Liebsch and I at the top of the mountain
Trollhaugen
Matt, Kuan, Dave and I enjoyed an icy first day on snow this morning. 65 degrees today, pretty wild to be skiing on snow. Manmade of course, maybe 2k, mostly up.
Category: XCFeeds
A collection of live feeds from cross-country ski blogs around the web.
-
The Season is Just Around the Corner
Since my last post two weeks ago, I was able to get in a good week of on-snow ski training! The skiing, only 15 miles north of town, was absolutely wonderful! Ten inches of fresh groomed trails. The good skiing lasted about a week until some warmer weather rolled in and melted south facing sections of the trail. As of Thursday, it was still skiable but several sections were a bit bare. However, it snowed again last night and there is more snow in the forecast. It is definitely nice to have some early snow and to be able to transition from dryland roller-skiing to real skiing with plenty of time before the first races of the season.
Nice freshly groomed trails!
A big smile on my face for the first ski of the season!
The Community School cross-country running season wrapped up last weekend with several successful performances in Soda Spring, Idaho. The girls ran their way to a team first place finish in the small school division, with Annie Pokorny leading the team with a 4th place finish. The boys team, led by Max Crissman finished 4th place. Congratulations to both teams!
The girls, 1A state champions!
That is all for now, but I will keep you posted as the season hastily approaches!Cheers!
-
The Season is Just Around the Corner
Since my last post two weeks ago, I was able to get in a good week of on-snow ski training! The skiing, only 15 miles north of town, was absolutely wonderful! Ten inches of fresh groomed trails. The good skiing lasted about a week until some warmer weather rolled in and melted south facing sections of the trail. As of Thursday, it was still skiable but several sections were a bit bare. However, it snowed again last night and there is more snow in the forecast. It is definitely nice to have some early snow and to be able to transition from dryland roller-skiing to real skiing with plenty of time before the first races of the season.
Nice freshly groomed trails!A big smile on my face for the first ski of the season!
The Community School cross-country running season wrapped up last weekend with several successful performances in Soda Spring, Idaho. The girls ran their way to a team first place finish in the small school division, with Annie Pokorny leading the team with a 4th place finish. The boys team, led by Max Crissman finished 4th place. Congratulations to both teams!
The girls, 1A state champions!
That is all for now, but I will keep you posted as the season hastily approaches!Cheers!
-
The Season is Just Around the Corner
Since my last post two weeks ago, I was able to get in a good week of on-snow ski training! The skiing, only 15 miles north of town, was absolutely wonderful! Ten inches of fresh groomed trails. The good skiing lasted about a week until some warmer weather rolled in and melted south facing sections of the trail. As of Thursday, it was still skiable but several sections were a bit bare. However, it snowed again last night and there is more snow in the forecast. It is definitely nice to have some early snow and to be able to transition from dryland roller-skiing to real skiing with plenty of time before the first races of the season.
Nice freshly groomed trails!A big smile on my face for the first ski of the season!
The Community School cross-country running season wrapped up last weekend with several successful performances in Soda Spring, Idaho. The girls ran their way to a team first place finish in the small school division, with Annie Pokorny leading the team with a 4th place finish. The boys team, led by Max Crissman finished 4th place. Congratulations to both teams!
The girls, 1A state champions!
That is all for now, but I will keep you posted as the season hastily approaches!Cheers!
-
The Season is Just Around the Corner
Since my last post two weeks ago, I was able to get in a good week of on-snow ski training! The skiing, only 15 miles north of town, was absolutely wonderful! Ten inches of fresh groomed trails. The good skiing lasted about a week until some warmer weather rolled in and melted south facing sections of the trail. As of Thursday, it was still skiable but several sections were a bit bare. However, it snowed again last night and there is more snow in the forecast. It is definitely nice to have some early snow and to be able to transition from dryland roller-skiing to real skiing with plenty of time before the first races of the season.
Nice freshly groomed trails!A big smile on my face for the first ski of the season!
The Community School cross-country running season wrapped up last weekend with several successful performances in Soda Spring, Idaho. The girls ran their way to a team first place finish in the small school division, with Annie Pokorny leading the team with a 4th place finish. The boys team, led by Max Crissman finished 4th place. Congratulations to both teams!
The girls, 1A state champions!
That is all for now, but I will keep you posted as the season hastily approaches!Cheers!
-
Norway: The First Days On Snow
For the past week I’ve been calling Sjusjoen, Norway home. The mountain town sits twenty kilometers outside Lillehammer. The place is pretty sweet, with incredible facilities, both from the long tradition of sport here, and the influx that came here for the 1994 Winter Olympics. The ex-pat Mike Meyers set me up with a nice little cabin by the lake beside the Rustad Hotell. If you’re ever in this neighborhood, you should check this place out: http://www.rustadhotel.no
While in Norway I’ll be racing with Team Sjusjoen. The team is a professional outfit, and is actually the oldest team of its kind in Norway. Former World Cup podium boy John Anders Gaustad took over the coaching duties this year for this team of ten. Here JA and I get in a couple hot laps around the tracks here. I also picked up a couple good pointers from the man himself. Good times, good stuff.
Here Team Sjusjoen gathers around the training table. This evening, though, was a bit more special. As the last night of the last training camp before the racing season kicks off in Beitostolen, Norway we had a julbordet, or Christmas Table. You know, eating all those delicious Scandinavian specialties like rotten fish, salted pork and lefsa. I know your jealous…
And a lil quick viv for you interested ski fans out there:
-
First All Team Dryland Training
First All Team Dryland Training
First All Team Dryland Training
First All Team Dryland Training
USST Preview: Kikkan Randall
This is part three in a short series of season preview posts on USST athletes in which I’ll review each skier’s results to date and make some guesses about how they’ll fare in the upcoming season. I don’t have any special insight into the future beyond my database of past race results, and I certainly am not using some fancy predictive model. While I’ll likely support a fair bit of my guesses with data of some form, I obviously wouldn’t take any of my predictions to Vegas with you. And of course, my guesses are just me being a cynical realist, not necessarily an expression of what I’d like to happen.
Kikkan Randall is arguably the best American female distance and sprint skier at the moment. That’s a pretty easy case to make on the sprinting side of things. For the distance events, it’s mostly the result of her stepping up her performances over the past two seasons or so:
These are just results from WC, WSC and OWG races, and I’m using the finishing place in each race rather than FIS points.Notice a pattern with the sprint results? Yeah, she’s done better in the skating sprint races. She did manage to have more decent classic sprint results last season, though, which is encouraging. Generally speaking, though, those sprint results are remarkably consistent over the last four seasons. When she’s failed to qualify for the elimination rounds, she hasn’t been much higher than 40th.
Randall reached the semis a bit less than half the time last season and if she’s looking to be a medal threat we should be looking for her to increase that rate to something closer to 60-70% which would put her more in line with skiers like Hanna Falk, Natalia Korosteleva and Arianna Follis. As it was, there were 15 women who did at least as many sprint races as she did who advanced to the semis at a higher rate.
Her distance results are a little more balanced between classic and skating. Randall’s distance results last season were really quite promising and didn’t get as much attention in the US as I think they deserve. I’d bet there’s a real possibility that Kikkan could manage 4-5 top 20 finishes and maybe even crack the top 10 in some distance races, if she continues her current rate of improvement.
As for sprinting, I’m sure her focus is on winning a medal at World Champs in Oslo. Luckily for her, that sprint will be freestyle, so there’s reason to think she might pull it off. I’m betting she makes it to the final heat, but after that who knows. But with four other freestyle sprints this season (including the one at the Tour de Ski) I’d say the chances are pretty high for at least one podium.
Related posts:
- <Career Retrospective: Sabina Valbusa
- <Career Retrospective: Claudia Nystad (Kuenzel)
- <Most Unimproved: Women’s Sprint
First Tracks in Sjusjoen, Norway
a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Qy8LpbgYOag/TNhWsH0a9CI/AAAAAAAAAdA/XArYsFZlGGo/s1600/email_cabin.jpg”img style=”float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;” src=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Qy8LpbgYOag/TNhWsH0a9CI/AAAAAAAAAdA/XArYsFZlGGo/s400/email_cabin.jpg” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5537271057865176098″ //abr /br /For the past week I’ve been calling Sjusjoen, Norway home. The mountain town sits twenty kilometers outside Lillehammer. The place is pretty sweet, with incredible facilities, both from the long tradition of sport here, and the influx that came here for the 1994 Winter Olympics. The ex-pat Mike Meyers set me up with a nice little cabin by the lake beside the Rustad Hotell. If you’re ever in this neighborhood, you should check this place out: http://www.rustadhotel.nobr /br /br /br /br /br /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Qy8LpbgYOag/TNhWrkwVpVI/AAAAAAAAAc4/EOg1hMbzHSE/s1600/email_torin_and_JA.jpg”img style=”float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;” src=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Qy8LpbgYOag/TNhWrkwVpVI/AAAAAAAAAc4/EOg1hMbzHSE/s400/email_torin_and_JA.jpg” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5537271048452810066″ //abr /br /While in Norway I’ll be racing with Team Sjusjoen. The team is a professional outfit, and is actually the oldest team of its kind in Norway. Former World Cup podium boy John Anders Gaustad took over the coaching duties this year for this team of ten. Here JA and I get in a couple hot laps around the tracks here. I also picked up a couple good pointers from the man himself. Good times, good stuff. br /br /br /br /br /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Qy8LpbgYOag/TNhWrRY-gFI/AAAAAAAAAcw/AxK1qb9SqPQ/s1600/email_julbordet_med_TeamSjusjoen.jpg”img style=”float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;” src=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Qy8LpbgYOag/TNhWrRY-gFI/AAAAAAAAAcw/AxK1qb9SqPQ/s400/email_julbordet_med_TeamSjusjoen.jpg” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5537271043254550610″ //abr /br /Here Team Sjusjoen gathers around the training table. This evening, though, was a bit more spoecial. As the last night of the last training camp before the racing season kicks off in Beitostolen, Norway we had a julbordet, or Christmas Table. You know, eating all those delicious Scandinavian specialties like rotten fish, salted pork and lefsa. I know your jealous…br /br /br /object width=”640″ height=”385″param name=”movie” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/Cz5O2HA4vZ0?fs=1amp;hl=en_US”/paramparam name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true”/paramparam name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always”/paramembed src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/Cz5O2HA4vZ0?fs=1amp;hl=en_US” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true” width=”640″ height=”385″/embed/objectbr /And a lil quick viv for you interested ski fans out there:div class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2910103639238326543-5949019307270983424?l=methowolympicdevelopment.blogspot.com’ alt=” //div
Weights and Measures – Skis and Bindings
Last week I weighed some skis and bindings.br /br /I used the “2nd largest size” in all the brands as a good representation. nbsp; nbsp;These have different lengths listed by the ski manufacturer, but when they’re on the rack they all are within about a centimeter of each other in actual tip-to-tail length. br /div class=”separator” style=”clear: both; text-align: center;”
Olympic Slideshow
Big weekend of SuperFits, presentations, and clinics in the Twin Cities. I’m kicking back tonight to watch the Packer Sunday Night Game. Check back tomorrow for a recap of the weekend’s events.
For now, plan to swing into Finn Sisu tomorrow (Monday night from 6-7pm) for an Olympic Slideshow and stories from last winter–and get fired up for the winter ahead. Presentation will be 30 – 45 minutes with time for questions at the end. Stop by and check it out!
One Last Big Week at Home
Enjoying one of my few weekend at home in Hayward, Home of the American Birkebeiner.
Birkie/ActivEdge Clinic in Seeley, WI analyzing video immediately after skiing. Last year I bought a Netbook with a 10hour battery life. The screen is small but the portability is fantastic. It is great to go over video while the workout is fresh in your mind.
Santi and Eric cooling down after 3(6*60s) HARD. We saw every kind of weather on this workout: rain, snow, sun, wind.Alright I didn’t stay at home all week, I drove down to Minneapolis on Saturday after dinner to surprise Caitlin for her Birthday. We enjoyed our 4 hour Sunday OD with the large group of Vakava skiers. There were over 40 skiers out on the road together.Let the snow fly.One Last Big Week at Home
Enjoying one of my few weekend at home in Hayward, Home of the American Birkebeiner.Birkie/ActivEdge Clinic in Seeley, WI analyzing video immediately after skiing. Last year I bought a Netbook with a 10hour battery life. The screen is small but the portability is fantastic. It is great to go over video while the workout is fresh in your mind.Santi and Eric cooling down after 3(6*60s) HARD. We saw every kind of weather on this workout: rain, snow, sun, wind.Alright I didn’t stay at home all week, I drove down to Minneapolis on Saturday after dinner to surprise Caitlin for her Birthday. We enjoyed our 4 hour Sunday OD with the large group of Vakava skiers. There were over 40 skiers out on the road together.Let the snow fly.
![](http://www.statisticalskier.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/kikkan_previewwtmk.png" "kikkan_previewwtmk")
