    TK Despres — putting a little alpine flavor in the Mix.

    Luethi, Riven and Jamieson.  The eventual Champions scouting the competition.

    Tristen taking a little air!

    Ms. Degen poling strong.

    Getting ready for the individual start.

    And she’s off!

    Fun + Competition = Awesome

    Ready to chase the big kids.

    Here I COME!!

    Awards.

    Kate Williams addressing the gang.

    The Bronze medal team — Shea, Brophy, Williams x 2.

    Taking the Silver back to Warren.

    The girls who stole the show.  Great skiing all of ya!

    Exciting to see so many faces up here!

    Coaches Beckwith and Weston and Headmaster Dave Gavett

    Special thanks to GMVS for hosting the event, NENSA for providing bibs and race support, and the kitchen staff for providing huge chocolate chip cookies and hot chocolate!  The conditions were once again terrific, with ample and fast snow cover.  Stay tuned for more fun racing action here at GMVS!!
    All photos courtesy of Todd Carroll. GMVS.

  • Sweetheart Sprints

    On Wednesday GMVS hosted the third annual Sweetheart Sprint Race on a fast and twisting track around the soccer field.  Sixty skiers, between the ages of lollipopper and parent, participated in a team relay and an individual challenge.  Teams were created with the hope of having many “like” speeded teams – to make the racing exciting to watch and participate in.  Each team had a GMVS skier or a coach as a captain – that helped keep order and also gave the younger skiers a chance to be on a team with a fast racer!
    Opening Ceremony
    The event was full of cheer and aimed to be on the fun side of competition.  There was an Opening Ceremony with flags from five nations, many festive outfits such as cowboys, valentines, rabbits and a fox, and awards for the top three teams and individual performances.  The Headmaster, Dave Gavett, who spoke to the character and energy of Nordic skiers, greeted the parents who were in attendance.
    After all the snow settled an all-female team took top honors in the relay event.  Elena Luethi captained her three-skier squad of Isabel Jamieson and Chloe Riven to victory in the “A” Final.  Second place went to Bear Simmons team of Tanner and Elliot Ketchel and Tristen.  Taking the bronze was Devlin Shea’s team, the Snow Leopards, composed of Noah Williams, Julia Brophy (who knocked her dad’s team out of the medals), and Ani Williams.

    Lydia gliding after Holden.

    Coach Beckwith escapes the start of the first heat.

    Isabel Jamieson

    Julia Brophy

    High speed tag!

    GMVS’er Dani LeBlanc taking charge.

    Looks like a snow dance to me.

    TK Despres — putting a little alpine flavor in the Mix.

    Luethi, Riven and Jamieson.  The eventual Champions scouting the competition.

    Tristen taking a little air!

    Ms. Degen poling strong.

    Getting ready for the individual start.

    And she’s off!

    Fun + Competition = Awesome

    Ready to chase the big kids.

    Here I COME!!

    Awards.

    Kate Williams addressing the gang.

    The Bronze medal team — Shea, Brophy, Williams x 2.

    Taking the Silver back to Warren.

    The girls who stole the show.  Great skiing all of ya!

    Exciting to see so many faces up here!

    Coaches Beckwith and Weston and Headmaster Dave Gavett

    Special thanks to GMVS for hosting the event, NENSA for providing bibs and race support, and the kitchen staff for providing huge chocolate chip cookies and hot chocolate!  The conditions were once again terrific, with ample and fast snow cover.  Stay tuned for more fun racing action here at GMVS!!
    All photos courtesy of Todd Carroll. GMVS.

  • Sweetheart Sprints

    On Wednesday GMVS hosted the third annual Sweetheart Sprint Race on a fast and twisting track around the soccer field.  Sixty skiers, between the ages of lollipopper and parent, participated in a team relay and an individual challenge.  Teams were created with the hope of having many “like” speeded teams – to make the racing exciting to watch and participate in.  Each team had a GMVS skier or a coach as a captain – that helped keep order and also gave the younger skiers a chance to be on a team with a fast racer!
    Opening Ceremony
    The event was full of cheer and aimed to be on the fun side of competition.  There was an Opening Ceremony with flags from five nations, many festive outfits such as cowboys, valentines, rabbits and a fox, and awards for the top three teams and individual performances.  The Headmaster, Dave Gavett, who spoke to the character and energy of Nordic skiers, greeted the parents who were in attendance.
    After all the snow settled an all-female team took top honors in the relay event.  Elena Luethi captained her three-skier squad of Isabel Jamieson and Chloe Riven to victory in the “A” Final.  Second place went to Bear Simmons team of Tanner and Elliot Ketchel and Tristen.  Taking the bronze was Devlin Shea’s team, the Snow Leopards, composed of Noah Williams, Julia Brophy (who knocked her dad’s team out of the medals), and Ani Williams.

    Lydia gliding after Holden.

    Coach Beckwith escapes the start of the first heat.

    Isabel Jamieson

    Julia Brophy

    High speed tag!

    GMVS’er Dani LeBlanc taking charge.

    Looks like a snow dance to me.

    TK Despres — putting a little alpine flavor in the Mix.

    Luethi, Riven and Jamieson.  The eventual Champions scouting the competition.

    Tristen taking a little air!

    Ms. Degen poling strong.

    Getting ready for the individual start.

    And she’s off!

    Fun + Competition = Awesome

    Ready to chase the big kids.

    Here I COME!!

    Awards.

    Kate Williams addressing the gang.

    The Bronze medal team — Shea, Brophy, Williams x 2.

    Taking the Silver back to Warren.

    The girls who stole the show.  Great skiing all of ya!

    Exciting to see so many faces up here!

    Coaches Beckwith and Weston and Headmaster Dave Gavett

    Special thanks to GMVS for hosting the event, NENSA for providing bibs and race support, and the kitchen staff for providing huge chocolate chip cookies and hot chocolate!  The conditions were once again terrific, with ample and fast snow cover.  Stay tuned for more fun racing action here at GMVS!!
    All photos courtesy of Todd Carroll. GMVS.

  • North American Race Penalties Over Time

    Previously, I discussed the differences in race penalties between North America and Europe.  Now we’ll continue with a really quick look at how race penalties have changed over time in North America.

    This will be really short and sweet, so here’s the graph:

    So clearly, this only goes back around 10 seasons (and doesn’t include the races from this season).  Reconstructing the FIS points for non-zero penalty races pre-2000 involves a ton of work, as the points don’t appear on the results pages of FIS.  So that’s a project for sometime in the indeterminate future.

    Personally, I was totally surprised to see this amount of variation in race penalties in such short time spans.  Here’s a (speculative) story we might tell based on this graph:

    Leading up to the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake, we had a bunch of World Cup races in North America that drew European skiers (and the faster North American skiers) out of Europe.  This means they were more likely to do other races while they were over here, creating low penalty races.  Post-Olympics, this phenomenon ended and we saw race penalties rise steadily.

    Beginning in 2004-2005, Canada began hosting World Cup races, in part to prepare for the Vancouver Olympics.  After a few years lag time, this cause race penalties to drop again, as these high level races attracted more fast European and North American skiers back across the Atlantic to race.

    Now, that was just me speculating.  For one, I don’t (currently) have much data before the 2002 Olympics.  If we did, and we saw the race penalties rising moving backwards from 2001, that might support my speculation.  Additionally, my trusted ski racing authority (i.e. my friend) tells me that this story is likely mostly bogus.

    Then there’s the obvious problem with the fact that FIS changed the rules for calculating race penalties beginning in the 2008-2009 season.  They switched from averaging the middle three points from the top five skiers to averaging the best three points from among the top five skiers.  Also, FIS switched from using an F-factor of 600 for all races to using 800/1200/1400 depending on the type of race.  If my sources are correct, this happened beginning in with the 2005-2006 season.  So really, this might just be reflecting rule changes on the part of FIS.

    But these rule changes (if my dates are right) would only explain some of what we see.  Penalties were rising in North American well before 2005, for instance.

    Some other things that could be going on here include: strategic decisions of national teams (or individuals on national teams) to race more in North America or Europe or perhaps genuine fluctuations in skier quality.

    Related posts:

    1. <La Clusaz Recap: North American Men
    2. <La Clusaz Recap: North American Women
    3. <Mid-Season Recap: North American Distance


  • Valley Athletes Dominate VT State Biathlon Championships


    Last night were the Vermont State Biathlon Championships at the Ethan Allen Firing Range. Several Mad River Valley and GMVS participants competed and were received awards for individual and season-long series titles.

    Antoine St-Louis (GMVS) won the VT State Championship, the 2011 Series (ages 17-20) and was the best overall shooter for the 6-race series!

    Nathanael Kuzio of Harwood Union place 1st for VT State Championship and also won the 2011 Series for ages 11-13.

    Parker Sheinfeld of Harwood Union placed 2nd for VT State Championship and was runner-up in the 2011 Series for ages 11-13.

    Also taking part were Kaitlin Fitzgerald (GMVS), Coach Timothy Weston (GMVS) and Coach Timothy Henderson (GMVS-Alpine). More to come once results have been published.

    All series results are found on the Ethan Allen Biathlon website.

  • Valley Athletes Dominate VT State Biathlon Championships


    Last night were the Vermont State Biathlon Championships at the Ethan Allen Firing Range. Several Mad River Valley and GMVS participants competed and were received awards for individual and season-long series titles.

    Antoine St-Louis (GMVS) won the VT State Championship, the 2011 Series (ages 17-20) and was the best overall shooter for the 6-race series!

    Nathanael Kuzio of Harwood Union place 1st for VT State Championship and also won the 2011 Series for ages 11-13.

    Parker Sheinfeld of Harwood Union placed 2nd for VT State Championship and was runner-up in the 2011 Series for ages 11-13.

    Also taking part were Kaitlin Fitzgerald (GMVS), Coach Timothy Weston (GMVS) and Coach Timothy Henderson (GMVS-Alpine). More to come once results have been published.

    All series results are found on the Ethan Allen Biathlon website.

  • Suns out, guns out, funs out

    Over the last month, the skiing here at Craftsbury has gone from really good to incredible. We haven’t gotten any huge storms but we also haven’t had a big  thaw resulting  in considerable snow pack with all of the Center’s core and peripheral trails open and in great shape. Yesterday was one of the first few days that has been well above freezing but none of us were complaining in any way; I don’t think we could have asked for better spring skiing!

    Perfect tracks right from our front door

    Perfect tracks right from our front door

    Dylan, Tim, and I started out for a long skate OD this morning with the goal of skiing all of the Center’s open trails. Temps started out around freezing with the sun starting to climb in the sky and not a cloud to be seen.  In a few hours we were starting to shed layers and the snow was really starting to transform and slow down.  By the end of the ski, it felt way more like a spring day skiing out west than mid February in Vermont! My highlight from the ski (aside from the incredible weather and perfect grooming) had to be racing down Elinor’s field right behind Tim and witnessing one of the more impressive Superman diggers I have seen in a while.  Too bad I didn’t have my camera out for it, but for those of you curious it looked somewhat like this, especially with our flow and shades…

    Grand Tour- hour 1

    Grand Tour- hour 1

    GT- hour 2

    GT- hour 2

    Cranking out some turns down Elinors

    Cranking out some turns down Elinor's towards the house

    Although temps were warm and the snow really settled down, there should be enough to last us well into the spring. A great day of skiing up in Craftsbury!

    Stockpiled snow in preperation for the 2011 Sprint Tour

    Checking out stockpiled snow in preparation for the 2011 Sprint Tour

  • Thanks and congratulations to Aroostook County!

    div class=”separator” style=”clear: both; text-align: left;”I am just back from racing in two Biathlon World Cups in northern Maine with two thoughts in mind: the organizing committees, volunteers and communities did an excellent, world-class job hosting two events and I couldn’t ski two lanes down the range nbsp;or ski the farthest hills of the course without a ‘congrats,’ ‘good luck,’ ‘go get’em,’ or ‘go haley!’ So I’d like a send an informal but HUGE CONGRATULATIONS and THANK YOU to everyone involved in the Maine World Cups!!! I am grateful to everyone of them./divdiv class=”separator” style=”clear: both; text-align: left;”br //divdiv class=”separator” style=”clear: both; text-align: left;”I guess I have a third thought, too: I didn’t race as well as I would have liked to in Maine, but regardless our team did great and it was awesome to compete in a World Cup on home snow!nbsp;/divdiv class=”separator” style=”clear: both; text-align: center;”br //divdiv class=”separator” style=”clear: both; text-align: center;”Some great volunteers in Fort Kent./divdiv class=”separator” style=”clear: both; text-align: center;”

  • Beitostolen

    After only a day in Oslo part of the US team headed 3.5 hours north following twisty roads along lakes and fjords to the little town of Beitostolen for a week of training and racing.

    beito5

    Beitostolen is a small resort town with alpine trails and a World Cup Nordic venue.

    beito1

    It was really nice to see the sun and the mountains after a few weeks in flat and grey Estonia, Finland, and Latvia.

    beito4

    Here’s the view from our condo living room.

    182080_10150101854504308_509374307_6051339_7467196_n

    The Norwegian National Team spends a lot of time training in Beitostolen and we had a chance to race against quite a few of them in some Norwegian Cup races.  The first day of racing was a skate sprint and I ended up 5th in the final despite having led for the first part of the heat.  It was really exciting to be racing in the same heats as Maikan Caspersen Falla, Ingvild Flugstad Oestburg, Astrid Jacobsen, and other Norwegians who routinely do well on the World Cup.  The rest of the weekend racing included a 5/10km classic and a 10/20km skate.  The Americans as a team had a great weekend of racing with 9 or 10 top ten finishes and almost that many top five finishes.  Our cargo van is now loaded with lots of Norwegian glassware which were the weekend’s prizes.

    beito3

    When the races were finished we had more time to explore the other trails which traverse the higher plateaus surrounding town.  I love the double classic tracked trails that are everywhere in this country.

    beito2

    The whole team is together now in Drammen gearing up for World Cup races this weekend.  I’m racing in a 10km classic tomorrow and then heading back to Oslo to get ready for World Champs action!

  • What a difference a month makes!

  • What a difference a month makes!

  • What a difference a month makes!

  • Busy, Busy

    This is a very busy time of the year for us. Yesterday we had a group from a sports college in Norway visiting to see how we did things at SMS. We have 5 6th/7th grade girls here for a Devo program this week. We have had nordic applicants visiting and we have our 4 kids who have been on USST trips returning for the last half of the season.
    This weekend, the Devo kids and our J3’s are heading to the midget Championships in Canada. The rest of us will go to the EC races.
    Today it warmed up fast! The skiing is great, but the snow was slow as only fresh warm powder snow can be. We still had a fun ski with some technique work and some group pick ups.









    After our technique and pick ups, we took a couple of trips up the chair lift and practiced our high speed turns. Click on any picture to enlarge it!


  • Beitostølen Recap: Freestyle Races

    There were only a handful of Americans (and no Canadians) who did the freestyle distance race in Beitostølen, Norway on Sunday, so we’ll cover them and Andrew Musgrave in one post.

    First a rough look at how each performance stacked up in terms of FIS points:

    By FIS points, that’s about as fast as Arritola has skied, although that’s an imperfect measure of course. Tad Elliott is typically a much stronger skater, so it’s not surprising he had a somewhat better day as well. Musgrave’s race looks ok, but not spectacular.

    Before I break these down further using percent back difference plots, I need to say a few things about some peculiarities in graphing head-to-head match-ups measured by the difference in percent back. When I make these graphs, I have to make a decision about how deep in the field to go. For instance, am I really interested in how Musgrave has fared against the folks in 200th place in a race like this?

    As much as I can, I try to make a reasonable decision here, but it can vary from graph to graph. If someone finished 25th, I may only compare them to the top 40; if someone finished 60th out of 130 I might go all the way back to 80th place. I also on occasion will go a bit deeper than usual for skiers who have not raced in Europe as much, in order to catch a bit more data to work with.

    Long story short, since many of the Americans were higher up the results sheet today, I didn’t have to go as far down to get some decent comparisons. This means the graphs can look quite a bit different from Tuesday’s versions.

    Anyway, let’s get Andrew Musgrave out of the way first:

    Andre Musgrave

    This is pretty much consistent with the FIS point graph, as it looks to be a mostly average race. The picture for Arritola and Stephen is quite a bit different:

    Morgan Arritola

    Liz Stephen

    Obviously, both of these gals skied quite a bit better on Sunday. The red trend line for the median dips strongly downward for both of them mainly on the strength of just these two races alone.

    Keep in mind that these graphs are making specific comparisons to a specific group of skiers. My intention is not to use these to extrapolate how well someone will ski against some other person who wasn’t there that day. So Arritola and Stephen really did ski quite a bit better against these specific skiers on Sunday than they have in the past. What that says about how they’ll ski against a more complete World Cup field is an open question, although of course it’s always better to be skiing faster, as they seemed to do on Sunday.

    The graphs for Diggins and Elliot aren’t as interesting, as they have considerably less data from past match-ups, and what I can graph mostly just confirms what’s obvious: they skied a lot better on Sunday.

    Related posts:

    1. <Kuusamo WC Recap: North Americans
    2. <Davos Recap: Distance – North Americans
    3. <U23 Pursuit Recap: Men


  • Don’t Staple your GUs–Use a Safety Pin

    Here’s a veteran move that I thought all of you should know in light of all the marathons that are coming up.
    For a long time, people have thought it’s a good idea to staple their GU packets to their bibs.  In theory, it seems like a great plan.  You grab your bib, give it a quick staple, and off you go!  But in actual practice, stapling your GU packets kind of sucks.
    The reason?
    The staples just

  • Lillehammer- Pre World Championships Camp

    Hey everyone.
    Sorry for the delay in updates, our whole team has been hard at work training for world championships! We are all now in Lillehammer, Norway for the last preperation for World Champs. It is very nice to have the whole team together. Johnny is at full strength, Bill is a new father, Bryan is having a career best season and Todd is healthy and ready to defend his title. As far as myself, I am doing very well, my cross country is much better than earlier in the winter and I feel like my jumping is getting better and better with the trainings I have been doing. We will have several jumping sessions this week with one in team competition before we head down to Oslo.
    Our team will be here for a week before we head down to Oslo on the 22nd and get ready to kick ass in the birthplace of Nordic Sports at Holmenkollen!
    If your in Lillehammer, Come check out the team at the Lysgardbakken or Sjujsoen x-c center!

    Taylor

  • Gatineau NorAms

    Last weekend the GRP crew split between the Dartmouth Carnival in Hanover and Canadian NorAms in the Gatineau.  Matt, Chelsea, Pepa and I lit out for the territories early on Thursday morning to test skis and the race courses for a mini-tour stage race in the Gatineau Park, just north of Ottawa, Ontario.

    With three  races on tap, it was a busy weekend with little downtime between racing and prepping skis for the next day.  We were greeted with cold temps and thin snow at the Nakkertok ski club, a funky little operation whose trails mainly wind up and over a single steep ridge, with tough climbs and fast descents.  On Friday, in the 3km skate prologue, the stomach-dropping downhills were almost enough to distract from the leg-burning acidosis that highlights this new and increasingly present race format.  It’s short enough to require precise pacing, but it’s long enough to really, really hurt.  Pepa’s unofficial splits had me finishing a bit higher than either of us expected, but after we found and corrected her mathematical error and confirmed the results on her new best friend and attractive single Canadian coach Eric’s iphone, I had snagged the last spot on the podium for a satisfying 3rd place.

    With over 500 starters, Saturday’s skate sprint was an even longer day than usual.  All three of us moved on from the qualifier, to mixed excitement and disappointment from our expressive coach.  Three more pairs of skis to touch up and prep for the rounds is a lot for one tech, but a huge thanks to her for making some fast boards all weekend long and especially in the sprint race.  Matt and I were placed in the same quarter, but with an extremely tight course, most of the decisive moves were made in the start and finish lanes.  Matty wound up 4th and I moved on in 2nd, and again as 2nd in my semi to ultimately finish 3rd again in the A final.  All in all a solid start to the tour.

    Sprint Podium: Cockney, Nishikawa, Reynolds

    Sprint Podium: Cockney, Nishikawa, Reynolds

    With two thirds, I started an unsurprising third in the final stage, the handicap pursuit.  Three days of consecutive racing is a lot; but it’s even more when the final day is a 30km.  With the top ten skiers going out in less than 45 seconds, it was going to be a tight race.  I planned to start easy and hang with the pack I  knew would form behind me.  Well the pack formed, but I didn’t hang.  Only a few kilometers after they skied me in, I got taken out on a long downhill.  While I regained contact after the fall, I’d burned a lot of energy doing it and was definitely feeling the previous two days in my legs.  I had to settle in for a solo 15km, going back and forth with one other guy to finish 10th overall and 10th on the day.  Chelsea had a good showing, moving up a few spots in the overall, while Matty sat out largely due to some nagging back issues he’s been battling the past couple of weeks.

    I’ve got to say, I like stage racing.  The Canadians have overwhelmingly adopted the new race format, with 4 of their 5 NorAm weekends going off as mini-tours.  It definitely adds an exciting element of ‘overall’ standings and has breathed life into the otherwise deceased handicap start format in cross country.  I’m looking forward to our own iteration of the Tour format at Craftsbury in mid March! For now though, it’s back to the grind of long easy hours at the Outdoor Center, getting ready for a big month of racing ahead.

    Volume week with the boys. How many hours can you ski in a day?

    Volume week with the boys. How many hours can you ski in a day?

  • Picking up the pace!

    Hello from Drammen everyone! 

    I’ve just arrived in this new city to prepare for the upcoming weekend’s World Cup races.  This is the first time that the whole Cross Country World Championships team has been together and we are quite the Crew. 

    The past week in Sjujsoen absolutely flew by and I have to say, it was a wonderful introduction to the country and a very, very restful place to become accustomed to the 10-hour time difference. I’m happy to report that I only had one fitful night of “sleep” that involved waking up at 3am and staying up through the entire next day.  I continue to be impressed with Kikkan’s ability to sleep anywhere – and to sleep long hours.  (She’s good at this!)
    Skiing in Sjujsoen at sunset
    As far as a training camp environment goes, you basically couldn’t beat the hotel we were staying at. Every day we walked out the door to over 200 kilometers of perfectly groomed trails that were great for easy and/or recovery training.  The downside of being an athlete in training (preparing for upcoming races) is that you must be careful to not “over do it” with training too many hours or skiing to hard.  I miss that about being a coach when there was absolutely no downside to skiing 6 hours per day if I felt like it and not caring if I was so tired at the end of the day to even put my head on the pillow. (However, life as an athlete has many, many benefits – for example, I wouldn’t be here otherwise!)
    For our hard interval sessions we would drive 15 minutes down the hill to the Birkebeiner Stadium that was used in the 1994 Winter Olympic games in Lillehammer. Last night Kikkan and I even watched a documentary about the men’s 4x10k relay about the most famous ski race in history between Norway and Italy for the Gold medal… Norway expected to win the race by minutes with plenty of time to carry the country’s flag down the finish stretch but Italy, the underdog, hung with each skier, each lap of the race and Silvio Fauner beat Bjorn Daehlie in a sprint to the line in front of 100,000 Norwegians.  (In the interview he described how the crowd literally went silent when he lost.)  It was sweet to recognize the trails  – the hills, bridges, and terrain that we had done our intervals on the day before. It was SWEET!  The whole Olympic venue is still alive and thriving – bustling with energy and people skiing everywhere. 

    Fauner and Daehlie in the final stretch ’94

    Me in the Olympic Stadium…. 
    Now that I’m in Drammen it’s time to switch gears and the pace of life is fast forwarding quickly!  I haven’t raced in over a month which makes me a bit anxious about this weekend’s competitions but it will be good to get some starts before Worlds the following week.  It’s funny to think that I’m using World Cups as my “warm up races” for Worlds but I really value the hard training camp I had at home – which will hopefully set me up for a peak here soon.  I theoretically have fifteen races in the next month and a half and I can’t wait for the wild ride to come!

    I’ll leave you all with a few pictures from the last couple of days.  A special thanks to Deb, Kikkan’s Mom, who supplied us with AMPLE Valentine’s Day card making supplies. We had a busy afternoon celebrating eventhough our husbands were thousands of miles away! 

    Our beds, AKA “craft tables”

    13 Valentines in all!

    This is the Valentine that I received from Rob. For those of you that know him, this is one of the best compliments I can receive! 🙂 

    We made Valentines for all the guys in our group.  I think that Kikkan and I enjoyed making them slightly more than the guys appreciated receiving them! (A look of pure excitement from Erik Flora)

    Holding up our creations in the country side, complete with Fast and Female Valentine’s Day ware! 

    We also skied to the store… just because we could. It’s sweet to leave your skis lined up against the side of the store with the other skier-patrons! 

    Here I am excited about an El Paso enchilada dinner kit 

    And here’s Kikkan biting into a huge chunk of the famous brown cheese!
    More soon/thanks for reading,
    Holly