FasterSkier

Category: XCFeeds

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

  • a super late La Cluzas race update

    My final race before the Christmas break was in La Cluzas, France.  The 6 hour car ride was from Davos was much more enjoyable than having to deal with the crowds at the airport, airline delays, and lost baggage. The coaches and I decided that it would be a better choice for me to skip the 30km skate race on Saturday to save some energy for the 4x10km relay the next day. The order for the relay was me 1st, Devon 2nd, Ivan 3rd, and Alex 4th.  The temperature was warming up really fast on the morning of the race. By race time the temperature was almost at zero and it was starting to snow. I haven’t had many races with these conditions so it was extremely hard to find a good pair of skis. The track was starting to get glazed during my warm-up so I had some more grip wax put on my skis. The first 5 km of the race flew by without any problems, I felt very comfortable with the pace and was able to stay with the leaders. While climbing the hills I could feel my skis starting to collect snow and start to ice.  The icing seemed to get progressively worse until the 7km mark. When I started making my move to get closer to the front of the pack, my skis stopped sliding completely and I fell head over heels in the track. I lost contact with the group after this wipeout and I tried hard to catch up. I lost valuable time at the top of each climb kicking my skis on the ground trying to get the ice to clear off of my bases.  At the end of my leg I lost 1:18 in the last 2.5km, ending up in 14th. The skis I picked for this race were definitely the wrong ones for this condition. Like I said earlier, I haven’t had too much practice in these tricky temperatures. My teammates skied amazingly and brought us up to a 9th place at the finish!
    This is the end of my Fall World Cup trip. I had such a great time travelling and racing and sharing great memories with my teammates. 
    I owe a huge thank you to the coaches for taking me along on this trip and for the wax techs for always doing a great job on the skis.
    Now I am off to Thunder Bay to race the U23 Trials races followed by some more racing in Europe.
    Happy New Year!

  • a super late La Cluzas race update

    My final race before the Christmas break was in La Cluzas, France.  The 6 hour car ride was from Davos was much more enjoyable than having to deal with the crowds at the airport, airline delays, and lost baggage. The coaches and I decided that it would be a better choice for me to skip the 30km skate race on Saturday to save some energy for the 4x10km relay the next day. The order for the relay was me 1st, Devon 2nd, Ivan 3rd, and Alex 4th.  The temperature was warming up really fast on the morning of the race. By race time the temperature was almost at zero and it was starting to snow. I haven’t had many races with these conditions so it was extremely hard to find a good pair of skis. The track was starting to get glazed during my warm-up so I had some more grip wax put on my skis. The first 5 km of the race flew by without any problems, I felt very comfortable with the pace and was able to stay with the leaders. While climbing the hills I could feel my skis starting to collect snow and start to ice.  The icing seemed to get progressively worse until the 7km mark. When I started making my move to get closer to the front of the pack, my skis stopped sliding completely and I fell head over heels in the track. I lost contact with the group after this wipeout and I tried hard to catch up. I lost valuable time at the top of each climb kicking my skis on the ground trying to get the ice to clear off of my bases.  At the end of my leg I lost 1:18 in the last 2.5km, ending up in 14th. The skis I picked for this race were definitely the wrong ones for this condition. Like I said earlier, I haven’t had too much practice in these tricky temperatures. My teammates skied amazingly and brought us up to a 9th place at the finish!
    This is the end of my Fall World Cup trip. I had such a great time travelling and racing and sharing great memories with my teammates. 
    I owe a huge thank you to the coaches for taking me along on this trip and for the wax techs for always doing a great job on the skis.
    Now I am off to Thunder Bay to race the U23 Trials races followed by some more racing in Europe.
    Happy New Year!

  • a super late La Cluzas race update

    My final race before the Christmas break was in La Cluzas, France.  The 6 hour car ride was from Davos was much more enjoyable than having to deal with the crowds at the airport, airline delays, and lost baggage. The coaches and I decided that it would be a better choice for me to skip the 30km skate race on Saturday to save some energy for the 4x10km relay the next day. The order for the relay was me 1st, Devon 2nd, Ivan 3rd, and Alex 4th.  The temperature was warming up really fast on the morning of the race. By race time the temperature was almost at zero and it was starting to snow. I haven’t had many races with these conditions so it was extremely hard to find a good pair of skis. The track was starting to get glazed during my warm-up so I had some more grip wax put on my skis. The first 5 km of the race flew by without any problems, I felt very comfortable with the pace and was able to stay with the leaders. While climbing the hills I could feel my skis starting to collect snow and start to ice.  The icing seemed to get progressively worse until the 7km mark. When I started making my move to get closer to the front of the pack, my skis stopped sliding completely and I fell head over heels in the track. I lost contact with the group after this wipeout and I tried hard to catch up. I lost valuable time at the top of each climb kicking my skis on the ground trying to get the ice to clear off of my bases.  At the end of my leg I lost 1:18 in the last 2.5km, ending up in 14th. The skis I picked for this race were definitely the wrong ones for this condition. Like I said earlier, I haven’t had too much practice in these tricky temperatures. My teammates skied amazingly and brought us up to a 9th place at the finish!
    This is the end of my Fall World Cup trip. I had such a great time travelling and racing and sharing great memories with my teammates. 
    I owe a huge thank you to the coaches for taking me along on this trip and for the wax techs for always doing a great job on the skis.
    Now I am off to Thunder Bay to race the U23 Trials races followed by some more racing in Europe.
    Happy New Year!

  • a super late La Cluzas race update

    My final race before the Christmas break was in La Cluzas, France.  The 6 hour car ride was from Davos was much more enjoyable than having to deal with the crowds at the airport, airline delays, and lost baggage. The coaches and I decided that it would be a better choice for me to skip the 30km skate race on Saturday to save some energy for the 4x10km relay the next day. The order for the relay was me 1st, Devon 2nd, Ivan 3rd, and Alex 4th.  The temperature was warming up really fast on the morning of the race. By race time the temperature was almost at zero and it was starting to snow. I haven’t had many races with these conditions so it was extremely hard to find a good pair of skis. The track was starting to get glazed during my warm-up so I had some more grip wax put on my skis. The first 5 km of the race flew by without any problems, I felt very comfortable with the pace and was able to stay with the leaders. While climbing the hills I could feel my skis starting to collect snow and start to ice.  The icing seemed to get progressively worse until the 7km mark. When I started making my move to get closer to the front of the pack, my skis stopped sliding completely and I fell head over heels in the track. I lost contact with the group after this wipeout and I tried hard to catch up. I lost valuable time at the top of each climb kicking my skis on the ground trying to get the ice to clear off of my bases.  At the end of my leg I lost 1:18 in the last 2.5km, ending up in 14th. The skis I picked for this race were definitely the wrong ones for this condition. Like I said earlier, I haven’t had too much practice in these tricky temperatures. My teammates skied amazingly and brought us up to a 9th place at the finish!
    This is the end of my Fall World Cup trip. I had such a great time travelling and racing and sharing great memories with my teammates. 
    I owe a huge thank you to the coaches for taking me along on this trip and for the wax techs for always doing a great job on the skis.
    Now I am off to Thunder Bay to race the U23 Trials races followed by some more racing in Europe.
    Happy New Year!

  • World Junior/Youth Team Trials

    Happy New Year!

    MWSC Juniors get off to a great start for the new year. Four Qualify for the 2011 USA Junior World Championship Team that will be competing in Nove Mesto CZ! Corrine Malcolm, Grace Boutot, Ben Greenwald and Raleigh Goessling all had strong performances in trials and will represent the USA in the Junior competitions January 29th through February 5th. Follow the teams progress as they compete at www.biathlonworld.com with live results and video coverage.

    The 2011 USA Junior/Youth Championship Team

  • World Junior/Youth Team Trials

    Happy New Year!

    MWSC Juniors get off to a great start for the new year. Four Qualify for the 2011 USA Junior World Championship Team that will be competing in Nove Mesto CZ! Corrine Malcolm, Grace Boutot, Ben Greenwald and Raleigh Goessling all had strong performances in trials and will represent the USA in the Junior competitions January 29th through February 5th. Follow the teams progress as they compete at www.biathlonworld.com with live results and video coverage.

    The 2011 USA Junior/Youth Championship Team

  • World Junior/Youth Team Trials

    Happy New Year!

    MWSC Juniors get off to a great start for the new year. Four Qualify for the 2011 USA Junior World Championship Team that will be competing in Nove Mesto CZ! Corrine Malcolm, Grace Boutot, Ben Greenwald and Raleigh Goessling all had strong performances in trials and will represent the USA in the Junior competitions January 29th through February 5th. Follow the teams progress as they compete at www.biathlonworld.com with live results and video coverage.

    The 2011 USA Junior/Youth Championship Team

  • World Junior/Youth Team Trials

    Happy New Year!

    MWSC Juniors get off to a great start for the new year. Four Qualify for the 2011 USA Junior World Championship Team that will be competing in Nove Mesto CZ! Corrine Malcolm, Grace Boutot, Ben Greenwald and Raleigh Goessling all had strong performances in trials and will represent the USA in the Junior competitions January 29th through February 5th. Follow the teams progress as they compete at www.biathlonworld.com with live results and video coverage.

    The 2011 USA Junior/Youth Championship Team

  • World Junior/Youth Team Trials

    Happy New Year!

    MWSC Juniors get off to a great start for the new year. Four Qualify for the 2011 USA Junior World Championship Team that will be competing in Nove Mesto CZ! Corrine Malcolm, Grace Boutot, Ben Greenwald and Raleigh Goessling all had strong performances in trials and will represent the USA in the Junior competitions January 29th through February 5th. Follow the teams progress as they compete at www.biathlonworld.com with live results and video coverage.

    The 2011 USA Junior/Youth Championship Team

  • World Junior/Youth Team Trials

    Happy New Year!

    MWSC Juniors get off to a great start for the new year. Four Qualify for the 2011 USA Junior World Championship Team that will be competing in Nove Mesto CZ! Corrine Malcolm, Grace Boutot, Ben Greenwald and Raleigh Goessling all had strong performances in trials and will represent the USA in the Junior competitions January 29th through February 5th. Follow the teams progress as they compete at www.biathlonworld.com with live results and video coverage.

    The 2011 USA Junior/Youth Championship Team

  • Craftsbury sprint 2010

    Enjoy the show…divbr //divobject width=”320″ height=”266″ class=”BLOG_video_class” id=”BLOG_video-13a7776b0b6a60a2″ classid=”clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0″param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/get_player”param name=”bgcolor” value=”#FFFFFF”param name=”allowfullscreen” value=”true”param name=”flashvars” value=”flvurl=http%3A%2F%2Fv17.nonxt1.googlevideo.com%2Fvideoplayback%3Fid%3D13a7776b0b6a60a2%26itag%3D5%26app%3Dblogger%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1298997547%26sparams%3Did%252Citag%252Cip%252Cipbits%252Cexpire%26signature%3D517C409789FF6A7D03E8C80F173201D45A34C174.66EA548273978341D3C7641457C995BF83A294B4%26key%3Dck1amp;iurl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2FThumbnailServer2%3Fapp%3Dblogger%26contentid%3D13a7776b0b6a60a2%26offsetms%3D5000%26itag%3Dw160%26sigh%3DNQ4OFfRUYiQ93lr0Lnhy3SLEEXIamp;autoplay=0amp;ps=blogger”embed src=”http://www.youtube.com/get_player” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash”width=”320″ height=”266″ bgcolor=”#FFFFFF”flashvars=”flvurl=http%3A%2F%2Fv17.nonxt1.googlevideo.com%2Fvideoplayback%3Fid%3D13a7776b0b6a60a2%26itag%3D5%26app%3Dblogger%26ip%3D0.0.0.0%26ipbits%3D0%26expire%3D1298997547%26sparams%3Did%252Citag%252Cip%252Cipbits%252Cexpire%26signature%3D517C409789FF6A7D03E8C80F173201D45A34C174.66EA548273978341D3C7641457C995BF83A294B4%26key%3Dck1iurl=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2FThumbnailServer2%3Fapp%3Dblogger%26contentid%3D13a7776b0b6a60a2%26offsetms%3D5000%26itag%3Dw160%26sigh%3DNQ4OFfRUYiQ93lr0Lnhy3SLEEXIautoplay=0ps=blogger”allowFullScreen=”true” //objectdiv class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/4680416899705879324-2349056060474051739?l=smsxc.blogspot.com’ alt=” //div

  • Getting up to Speed…

    I suppose its time to put up a blog post when I hear through my teammate that a junior skier approached her saying, “Katie hasn’t updated her blog since November 25th! Tell her she needs to post again soon!”A Silver Star in Silver Star, BC. An HBrooks photo.Sometimes I feel as though there’s so much higher-quality ski-racing media out there, so I push posting to the back-burner. But when I get

  • Getting up to Speed…

    I suppose its time to put up a blog post when I hear through my teammate that a junior skier approached her saying, “Katie hasn’t updated her blog since November 25th! Tell her she needs to post again soon!”A Silver Star in Silver Star, BC. An HBrooks photo.Sometimes I feel as though there’s so much higher-quality ski-racing media out there, so I push posting to the back-burner. But when I get

  • Getting up to Speed…

    I suppose its time to put up a blog post when I hear through my teammate that a junior skier approached her saying, “Katie hasn’t updated her blog since November 25th! Tell her she needs to post again soon!”A Silver Star in Silver Star, BC. An HBrooks photo.Sometimes I feel as though there’s so much higher-quality ski-racing media out there, so I push posting to the back-burner. But when I get

  • Getting up to Speed…

    I suppose its time to put up a blog post when I hear through my teammate that a junior skier approached her saying, “Katie hasn’t updated her blog since November 25th! Tell her she needs to post again soon!”A Silver Star in Silver Star, BC. An HBrooks photo.Sometimes I feel as though there’s so much higher-quality ski-racing media out there, so I push posting to the back-burner. But when I get

  • Home for Christmas

    Family red except for Chad and Leit who were in Minnesota

    It’s always great to be back in the Methow for the holidays.  This was Caitlin’s second Christmas in the Methow so she was treated like a local.  We had a heavy week of training but also time for friends, family, cookies, and wedding planning.

    Please do not dress like this during hunting season.

  • Scenes From the Road: Rumford, Maine Edition


    In Washington, we have the towering Cascades to captivate the photographer’s lens. In Utah, the deserts, the mesas, and the views that stretch for miles in every direction are certainly picture-worthy. With its four distinct seasons, the small towns of New England have their unique charm. From turn-of-the-century farmhouses to scenic schoolyards like the Lukin School House I pass everyday from the MOD’s stay at the Inn at the Rustay to the race trails at Black Mountain.

    My favorite sights stray a bit from the postcard-worthy, though. Like this one taken a little before noon on a Thursday, complete with a full rack of Natural Ice, minus eight empties. Hey, at least its five o’clock somewhere. Maybe Stockholm, Sweden.. Living the dream, South Maine style.

  • Scenes From the Road: Rumford, Maine Edition


    In Washington, we have the towering Cascades to captivate the photographer’s lens. In Utah, the deserts, the mesas, and the views that stretch for miles in every direction are certainly picture-worthy. With its four distinct seasons, the small towns of New England have their unique charm. From turn-of-the-century farmhouses to scenic schoolyards like the Lukin School House I pass everyday from the MOD’s stay at the Inn at the Rustay to the race trails at Black Mountain.

    My favorite sights stray a bit from the postcard-worthy, though. Like this one taken a little before noon on a Thursday, complete with a full rack of Natural Ice, minus eight empties. Hey, at least its five o’clock somewhere. Maybe Stockholm, Sweden.. Living the dream, South Maine style.

  • Scenes From the Road: Rumford, Maine Edition

    In Washington, we have the towering Cascades to captivate the photographer’s lens. In Utah, the deserts, the mesas, and the views that stretch for miles in every direction are certainly picture-worthy. With its four distinct seasons, the small towns of New England have their unique charm. From turn-of-the-century farmhouses to scenic schoolyards like the Lukin School House I pass everyday from the MOD’s stay at the Inn at the Rustay to the race trails at Black Mountain.

    My favorite sights stray a bit from the postcard-worthy, though. Like this little ditty taken a little before noon on a Thursday. Hey, at least its five o’clock somewhere. Maybe Stockholm, Sweden.. Living the dream, South Maine style.

  • SKI TRAIL PROFILE: Korkki Nordic Trail