FasterSkier

Category: XCFeeds

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

  • Muonio

    We arrived on Monday night to Muonio, Finland, after a solid 30 or so hours of travel time. We are way up here, where it is dusk all the time. The sun is always rising or setting, but here, you don’t base your day’s plans around the hours of daylight. There are hundreds of kilometers of skiing in the middle of winter here, and almost all of them are lit. Daylight is man made, rather than created by the rising of a large star, and darkness is plentiful, so there are many chances for night skis, which are some of my favorites. Races kick off tomorrow with a skate sprint, then a 5/10K classic race on Saturday, followed by another 5/10K skate on Sunday. YEAH BUDDY!



    Just when you thought that High Sierra couldn’t make a bigger backpack, they do, and Kikkan and I still managed to fill them. Now they really don’t fit in the overhead or under the seat in front of you. Walking to my seat on the plane is what it must feel like to be the master of the game “Sorry”. I have to say it to every passenger sitting in the isle seat, as the side pockets full of water bottles hit them in the face as you pass by.

    Simi scraping a pair of skis on day 1. We are lucky to have the support of one of our wax techs, “Juqui”, (really unsure of the spelling on that one) here, not to mention 2 fired up coaches in Brian Fish and Pete Vordenberg.

    Day 1 of skiing in Muonio. There is really good snow here and about 25K of skiing, so no complaints will be coming from up North, and we are WAY UP NORTH. Check this place out on a map. The quickest way will be to find the arctic circle and go 250 kilometers north. Up here, daylight literally disappears to the tune of almost 9 minutes a day, or about an hour a week!

  • How to not get bored in Finland

    scrabble1

    It took me a while to figure out that the blank was supposed to be an "N".

    When we were leaving for Finland, we were pretty afraid that we were going to be terribly bored over there in the great white northland. After all, we were going to be essentially doing a four-week training camp – longer than any of us had ever done before. How could we keep from getting bored in the long hours of complete darkness we were imagining?

    We loaded our luggage with books. The boys brought movies on external hard drives; the girls brought yarn to make hats, mittens, and socks. And we girls brought one more secret weapon, too. We brought our scrabble letters.

    This was clearly a losing effort - the extra letters are scattered around the outside.

    This was clearly a losing effort – the extra letters are scattered around the outside.

    You don’t need a board to play scrabble. There are a bunch of different other games you can play. We checked on wikipedia, and some of them are way too complicated or intellectual for us. We stick to “speed scrabble”, which occupies us pretty well. Like many speed games, it’s completely addicting, and we all want to keep playing until we have that perfect board. Unfortunately, I think it gets us a little too excited before bedtime….

    Now, this one must be Lauren's. She always makes long, "good" words rather than short, easily re-arrangeable ones.

    Now, this one must be Lauren's. She always makes long, "good" words rather than short, easily re-arrangeable ones.

    Here’s how you play. Each player starts with seven letters. All the other letters are face-down in the middle of the table. When you say “go”, everyone turns over their seven letters and starts trying to make words in their own little scrabble-crossword world. As soon as you use up your letters, you say, “Pull!” and everyone takes one more letter, regardless of whether they still have any left or not. And so on. Sometimes you can get really behind with five or ten extra letters you are scrambling to work in. Or sometimes you just get on a roll, building more and more words off of each other and re-arranging two- and three-letter words as you draw new letters. The first person to finish when there are no more letters in the middle of the table wins.

    A nicely organized board, this one.

    A nicely organized board, this one.

    Sometimes you draw a “Q” two turns before the end, and then you’re pretty screwed. And because you aren’t sharing the board with others, if you don’t have vowels, well, you can’t do much about it. Lauren once drew 5 “E” tiles in a row. But… games go so quickly that you’ll always get another chance soon. It’s really addicting. Hannah’s almost as addicted to it as she is to knitting and melatonin. Just kidding about the melatonin. Not about the knitting though.

    We’re psyched to be exercising our brains at least a little bit.

    scrabble5

  • Inspiration

    If you want to be inspired, check out this video of Joan Benoit Samuelson and her brave move to become the first Olympic gold medalist in the women’s marathon.When I first saw this video years ago I had to watch it a couple times because it made me eager to give my best to training and racing. And somehow, through my racing travels and pursuits I found myself receiving generous hospitality at

  • Inspiration

    If you want to be inspired, check out this video of Joan Benoit Samuelson and her brave move to become the first Olympic gold medalist in the women’s marathon.When I first saw this video years ago I had to watch it a couple times because it made me eager to give my best to training and racing. And somehow, through my racing travels and pursuits I found myself receiving generous hospitality at

  • Inspiration

    If you want to be inspired, check out this video of Joan Benoit Samuelson and her brave move to become the first Olympic gold medalist in the women’s marathon.When I first saw this video years ago I had to watch it a couple times because it made me eager to give my best to training and racing. And somehow, through my racing travels and pursuits I found myself receiving generous hospitality at

  • Inspiration

    If you want to be inspired, check out this video of Joan Benoit Samuelson and her brave move to become the first Olympic gold medalist in the women’s marathon.When I first saw this video years ago I had to watch it a couple times because it made me eager to give my best to training and racing. And somehow, through my racing travels and pursuits I found myself receiving generous hospitality at

  • Tie Dye Art with In The Arena

    Estasha, Alison, and Sariah Rockin' their new Tie Dye T's

    One year during High School our cross-country running team warm-ups were misplaced so we decided to Tie Dye long sleeve shirts for the Team Uniform.  One of the guys on the team Pete had done a fair amount of Tie Dye and he helped everyone create some sweet shirts.  It was a lot of fun and something I have wanted to do with the kids at the Lac Courte Orielles Boys and Girls Club.  Again Pete coached me along about where to get the best dye and get the project started.

    Aaron working on his spiral shirt

    A huge thanks to my neighbor and friend Kay for helping keep the chaos organized

    Tomorrow I hit the road for 2 Months: Nov 11 – Jan 11.  After a great spring, summer, and fall of training I am excited to get back on snow and to race.  One of the things that I will miss is everyone at the Boys and Girls Club.

    What does Brian do when he is not at the Boys and Girls Club?

    I gave a presentation to the kids about my travels, struggles and triumphs of last season.  Plus, my plans for the next two months on the road.

    "I want to see what my shirt looks like!"

    We tie dyed over 60 unique shirts on Monday night.  It was fun to see them all.  I was hoping to get the kids the shirts on Tuesday but it took me over 2 hours to cut/pull out the rubber bands and rinse the shirts.  There were a lot of curious kids yelling at me as I walked down the hall on my way to Mrs. Johnson’s 5th Grade classroom.

    Mary, "Check out my Shirt?"

    Josephine

    Adding letters and drawings to the shirts with Sharpies

    It is still pretty warm here in Wisconsin. Bad for skiing, good for flashlight tag

    I had a great final night at ‘The Club’ tonight.  The kids loved the slide show, were super excited to see their shirts, and we had a huge game of flashlight tag down at the Pow Wow Grounds.

    Tomorrow we head for snow.

  • Words with Jeff Foltz, author of “Birkebeiner: A Story of Motherhood and War”

  • Tie Dye Art

    Estasha, Alison, and Sariah Rockin’ their new Tie Dye T’s

  • Tie Dye Art

    Estasha, Alison, and Sariah Rockin’ their new Tie Dye T’s

  • Tie Dye Art

    Estasha, Alison, and Sariah Rockin’ their new Tie Dye T’s

  • Guns ‘A Blazin’!!!

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    Greetings Everyone!

    At the moment, I’m in Canmore, Alberta for the National Team Pre-Season Training Camp and World Cup Trials races. In about a week, I will be competing against the rest of the American biathlon contingent for two of the five eventual World Cup positions. At the moment, Tim Burke, Jeremy Teela, and Leif Nordgren are prequalified for the first World Cup start in Ostersund, Sweden at the beginning of next month.

    As an aside, the slideshow at the top of this post is a new addition to the website. The photos included are a random sampling of what I’ve been up to over the last couple of months. I believe the most recent shots (of Canmore) are towards the end of the show. The beginning features shots from our October Utah Camp, then the US Biathlon Board Meeting and Foundation Kickoff in Jackson Hole, WY, a few shots from home, and finally my recent travels in Canmore, Alberta.

    I arrived in Canmore on Nov. 2nd with the hopes of getting on snow right away. Canmore was selected as our preseason training site this year as the venue staff had guaranteed snow on or before October 22. They did follow through on their promise and athletes were skiing throughout the end of October. However, due to some freakishly warm temperatures in the Bow Valley, the 800-meter artificial snow track gradually melted and, by the time I arrived, it was little more than an ice-gravel-sawdust path. However, things are looking up after a week of dryland training. The temps are now low enough to blow snow 24/7 and it looks like we will be on manmade snow within a few days.

    The upcoming trials races will take place starting on Tuesday of next week. We will compete in three races and the full World Cup and Europa Cup teams will be named following the conclusion of this race series. Hopefully, I’ll be headed home for a brief pre-Thanksgiving respite and then over to Ostersund on November 25th.

    It’s hard to believe that another training season is yet again drawing to a close and the World Cup tour is just around the corner. It feels like just a few weeks ago I was in Vancouver for the Olympics. As some of you may know, I was disappointed with my overall performance throughout the season last year. After a few weeks away from the sport in April, I came back to the Spring training camp with a fresh outlook and the desire to make the changes necessary to reach my goals on (and off) the biathlon course. With the help of coaches Per Nilsson and Armin Auchentaller, we crafted a specific training plan, incorporating the successful parts of previous plans and incorporating new ideas with the end goal of having a top performance at World Championships this winter. I feel like I’m on track and I’m happy with how the training has gone so far. Now, it’s just a matter of executing on the race course. Next week will be the first test!

    I hope this post finds everyone happy and healthy and looking forward to a snowy (or not) winter!

    -Lowell

  • Lewis Butte All Team Practice – Let it snow!!!

  • Lewis Butte All Team Practice – Let it snow!!!

  • Lewis Butte All Team Practice – Let it snow!!!

  • Lewis Butte All Team Practice – Let it snow!!!

  • #2 – Russia

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  • Minneapolis

    As the final send-off before a winter on the road, I spent a week back in Minneapolis catching up with friends and getting skiers fired up for the season ahead.  A highlight of some of the events during a full tour include: the CXC Hoigaard’s SuperFit getting skiers outfitted with new equipment, leading a USSA Level 100 Coaches Clinic at Hoigaard’s, an afternoon of playing with the St Croix Valley youth ski club in Marine, an Olympic slideshow at Finn Sisu, and a morning with Madame Skold’s 5th Graders at the French Immersion School in Edina.

    If you haven’t been to a CXC/Salomon SuperFit yet, you’re missing out on some pretty cool ski fitting technology using a “Flex Mat” to find skis with the best flex pattern (aka: the fastest skis).  That’s the same technology we use when picking our skis–the fastest boards on the tour.  There are still a couple of SuperFit sales coming up this fall, so check it out!

    Another cool piece to the SuperFits are the USSA Level 100 Coaches Clinics led by CXC coaches and athletes.  At Hoigaard’s, we had coaches from St Paul Central, Edina, Bloomington Jefferson & Kennedy, and Anwatin Middle School/City of Lakes Loppet Ski Foundation.  Each of these programs has between 60 and 100 student-athletes.  By working with these coaches, we were able to reach out to over 400 junior skiers.  With the Minnesota State High School season starting next week, this was the perfect time of year to refresh the coaches on drills and skills to teach the kids.

    These coaches are taking a big step forward in Coaches Education: learning how to bring their skiers to the next level and have even more fun on skis.

    Adopt an Athlete

    If you haven’t heard of CXC’s Adopt an Athlete program, you should check it out.  Basically, groups or clubs come together to fund raise for CXC and essentially “adopt” an athlete of their choice.  The funds raised by the Adopt an Athlete program go towards funding the entire team, which covers coaching, training, travel, and race expenses for the CXC Team.  In return, the “adopted” athlete becomes affiliated with that club and can help them at various events of their choice during the year.

    The club that adopted me is the St Croix Valley Ski Club in Marine on St Croix.  Led by Everett Myers, the club has over 120 youth skiers and parents that get together for a weekly Sunday ski all winter.  Last weekend, they hosted their annual club Ski Swap.  I have never seen so many tiny skis, boots, and poles getting passed along through the generations.  According to Everett, over 80 skiers signed up for the club on Sunday afternoon–45 of which were brand new skiers to the club.

    It’s a real honor for me to be able to work with such an enthusiastic club and pretty cool to see individuals like Everett doing so much work to build the cross country ski community from the grassroots level.  Jessie Diggins, another CXC Team athlete, came out to help me work with the kids.  We worked on a variety of ski-specific balance, strength, and coordination exercises with a fun twist to keep the kids motivated.  We also played a variety of games, including football, soccer, and capture the flag.

    One of the young skiers, showing off his new skis to Jessie.

    After a full afternoon of games, the group relaxed in the Marine Town Hall with an Olympic Slideshow and the kids got autographs and postcards to take home.

    The final highlight of the week was a presentation to Madame Skold’s 5th Graders at the French Immersion School.  Unfortunately, the extent of my French is limited to “hello” and “good-bye,” so it was a pretty short presentation.

    Actually, Mme Skold (my best friend Dan’s mother) got special permission from the principal to have an English speaking guest.  The class was very attentive and enthusiastic.  Many of the kids had even been to Hayward and seen the Birkie or skied in the Barnebirkie.  It was pretty cool to see a class full of 5th Graders fluent in French.

    For now, it’s time to pack up and hit the road to West Yellowstone tomorrow morning.  After a refreshing rest week, I’m ready to start skiing.

  • DRYland training on the first snowy day!

  • DRYland training on the first snowy day!