Category: XCFeeds

a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Qy8LpbgYOag/SeKPAWrUWBI/AAAAAAAAAH8/cGvNAIGRhAE/s1600-h/sun+shaking+hands+with+the+night.jpg”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 132px;” src=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Qy8LpbgYOag/SeKPAWrUWBI/AAAAAAAAAH8/cGvNAIGRhAE/s400/sun+shaking+hands+with+the+night.jpg” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323974945755387922″ //abr /The Season’s Done.br /br /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Qy8LpbgYOag/SeKO_sfFYYI/AAAAAAAAAHk/oCfevnmQwR8/s1600-h/skis+black+%26+white.jpg”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;” src=”http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Qy8LpbgYOag/SeKO_sfFYYI/AAAAAAAAAHk/oCfevnmQwR8/s400/skis+black+%26+white.jpg” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323974934429786498″ //abr /The skinny race skis have been replaced by bigger, heavier, more shapely, boards.br /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Qy8LpbgYOag/SeKO_xlrJJI/AAAAAAAAAHs/77T1mIwLKtg/s1600-h/hike+to+the+sun.jpg”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 300px; height: 400px;” src=”http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Qy8LpbgYOag/SeKO_xlrJJI/AAAAAAAAAHs/77T1mIwLKtg/s400/hike+to+the+sun.jpg” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323974935799604370″ //abr /In morning, the paths heads in one general direction. That is up.br /br /a onblur=”try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}” href=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Qy8LpbgYOag/SeKPAOyQ2qI/AAAAAAAAAH0/qkqKjLE0Unw/s1600-h/email+-+moonlit+ski.jpg”img style=”display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 326px; height: 400px;” src=”http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Qy8LpbgYOag/SeKPAOyQ2qI/AAAAAAAAAH0/qkqKjLE0Unw/s400/email+-+moonlit+ski.jpg” border=”0″ alt=””id=”BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5323974943637035682″ //abr /If lucky by night the peak nears.div class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/2691525267872963085-5655863232790304244?l=in-the-arena-torin.blogspot.com’ alt=” //div

The final points lists for the 2008-2009 SuperTour have been posted.  Click HERE to view the top 5 or a full pdf from each category.  In the Men’s category, CXC Elite athletes finished 3rd, 7th, 9th, 9th (tie), 22nd, and 69th.  The CXC women also faired well, placing 4th, 8th, 12th, 14th, and 27th.  Bryan Cook was the top male athlete for CXC, while Caitlin Compton was our top female.  Thank you to all of the volunteers, clubs, and coaches that made this year’s SuperTour such a wonderful event!

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Lots of photos and some words about the season and seasons to come inside.

Well, after finally returning to Marquette after being held up in Fairbanks due to the volcano I have found some time to reflect on the races.  Due to the race courses being extremely hard the races were demanding as well as fast.  The field was smaller than a normal short distance US Nationals, but the quality of the field was still very high.

In both races the front group split up on the second biggest climb, the Tower climb.  This was probably the biggest hill on the Duathlon course, but it was second biggest to the Black Hole climb in the 50km.  These were straight up herringbone hills.  In both races I was able to stay connected with the lead pack because of insanely fast classic skis.  I was feeling really good in the Duathlon during the classic portion and came through the exchange in 6th, 4th American.  I just did not have it in the skate portion and had to settle for staying in the pack that was fighting for the 3rd American spot.  On the last time up the big Tower climb I was dropped a little and just could not make it up by the time the finish came.  In the end I had to settle for 7th overall, 6th American.

In the 50km classic I was able to fight the entire race just off of the lead pack.  Just as the race started the Sun warmed the tracks and they started to glaze due to all the racers and my skis became a bit slick.  This was really unfortunate because I felt great the whole race and ended up being passed in the last 3km by the 3rd American, Glen Randall.  He had a great race, but I feel like I could have stayed with the lead pack of Ivan Babikov, Stefan Kuhn, Noah Hoffman, and James Southam with a little more kick.  I stayed with them until about 25km before having to settle in the chase pack with Torin Koos and Graham Nishikawa.

All in all it was a bit disappointing to be so close to the podium in the races but at the same time encouraging for next season.  It was also great to finally be able to ski with my older brother Chris again.  It has been awhile since we have even been in the same race, and it just so happened that we skied pretty much together for the entire Duathlon and about half of the 50km.

Currently, I am taking some time off of training and just staying active by playing basketball with some of the Men’s NMU ski team and Gus Kaeding, as the ski team practices for the annual Basketball Massacre.  The Massacre usually takes place in late April and consists of the current Men’s ski team taking on the current Women’s NMU basketball team.  It is always fun to watch as well as play in!  I am also waiting for some warmer weather so I can get out on the road bike.

Check back for pictures, because we cannot currently post any for some reason.

The racing season culminated in Fairbanks recently. I’m soaking up every opportunity I have to do non-nordic specific things that I love to do, during our 3 week stint from structured training. Here are a few photos from recent tele skiing adventures.About to descend Corn Biscuit (Turnagain Pass) Clint the climber skinning up Magnum (Turnagain Pass) CXC’s Andre and Brian beginning the climb up

The trip to Faribanks, AK for the US Distance National Championships was one of the most fun trips of the year, and a wonderful way to end the 2008/2009 ski season.  The Hanley family, and many of their neighbors were kind enough to let us stay in their beautiful, unique Alaskan homes.  I stayed with the McWayne family for the first half of the trip, and Teri Viereck for the last part.  Thank you to everyone who housed CXC athletes for your hospitality and for making this trip such a huge success.

Again, “the Last Frontier” lived up to its reputation and tested our patience with Mother Nature, this time in the form of a volcanic eruption instead of dangerously cold temperatures (see January 2009).  Most of the week was very enjoyable, with temperatures in the mid 20’s and sunshine every day; however, Mt. Redoubt went off several times during the week, one of which happened to be on Monday when everyone showed up at the airport to leave between 4 and 5 AM.  Flights were canceled all day, and I was not able to get to Minneapolis until Wednesday night.

Besides racing, we got a chance to see the 2009 World Ice Art Championships, Dorlie McWayne took me to see the Faribanks Art Museum, and I got to meet The Bobs.

The week of racing started on Tuesday with a 5K (women) and 10K (men) classic race.  Results can be found HERE.  This was a decent classic race for me, but I would still like to get faster.  Bryan Cook led the men’s team finishing 7^th place overall (5^th American) while Caitlin Compton led the women’s team finishing 5^th place overall.

Next was the Team Sprint competition.  For those of you who are not familiar with team sprints, teams are made up of 2 athletes.  The course in Fairbanks consisted of a very challenging 1.3K loop.  Each skier goes around the loop once before tagging off to their partner, and a race consists of 3 laps per person (6 laps per team).  In addition, there is a semi-final and a final.  You must be top 5 in your semi-final to qualify for the final.  To win the race, you end up skiing the lap 6 times (12 laps per team) or 7.8 K total (15.6K per team).  This event can be really hard, but it is always super fun.  On Wednesday, I teamed up with Caitlin Compton.  We were the 5^th ranked team going into the event, but we had extremely high expectations.  I woke up on Wednesday morning nervous, much more nervous than I had been all year.  One of the reasons that team sprints are so cool is because you are not just racing for yourself but racing for a teammate, which often brings out the best in me.

We cruised through our semi-final, not working too hard except for the first lap, and finishing 2^nd place.  After completion of the semi-final I was even more nervous because I knew the final would be very different.  Compton was the first leg for our team so I knew that I would be bringing us into the finish.  In my leg the field was very stacked, including 2009 World Champ Silver Medalist, Kikkan Randall, and Liz Stephen who was 4^th in this same event at a World Cup in January.  Our strategy was to have Caitlin put the hurt on during her 2^nd and 3^rd leg, and get me a gap so that we could ware out the rest of the field.  This would also allow me to ski like crazy and hopefully hold off the rest of the field to the finish line.  Now, can you see why I was so nervous?!?  I tried suggesting a few other strategies that were less stressful and did not involve Kikkan and Liz hunting me down, but this strategy was our best shot to win and Compton and Coach Fish would not do it any other way (I love them for this).

On the first lap, Kristina Strandberg of the Saab/Salomon Factory team took the lead, but the top 6 teams stayed together and Compton crossed the line in 3^rd.  The next lap was similar with Liz Stephen taking the lead and myself coming through a close 4^th place.  It is important to note, that the pace on the first lap was fast, very fast.  I came through the finish drop-dead exhausted and had less than 4 minutes to recover before heading out again.  Each lap was increasingly difficult and I was giving it everything to stay with the leaders.  On Compton’s last lap, I watched intently because this is where she was planning to make a move.  The announcer’s voice heightened as Caitlin hammered up the hill in first place clearly giving it everything she had to make the rest of the field hurt.  Although Compton was strong, the rest of the field was too and her surge did not work.  She came around the final corner in 3^rd place still in close contact with Kristina Strandberg, who partnered with Kristina Trygstad-Saari, Morgan Smyth, who partnered with Liz, and Kikkan’s partner Katie Ronsse about 10 seconds behind the lead group.  I came out of the hand-off behind Kristina Trygstad-Saari and then Liz came around on our right to take the lead.  Kristina had let a little gap form on the uphill of the previous lap so I knew that she was tired and I knew I had to dig deeper and try to go with Liz.  I followed Liz up the hill going as hard as I could the whole entire time.  My legs were burning and I knew that if I fell off of her pace my technique would fall apart and Kikkan (the second fastest sprinter in the world) was somewhere close behind.  The last lap is mostly a blur, it went by super fast and before I knew it I was picking my lane for the sprint finish.  I made up a little ground, but there was not much time after the 180 degree corner to pass anyone in a sprint, especially the way I was feeling.  After a long tough season, I was more than happy with second place.

It was also wonderful to have so many friends in the shoot and on the podium.  Three of the six women on the women’s team sprint podium were NMU alumni (Morgan Smyth, Caitlin Compton, and I).  Morgan was an integral part of my success at NMU.  Over the years, we have helped bring out the best in each other, and there is no one I would rather stand one step down to on the podium of a team event.  Caitlin and I look forward to a rematch next year.

I think in any introductory exercise physiology textbook the first chapter uses probably two paragraphs to mention one of the most important tenets of ex phys as it relates to coaching: every athlete responds differently to a given stimulus.  When we cull the research for findings related to certain types of training, it is important to remember that while there is a trend that will be highlighted and discussed in the paper, when we work with individual athletes, they are merely a single point of data within the whole data set.  An individual can respond positively, negatively or not at all, and that response can be strong or weak.  Why that response ended up a given way, is often the harder question to figure out in the real world – each of us certainly has different genetics, but we also are not working in a controlled setting.  We go to school or work, are part of a family, have friends and relationships, can eat well or poorly, sleep enough or too little.  All these things can effect the outcome of training, and discerning whether nature or environment is the root of a given outcome is part of the ‘art’ of coaching and training.

Anyway, before I go any further down that road, back to the subject and title of this post.  First a little background: Every once in a while I get to play at being an athlete again with some sort of half-focused training towards a given event.  This time around I’m on a 3-week training ‘plan’ for the Boston Marathon – or perhaps I should refer to it as a ‘training push’ since the ‘plan’ is pretty vague and ever-evolving on a daily basis.

Prior to this latest ‘push’ I hadn’t run more than 9 miles all winter, and the last time I did a run that long was in January or February – I can’t really remember.  Weekly mileage has maxed out at about 12, with most weeks being somewhere in the range of 0-8.  I’ve been at the bottom end of that range lately, but even so,  when I dusted off the running legs last Tuesday and did 4 or 5 miles and was slightly sore the next day, I had myself a little worried. My goal suddenly changed from running well at the marathon to simply surviving the marathon with functional lower appendages…

Fast forward to today, and I’m thinking about running fast again.  Why?  Well, I just made it through a week of 43 miles, with a 13 miler followed by an 18 miler two days later at the end.  The trick?  Spinning.

Now granted, in the interest of full disclosure, it’s not like I’ve been sitting at a desk all winter, and barely exercising – I do maintain a basic level of fitness through my job.  And that first 4 or 5 miler was run a bit faster than the last two long runs, but still, I think there’s something to this ’spinning’ thing.

If you’re anything like me (and for your sake I hope you aren’t), when you hear the word ’spinning’, you first think of spin classes and health clubs and personal trainers, and then you’re about ready to vomit.  Next you envision Cat 4-5 cyclists geeking it out about gizmos and gadgets for training, spending more time tricking out their bike and training gear than they do actually riding, and you want to roll your eyes.  But seriously, once I get beyond those initial reactions, I think there really is something to this ’spinning’ thing.

I first became a fan of biking as a recovery tool when I lived in Lake Placid.  Back then I used to train a lot more and a lot harder than I do now, so it wasn’t uncommon that I’d feel like hell some evening after a hard interval session the day before compounded by spending all day on my feet fixing bikes at my not-always-fun summer job.  Not far from my apartment, there was some sweet single track, and often that would be the only way I could entice myself out the door to exercise when I got home at night.  Given my mental and physical state (Marge, my roommate at the time, might consider it more of a ‘condition’), I knew I could make an easy bike ride easy enough that I wouldn’t have to work too hard (major bonus), and I knew that the technical challenges could be the right mental boost to actually make the whole deal ‘fun.’  (That is, provided I didn’t crash all over the place and have a minor meltdown in the woods – which can also be cathartic.)  That was enough to get me out the door and lo and behold, every time I did that ride my legs would feel awesome afterward.  Score one for spinning!

So last summer, I got on this marathon kick and started hammering stupidly (aka necessarily) long runs on the road (note: not that fun, so it didn’t happen that often – only to compound the recovery issue).  These were the sort of runs where you could feel your legs starting to fall apart towards the end, not coincidentally about the same time as your mind starts to lose acuity and you start to really feel the onset of dehydration and depleted energy stores.  And I don’t mean my legs would fall apart like just get tired, but fall apart like feel the muscles stiffen and start to hurt when you’ve still got 5 miles to go.  Must… Keep… Running…

I’m all about recovery after a training session, after all, as lazy as I am these days, I at least want to squeeze everything I can out of the few real training sessions I actually do.  Dry clothes, rehydration and refueling are like second nature to me.  After one of those runs last summer, I decided to add to the normal routine and throw the bike on the rollers for a 10 minute spin.  Sure enough, my legs felt way, WAY better after, and the soreness was way less than I expected the next day.  Score two for spinning!

So what’s the moral of this rambling, overly long post?  In this transition season where we’re all finding our land legs again (some of us in a little more hurry than others), if after those first few runs that push your leg muscles’ tolerance for pounding, you have the ability to go for a spin (low gear, rollers/trainer or easy terrain, cadence ~100 or at least 90+), I highly recommend giving it a try.   After this past week, my faith in spinning as a post-exercise recovery tool has certainly been reaffirmed, and who knows, although we’re different beings, it might just work for you too.  (Did you catch that?  Tied all my random thoughts together in one stinkin’ paragraph.  Didn’t think I could do that, did you?)

Scandinaviabr /Greetings from Sweden. I’m in Piteå, a city about 800 kilometers north of Stockholm, on the Baltic Sea. I came over here with a group led by Pete Phillips, the head coach at Burke. The group consists of three older athletes from Canmore, Alberta and a junior from New Zealand who also lives in Canmore. These four athletes are over here to gain FIS points in order to improve their chances of making the Canadian and New Zealand Olympic Teams for 2010. I’m simply here for the experience and to ski a bit more. I’m extremely grateful to Pete for helping me make this trip possible and allowing me the opportunity to continue my season for a few more weeks.br / Sweden is awesome. We raced in the InterSport / Vattenfall Cup over the weekend. Saturday was a 5k freestyle and Sunday was a 15k classic pursuit, based off the 5k prologue. The courses wound their way through many bridges and part-way up a small alpine area, which made for exciting and tough racing. I didn’t have any expectations for Saturday; we had several long travel days on the way to Piteå and I was simply excited at the opportunity to race.br / Sunday was tougher. I skied on a pair of skis that is made for hard track klister conditions and the snow was sugary and soft, but still warranted klister. My skis were a bit draggy and iced up at times. But the bigger problem was my back: my back starting hurting on the first lap, but I know what I need to do technically to fix my back issue.br / We’re headed up to Finland for a weekend of racing and then to Bruksvallarna, a town in Western Sweden for some more races. Many of the members of the Norwegian and Swedish National Teams will be in Bruksvallarna. These are the last races of the season and all the skiers out here look forward to because the races are competitive and everyone comes together for one last time before the spring and has a good time.br / I hope everyone is enjoying some time off back home and enjoying a mental break before the start of the new training year.div class=”blogger-post-footer”img width=’1′ height=’1′ src=’https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1847564486460994594-8346177559687886156?l=gmvsxc.blogspot.com’//div