FasterSkier

Category: XCFeeds

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

  • Title #12, Sweetest of them all for Park City Miner XC?


    From the Deseret News By Steve Mundee
    SALT LAKE CITY — Considering that Park City has now won nine out of the past 10 state titles in cross country it sounds weird to say that the Miners were surprised to win the title again this year. However, that is the case with nationally ranked, No. 13 Ogden, competing.

    “Nobody believed we could do it. I’m not even sure I believed it,” said Park City coach Jeff Wyant. “These girls rose up.”

    Wyant has led the Miners to 12 total state titles during his tenure at Park City, but says that this year was one of the sweetest because they weren’t expected to win the race. Wyant is also quick to credit the athletes for the program’s continued strength.

    “We train hard and we’ve been lucky getting girls who want to win,” he said.

    Alisse Walker and Annie Orr finished ninth and 10th, respectively. All seven Park City runners finished in the top 20, and they all finished within a 34-second window.

    Ogden’s team fell to third place, behind Pine View.

    However, the Tigers saw athletes finish one and two individually in the race. Jamie Stokes took first place by a comfortable margin with teammate Sarah Feeny crossing the line next.

    “It’s been my goal for a long time,” said Stokes. “I can’t believe it actually happened.”

    She was the leader for nearly the entire race, winning with a 23-second margin.

    “I didn’t want to leave the race up to chance,” she said.

    3A Boys

    Ogden edged Park City to grab their first state title since 2007.

    “There is not a senior in the group, and they were hungry,” said Ogden coach Dan Hall.

    The Tigers were comprised of two juniors, three sophomores, and a freshman. When asked the secret for getting such a young team ready to compete so effectively coach Hall said, “It’s work ethic; they want it.”

    Ogden wanted it so much the boys have been talking for weeks about championship rings and telling Hall that they are going to give him a Gatorade bath. Hall finished his comments by saying that the boys’ victory was a relief and that “it was a sweet comeback” after the disappointing meet the girls team endured.

    Ben Saarel of Park City finished first place in what he called a “crazy race,” but had nothing but compliments for Jordon Cross, the second-place finisher from Ogden.

    “Gross is an incredible runner and a great pace-setter,” said Saarel. “He ran an incredible race.”

    Saarel’s strategy was to hang with Cross for the majority of the race and overtake him towards the end, which worked to perfection.

    ###

    Congrats to the Miners. Look forward to getting in a few runs before Footlocker Regionals… -Torin


  • TRAIL WORK DAY: Balsam Branch / Garfield XC Ski Trails, near St. Croix Falls, WI

    We guarantee that trail work is a great time, and we actually do get a bunch of work done – although you might not know if from this picture!

    ‘Tis the season of cooling temps, shorter days, and wishing it would only be a few degrees cooler when it rains – so it would snow…  It can only mean one thing – that’s right, another epic ski season is just around the corner now!  
    While many folks

  • TRAIL WORK DAY: Balsam Branch / Garfield XC Ski Trails, near St. Croix Falls, WI

    We guarantee that trail work is a great time, and we actually do get a bunch of work done – although you might not know if from this picture!

    ‘Tis the season of cooling temps, shorter days, and wishing it would only be a few degrees cooler when it rains – so it would snow…  It can only mean one thing – that’s right, another epic ski season is just around the corner now!  
    While many folks

  • TRAIL WORK DAY: Balsam Branch / Garfield XC Ski Trails, near St. Croix Falls, WI

    We guarantee that trail work is a great time, and we actually do get a bunch of work done – although you might not know if from this picture!

    ‘Tis the season of cooling temps, shorter days, and wishing it would only be a few degrees cooler when it rains – so it would snow…  It can only mean one thing – that’s right, another epic ski season is just around the corner now!  
    While many folks

  • TRAIL WORK DAY: Balsam Branch / Garfield XC Ski Trails, near St. Croix Falls, WI

    We guarantee that trail work is a great time, and we actually do get a bunch of work done – although you might not know if from this picture!

    ‘Tis the season of cooling temps, shorter days, and wishing it would only be a few degrees cooler when it rains – so it would snow…  It can only mean one thing – that’s right, another epic ski season is just around the corner now!  
    While many folks

  • Revelstoke Camp

    BC Team Fall Dryland Camp – Revelstoke BC Team Black Jack joined up with the rest of the BC team for a fabulous week of training in Revelstoke. The day 1 was a quality 5 hour day complete with a long run at Rogers Pass in the morning and a doublepole rollerski session in the […]

  • Cafe Society

    As many have already heard, one of the most popular pastimes of the MOD Squad (me and Scott) is motorcycle mechanics. This past spring I sold my old 1984 Honda Ascot and purchased Koos’ 1973 Honda CB750K3. The bike was largely in pieces after Torin left for school and the opportunity was ripe for me to jump feet-first into the fire and learn how to (re)build motorcycles. Last summer Scott had bought a later-vintage model of the same bike and converted it to a cafe racer, a style of motorcycle popularized in mid-’60s England as retro-fitted race bikes for riders with small wallets. You can Google “cafe racer” and there are countless websites and photo albums of some amazing work; people make boatloads of money as professional builders, taking old Japanese and British bikes and doing these conversions into stream-lined jockey rockets.

    Anyway, with a HUGE amount of tutoring and oversight from Scott, I managed to get a handle on electrical work and wiring; aluminum cutting and parts fabrication; TIG welding; engine maintenance and diagnosis; bodywork and painting; and learning from many, many mistakes. Alongside my efforts Scott managed to reconstruct and make road worthy two additional bikes to go along with his own CB750: a ’70s model Triumph Tiger 750 and a Norton Commando 750. Needless to say we’ve both huffed some gas fumes this summer…

    Anyway, as promised; the finished bike photos.



  • Cafe Society

    As many have already heard, one of the most popular pastimes of the MOD Squad (me and Scott) is motorcycle mechanics. This past spring I sold my old 1984 Honda Ascot and purchased Koos’ 1973 Honda CB750K3. The bike was largely in pieces after Torin left for school and the opportunity was ripe for me to jump feet-first into the fire and learn how to (re)build motorcycles. Last summer Scott had bought a later-vintage model of the same bike and converted it to a cafe racer, a style of motorcycle popularized in mid-’60s England as retro-fitted race bikes for riders with small wallets. You can Google “cafe racer” and there are countless websites and photo albums of some amazing work; people make boatloads of money as professional builders, taking old Japanese and British bikes and doing these conversions into stream-lined jockey rockets.

    Anyway, with a HUGE amount of tutoring and oversight from Scott, I managed to get a handle on electrical work and wiring; aluminum cutting and parts fabrication; TIG welding; engine maintenance and diagnosis; bodywork and painting; and learning from many, many mistakes. Alongside my efforts Scott managed to reconstruct and make road worthy two additional bikes to go along with his own CB750: a ’70s model Triumph Tiger 750 and a Norton Commando 750. Needless to say we’ve both huffed some gas fumes this summer…

    Anyway, as promised; the finished bike photos.



  • Cafe Society

    As many have already heard, one of the most popular pastimes of the MOD Squad (me and Scott) is motorcycle mechanics. This past spring I sold my old 1984 Honda Ascot and purchased Koos’ 1973 Honda CB750K3. The bike was largely in pieces after Torin left for school and the opportunity was ripe for me to jump feet-first into the fire and learn how to (re)build motorcycles. Last summer Scott had bought a later-vintage model of the same bike and converted it to a cafe racer, a style of motorcycle popularized in mid-’60s England as retro-fitted race bikes for riders with small wallets. You can Google “cafe racer” and there are countless websites and photo albums of some amazing work; people make boatloads of money as professional builders, taking old Japanese and British bikes and doing these conversions into stream-lined jockey rockets.

    Anyway, with a HUGE amount of tutoring and oversight from Scott, I managed to get a handle on electrical work and wiring; aluminum cutting and parts fabrication; TIG welding; engine maintenance and diagnosis; bodywork and painting; and learning from many, many mistakes. Alongside my efforts Scott managed to reconstruct and make road worthy two additional bikes to go along with his own CB750: a ’70s model Triumph Tiger 750 and a Norton Commando 750. Needless to say we’ve both huffed some gas fumes this summer…

    Anyway, as promised; the finished bike photos.



  • Cafe Society

    As many have already heard, one of the most popular pastimes of the MOD Squad (me and Scott) is motorcycle mechanics. This past spring I sold my old 1984 Honda Ascot and purchased Koos’ 1973 Honda CB750K3. The bike was largely in pieces after Torin left for school and the opportunity was ripe for me to jump feet-first into the fire and learn how to (re)build motorcycles. Last summer Scott had bought a later-vintage model of the same bike and converted it to a cafe racer, a style of motorcycle popularized in mid-’60s England as retro-fitted race bikes for riders with small wallets. You can Google “cafe racer” and there are countless websites and photo albums of some amazing work; people make boatloads of money as professional builders, taking old Japanese and British bikes and doing these conversions into stream-lined jockey rockets.

    Anyway, with a HUGE amount of tutoring and oversight from Scott, I managed to get a handle on electrical work and wiring; aluminum cutting and parts fabrication; TIG welding; engine maintenance and diagnosis; bodywork and painting; and learning from many, many mistakes. Alongside my efforts Scott managed to reconstruct and make road worthy two additional bikes to go along with his own CB750: a ’70s model Triumph Tiger 750 and a Norton Commando 750. Needless to say we’ve both huffed some gas fumes this summer…

    Anyway, as promised; the finished bike photos.



  • Nature’s Bounty

    Training and preparing for a big ski season demands a tremendous amount of time and energy. I’ve found over the years that in order to be at my best during workouts, I need to be focused equally on recovery and leisure time. This past Sunday was a perfect example. Read on…

    Back in 1994 my folks bought a small piece of land in the hills outside of Winthrop, on the Rendezvous road. The property has an aspen grove situated immediately behind the house they built in 1997, and a century-old orchard adjacent to the house. When we moved there, the orchard had not been tended to for decades; the last resident on the land had run a fox farm, and there were still remnants of chicken wire in a field where the cages were located. The orchard itself was a testament to the resilience of nature – a few dozen apples trees (the varieties of which we haven’t ever identified) are aligned in even rows, interspersed here and there with a large apricot and a few small plum trees.


    The orchard has served many purposes in my life. Growing up there I would spend hours climbing all the trees and building makeshift forts fifteen feet off the ground as my dog looked on from below. Many years later, I buried that same dog in the middle of the orchard after her life had run its course. I’ve shot a few deer that come through for apples, making for some tasty meat to fill the freezer. And finally, for the last decade or so we’ve harvested apples every year to press for cider, both fresh and hard (fermented). A cider-pressing is another great occasion to celebrate fall, and every year my mom has faithfully made a fresh batch of buttermilk donuts to go along with the newly-pressed cider we extract. This past Sunday was no exception, and Mom’s donuts were arguably the best ever. We pressed over 25 gallons of cider, with 15 of those gallons going into fermenting carboys to create Dad’s delectable (and stout) hard cider. Cheers!

    Mom’s donuts, fresh out of the hot grease and dredged in cinnamon-sugar.
    Alison cutting bruises out of the harvested apples before we send them through the press. The press was custom built as a birthday gift for my Dad last year. Fifty gallons and counting…

  • Nature’s Bounty

    Training and preparing for a big ski season demands a tremendous amount of time and energy. I’ve found over the years that in order to be at my best during workouts, I need to be focused equally on recovery and leisure time. This past Sunday was a perfect example. Read on…

    Back in 1994 my folks bought a small piece of land in the hills outside of Winthrop, on the Rendezvous road. The property has an aspen grove situated immediately behind the house they built in 1997, and a century-old orchard adjacent to the house. When we moved there, the orchard had not been tended to for decades; the last resident on the land had run a fox farm, and there were still remnants of chicken wire in a field where the cages were located. The orchard itself was a testament to the resilience of nature – a few dozen apples trees (the varieties of which we haven’t ever identified) are aligned in even rows, interspersed here and there with a large apricot and a few small plum trees.


    The orchard has served many purposes in my life. Growing up there I would spend hours climbing all the trees and building makeshift forts fifteen feet off the ground as my dog looked on from below. Many years later, I buried that same dog in the middle of the orchard after her life had run its course. I’ve shot a few deer that come through for apples, making for some tasty meat to fill the freezer. And finally, for the last decade or so we’ve harvested apples every year to press for cider, both fresh and hard (fermented). A cider-pressing is another great occasion to celebrate fall, and every year my mom has faithfully made a fresh batch of buttermilk donuts to go along with the newly-pressed cider we extract. This past Sunday was no exception, and Mom’s donuts were arguably the best ever. We pressed over 25 gallons of cider, with 15 of those gallons going into fermenting carboys to create Dad’s delectable (and stout) hard cider. Cheers!

    Mom’s donuts, fresh out of the hot grease and dredged in cinnamon-sugar.
    Alison cutting bruises out of the harvested apples before we send them through the press. The press was custom built as a birthday gift for my Dad last year. Fifty gallons and counting…

  • Nature’s Bounty

    Training and preparing for a big ski season demands a tremendous amount of time and energy. I’ve found over the years that in order to be at my best during workouts, I need to be focused equally on recovery and leisure time. This past Sunday was a perfect example. Read on…

    Back in 1994 my folks bought a small piece of land in the hills outside of Winthrop, on the Rendezvous road. The property has an aspen grove situated immediately behind the house they built in 1997, and a century-old orchard adjacent to the house. When we moved there, the orchard had not been tended to for decades; the last resident on the land had run a fox farm, and there were still remnants of chicken wire in a field where the cages were located. The orchard itself was a testament to the resilience of nature – a few dozen apples trees (the varieties of which we haven’t ever identified) are aligned in even rows, interspersed here and there with a large apricot and a few small plum trees.


    The orchard has served many purposes in my life. Growing up there I would spend hours climbing all the trees and building makeshift forts fifteen feet off the ground as my dog looked on from below. Many years later, I buried that same dog in the middle of the orchard after her life had run its course. I’ve shot a few deer that come through for apples, making for some tasty meat to fill the freezer. And finally, for the last decade or so we’ve harvested apples every year to press for cider, both fresh and hard (fermented). A cider-pressing is another great occasion to celebrate fall, and every year my mom has faithfully made a fresh batch of buttermilk donuts to go along with the newly-pressed cider we extract. This past Sunday was no exception, and Mom’s donuts were arguably the best ever. We pressed over 25 gallons of cider, with 15 of those gallons going into fermenting carboys to create Dad’s delectable (and stout) hard cider. Cheers!

    Mom’s donuts, fresh out of the hot grease and dredged in cinnamon-sugar.
    Alison cutting bruises out of the harvested apples before we send them through the press. The press was custom built as a birthday gift for my Dad last year. Fifty gallons and counting…

  • Meet Olympians at the CXC Superfit Weekend in St. Croix Falls, WI!

    CyclovaXC is proud to offer the premier XC educational opportunity in the state of Wisconsin on October 28th, 29th, and 30th. Olympians, US Ski Team Members and CXC team members will be hosting a variety of fitness, technique and waxing presentations at the CyclovaXC retail store in downtown St. Croix Falls. This event is absolutely free, and it’s a great opportunity to meet some tremendous

  • Meet Olympians at the CXC Superfit Weekend in St. Croix Falls, WI!

    CyclovaXC is proud to offer the premier XC educational opportunity in the state of Wisconsin on October 28th, 29th, and 30th. Olympians, US Ski Team Members and CXC team members will be hosting a variety of fitness, technique and waxing presentations at the CyclovaXC retail store in downtown St. Croix Falls. This event is absolutely free, and it’s a great opportunity to meet some tremendous

  • Meet Olympians at the CXC Superfit Weekend in St. Croix Falls, WI!

    CyclovaXC is proud to offer the premier XC educational opportunity in the state of Wisconsin on October 28th, 29th, and 30th. Olympians, US Ski Team Members and CXC team members will be hosting a variety of fitness, technique and waxing presentations at the CyclovaXC retail store in downtown St. Croix Falls. This event is absolutely free, and it’s a great opportunity to meet some tremendous

  • Lot 1 Speeds

    This morning we headed up to Lot 1 for some classic speed work before lunch. We did a few loops of no pole skiing downhill and single sticking uphill, followed by some quick double pole (10 double poles, as fast as you can) and some rolling start speeds. Andy trained with us this morning and set the pace for the speeds. This afternoon we’re out for an easy distance run. Check the video above for some footage and click here for more pictures.

  • Female Long Distance Specialists

    Since we supposedly do statistics around here, the goal here will be to ‘statistically’ identify folks who specialize in longer distance races. By that I mean people who tend to ski better (relative to their own performance) in longer races. The fun part is to see whether the folks we single out match up with the people we would have thought of anyway. We’ll begin with the women.

    The mechanics of this will largely mirror how I’ve identified technique specialists in the past, using mixed effects models. These are extremely handy modeling tools when you want to compare athlete specific effects. If you’re familiar with linear regression models, you can imagine doing a regression analysis on all skiers that investigates the effect of race length on performance. What we’d end up measuring is the average effect across all skiers. That’s not terribly interesting, or meaningful. Mixed effect models allow us to estimate a separate parameter for each skier that (hopefully) captures the effect of race length on performance for each individual skier.

    Beyond that, I’ll spare you the nitty gritty, except to say that I included a handful of other variables in the model to attempt to control for some other differences in race types (technique, mass vs. interval, etc.).

    Out of all the women with a reasonable number of major international distance races (at least 10), these are the ones with who have performed ‘significantly’ better in longer races:

    The more negative the value, the stronger the preference for long races. One of the reasons I like this kind of analysis is that it doesn’t just pick out people who are good at long races; it picks out people who are better at long races than short races. This means you aren’t just picking out the fast folks over and over again. There are plenty of big names here, but also some folks who are not dominant WC skiers. I’ve never hear of Annmari Viljanmaa, for example.

    Therese Johaug floating to the top here probably isn’t a surprise, although it’s not like I’d count her out completely in a 5k. And I’m also not surprised to see three Italians here; they seem to excel at the longer stuff a lot of the time.

    Who are some folks at the opposite end of this list? Along with a lot of people I’ve never heard from you’d find the likes of Vesna Fabjan, Ida Ingermarsdotter, Astrid Oeyre Slind, Katrin Zeller, Wendy Wagner and Natalia Korosteleva, who would all apparently tend to do worse in longer races.

    Related posts:

    1. <Week In Review: Friday Oct 1st
    2. <Technique Preferences: Italy
    3. <Mid-Season Recap: North American Distance


  • Altitude and Sunshine

    It’s October, which means I’m training in Utah’s Heber Valley for our biathlon team’s annual fall altitude camp.  Every day so far has been warm, sunny and beautiful on the valley floor.  The surrounding Wasatch mountains are capped with fresh snow; a promising reminder of the skiing soon to come.  Solider Hollow, the venue where we are training and the site of the 2002 Olympic games, sits at 5,500 feet.  The thinner air at this altitude makes it slightly more challenging to train and race.

    The US Biathlon Association board members were in town last weekend for a meeting and banquet, as were the US Biathlon Foundation members.  We gave them some shooting instruction and then enjoyed a variety of activities together such as horseback riding, golf, and fly fishing.  At the banquet, I had the honor of sitting next to Bitsy Kelley who runs a west coast weekly radio show about everything outdoors.  We chatted about hunting, gardening, farming, and shared ideas for living self-sufficiently.

    I went horseback riding with the board in the town of Sundance, home of Robert Redford. The scenery was beautiful with the aspens, oaks, and maples at the height of foliage season- almost as colorful as the Green Mountains back home. photo credit: Laura Spector

    I went horseback riding with the board in the town of Sundance, home of Robert Redford. The scenery was beautiful with the aspens, oaks, and maples at the height of foliage season- almost as colorful as the Green Mountains back home. photo credit: Laura Spector

    The first week of training was great.  We’ve shared the range with Maine Winter Sports Center, Twin Biathletes (the Barnes), the Junior National Team, and a contingent from Canmore.  A couple of times, we even saw our xc friends from the US Ski Team, Central XC and Sun Valley sprinting around the Soldier Hollow trails.  Although all these groups are on different training schedules, it is inspiring to train around them.  At the end of this week, we’ll also have the chance to meet some of the US speed skaters.  They invited us to watch their World Cup competition in Salt Lake.

    Group training on the range. photo credit: Pat Coffey

    Group training on the range. photo credit: Pat Coffey

    Today was our first of two sprint races out here.  Racing at altitude tends to be very painful, the lack of oxygen makes it harder to recover.  My goal was to start at a relaxed pace and keep getting faster as the race went on.   I also applied a similar strategy on every uphill: ski at a controlled pace until the last few meters, when I would accelerate and carry more speed over the top.   It paid off- I had the fastest ski time of the American contingent (not by much), but I missed 3 out of 10 targets, while several of my teammates shot clean or only missed 1 or 2.

    Standing shooting. Notice the new custom stock that I got a few months ago. photo credit: Jonne Kahkonen

    Standing shooting. Notice the new custom stock that I got a few months ago. photo credit: Jonne Kahkonen

    To read more about our Utah training camp and see more pictures, check out this Fasterskier article written by Chelsea

  • Altitude and Sunshine

    It’s October, which means I’m training in Utah’s Heber Valley for our biathlon team’s annual fall altitude camp.  Every day so far has been warm, sunny and beautiful on the valley floor.  The surrounding Wasatch mountains are capped with fresh snow; a promising reminder of the skiing soon to come.  Solider Hollow, the venue where we are training and the site of the 2002 Olympic games, sits at 5,500 feet.  The thinner air at this altitude makes it slightly more challenging to train and race.

    The US Biathlon Association board members were in town last weekend for a meeting and banquet, as were the US Biathlon Foundation members.  We gave them some shooting instruction and then enjoyed a variety of activities together such as horseback riding, golf, and fly fishing.  At the banquet, I had the honor of sitting next to Bitsy Kelley who runs a west coast weekly radio show about everything outdoors.  We chatted about hunting, gardening, farming, and shared ideas for living self-sufficiently.

    I went horseback riding with the board in the town of Sundance, home of Robert Redford. The scenery was beautiful with the aspens, oaks, and maples at the height of foliage season- almost as colorful as the Green Mountains back home. photo credit: Laura Spector

    I went horseback riding with the board in the town of Sundance, home of Robert Redford. The scenery was beautiful with the aspens, oaks, and maples at the height of foliage season- almost as colorful as the Green Mountains back home. photo credit: Laura Spector

    The first week of training was great.  We’ve shared the range with Maine Winter Sports Center, Twin Biathletes (the Barnes), the Junior National Team, and a contingent from Canmore.  A couple of times, we even saw our xc friends from the US Ski Team, Central XC and Sun Valley sprinting around the Soldier Hollow trails.  Although all these groups are on different training schedules, it is inspiring to train around them.  At the end of this week, we’ll also have the chance to meet some of the US speed skaters.  They invited us to watch their World Cup competition in Salt Lake.

    Group training on the range. photo credit: Pat Coffey

    Group training on the range. photo credit: Pat Coffey

    Today was our first of two sprint races out here.  Racing at altitude tends to be very painful, the lack of oxygen makes it harder to recover.  My goal was to start at a relaxed pace and keep getting faster as the race went on.   I also applied a similar strategy on every uphill: ski at a controlled pace until the last few meters, when I would accelerate and carry more speed over the top.   It paid off- I had the fastest ski time of the American contingent (not by much), but I missed 3 out of 10 targets, while several of my teammates shot clean or only missed 1 or 2.

    Standing shooting. Notice the new custom stock that I got a few months ago. photo credit: Jonne Kahkonen

    Standing shooting. Notice the new custom stock that I got a few months ago. photo credit: Jonne Kahkonen

    To read more about our Utah training camp and see more pictures, check out this Fasterskier article written by Chelsea