FasterSkier

Category: XCFeeds

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

  • NNF and the Big Hairy Budget Cut

    Once upon a time, there was a great non-profit organization named NCCSEF (National Cross Country Ski Education Foundation). Because their name was so long and awkward, they decided to change it to NNF (National Nordic Foundation), which is much easier to remember. In those days a group of skiers from 16 to 22 years of age traveled each year from their hometowns in the US to a big set of races in Europe called the Junior/U23 World Championships. They really wanted to compete with all the other fast skiers in the world, and hoped to get strong enough to win races like this someday. At night when these skiers were snug in their beds, visions of podiums danced in their heads. The nice NNF provided financial support for the U23 and Junior athletes on their annual trek, making the long, arduous, and exciting trip relatively affordable. The US ski team also helped to subsidize that trip. Everyone was living in peace and prosperity until the big hairy ‘budget cut’ came along. He huffed and he puffed and he… took some of the US ski team’s money. They couldn’t help with the trip anymore! Before anyone could panic, NNF sprang into action and created a pillar project fundraiser. This fundraiser was online, really easy to contribute to, and a great idea! Perhaps the little skiers with the big dreams could race in europe again! All that they needed were some friends, family, supporters, nice people, or even just facebook friends to donate a couple of bucks each… and everyone could live happily ever after.

    National Nordic Foundation | Cross Country Pillar Projects General Fund

    Here is the link! It’s up to you… don’t let the Big Hairy Budget Cut win!

  • Can Bjørgen Repeat Her Dominant Performance?

    Marit Bjørgen pretty much wiped the floor with folks last year in distance events:

    As a stats guy, when I see extreme events I tend not to expect them to repeat themselves. The general principle here is called regression to the mean. Extreme events are just unlikely, so it doesn’t make sense to expect them to happen repeatedly. From a numbers perspective, Bjørgen’s season was pretty much unrivaled, so if I were a betting man I’d wager that she won’t be as dominant next year.

    At the very least, I wouldn’t expect her to win by a consistently large margins over the field, even if she actually wins nearly as many races. But you never know!

    When people have had extremely good seasons in the past, sometimes they can sustain is for a few years in a row, other times not. For example, here are some examples of some men who had a strong season but weren’t really able to sustain that level:

    Fredriksson’s 2003 campaign is the most obvious example here. Sommerfeldt had great seasons in 2003 (second place in the WC overall) and 2004 (first place) but couldn’t sustain his 2004 performance. Similarly, Bauer had an amazing season in 2008.

    Two examples of people who managed to sustain some level of dominance for more than a year or two were Björn Dæhlie and Vladimir Smirnov:

    These guys were already pretty much top of the heap, but each seemed to step things up for three consecutive seasons. Dæhlie for 1995-1997 and Smirnov for 1994-1996. Which pattern Bjørgen follows remains to be seen…

    Related posts:

    1. <Marit Bjoergen’s Best Freestyle Race
    2. <How Many WC Victories Does Björgen Really Have?
    3. <Björgen vs Skari vs Välbe


  • Pretty Good Inspiration

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jal4OkZtz8g&feature=player_embedded

  • Pretty Good Inspiration

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jal4OkZtz8g&feature=player_embedded

  • Pretty Good Inspiration

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jal4OkZtz8g&feature=player_embedded

  • Pretty Good Inspiration

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jal4OkZtz8g&feature=player_embedded

  • Pretty Good Inspiration

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jal4OkZtz8g&feature=player_embedded

  • Volume Week

    We’re nearing the end of the end of a volume week and we’re just about three weeks into the school year, so everyone is getting into the swing of things with the schedule, classes, homework, training, staying healthy and balancing it all. In the last three days, we’ve done a threshold workout at BMD (Tues), morning agility work on foot, followed by a long, easy classic ski out to Stratton (Weds), and a recovery hike up the alpine area (Thurs). In lieu of more photos, check out the video above for some footage of the past week. It’s no fancy Revived Films production, but I’m working hard on my tracking shots from the bike… : ) Double click on the video or hit the “X” to see it bigger.
    Mac flying through his first threshold interval.
    Mackenzie.

    Corky getting forward.
    Tess follows Issy and works on her technique.

    Gino checks his heart rate and time at the end of the interval.
    Corky powering to the line.
    Mollie, the double pole queen!
    Checking lactates…who’s really in L3?
    Calvin.
    T-bone is wiped after his last interval.
    Ladies team in Stratton mid-ski.
    Up the mountain.
    Pausing for some construction trucks…
    The crew at the summit.
    In the clouds.

  • National Nordic Foundation

    Our great skiing community has created a page to help with fund raising for the upcoming season and future years. Nordic Combined has set a goal of $250,000 to help pay for World Cup, Continental Cups, development Team, Europe Camps, National camps, and much more.

    As seen on our training camps with juniors and Club skiers, Our nation has a very promising future in Combined Skiing. We can continue move up the ranks and become the best nation in the world, and bring home more medals.

    You can donate in several ways. I have made a page to help out, I want to raise 500 dollars on my own, but also you can donate directly to main page…
    Here are the link

    http://ncgeneralfund.causevox.com/taylorfletcher

    http://ncgeneralfund.causevox.com

  • National Nordic Foundation

    Our great skiing community has created a page to help with fund raising for the upcoming season and future years. Nordic Combined has set a goal of $250,000 to help pay for World Cup, Continental Cups, development Team, Europe Camps, National camps, and much more.

    As seen on our training camps with juniors and Club skiers, Our nation has a very promising future in Combined Skiing. We can continue move up the ranks and become the best nation in the world, and bring home more medals.

    You can donate in several ways. I have made a page to help out, I want to raise 500 dollars on my own, but also you can donate directly to main page…
    Here are the link

    http://ncgeneralfund.causevox.com/taylorfletcher

    http://ncgeneralfund.causevox.com

  • National Nordic Foundation

    Our great skiing community has created a page to help with fund raising for the upcoming season and future years. Nordic Combined has set a goal of $250,000 to help pay for World Cup, Continental Cups, development Team, Europe Camps, National camps, and much more.

    As seen on our training camps with juniors and Club skiers, Our nation has a very promising future in Combined Skiing. We can continue move up the ranks and become the best nation in the world, and bring home more medals.

    You can donate in several ways. I have made a page to help out, I want to raise 500 dollars on my own, but also you can donate directly to main page…
    Here are the link

    http://ncgeneralfund.causevox.com/taylorfletcher

    http://ncgeneralfund.causevox.com

  • National Nordic Foundation

    Our great skiing community has created a page to help with fund raising for the upcoming season and future years. Nordic Combined has set a goal of $250,000 to help pay for World Cup, Continental Cups, development Team, Europe Camps, National camps, and much more.

    As seen on our training camps with juniors and Club skiers, Our nation has a very promising future in Combined Skiing. We can continue move up the ranks and become the best nation in the world, and bring home more medals.

    You can donate in several ways. I have made a page to help out, I want to raise 500 dollars on my own, but also you can donate directly to main page…
    Here are the link

    http://ncgeneralfund.causevox.com/taylorfletcher

    http://ncgeneralfund.causevox.com

  • National Nordic Foundation

    Our great skiing community has created a page to help with fund raising for the upcoming season and future years. Nordic Combined has set a goal of $250,000 to help pay for World Cup, Continental Cups, development Team, Europe Camps, National camps, and much more.

    As seen on our training camps with juniors and Club skiers, Our nation has a very promising future in Combined Skiing. We can continue move up the ranks and become the best nation in the world, and bring home more medals.

    You can donate in several ways. I have made a page to help out, I want to raise 500 dollars on my own, but also you can donate directly to main page…
    Here are the link

    http://ncgeneralfund.causevox.com/taylorfletcher

    http://ncgeneralfund.causevox.com

  • Female Participation Over Time

    On Monday I looked at the ratio of women to men in FIS races during the 2010-2011 season. This will just be a quick update on that to look at the same data, but over time.

    The same caveats apply here. I’m only looking at participants in FIS sanctioned races, which misses lots of races in various countries. Indeed, some countries are probably more likely to have lots of FIS races than others, so comparisons between countries should be taken with a grain of salt. Given these caveats, changes over (reasonably short) periods of time can be interesting:

    Sweden is nice and steady. Finland has apparently seen a steady increase in the ratio of women to men recently. Interestingly, Russia has seen a bit of a decline. As for the US and Canada:

    Related posts:

    1. <Participation Rates
    2. <Performance Trends: ITA, FIN, GER
    3. <North American Race Penalties Over Time


  • Back from Europe

    I have been home from our European camp for about a week now and it feels great to be back!  I had a very productive four weeks in Austria and Germany but it’s nice to be back home for my … Continue reading →

  • Back from Europe

    I have been home from our European camp for about a week now and it feels great to be back!  I had a very productive four weeks in Austria and Germany but it’s nice to be back home for my … Continue reading →

  • Back from Europe

    I have been home from our European camp for about a week now and it feels great to be back!  I had a very productive four weeks in Austria and Germany but it’s nice to be back home for my … Continue reading →

  • Back from Europe

    I have been home from our European camp for about a week now and it feels great to be back!  I had a very productive four weeks in Austria and Germany but it’s nice to be back home for my … Continue reading →

  • Female Participation In Skiing

    Fast and Female is a great organization, operating mainly in the US and Canada to promote women’s participation in skiing (or sports, more generally). I’ve been thinking about women’s participation in sports recently, so I thought I’d look up some data.

    Using all FIS sanctioned races from the 2010-2011, the following graph shows the ratio of the total number of women to men for each nation that I have a record of racing last season. The bars are colored according to the total number of skiers, men or women, since many nations have only a few skiers.

    Obviously, women’s races generally tend to have fewer participants all over. But notice that the US actually does pretty well in terms of the ratio of women to men participating. Of course, this only counts FIS races, which is a big omission. This doesn’t count small, local non-FIS races. Still, this is probably indicative of something at least somewhat relevant to female participation rates. However, it will also inevitably be correlated with how many FIS races a nation holds. So don’t get all mad at countries like Serbia or Greece over this (and, conversely, don’t assume that Kyrgyzstan (or China!) is some sort of sports gender equality utopia.

    Note how many total skiers Norway has, but how disproportionately male they are. And of course, basically all the ratios are far too short of 1 for my taste.

    Related posts:

    1. <Skiing Performance and Age
    2. <Participation Rates
    3. <Japan’s Junior Skiers


  • Roll Run Row

    For roughly the past two years, the GRP skiers and SBTC rowers have been talking about the doing a “Craftsbury Triathlon”.  It would be the ultimate test of the well-rounded Craftsbury athlete: a rollerski on the Creek Rd. from Irasburg to the end of the pavement, followed by a run back to the center on the dirt roads, followed by sculling to the end of the lake and back.  Each leg would take somewhere around 25 minutes for someone who was fast at the particular activity, and potentially much longer for someone who wasn’t.  Finally, after all these years of talk and speculation, the dream became a reality and the inaugural Craftsbury Roll Run Row was held this past Friday.  Here are some pictures of the day.

    Tim and Pat came in together after the running leg. But would they stay together for long?

    Tim and Pat came in together after the running leg. But would they stay together for long?

    The rowing battle didn't last for too long until Tim flipped. Larry coached him back into the boat.

    The rowing battle didn't last for too long until Tim flipped. Larry coached him back into the boat.

    Lynn ran the running leg for the "masters" team. They were missing a rollerskier, so their win was unofficial.

    Lynn ran the running leg for the "masters" team. They were missing a rollerskier, so their win was unofficial.

    Ethan made up a large deficit after the frist two legs to take the win.

    Ethan made up a large deficit after the first two legs to take the win.

    Claire sported a Belarussian rowing uni for the race. She almost caught Pat in the row and took 3rd overall.

    Claire sported a Belarussian rowing uni for the race. She almost caught Pat in the row and took 3rd overall.

    John Graves was 12 minutes behind after the rollerski, but plowed through the competition in the row to take 5th.

    John Graves was 12 minutes behind after the rollerski, but plowed through the competition in the row to take 5th.

    Dylan climbs back onto the dock after jumping in to save the seat that fell out of his boat.

    Dylan climbs back onto the dock after jumping in to save the seat that fell out of his boat.

    Megan got to the dock and said, "Pepa, teach me how to row!" By the end of the row she was doing great with some coaching from Larry.

    Megan got to the dock and said, "Pepa, teach me how to row!" By the end of the row she was doing great with some coaching from Larry.

    All of us hanging out after the big race. It was a long hard race. I think the winning time was around 90 minutes.

    All of us hanging out after the big race. It was a long hard race. I think the winning time was around 90 minutes.