FasterSkier

Category: XCFeeds

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

  • Recovery Week Day 1

    MK wanted some pictures of us “pumping iron” so she brought her camera down to the weight room and took some shots while we did a lift at the end of last week. We’re all making some pretty major strength gains, and we looked stronger than ever even during a week when everyone was tired from three time trials.
     Hans poses with our alpine friend, Brian, who was lifting some serious weight while we were down in the gym.

    We’ve been working on balance and agility with this little drill: six times around the ball, hopping on one foot to each of the taped directions. It’s nice to see improvement over time with an exercise that is difficult at first.

    I had to get a piece of the action: Ryley’s music was bumpin’ and everyone was working so hard that I couldn’t resist.

    Fitzy puts up some big time weight on the bench press: follow this with 10 fast pushups!

    Then right over to the pull-ups.

    Then right over to the box jumps: we had the circuit humming the other day.


    Heidi gets dynamic while Fitzy contemplates the next set in the background.

    MK managed to get out from behind the camera to crank out some pull-ups.


    Ryley demonstrates some big-league arm and core strength.

    After an incredible Indian Summer weekend, the good weather persisted for ski imitation and speed bounding yesterday. We started out with some drills, thinking about setting kick wax, keeping the hips forward, and swinging our arms and legs to conserve momentum.

     After drills and stretching, we did some max speed bounding, trying to be both light and powerful.




    It was Ryley’s 19th birthday, and he smashed through some bounding before heading off to eat steak for dinner. Not a bad birthday, in my opinion.


     Hans joined us after doing some spinning. What’s up, Hans?

    Heidi is all smiles after a good workout.

    We hung out on the upper soccer field for a while and stretched. It was almost too nice to go inside, but after some ski pole javelin we all headed off to dinner and homework.


  • MVNT Registration Dates

  • MVNT Registration Dates

  • MVNT Registration Dates

  • MVNT Registration Dates

  • MVNT Registration Dates

  • MVNT Registration Dates

  • Lake O’Hara!

    Two weeks ago (okay… three now) Emma and I headed up to Lake O’Hara with her parents and some good family friends. Lake O’Hara is one of my favorite running spots, there is endless terrain, incredible mountain views and it is easily accessible. Emma’s parents and friends stayed at the Warden Cabin on the lake (thanks to Sue Hairsine and her hook ups!) while Emma and I camped at the camp ground. It was an incredible weekend with some great hiking/running, food, friends and family!

    Below are some pictures of the fun.

    Lake O’Hara
    Heading out on day one up towards Lake McArthur.

    The Larch trees were just entering their prime.
     
    A Pika mowin’ down!

    Lake McArthur…  It is a gorgeous lake and appears to have been filled with blue Powerade instead of water. Fantastic color.

    We even had our first taste of snow (not so cool for those of us camping…)
    On day two we headed out and completed the alpine circuit.
    And of course took the token ‘Lake O’Hara’ picture that everyone needs!
    Looking towards Lake Oesa from Wiwaxy Gap.
    Looking down on Lake O’Hara
    A crystal clear mountain pond below Oesa.

    Amazing colors!

    One of the small ponds below Opabin Lake with Wiwaxy gap in the distance.
    Happy Campers!

    Lake O’Hara

    Amazing weekend overall! Thanks to Paula, Jeff, Sue and the Jenkins for an awesome weekend!

  • Accuracy of FIS Points In OPA Cups vs Scandinavian Cups

    Some comments on a recent post got me curious about the FIS points awarded at OPA Cup races. Similarly to my commenters, I’d noticed that oftentimes the top skiers at an OPA Cup race would receive very low (i.e. good) points for that race, and that this often wouldn’t seem to match up well with how they actually ski against a real World Cup field.

    Here’s what I’m interested in: are the FIS points of top skiers at OPA Cups a worse indicator of performance on the WC than the FIS points of top skiers in high-level Scandinavian races (i.e. Scandinavian Cups). I think we all would suspect that the answer is yes; but how big is the difference? Can we quantify it?

    Let’s take all the skiers who finished in the top ten in an OPA Cup race over the past five season and compare their OPA Cup FIS points with their WC/WSC/OWG/TdS FIS points. In the process, we obviously going to filter out some folks who didn’t participate in both types of races. Normally I just make a pretty graph, but I was feeling fancy, so here are some estimates of the difference in FIS points obtained via some simple linear modeling:

    EstimatedDifference StandardError
    Men Distance 27.04 2.23
    Men Sprint 16.73 3.10
    Women Distance 43.24 2.95
    Women Sprint 21.16 3.91

    These values all indicate significantly higher FIS points against actual WC fields for these skiers. (Note: these models were fairly crude, but did attempt to account for the number of races of each type a skier did as well as general performance changes over time.) Note that generally speaking, OPA Cup FIS points are a worse predictor of WC FIS points in distance races; for the women, they are very bad, on average.

    How about Scando races? Let’s do the exact same thing, but instead we’ll take the skiers who’ve finished in the top ten over the past five seasons in Scandinavian and even general FIS races held in Norway, Finland and Sweden. The estimates we get for this group of skiers are:

    EstimatedDifference StandardError
    Men Distance -6.03 2.25
    Men Sprint -6.67 2.40
    Women Distance 4.05 3.09
    Women Sprint -0.88 3.57

    Holy Cow. The negative values suggest that these skiers actually have a slight tendency to get better FIS points against a WC field. However, note that only the estimates for the men are “statistically significant”, and even those aren’t really that far from zero in a practical sense. (A difference of 5-6 FIS points, on average, is not very big given how variable people’s FIS points are to begin with.)

    Still, these values are definitely strong evidence that a top result in an OPA Cup isn’t nearly as meaningful as a top result in a competitive FIS race held in Scandinavia. Not a big surprise, but fun to quantify.

    Finally, I should point out that all the models I ran here “fit poorly” in some senses. By that I just mean that their R-squared values were fairly low (generally around 0.3 or so). Now, R-squared isn’t really a good indicator of model fit, but it’s safe to say that while the differences we just observed do exist on average, there is a lot of variation from athlete to athlete. The somewhat mythical ‘average’ OPA top ten skier will tend to do much worse on the WC circuit, but what you see in individual skiers will vary considerably.

    Related posts:

    1. <A New Sprint Points Method
    2. <OPA Cup vs Scandinavian Cup: Quality
    3. <FIS Points Development Guide


  • Accuracy of FIS Points In OPA Cups vs Scandinavian Cups

    Some comments on a recent post got me curious about the FIS points awarded at OPA Cup races. Similarly to my commenters, I’d noticed that oftentimes the top skiers at an OPA Cup race would receive very low (i.e. good) points for that race, and that this often wouldn’t seem to match up well with how they actually ski against a real World Cup field.

    Here’s what I’m interested in: are the FIS points of top skiers at OPA Cups a worse indicator of performance on the WC than the FIS points of top skiers in high-level Scandinavian races (i.e. Scandinavian Cups). I think we all would suspect that the answer is yes; but how big is the difference? Can we quantify it?

    Let’s take all the skiers who finished in the top ten in an OPA Cup race over the past five season and compare their OPA Cup FIS points with their WC/WSC/OWG/TdS FIS points. In the process, we obviously going to filter out some folks who didn’t participate in both types of races. Normally I just make a pretty graph, but I was feeling fancy, so here are some estimates of the difference in FIS points obtained via some simple linear modeling:

    EstimatedDifference StandardError
    Men Distance 27.04 2.23
    Men Sprint 16.73 3.10
    Women Distance 43.24 2.95
    Women Sprint 21.16 3.91

    These values all indicate significantly higher FIS points against actual WC fields for these skiers. (Note: these models were fairly crude, but did attempt to account for the number of races of each type a skier did as well as general performance changes over time.) Note that generally speaking, OPA Cup FIS points are a worse predictor of WC FIS points in distance races; for the women, they are very bad, on average.

    How about Scando races? Let’s do the exact same thing, but instead we’ll take the skiers who’ve finished in the top ten over the past five seasons in Scandinavian and even general FIS races held in Norway, Finland and Sweden. The estimates we get for this group of skiers are:

    EstimatedDifference StandardError
    Men Distance -6.03 2.25
    Men Sprint -6.67 2.40
    Women Distance 4.05 3.09
    Women Sprint -0.88 3.57

    Holy Cow. The negative values suggest that these skiers actually have a slight tendency to get better FIS points against a WC field. However, note that only the estimates for the men are “statistically significant”, and even those aren’t really that far from zero in a practical sense. (A difference of 5-6 FIS points, on average, is not very big given how variable people’s FIS points are to begin with.)

    Still, these values are definitely strong evidence that a top result in an OPA Cup isn’t nearly as meaningful as a top result in a competitive FIS race held in Scandinavia. Not a big surprise, but fun to quantify.

    Finally, I should point out that all the models I ran here “fit poorly” in some senses. By that I just mean that their R-squared values were fairly low (generally around 0.3 or so). Now, R-squared isn’t really a good indicator of model fit, but it’s safe to say that while the differences we just observed do exist on average, there is a lot of variation from athlete to athlete. The somewhat mythical ‘average’ OPA top ten skier will tend to do much worse on the WC circuit, but what you see in individual skiers will vary considerably.

    Related posts:

    1. <A New Sprint Points Method
    2. <OPA Cup vs Scandinavian Cup: Quality
    3. <FIS Points Development Guide


  • Team Sjusjoen Arrives at the Dachstein

    Team Sjusjoen arrived just in time for the big snows and wind atop the Dachstein Glacier. We’ve been here for two days and have another two weeks here living high in the Austrian Alps. It’s going to be a great camp…

  • Team Sjusjoen Arrives at the Dachstein

    Team Sjusjoen arrived just in time for the big snows and wind atop the Dachstein Glacier. We’ve been here for two days and have another two weeks here living high in the Austrian Alps. It’s going to be a great camp…

  • Team Sjusjoen Arrives at the Dachstein

    Team Sjusjoen arrived just in time for the big snows and wind atop the Dachstein Glacier. We’ve been here for two days and have another two weeks here living high in the Austrian Alps. It’s going to be a great camp…

  • Team Sjusjoen Arrives at the Dachstein

    Team Sjusjoen arrived just in time for the big snows and wind atop the Dachstein Glacier. We’ve been here for two days and have another two weeks here living high in the Austrian Alps. It’s going to be a great camp…

  • Last day in the Park City

    Well…. It’s been a sweet camp down here in Park City, Utah. There has been lots of snow flying witch always gets us skiers pretty pumped. I woke up to this view a couple of days ago. Pretty unexpected!

    Me enjoying the fresh powder on a run.

    I leave tomorrow morning back to Anchorage. It will be nice to get a day off of training tomorrow, I’m feeling pretty beat. This morning I chased Kris Freeman and Noah Hoffman up Wolf Creek pass for three hours. A good way to end a camp, laying everything I had left out there. Yesterday we had a time trial(practice race) at the Soldier Hollow, the 2002 Olympic venue. Luckily there wasn’t snow there, I think it is a thousand or so feet lower then Deer Valley, where we are staying now. I had a pretty good race. Felt nice to go out there and not have to watch the heart rate, just go as hard as I can. Here is a picture from the race.

    Top five results-

    1)Noah.Hoffman
    2)Kris Freeman
    3)Erik Bjornsen
    4)Matt Liebsch
    5)Tad Elliott

  • Schedule: CyclovaXC Superfit Weekend!

    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

  • Schedule: CyclovaXC Superfit Weekend!

    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

  • Schedule: CyclovaXC Superfit Weekend!

    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

  • October Stone Grinding Schedule

    You’ve been training this summer and fall to get the most from your skiing, so make sure your skis aren’t a limiter.

    Prepare all of your skis to run their best with a fresh grind and hotbox service. At Nordic Ultratune, a grind batch starts every Thursday and those skis are ready for shipping on the following Monday — just 4 days later.

    Return shipping is FedEx Express Saver, which is 3rd day delivery. So, skis that are shipped out on Monday will arrive back to you on Thursday.

    Here’s the upcoming service schedule at Nordic Ultratune. Use these dates to make sure you get your skis ready before your most important races.
    • Skis in by Oct 6th will ship out on Oct 10th..
    • Skis in by Oct 13th will ship out on Oct 17th.
    • Skis in by Oct 20th will ship out on Oct 24.
    • Skis in by Oct 27th will ship out on Oct 31st.
    • Skis in by Nov 3rd will ship out on Nov 7th.

    You can see that there are still several service batches scheduled before the big Thanksgiving week training camps (and races…). There is still plenty of time to get a fast grind on your skis before the season kicks off! But don’t delay… …fast boards are a joy to ski on, and they’re a real advantage.

    Also, new skis have arrived and picks are being sorted and prepped starting this week (Oct 10th).    

    The first snows have fallen in the high peaks of the North Cascades, and fall is in full swing – winter close behind!

  • October Stone Grinding Schedule

    You’ve been training this summer and fall to get the most from your skiing, so make sure your skis aren’t a limiter.

    Prepare all of your skis to run their best with a fresh grind and hotbox service. At Nordic Ultratune, a grind batch starts every Thursday and those skis are ready for shipping on the following Monday — just 4 days later.

    Return shipping is FedEx Express Saver, which is 3rd day delivery. So, skis that are shipped out on Monday will arrive back to you on Thursday.

    Here’s the upcoming service schedule at Nordic Ultratune. Use these dates to make sure you get your skis ready before your most important races.
    • Skis in by Oct 6th will ship out on Oct 10th..
    • Skis in by Oct 13th will ship out on Oct 17th.
    • Skis in by Oct 20th will ship out on Oct 24.
    • Skis in by Oct 27th will ship out on Oct 31st.
    • Skis in by Nov 3rd will ship out on Nov 7th.

    You can see that there are still several service batches scheduled before the big Thanksgiving week training camps (and races…). There is still plenty of time to get a fast grind on your skis before the season kicks off! But don’t delay… …fast boards are a joy to ski on, and they’re a real advantage.

    Also, new skis have arrived and picks are being sorted and prepped starting this week (Oct 10th).    

    The first snows have fallen in the high peaks of the North Cascades, and fall is in full swing – winter close behind!