FasterSkier

Category: XCFeeds

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

  • Bike Ride to Grout Pond

     We took advantage of the nice weather yesterday to hop on our bikes for a ride out to Grout Pond, past the town of Stratton.  We’re in for a rainy stretch for the next few days, so we enjoyed the nice summer-like weather on our ride!  Above, Corky & Gino set the pace for the team and rode off the front.
     Mollie & Hamish, all smiles at the top of stair stepper. 
     Sverre drops Paddy & Tyler up the final pitch.
     Paddy & T-bone.
     Anika is a machine on the bike. 
     Riding in a pack: Mollie, Hamish, Issy, Tess, Brooke, & Sverre.
     Issy P.
     Tess & Sverre.
     Brooke.
     Matt & Mac.
     Brooke.
     Corky & Gino cruising back down to Stratton.
    Anika.
     Hamish & Mollie with Mt. Snow in the background.
     Paddy.
     Issy.
     Team Revived Films.
    Tess & Brooke.

  • Backcountry Soccer-Golf

    Backcountry Soccer-Golf, Year-Round Training, and Why Skiers go Further in Sport?

    Yesterday was the first training session of the 2013 season for Mansfield Nordic Club athletes. It was an historic day for 2 reasons:

    1. the first-ever officially organized training during the month of May
    2. the first day of the first year we’ve ever had a full / year-round training structure

    Having a diverse group of athletes, athletes that are just entering the realm of year-round training, and only 1 coach, I wanted to lead a session that was fun, kept the group together, and addressed skills that we don’t always have as endurance athletes.

    The solution? Backcountry Soccer-Golf. 

    It is a mix of an adventure run/hike crossed with frisbie-golf. Only instead of chucking frisbees, we were kicking soccer balls through the woods. Low-score each hole got to do the fewest number of push-ups.

     Amy, Cally, Liam, Henry, Parker, and Bill up front

    One of the greatest aspects of ski training is that we get to go on adventures. Operating on a long-term training plan, we can afford to have days that aren’t 100% focused on a ski-specific task. With a 2 month track season, you don’t have time to fool around: you should either be running, running fast on a track, or taking a day off. Training year-round for ski racing? Heeellllooo hiking, epic bike rides, running, swimming, soccer, strength, rollerskiing, yoga, speedball, basketball and rock climbing! We are the definition of crossfit. Focusing on being a skier invariably leads to more cross-training. We only have snow on the ground 30% of the year — it is a necessity to practice other sports.

    That is why skiers go on to be such great endurance athletes, in a wide-variety of sports. We don’t specialize in one simple task from a young age… even the athletes that train year-round are participating in a wide range of activities. A large proportion of skiers continue training and competing beyond high school and college because they truly love sport, and because they have such a broad base in endurance sports.

    Want proof? An NCAA ski champ was in the lead for the first 5km of the 2012 Boston Marathon (Glenn Randall – Boston Marathon). On the same weekend this past April, another NCAA All-American skier defended his title and won a $10,000 payout for a victory in the 5km (Ben True 5km 13:41). Former US Ski Team member Morgan Arritola won a world championship in trail running (XTERRA trail running champs) and current US Ski Teamer (and Montpelier VT native) Liz Stephen was 2nd in the same event (Skiers go 1-2 at world champs).

    On a more somber note, last night I was saddened to see the following headline pop-up in my browser: “42% of Americans Obese by 2030.”

    As a coach working with young athletes, I make a pledge to keep that statistic as small as possible.

  • Holly Brooks deserves a spot on the A team

    No, not that A-Team. (Although she’d probably kick some butt.)

    As discussed recently over at FasterSkier, Brooks just missed qualifying via objective criteria, as she finished 55th in the World Cup overall. That means that if she’s named, it will have to be based upon some discretionary judgement by the coaches. I think you can make a pretty good case that Brooks deserves a spot.

    First let’s review her distance results, compared to a few of her peers:

    This doesn’t make her look very good, although she still comes out looking pretty favorably compared to Sargent and even Stephen, to a certain degree. But as we all know, Brooks broke her wrist over Christmas, and then proceeded to race through the injury for several weeks. What does her season look like if we drop her post-injury results?

    That looks to me like an athlete performing roughly on par with Jessie Diggins (who qualified for the A team via objective criteria), better than Sargent, and showing stronger improvements year-to-year than Stephen (who, I might add, is considerably younger than Brooks). I omitted Sadie Bjornsen from these plots for space reasons, but that comparison is basically the same as between Brooks and Sargent.

    The argument is mostly confined to distance events:

    If you omit Brooks’ post injury sprints she’s left with only a 23rd and a 46th, which is sort of a wash, in my opinion. Particularly compared to these other women, I don’t think you’d be adding Brooks for her sprinting. Any success in these events would be a bonus.

    A possible counterargument would be that given the financial limitations of the US team and their reluctance to invest in older athletes, it would make more sense to simply count on naming her as a discretionary pick to the World Championships team, rather than naming her to the A team for the whole season. Honestly, I’d be willing to bet that this is actually what will happen. (Not that they’d name her to the WSC team in advance, but that they’d basically be planning on it, even if they don’t announce it publicly.)

    But consider that her pre-injury distance results this season were 13th, 17th, 19th, 22nd and 36th. Even if she had spent much of the remainder of the season in the 20s rather than the teens, so at the low end of what she was doing pre-injury, she’d have been a shoe-in for making the A team on objective criteria alone. Also, it may be worth considering how much better prepared she might be for WSCs racing in Europe rather than domestically. And really, barring some catastrophic collapse there’s just no way I can see her not going to WSCs next year. I mean, raise your hand if you want to see what a relay team of Randall, Brooks, Diggins and Stephen could do? A long shot, perhaps, but with Brooks there you really do have a shot at a significant result in the relay. And if you have all four of them on the WC circuit more or less full time, they’d get two solid dry runs at the relay before WSCs.

    So if it were me, I’d name her because:

    1. Her results suggest that an injury free season could have shown her to be equal to, or better than, both Diggins and Stephen.
    2. I want her at WSCs, particularly to complete our relay team.
    3. I want her to be prepared for WSCs, and I’m skeptical that racing domestically and then jetting over to Europe just for WSCs is optimal.

    Obviously, this is just me. And I don’t have to deal with any of the financial realities of the situation, so that makes this a much easier call for me to make. But I think that in this case Brooks’ potential for consistent top 30 results (even if its only for 1-2 seasons, given her age) is worth making an exception to the US team’s general policy of favoring younger, developing athletes.

    Related posts:

    1. <NOW Is It Panic Time For The Norwegian Men’s Distance Team?
    2. <WSC Pursuit Recap: North Americans
    3. <Should Jessie Diggins Be On The A-Team?


  • Will you take us outside?

    “Will you take us outside?” is my favorite question to hear when I walk in the door at the Boys and Girls Club. 

     Freeze Tag
    The Club didn’t receive some of the funding we were expecting so we have been short staffed this week as the regular staff is taking turns with unpaid days off. Thankfully the weather has been nice and we have been able to get outside and organize some great games.
    Spring time also means dinner outside on the patio.  
    Mr Greene makes the best grilled chicken I have ever had in my life.
    Kickball: I think this photo demonstrates the importance of having good mentors as you are growing up.  Remember that you are always making an impression on others even if you can’t see it.

    After several ‘classroom’ sessions of talking about goals and healthy lifestyle the teens and I were able to get out and enjoy some Mountain Biking.
    Jasmine on a mountain bike for the first time

    A perfect day
    Thanks to Trips for Kids and the City of Lakes Nordic Ski Foundation for providing the bikes and the experience.  Tomorrow we are going mountain biking again and everyone is fired up.

  • XC Ski Girl

    A friend and avid skier from Seattle, “XC Ski Girl” asked me if I would do a guest post 1x per month on her blog, the idea being to give folks some ideas of what my training goals for the next month is, etc.  Here is a link to her blog and my post……. Unlike me, she posts all the time including lots of great stuff from friends in the Northwest (where I grew up) and all over the world. 
    Good luck with your training XC Ski Girl & Everyone else out there!  
    In other news, I just completed a challenging week of training with the APU team for “Start up camp” which included 15 hours of on-snow skiing including three interval sessions!!!!  Today, Sunday, is our “recovery” day as well as our third annual APUNSC Spring Fundraiser. 
    More on life, training & such later! Thanks for reading, 
    Cheers, 
    Holly 

  • Nice Day for a Bike Ride!

     After our juniors crushed the SAT this morning, the whole team headed out for a bike ride near school.  Starting from the bottom of the Stratton access road, we road a loop around Winhall Hollow/Old Town Rd – Rt 30 – Rt 11 – Rt 100 – Rt 30 and then UP the access road back to school!   28.5 miles total for everyone and perfect weather.  What a nice way to finish up the week!  Above and below the team starts out together on Winhall Hollow Road. 

    Riding down Old Town Road into the intersection with Rt. 30. 
    Heading up Rt. 30 towards Bromley/Rt. 11.

    Coming to the intersection of Rt 30 & Rt 11.

    Making the turn onto Rt 100 in Londonderry.
    Last turn!  Up the Access Road to school. 

    Almost there!  Kate & Brooke about to reach the alpine area and the highest point on their ride today at mile 28.

  • Athlete Recognition – what is needed for T2T athletes to optimize athlete development?

    Athlete recognition – what’s needed for T2T athletes?

    Last year when I was volunteering as the Youth and Athlete Development Director on the CCA board, I advocated for and worked to create a new initiative called the Alberta Midget Talent Squad.  The idea here was to recognize kids for their accomplishments as a provincial sport organization – and to try to recognize alot of kids.  The fact is that kids need positive recognition – for some kids that might be a ‘way to go’ or ‘good job’ but this type of recognition only goes so far.  Participation recognition is also good at a certain level (often entry level skiers) for a certain type of kid – something that says ‘you did it’ – but after awhile that type of recognition gets old and loses meaning for some kids.

    By the time kids have been at this sport for a couple of years, they need something that says ‘I am doing a good job, I am improving, and I’m good at this.  This usually happens to kids as they gain some independence from their parents during early adolescence – the T2T age.  At this same time, if a kid is reasonably active, they begin getting asked by all of the activities/sports they are involved with to ramp up their involvement.  Coaches in all sports recognize that 12-14 is a crucial age in retaining and developing performing athletes.  Kids then choose the sport that gives them the best feeling about themselves, about who they are, and who they want to be.  Its the space their in.   That is why it is crucial that kids this age have a good reason to stay involved with cross country skiing.  This is why I feel that we have to do more than token recognition for kids this age.

    The Talent Squad was meant to do this – to recognize kids based on merit – and to expand the recognition outwards from the small group of kids who usually receive the recognition at organized events.  I certainly am not saying that recognition based on results isnt needed or important – it certainly is important for each of those kids who recieve that recognition   Our sport in Alberta is not that big, and an experienced observer could usually pick the finish order of any given race based on the kids who have entered. The fact is that when you have a field of 30 kids in an age category, only some of them are going to be recognized.  After all, the competition is about who can go the fastest.  But it doesnt take a PhD in sport science to recognize that the early developers in the T2T age have huge advantages (muscular, hormonal, skeletal) over later developing T2T athletes.

    Much has been written about how athletes entering and experiencing Peak Height Velocity need to have some mentoring and coaching around ‘being patient’, ‘working hard’, ‘taking advantage of windows of trainability’.  And there are efforts to expand recognition in some ways.  As coaches, we need a carrot.  Something that is achievable if you work hard.  I certainly have talked with many coaches around the province all of whom have ideas about this.What would it look like, how could it be done? 

    In subsequent blog posts, I’ll explore some these ideas.  In the meantime, I encourage you as a coach to find ways create and provide meaningful recognition to your T2T athletes.  There are a few kids who seem to be able to withstand limitless amounts of very little positive attention when higher performing peers stand on the podium each race.  For others they just say “I think I’ll be a mtn bike racer, or a triathlete, or play volleyball”.  

    A couple of years ago I was at some conference and Istvan Balyi shared his response to a minor hockey coach who disagreed with Balyi’s assertion that even Hockey needed to change their practice to improve performance internationally and domestically.  The hockey coach responded with ‘why should we change, canada has been the world junior champions for 6 years in a row’.  Balyi’s response was something like – if you have 100 eggs and you throw them at the wall, 3 of them wont break – and that is what is happening in hockey in canada’  In cross country skiing in Alberta there is lots of great things happennig, but we do need to make sure that we arent throwing eggs against the wall.

    Roy

  • Career Retrospective: Ivan Batory

    Woo hoo! Another classic specialist! Ivan Batory has been around the block a few times. The first WC race I have for him is all the way back in the 1994 season. Let’s see, I think I was a freshmen in high school that year.

    Among Batory’s top 30 results, 63 were classic, 31 freestyle and 20 in mixed technique events (i.e. pursuits). While his best results were undeniably weighted towards classic races, his median results actually weren’t that lopsided:

    At least, they weren’t too lopsided during his heyday. As he got older, Batory did seem to let his skating slip a bit. He dabbled in sprinting, during the early days of the event:

    But as you can see pretty quickly was displaced by the “true” sprinters and never had much luck with it after that. If we take a somewhat cruder look has his (World Cup-level) distance results using finishing place:

    We can see that Batory’s “golden era” spanned roughly from 1999-2003. The 2003-2004 season was a big drop-off for him, and top results got thinner each year after that.

    With some of these older skiers with very long careers, I think it’s fun to remind people when they retire how they did at World Juniors. In his first trip, Batory finished 21st and 22nd. The next year he finished 14th and 2nd. Both years his better race at World Juniors was the classic event.

    While he had many, many top-30 results over his long career, Batory finished with only 3 podium results, but 26 top 10 results. My point here is, of course, that his success at World Juniors probably correlates well with his large number of top 10 or top 30 results. But the next step to finishing in the top three repeatedly is probably a big jump from 10th place, and not easily distinguished using 4 races when he was 19.

    Related posts:

    1. <Career Retrospective: Rene Sommerfeldt
    2. <Career Retrospective: Laurence Rochat
    3. <Career Retrospective: Tore Ruud Hofstad


  • From Cascade School District to John Carlos

    It’s just like Dorothy says in the Wizard of Oz. No matter where you go, there’s no place like home. Taking a commuter flight from Seattle on a clear spring day is finest commercial plane ride I’ve ever known. First you pull out across the Tacoma port, take a hard 180 and pass by Mt. Raineer before it feels like you practically touch the mountaintops of the Enchantment Range. All to end up in the Wenatchee Valley, meet up with family and longtime friends, and the kids of the Cascade School District.

    Every year I make it out with Mr. Peck’s 5th graders for a wildflower hike. Most times we head out the door, up Ski Hill Drive to, you guessed it, “Ski Hill.” With a seven and a half kilometer loop I’ve skied conservatively a couple thousand times, I know pretty much every inch of the trails and forest here. It’s good to get out with the kids. This year we found something quite amazing, actually: the white trillium. This might be the coup de grace of all of the northwest’s wildflowers. It’s protected. It’s brilliant. If you find one, it’s always in the shade not far from a source of water. Yet here it is, blooming in the middle of the alpine hill in the hottest, most exposed piece of Ski Hill property. A rare find.

    The crew before the afternoon hike higher up on the trails. They might be all smiles now, but some were hurting like you couldn’t believe before we made it back to where we began. I think they needed the oxygen more than any other science problems.

    I can’t forget to tell you about track season. The Mountain Lions of Icicle River are in decent form, and I have been fortunate to rake a couple jumping pits this spring. My jump knowledge is passable at best, but after watching a couple U of Oregon made Dellinger videos that specialize on the events I think I steered the crew in the right direction.

    In the reading department I’m fortunate to have come across a copy of the John Carlos Story. I’d put this down as an absolute must-read. Buy it or borrow it, but definitely read it. Reading Mr. Carlos’ words, you get the very real sense that people don’t just get in trouble for doing something bad or wrong. You can also get in trouble because you stand up for ideas and principles that challenge people in power. 40 years ago, Tommie Smith and John Carlos had something very real to say. To think for themselves and to make a sign of hope, no matter the personal cost took courage. Great courage. I’m glad they had this within them.

  • Back to Business!

      Another spring has flown by and I am now back to my normal training routine. Although I stay active throughout the month of April, May 1st always marks the official start to the training season. This year our first … Continue reading →

  • Run & Roll

     Yesterday we broke out the rollerskis for the first ski of the year!  The goal was really to get everyone’s tips switched over and check out our equipment to make sure everything is in working order.  Everyone on the team did both skate and classic and did a few laps around the Sunbowl and up the hill towards the mountain.  Earlier in the day, during our morning training block, we got out for a quick 6 mile run before lunch.  Photos from rollerskiing below and on the photo site.

    I missed Tyler & Paddy, who skied up towards the mountain together, but found them in the gym later. 🙂

  • And We’re Off!

    Cheering one of my athletes to a win in the girl’s 4x100m relay

    This past month of April has been a busy one. After returning from Craftsbury and ST Finals, I jumped immediately into coaching the Junior High track team at my old school. With a team of almost twenty athletes I have certainly been challenged by the job, as I have almost no experience with track field events. Fortunately there are some knowledgeable folks in the Methow who have stepped up to lend assistance from time to time, and with their help we’re pretty handily winning all the meets we attend.

    One of the other major tasks this spring has is planning my wedding in June. Alison and I have opted to take care of much of the reception planning and food logistics ourselves, so we’ve been scrambling to develop menus, source ingredients, and line up cooks to cover the day-of-event tasks. We have recruited some really fantastic folks to help us and we’re really starting to get excited about the wedding, now that it’s closer than ever!

    Nikki taking a power snooze during our ski tour into Silver Star basin

    Training has started up again, too. I took about a week and a half off in April before I started agitating to get going. My first few weeks of “training” weren’t structured much; I spent a lot of time in the backcountry and getting my running legs under me again. Also, in a change of pace from the last few years, I’m back in the weightroom three days per week building some strength.

    Hill sprints = Power building

    Finally, we kicked off the new season of training (officially) on Monday. This year’s focus shifts us a bit away from what we did last year with so much aerobic work; this season will look to maintain that aerobic system while bolstering and solidifying my anaerobic and power bases. These have traditionally been my strengths so the hope is that once they’re back up to a high standard, the three systems working together will provide me with a great racing engine.

    More to come!

  • Career Retrospective: Odd-Bjoern Hjelmeset

    A skier after my own heart, he was! Skating? Bah! That’s for losers!

    Hjelmeset was the quintessential classic specialist:

    If you’re basically only going to do classic races, you’d better be pretty good at them, and Hjelmeset certainly was. His World Cup career included 119 classic starts, only 26 freestyle starts and another 9 pursuits (mixed technique). All but one of his 26 WC podiums were in classic races. Those podiums included 4 World Championships podiums and one Olympic podium.

    That’s one area that being such a specialist will hurt you: the Olympics only come once every four years, the techniques will alternate on the events, and nations won’t be as likely to use one of their spots on someone who can only do 1-2 events.

    But his one WC podium in a freestyle race opens up the window to the other quirky aspect of Hjelmeset’s racing. It actually came in a sprint race, waaaay back in the day in 2001. Hjelmeset excelled at classic skiing, and amusingly it didn’t much matter what the distance was.

    He finished his career with 7 WC level sprint podiums and 9 distance podiums in races 30km or longer. The only other skiers even remotely close in terms of that split are Petter Northug (14 sprint, 17 30km+) and Dario Cologna (7 sprint, 7 30km+). And they just happen to be essentially the two best all around male skiers.

    Most of that sprinting success, though, was earned a while back:

    So chalk that up for sprinting being a bit harder as you get older, I suppose.

    Related posts:

    1. <Career Retrospective: Rene Sommerfeldt
    2. <Career Retrospective: Tore Ruud Hofstad
    3. <Career Retrospective: Petra Majdic


  • Back at it!

    Like everyone else, I had huge intentions of writing a huge blog post (almost a month ago now) reviewing my season, talking about the highs and lows in detail – and covering everything in between. However, in reality, I needed time to rest – both my body and my mind and that included taking a short hiatus from blogging and telling the world about my exploits 🙂
    Now that I’ve had that time to rest, here is how it went, in a nutshell:
    • A delayed departure for Europe due to no snow…. got my first taste of tunnel skiing in Torsby
    • An awesome streak of World Cup performances – better than I had ever imagined… scoring WC points in 6 of 9 individual start races.  I almost made the distance red group after one period alone!  This was certainly a break through for me mentally, physically & emotionally.  It also gave me the green light to extend my season in Europe and join the Tour de Ski USA crew!  This meant spending Christmas in Europe. 
    • Christmas night: fell on icy road and broke my wrist 4 days before Tour de Ski. (Nice timing, right?) 
    • Proceeded to race the Tour de Ski with my wrist – didn’t find out it was broken until half way through the Tour when I got x-rays and an MRI en route to Italy. 
    Late night orthopedic clinic visit – Oberstdorf, Germany
    • Stubbornly finished the Tour with the help of pain killers and tape jobs (thanks Steph!)  Was ecstatic to reach the top of the Alps Cermis, even if my performance took a huge tumble. 
    • Proceeded to take some much needed rest in Italy at the home of Bill and Kathy Estes – thanks Guys!  
    • Continued onto Ramsau, Austria, SOLO for a one-pole ski camp… often in a blizzard. 
    • Got back into World Cup racing in time to come down with the weird stomach bug that took almost everyone out at one point or another. Dropped out of a race in Czech (Heck, I didn’t even drop out of races when I had a broken wrist!) and then the next day summoned all my courage and energy to help the USA ladies to our best 4x5k relay result ever.  Certainly a HIGHLIGHT of the season! 
    • Just the day before I had purchased a ticket home for a 2-week recovery trip.  My wrist episode combined with the stomach bug took a bigger toll on me than I’d thought. I traveled back to the states, 30 pairs of skis and all; knowing that I wanted to come back but not knowing if I could come back. 
    • Raced the American Birkebeiner and WON!  That one had been on my list for a while ever since loosing my an inch in 2009! 
    • Returned to Europe for the Lahti World Cups but skied poorly.  Perhaps 20,000 + miles in an airplane, a 50k and jumping 4 time zones doesn’t work…. 
    • Skied and WON OPA cup finals in Toblach, Italy!  It wasn’t WC Finals but it certainly felt good to stand on TOP of a podium. I won countless pounds of cheese and meat for my efforts. 
    • From Italy I continued onto Craftsbury Vermont where I met my APU teammates. It was close to 80 degrees so we had to get tanks and shorts at thrift stores…. I continued to have what I felt were mediocre races at spring series. 
    In all, the season was a huge break through for me.  Going into it, I had no idea that I would be spending almost five straight months overseas.  I didn’t anticipate a 13th place in Davos, just missing the distance red group at the end of December, or even starting the Tour de Ski. Injuring myself was a huge bummer, especially with the momentum that I had created….. but on the bright side, it wasn’t an Olympic year, right? I raced in 26 different World Cup races in countries and venues all over Europe. In all, I raced 51 times last year, summer events included.  I learned a lot, as you’d hope I would in that period of time. But perhaps the most important lessons when it comes to International performances are that 1 – I can do it; we can do it. We have the tools to succeed, let alone WIN against the Europeans. 2 – Next season I will need a planned break to come home to AK 3 – Diversify racing venues and level of competition – I didn’t race my first non-World Cup race until the American Birkie in February!  As hard as it is to miss World Cups, standing on a podium and being in the hunt for the win is important and not to be under estimated.
    All in all, I’m excited to train really hard this summer and take another stab at it next winter.  I’m crossing my fingers to stay injury free and be able to pick up where I left off!  
    WHEW….. That wasn’t supposed to be long winded but it was, sorry. Here are some pictures of my spring to make up for it:
    First: A happy team – the 2011-2012 season is a WRAP!
    Following the ski season I did what so happy skiers do after 5 months of traveling on the road, chasing snow; go to the beach!  This trip was actually planned as a college reunion some 8 months prior to going.  There was lots to celebrate and lots to catch up on including BIG birthdays…. (and some anxiety on my part for those that know me well!)  Time with my college girlfriends was awesome. We cooked amazing meals and talked for HOURS about all kinds of non-ski related things.  My friends are all amazingly accomplished and it was fun to hear about mobile butchers for Sarah’s meat CSA, Al’s trips on the Grand Canyon, Jayne’s PhD in geophysics & Laura’s teaching exploits from Oahu!
    It was a tight turn around to get to Hawaii. I came into Alaska on a red eye and had less than 24 hours in AK to give my husband a hug, vote, pack, un-pack, lead a clinic & attend to all kinds of business and months of mail. Then, I departed on another red eye for the islands….. arriving 10 hours later; exhausted to say the least. (I’m NOT complaining though!) 
    The girls also put up with my need to exercise – at least a bit. I’ve always wanted to bike on the islands and this time I was finally able too. Here I am at the 9,000 ft. lookout for Mauna Kea.
    The view from the behind the handle bars….. we had more cloudy days than I would have wished!
    A fern fiddlehead, I think?
    Me and Jayne!
    Walking through the Kona Coffee trees
    Okay…. we did get a couple of good days at the beach 🙂
    Al and her friend, Tortuga
    The other super fun thing I did this spring was attend my good friend, Chrissy’s bachlorette party.  Instead of a night on the town we took a water taxi across K-Bay in Homer to her family cabin. We brought skis, running shoes, and blow-up paddle boards – and used them all! 
    I didn’t go paddle boarding in Hawaii but I did in Alaska!  I wore a dry suit though 🙂 
    In this photo we’re trying to show that it’s an “OIA or Only in Alaska” moment… 
    Crescent Lake Back Country loop – not a bad place for a double pole workout with the husband! 
    The spring is also a great time to participate in some awesome community programs.  
    ARISE is a new program co-lead by Alaska Sports Hall of Fame and Healthy Futures. It stands for Anchorage Runners Inspired to Succeed and Excel.  Basically, it brings local runners and health advocates into Title I schools in Anchorage to run with elementary school kids at recess.  The goal is to show that being active can be fun! This spring Tyson Elementary in Mountain View is the pilot program. 
    The grades, K-5 are having a competition to see which class can run the most.  Mid-week last week, the Tyson kids had run 584 miles total!  Last Thursday we had a “speed gun” where kids did a full on sprint.  The school is going to take our mileage and overlay it across the state of Alaska.  The goal is run from Anchorage to the North Slope – at least! 
    Running with the kids! 
    Rob came out to help with ARISE too! 

    In other news, training for 2012-2013 has started and we’re hitting it hard with APU. Lucky for us, we can still ski in Anchorage so we’re mixing some on-snow training in with running, lifting, etc. Should be fun (and sometimes sore) times!

    3.5 hour crust ski May 1st 2012

    More real soon….. 
    Cheers! 
    Holly 🙂 

  • Link To Faster Skier Article

    Audrey Mangan wrote a nice article on faster skier about our new Elite Team. Click here to read the article.

  • MNC – May/June Training Schedule

    “Comp Team” training begins next week! Please make sure you have filled out the online registration and submitted your payment before training begins.

    Here is a list of dates/times/locations for our early-season training:

    *unless otherwise announced, athletes should have the following for each practice: classic ski poles, running attire, water/food (and a frisbee or soccer ball if you have one!).

    Monday 5/7: The Range (Jericho) 4:00 – 6:00pm.

    Monday 5/14: The Range (Jericho) 4:00 – 6:00pm.

    Monday 5/21: The Range (Jericho) 4:00 – 6:00pm.

    Monday 5/28: The Range (Jericho) 4:00 – 6:00pm.

    Monday 6/4: The Range (Jericho) 5:00 – 6:30pm (rollerskiing + running with Eric Tremble and Ethan Allen Biathlon Club).

    Wednesday 6/6: The Range (Jericho) 4:00 – 6:00pm. 

    Monday 6/11: The Range (Jericho) 5:00 – 6:30pm (rollerskiing + running with Eric Tremble and Ethan Allen Biathlon Club).

    Wednesday 6/13: The Range (Jericho) 4:00 – 6:00pm.

  • Diversifying Skill Development

    Cross Country MTB – exploring how to fit this in to a year round T2T program.

    Variety is important to 12-13 year olds.  Including varied training activities expands physical literacy opportunities for this age kid as well as appeals to the need to do lots of different types of physical training.  XC MTB is a discipline of cycling that has been growing in popularity the last number of years.  With development programs existing in Edmonton (Juventis), Canmore (Rundle Mtn CC), and Bragg Creek (XCBC), many kids in Alberta are being exposed to this great activity.

    In response to interest from athletes, our club in Canmore, Canmore Nordic Ski Club has registered as a affiliate club with the Alberta Bicycle Association.  The club has also went further to include an ABA membership for each of its T2T and older atheltes in its program registration fee (where an athlete isnt already an aba member).  ABA membership is required for insurance coverage while mountain biking as the CCC insurance does not cover mountain biking as a training activity for cross country ski athletes. 

    Cross country mountain biking is a fun and challenging sport that incorporates climbs and descents on single track and double track trails. 

    The Alberta Bicycle Association has instructional resources available as well as coach training workshops.  http://www.albertabicycle.ab.ca/

    XC Bragg Creek MTB is hosting an invitational event on June 17, 2012 – the event will be an enduro style team relay event held at Station Flats/Diamond T southwest of Bragg Creek.  Interested in bringing your skiers?  I am the chief of event for this interclub event – you can contact me if you’re interested.

    cheers
    Roy

  • Brief Season Assessment For North America

    This is by no means a comprehensive look at how we fared this year, just one perspective based on a single graph.

    One of the things that I pay closest attention to is depth: how many different skiers do we have performing at a particular level. The reason for this is that for relatively “small” skiing nations like ourselves, it can be pretty common for a single extraordinary skier to come along and provide excellent results for several years. This can make the program as a whole look pretty good, but if the success isn’t “filtering down” it probably won’t last.

    In that vein, here’s a graph of the proportion of skiers (with World Cup starts) achieving a top 30 result, broken down by gender and race type (sprint or distance):

    I’ve included the size scale with the points to give you a sense of the “denominator”: how many skiers we actually sent out there in a given season. As you can see, oftentimes is hasn’t been very many at all.

    The Canadian men have obviously been quite successful recently, but note that Len Valjas is really the only new development lately, in terms of scoring WC points. Also, it’s interesting to me how the Canadian men seem to tend to have a larger number of athletes getting starts than the US, at least over the past 5 years or so.

    The story with the Canadian women is pretty simple. There’s the big bulge for the Beckie Scott & Co. era and then a pretty steep drop off. There was a sudden explosion in the number of women getting sprint start between 2008-2010 in the run-up to the Olympics. While that has dropped off considerably, the women they are starting are finally scoring some points (Crawford and Gaiazova, mainly). Their distance results have sort of bounced around.

    As for the American men, the 90′s saw a lot of years with only a few skiers getting starts (and hence the proportion bounces around quite a lot). Unsurprisingly, there was a huge increase in the number of starts prior to the 2002 Olympics, and then a somewhat deceptive jump in performance in the Olympic year. We did ski pretty well that year, but it was aided by some pretty sparsely attended pre-Olympic World Cups. (It would be interesting to do a version of this graph that looks only at races on European soil.)

    That was basically the beginning of the Kris Freeman era in US men’s distance skiing. Between then and 2008 there a steady decline in the proportion of skiers reaching the top 30, despite a fairly steady 5-10 athletes getting starts each year. Recently, things appear to have picked up somewhat, although this year is basically identical to the last.

    With the departure of Torin Koos and Simi Hamilton taking a few seasons to get healthy and performing where he’d like, sprinting has also seen a decline over the last several years.

    That leaves the obvious big bright spot, the US women. For much of this graph, the proportions bounce around very erratically, since we very often had only 2-3 women getting starts. Following a real low in 2007, with no American women scoring points we’ve seen several consecutive seasons of improvement, with a slight drop off this year. The improvement in the women’s sprint events is only ~3 seasons old, but if anything it seems more promising.

    Related posts:

    1. <Mid-Season Recap: North American Distance
    2. <Mid-Season Review: North American Sprint
    3. <North American WSC Assessment


  • Weekend Bike Ride

     After a morning of classes, we headed down to Manchester for a bike ride this afternoon. Our goal was to find warmer air (it was chilly) and gentle terrain. We succeeded on both counts and had a fine outing.

     Tess, Issy, Brooke, Mackenzie and Sverre cruised along at a nice steady pace.

     Paddy, Kate, Corky, Hamish, Anika, Matt and Andy played the “hare” role, zipping ahead, flatting, zipping by again, waiting and finally passing us (tortoise group) for good 50 minutes into the ride.

    Our route took us down through Arlington and back.

    The tulips are up at the Equinox Hotel… we’re about 10 days behind up on the mountain.

    We all enjoyed the ride. One of our spring goals is to do a team 100 mile bike ride so today was the first weekend warm up ride. Each weekend we will go a bit further and by early June, we should be ready to roll!

  • Corrine Goes Home: Hilarity Ensues

    Home is a place I don’t go to very often.  I was joking this spring as I sat in the Minneapolis airport during one of my many layovers as I tried to fly from the west to the east… it was the closest I had been to home in 5  months.  That was…. until I decided to get my wisdom teeth out.

    It was getting to the point that shooting was painful.  Smashing my face into the cheek piece of my rifle was uncomfortable.  Added challenge: take shots in-between blinks as your eyes water up and over.  Super fun!

    So it was decided.  Those suckers were coming out. One way or another.  Horror story to horror story I was a little nervous to get them pulled.  So as not to offend any dentist out there I’ll keep this short… I don’t like you.  I don’t like your hands in my mouth. I don’t like it not one little bit.  That being said. They knocked me out for the surgery and I woke up hours later curled up in a ball in my bed at home.  Great Success!

    Who doesn’t like a diet that consists almost entirely of anti-inflamatoires and gauze???  Who am I kidding, hand me some icecream!

    I actually lucked out big time.  Went for a run two days later.  No zombie-esque bleeding from the mouth or anything!  Wisdom teeth. Done. check.

    Corrine Works Out With The Ladies.

    My mom and her friends have always been pretty active.   They’ve skied the Birkie, they trail run, they love  Ski & Tea.  Most recently they’ve started to go to this kettle bell gym.  I get to hear all about it… mostly how sore it makes them.  And so of course I tease them!  ”Oh what’s that?  You can’t get the phone to your ear? awwwwwwww”

    That was…. until they brought me to class on Wednesday morning.

    Game over.  These ladies are tough….  and I well… don’t want to do box jumps for a while.

    It’s been super nice to be back in Hayward.  To see the familiar faces, to run the trails that made me fall in love with running and skiing.  It’s been the break I needed.  It finally feels like I have a fresh start as we head into the next season.  Oh right… I got renominated to the national team…. barely!   Looks like I live to ski another year!   As nice as it has been to be home I’m excited to head back out east for the first national team camp of the year.  I’ve spent alot of time training by myself this past season… Now don’t get me wrong I love a good run in the woods as much as the next person (lie: I love it more!) but I’m looking forward to having someone to train with… besides my over active imagination…

     

    One last day home in the Northwoods then it’s the long trek to Lake Placid!  Here’s to mind-willing the weather to be nice by the time I get there!