Tag: north american women’s training alliance

Throwback Workout: Pace-Development Intervals with the NAWTA (Remember That?)
Norway’s Astrid Jacobsen (r) leads Liz Stephen (U.S. Ski Team), Switzerland Bettina Gruber, and U.S. Ski Team members Jessie Diggins, Holly Brooks and Ida Sargent during threshold intervals at the 2013 North American Women’s Training Alliance (NAWTA) camp in Anchorage, Alaska. (Photo: Matt Whitcomb)

For this week’s workout, we bring you one of the best threshold workouts U.S. Ski Team Women’s Coach Matt Whitcomb said he’s ever seen — back in 2013. That’s not to say this workout is outdated, and the kind of training environment nearly a dozen top-level athletes created at the 2013 North American Women’s Training Alliance (NAWTA) camp in Anchorage, Alaska, was one other teams and clubs can try to emulate. All it takes is a quality all-around effort and well-thought-out terrain choices. Read original article here.

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[circa July 2013]

The third-annual North American Women’s Training Alliance (NAWTA) camp began this week in Anchorage, Alaska, and on Tuesday morning they completed a threshold workout that ended with a lot of high-fives in the van and left U.S. Ski Team women’s coach Matt Whitcomb pretty happy.

“Today’s threshold workout was the best threshold workout I’ve seen out of this group of women since I’ve been working with the team,” he said on the phone, as the group began their afternoon strength session.

Kikkan Randall, Jessie Diggins, Liz Stephen & Co., are joined at this camp by Alaska Pacific University skiers, National Training Group athletes, and decorated Norwegian Astrid Jacobsen, Switzerland’s Bettina Gruber and Canada’s Chandra Crawford. The workout is one that Whitcomb and APU head coach Erik Flora have repeated over the last few years in order to work specifically on high-speed skiing in the middle of a threshold session.

The keys to accomplishing this goal are two-fold: the choice of terrain, and the presence of a group to ski with. It was his team’s skilled pack skiing that Whitcomb thinks set Tuesday’s session apart from the rest, but the rolling hills are a critical ingredient to the goal of the entire workout.

“It’s not so much emphasizing going harder, it just emphasizes patterning your muscles, neurally, to fire faster,” Whitcomb explains. “I think a lot of times, certainly my tendency as been to prescribe intervals that are a bit too slow. We might be nailing the percentage of your max heart rate and the proper lactate right on the money, but the pace is just too slow — you’re going uphill, uphill, uphill, and a lot of times when we find hard terrain we go hit intervals there.”

To encourage speed variation while staying within threshold, the workout should be done on a stretch of pavement that includes gradual uphills, flats and gradual downhills, which “systematically [builds] some pace development intervals into your session,” Whitcomb says.

“It doesn’t need to be incredibly hard — today was roughly threshold and above during bursts of speed — but it was about the terrain that helped push the pace for us.”
The Workout:
- 20-30 minute warm up*
- 4-6 x 7-10 minute L3 intervals (3 minutes rest) on fast terrain that incorporates gradual uphills, flats and gradual downhills. Most interval sessions use hard and grinding terrain, great for building capacity but not so great for higher pace development. The key to this workout is in the choice of terrain.
- 20-30 minute cool down*
*Do a warm up and cool down that allows you to focus on the intervals. “Sometimes a mistake can be made where people are going after volume in addition to high intensity on interval days,” Whitcomb says.

Don’t do try to multi-task for this workout. “Warm up only the minimum that your body requires,” he continued. “You want to make sure your muscles are ready to go, and build into the intervals if you have to — you don’t want to pull any muscles or get injured — but a 45 minute warm up is too long, as is a 45 minute cool down. Keep them concise and focus more on the on-time.”

Frequency:

Every two to three weeks in the summer, with increasing frequency to every 10 days as fall approaches. “A workout like this is in addition to L4 intervals, time trials, speeds, ODs,” Whitcomb said. “It’s just another small component, another ingredient to throw in the bag and mix it up.”

Variations:
- Shorter recovery time as the season goes on, or longer recovery when at altitude — “just to make sure the on-time is what’s being emphasized,” Whitcomb says.
- Pre-determined sprint preems that accomplishes a similar break from straight threshold, forcing athletes to go from threshold, into race pace, then back into threshold when they cross certain preem markers in the interval.
On Tuesday, the women did this session on a stretch of bike path in Anchorage’s Kincaid Park. They chose a section of rolling terrain that was about 7-10 minutes long going either way. The group started their first interval in one direction, which took about nine minutes, took their three-minute recovery, and then skied back the other way to the start, which took about seven minutes.

The 2013 North American Women’s Training Alliance group after a well-executed workout in Anchorage, Alaska. (L to R) Kate Fitzgerald, Kikkan Randall, Liz Stephen, Astrid Jacobsen (NOR), Ida Sargent, Holly Brooks, Bettina Gruber (SUI), Jessie Diggins, Emily Hannah, Annika Miller. (Photo: Matt Whitcomb)

From a coaching perspective, this workout shows Whitcomb things that don’t surface in regular threshold intervals.

“I think when we started doing this it taught us that the speed didn’t really change as much as we thought it would when the terrain asked for higher speed,” he said. “You try and go faster and your muscles simply didn’t want to move faster. It wasn’t a matter of being at your max heart rate, people were well within threshold, but they just didn’t want to fire those muscles faster. But the body fortunately adapts pretty quickly to a group session like this and you see pretty notable progress in your speed in just a few weeks.”

So what made Whitcomb call Tuesday’s workout, in particular, the best threshold session he’s ever seen from his team?

In addition to their raw speed — “they were really flying” — Whitcomb noticed they skied better together within the pack than they have before.

“Everyone spent some time leading, some time sandwiched cycling in the spin wash in the middle of the pack, and it was really unlike this group perhaps in the past — you know, you establish a pecking order and somebody’s out there hammering off the front all day, maybe somebody switches out if they get tired, somebody is flying off the back all day because they’re struggling,” he said.

“And today instead it was much more this series of incessant attacks at the front where you’d recover a little bit, spend some time in threshold in the pack, and then you’d work your way to the front and use your good feelings and your recovered state to push the pack and pull everybody along at a faster rate. It looked more like watching a cycling race today, to be honest, and that’s kind of a new thing particularly in girls skiing, I think. The mass starts [sometimes] just getting strung out from 100 m into the race, and I think we’re moving in the direction of more pack skiing. And as we can improve our skills within the pack were going to be better suited for those days when the women’s pack does stay together.”

— Audrey Mangan
August 31, 2016
Norway’s Brun-Lie Impressed with U.S. Women’s Team: ‘I Think We Have A Lot to Learn’

Four women with the 2014 North American Women’s Training Alliance (NAWTA) on Eagle Glacier last week (from left to right) Jessie Diggins (SMST2/USST), Celine Brun-Lie (Norway), Rosie Brennan (APU), and Rosie Frankowski (APU). (Photo: Chris Hodel)

It all started with brown cheese and banana bread. While the U.S. Ski Team was just warming into its five-month World Cup grind, one act of kindness in Beitostølen, Norway, had a lasting effect into the following year.

Last November, Norway’s Celine Brun-Lie visited the U.S. women’s team at their cabin in the village affectionately known at Beito, bringing Scandinavian cheese with her. Then, the group made banana bread.

Eight months later, they were doing more of the same, baking some 4,000 miles away on Eagle Glacier near Anchorage, Alaska.

“It’s amazing,” Brun-Lie, 26, said on the phone last Friday from the glacier. “We are, like, 14 girls and it works really well. The girls are just nice to each other. They want everybody to have a good time. We bake a lot and do nice stuff for each other, so we have good food and everybody’s just smiling.”

Finding Falun on Eagle Glacier:

Before the NAWTA arrived on Eagle Glacier, APU went to work on a loop that replicated the sprint course at the upcoming 2015 World Championships in Falun, Sweden.“It’s amazing how the tracks are,” Brun-Lie said of how the grooming holds up in often humid daytime conditions. “I don’t know what Erik [Flora] does with the grooming but it’s always really good.”

As for the Falun-like course: “That’s really cool,” she said of the course with big hills and a technical, curving descent. “[It’s] really, really good training. You have to ski hard uphill and your legs are so tired and you have to ski down. I think it’s really important that you have to do that. It’s just amazing.”In Norway, she said her team will find terrain with similarities to a particular course, but in parts — nothing in its entirety like what APU created.

In the fourth year of the North American Women’s Training Alliance (NAWTA), Brun-Lie, part of Norway’s selective Sochi Olympic team, was invited to be the Americans’ international guest at their Alaska training camp. She’d been to Alaska once before — at least 10 years ago.

But back then, she went with her family on a cruise, visiting what she referred to as tourist spots in places like Juneau. Nothing like what she’d experience in Anchorage.

For two-and-a-half weeks, Brun-Lie explored Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula, stopping at places like Homer and Seward (for Mount Marathon on July 4) while staying with U.S. Ski Team (USST) member Sadie Bjornsen.

“She is friends with Marine Dusser, my brother’s girlfriend, so I always heard how much fun she was from Marine,” Bjornsen wrote in an email. “Last winter we threw around the idea of her coming to Alaska to visit, and by World Cup Finals she was sold.”

Visiting Alaska had been on Brun-Lie’s mind for the last several years, ever since U.S. women first asked the Norwegian women to come over. Astrid Uhrenholdt Jacobsen joined the camp last July and returned with raving reviews.

“I just asked the girls if I could come and they said yes,” Brun-Lie explained.

Brun-Lie booked her flight in April and took some classes toward her engineering degree at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in May. With just one stop in Iceland en route from Norway, she arrived in Anchorage with a few days to play before the USST camp.

“We went to all these cool places, doing all these Alaska things, which was really cool,” Brun-Lie explained.

She watched Holly Brooks, Bjornsen’s Alaska Pacific University (APU) teammate, win the prestigious-and-gut-wrenching Mount Marathon hill climb, and later visited Brooks at her cabin in Hope. She took a ride in a bush plane (which she called one of her greatest experiences ever), ate Alaskan salmon (drier than Norwegian salmon, but still good), saw moose, and checked out Anchorage’s abundant recreation and rollerski trails.

Norway’s Celine Brun-Lie at the NAWTA Eagle Glacier camp last week. (Photo: Chris Hodel)

After a week of dryland training around Anchorage and another week of on-snow skiing on Eagle Glacier, she spoke excitedly about the camp. Had she been home in Trondheim, Brun-Lie would’ve had the month of July to train by herself.

Instead, she joined a selective group of 14 women in a foreign place. Five belonged to the USST (Bjornsen, Sophie Caldwell, Jessie Diggins, Kikkan Randall, and Liz Stephen), five more came from APU (Brooks, Rosie Brennan, Rosie Frankowski, Becca Rorabaugh, and Lauren Fritz), and three were from other U.S. clubs (Erika Flowers of SMST2, Chelsea Holmes of Sun Valley, and Caitlin Gregg of Team Gregg).

Not only was the trip good for her English (she fielded questions from local reporters at media day on the glacier last Wednesday) , but it was also good for her skiing, Brun-Lie said. A week before the camp, she reviewed the Americans’ two-week training plan with her coaches. It was comparable to what she would’ve done on her own, so she had no problems jumping right in. To her surprise, the U.S. coaches gave her daily feedback.

“I didn’t know if they would care so much about me, but they do,” she said of the camp’s coaches, including APU Head Coach Erik Flora, USST Women’s Coach Matt Whitcomb and USST assistant Jason Cork. “They tell me their ideas and I tell them about mine. It’s really fun to see how similar it actually is. Maybe Matt tells me a little different than something my coaches tell me.”

International Exchange

A sprinter by nature who placed sixth in the classic sprint at the 2010 Olympics, she had been focusing on her stability skills this summer. Last season wasn’t her best, she said.

“I think I was in good shape most of the winter, but I had a tendency to fall in every sprint I did,” she said. “I’m more stable in skating than I am in classic.”

One of eight women to make Norway’s selective 2014 Sochi Olympics team, Brun-Lie had previously claimed two Junior World Championships medals (in 2006 and 2008) and went on to win a Norwegian national skate sprint in 2009. At the pre-Olympics World Cup in Sochi in February 2013, she placed third in the skate sprint.

But she didn’t compete in Russia. Her team was too competitive.

“We have a lot of good skiers; I didn’t race so I didn’t really make the team … I was kind of the reserve,” she said. “It was really tough to know that you were in a dangerous position and you might make the team but maybe not … and then go to the Olympics and be there and really want to race, but I couldn’t race.

“I learned a lot about those two weeks I was there, about myself, about how the team works and everything,” she continued. “It motivates me a lot for next season to not be in that position.”

She was glad to have made the team in the first place, because not making the team would’ve meant she had a bad season, Brun-Lie explained.

“I learned a lot about those two weeks I was there, about myself, about how the team works and everything. It motivates me a lot for next season to not be in that position.” — Celine Brun-Lie, on being ‘on the bubble’ of Norway’s Olympic team

“The hard part this year was that I was good enough to take a medal, but I kept falling in every sprint, and I didn’t know why,” she said. “But just to be there with the girls and … the U.S. Ski Team girls were so nice to me. I got to hang out with them a lot — they took care of me. I was happy to be there.”

Norway’s Untimely Tragedy

The day before the Olympics started in Sochi, Russia, Astrid Jacobsen’s brother died unexpectedly, and the team was left to cope with the tragedy throughout the next two weeks of competition.“It’s really a sad thing and I knew him also,” Brun-Lie said. “No one saw it coming. … I’m amazed how we took care of each other and got a bigger perspective of what we were doing — the races were really important, but there was a life that was more important, especially for those who didn’t race well.

“But at the same time we were there to do a job and it was important because we worked on it so long. We learned how the team works and it made us closer than we were before.”Staying in the Olympic village and speaking with athletes from other teams made for “a big family,” she added. “We had amazing coaches and doctors and all the people around us that were doing an amazing job. We got out of it pretty good compared to how tragic it was.”

That kind of relationship prompted her to solidify her trip to Alaska, where she learned more about the U.S. women’s team. Close with her own teammates, especially after the sudden death of Jacobsen’s brother on the eve of the Sochi Olympics, Brun-Lie was especially in awe of the Americans.

“I’ve always been impressed with how they can stay together and have a good time in Europe for five months at a time and not get sick of each other,” she said. “Everybody has their place on the team.”

One thing she noticed was a lack of team-building activities, which they apparently didn’t need during the two-week camp.

“We have a lot of meetings ,” she said of the Norwegian women’s team. “How we want to be with each other … You put kind of the most selfish girls in the country together and we have to work together and it’s amazing it works as well as it does.”

But the Norwegians go home after every World Cup weekend and for some quality alone time, or time with people outside of their team.

“I think it’s amazing how they keep up the good mood and if someone has a bad day, they learn how everyone reacts,” she said. “They learn how to handle it much better than we do. I think we have a lot to learn.”

Bjornsen, 24, explained this year’s camp was one of the best to date — and she trains on Eagle Glacier multiple times a year.

“We do a lot of baking, giggling, recalling stories from our fun times together — and our training is always great,” she wrote. “With 14 girls you can push each other and encourage each other to make one more step forward in training. There is always something to learn from someone else, and someone to follow! I have always loved girls camp.”

As for her team in particular, Bjornsen felt they’re unique because of their different personalities and ability to work together.

“We are all very patient and encouraging of each other which allows us to be individual,” she wrote. “In the summer for example, we are all working on different things. We have different training goals, and different approaches…. yet we are able to come to a camp, work together and have a ton of fun.”

“I think it’s amazing how they keep up the good mood and if someone has a bad day, they learn how everyone reacts. They learn how to handle it much better than we do. I think we have a lot to learn.” — Brun-Lie after getting to know the U.S. women’s nordic team

Bjornsen and Brun-Lie talked a lot about their teams, and ultimately, Bjornsen didn’t think the two were very different.

Sochi Olympians (from left to right) Sophie Caldwell, Liz Stephen, Kikkan Randall, and Holly Brooks work on a one-pole cornering drill during their annual NAWTA camp on Eagle Glacier last week. (Photo: Chris Hodel)

“They too have tons of fun together, they have good chemistry, good leadership, and a great team,” she wrote. “I think the awe comes from seeing this phenomena in a different place. While we are not doing the ‘exact same thing’, we are finding a way to push each other along in a fun and healthy way! There are so many ways to do this that I think Celine just finds it interesting and exciting.

“I can imagine it would feel the same way for any of the US girls when we join the Swedish Team, or the Norwegian Team, or maybe some others,” she added. “It is a natural thing for woman to bond together — we are just lucky we have some great leadership that has allowed this to happen!!”

Brun-Lie even offered Bjornsen some training tips.

“One day after training, Celine asked if she could tell me something, and she explained what she has been working on and what I was missing a bit,” Bjornsen wrote. “It has been amazing to see how open these girls are, and how we all just want to learn from each other and have a good time together. Training with new buddies, and learning new techniques and ideas keeps things fresh for everyone!”

Six days before flying back to Oslo, before upcoming summer and fall training camps in Norway and Italy, Brun-Lie was already starting to feel nostalgic.

“I was thinking about that, like, ‘Oh no we only have five days left!’ ” she said.

Regardless, she was excited about her own team, with 11 women — the most Norway has had in recent years. In addition to distance skiers, she also has a number of sprinters to work with at home.

Before she left on Tuesday, she extended an invite to her U.S. training partners.

“I hope if they want to come to Norway, they will,” she said. “It’s really nice for the World Cup next year to know them, so if we want to hang out get a coffee, they will.”

July 22, 2014
The Band is Back Together: Women’s Training Camp Begins in Alaska

The North American Women’s Training Alliance converged again this week in Anchorage for their third annual camp, this time with a few more foreigners than usual. (L to R) Kate Fitzgerald, Kikkan Randall, Liz Stephen, Astrid Jacobsen (NOR), Ida Sargent, Holly Brooks, Bettina Gruber (SUI), Jessie Diggins, Emily Hannah, Anika Miller. (Photo: Matt Whitcomb)

The joint women’s training camp between the U.S. Ski Team and Alaska Pacific University began this week in Anchorage, Alaska, bringing many of the nation’s top female skiers together for the first time in a month along with a few special foreign guests. According to USST women’s coach Matt Whitcomb, training has been going well so far.

“It’s nice to have the band back together up here for the third annual NAWTA camp,” he said on Tuesday. “We had a killer session [on Tuesday] with some Level 3 pace development intervals, and we’re gearing up for a great couple of weeks here.”

The pack of Americans once again includes Canada’s Chandra Crawford, whose participation in the camp since its iteration in 2011 inspired the name North American Women’s Training Alliance, or NAWTA. But the group might have to change its name soon if it keeps attracting so many European athletes; this year decorated Norwegian skier Astrid Jacobsen and top Swiss national team member Bettina Gruber joined its ranks to experience the group’s training environment.

“We’re in really good company this week,” Whitcomb said. “Just the day in, day out training situation resulting from such a high caliber group is where we get most of our benefit from.”

The group training is precisely what brought Jacobsen says brought her to Alaska.

“For me it is exotic to travel here to see Alaska,” Jacobsen told FIS in a recent interview. “Most importantly though it was the opportunity to go and train with Kikkan [Randall]. For me she is the best skate sprinter we have. I felt that we could challenge each other. We each have different qualities.

“Also, if you look at how the American women’s team has developed in the last couple of years it is a really interesting team with a good spirit. I was curious to come here and see how they work as a group.”

In return, the Americans hope to benefit from the new perspective a foreign athlete brings to the table.

“I got this descriptor from Rikard Grip, the Swedish head coach: he talked about the Americans adding just the right spice to training, so I’ve taken the word spice and have really appreciated the spice that it does add, having Bettina and Astrid and Chandra,” Whitcomb said. “It’s just a nice simulation for everybody, including the guest athlete. We’re going to be watching these girls and their strengths closely, and we hope they can pull something out of this camp and have a better shot at a medal in Sochi, as well.”

If it surprises anyone that the U.S. national team has opened up its training to foreigners, particularly before an Olympic year, Whitcomb says this is simply part of how they operate.

“One of the philosophies of the team is we’re very open,” he said. “We share any secrets we might have, and in doing that we end up learning much more. So it’s an open environment and the more we can share the more we can learn.”

The first week of the camp is being spent dryland training in Anchorage during a higher-intensity block, and next week athletes and coaches fly up to Eagle Glacier for more volume-specific training on snow.

Thus far, Whitcomb has been happy to see his athletes looking strong in workouts and staying healthy while managing mild injuries.

“We have a couple mild injuries being nursed along but nothing major this season,” he said. “I think everybody has their little tendonitis issues, little things here and there, and as a team we’ve gotten things much better under control this season. Through working with a physical therapist and setting up better injury management system than we’ve had in the past.

“The key is just smart, varied training,” Whitcomb continued. “When you do varied training it allows the body to recover in sneaky ways, so we’re doing a lot of that to be preemptive. They’re doing a much better job as athletes, we’re doing a better job paying attention and being strict when needed as coaches, but everybody’s doing great and hitting the ground running here.”

When the group moves to the glacier this weekend they’ll spend about six days on snow for between 23 and 30 hours of volume on skis. The team has both individual and group-specific goals for the entire camp; as athletes work on personal technique or equipment-based goals, the team aims to continue operating better together as they live and train together on Eagle Glacier.

“It’s just a great opportunity to get out there and get on skis,” Whitcomb said. “Learning to kick a ski on sloppy snow — mornings are firm and fast for skating, focusing on something similar to our workout [from this week]… Whether you’re socializing on a long easy ski or going head to head in a speed workout, we really run everything as a group at this camp.”

July 19, 2013
Wednesday Workout: NAWTA’s Pace Development Threshold Intervals
Astrid Jacobsen (NOR), Liz Stephen, Bettina Gruber (SUI), Jessie Diggins, Holly Brooks and Ida Sargent during threshold intervals in Anchorage, Alaska, on Tuesday. (Photo: Matt Whitcomb)

The third-annual North American Women’s Training Alliance (NAWTA) camp began this week in Anchorage, Alaska, and on Tuesday morning they completed a threshold workout that ended with a lot of high-fives in the van and left U.S. Ski Team women’s coach Matt Whitcomb pretty happy.

“Today’s threshold workout was the best threshold workout I’ve seen out of this group of women since I’ve been working with the team,” he said on the phone, as the group began their afternoon strength session.

Kikkan Randall, Jessie Diggins, Liz Stephen & Co., are joined at this camp by Alaska Pacific University skiers, National Training Group athletes, and decorated Norwegian Astrid Jacobsen, Switzerland’s Bettina Gruber and Canada’s Chandra Crawford. The workout is one that Whitcomb and APU head coach Erik Flora have repeated over the last few years in order to work specifically on high-speed skiing in the middle of a threshold session.

The keys to accomplishing this goal are two-fold: the choice of terrain, and the presence of a group to ski with. It was his team’s skilled pack skiing that Whitcomb thinks set Tuesday’s session apart from the rest, but the rolling hills are a critical ingredient to the goal of the entire workout.

The group after a well-executed workout. (L to R) Kate Fitzgerald, Kikkan Randall, Liz Stephen, Astrid Jacobsen (NOR), Ida Sargent, Holly Brooks, Bettina Gruber (SUI), Jessie Diggins, Emily Hannah, Anika Miller. (Photo: Matt Whitcomb)

“It’s not so much emphasizing going harder, it just emphasizes patterning your muscles, neurally, to fire faster,” Whitcomb explains. “I think a lot of times, certainly my tendency as been to prescribe intervals that are a bit too slow. We might be nailing the percentage of your max heart rate and the proper lactate right on the money, but the pace is just too slow — you’re going uphill, uphill, uphill, and a lot of times when we find hard terrain we go hit intervals there.”

To encourage speed variation while staying within threshold, the workout should be done on a stretch of pavement that includes gradual uphills, flats and gradual downhills, which “systematically [builds] some pace development intervals into your session,” Whitcomb says.

“It doesn’t need to be incredibly hard — today was roughly threshold and above during bursts of speed — but it was about the terrain that helped push the pace for us.”
The Workout:
- 20-30 minute warm up*
- 4-6 x 7-10 minute L3 intervals (3 minutes rest) on fast terrain that incorporates gradual uphills, flats and gradual downhills. Most interval sessions use hard and grinding terrain, great for building capacity but not so great for higher pace development. The key to this workout is in the choice of terrain.
- 20-30 minute cool down*
*Do a warm up and cool down that allows you to focus on the intervals. “Sometimes a mistake can be made where people are going after volume in addition to high intensity on interval days,” Whitcomb says.

Don’t do try to multi-task for this workout. “Warm up only the minimum that your body requires,” he continued. “You want to make sure your muscles are ready to go, and build into the intervals if you have to — you don’t want to pull any muscles or get injured — but a 45 minute warm up is too long, as is a 45 minute cool down. Keep them concise and focus more on the on-time.”

Frequency:

Every two to three weeks in the summer, with increasing frequency to every 10 days as fall approaches. “A workout like this is in addition to L4 intervals, time trials, speeds, ODs,” Whitcomb said. “It’s just another small component, another ingredient to throw in the bag and mix it up.”

Variations:
- Shorter recovery time as the season goes on, or longer recovery when at altitude — “just to make sure the on-time is what’s being emphasized,” Whitcomb says.
- Pre-determined sprint preems that accomplishes a similar break from straight threshold, forcing athletes to go from threshold, into race pace, then back into threshold when they cross certain preem markers in the interval.
On Tuesday, the women did this session on a stretch of bike path in Anchorage’s Kincaid Park. They chose a section of rolling terrain that was about 7-10 minutes long going either way. The group started their first interval in one direction, which took about nine minutes, took their three-minute recovery, and then skied back the other way to the start, which took about seven minutes.

From a coaching perspective, this workout shows Whitcomb things that don’t surface in regular threshold intervals.

“I think when we started doing this it taught us that the speed didn’t really change as much as we thought it would when the terrain asked for higher speed,” he said. “You try and go faster and your muscles simply didn’t want to move faster. It wasn’t a matter of being at your max heart rate, people were well within threshold, but they just didn’t want to fire those muscles faster. But the body fortunately adapts pretty quickly to a group session like this and you see pretty notable progress in your speed in just a few weeks.”

Whitcomb’s footage from Tuesday’s session.

So what made Whitcomb call Tuesday’s workout, in particular, the best threshold session he’s ever seen from his team?

In addition to their raw speed — “they were really flying” — Whitcomb noticed they skied better together within the pack than they have before.

“Everyone spent some time leading, some time sandwiched cycling in the spin wash in the middle of the pack, and it was really unlike this group perhaps in the past — you know, you establish a pecking order and somebody’s out there hammering off the front all day, maybe somebody switches out if they get tired, somebody is flying off the back all day because they’re struggling,” he said.

“And today instead it was much more this series of incessant attacks at the front where you’d recover a little bit, spend some time in threshold in the pack, and then you’d work your way to the front and use your good feelings and your recovered state to push the pack and pull everybody along at a faster rate. It looked more like watching a cycling race today, to be honest, and that’s kind of a new thing particularly in girls skiing, I think. The mass starts [sometimes] just getting strung out from 100 m into the race, and I think we’re moving in the direction of more pack skiing. And as we can improve our skills within the pack were going to be better suited for those days when the women’s pack does stay together.”
July 17, 2013
Saarinen Speaks from Eagle Glacier

Aino-Kaisa Saarinen (second from right) with several members of the North American Women’s Training Alliance. From left to right: Jessie Diggins, Chandra Crawford, Kikkan Randall, Holly Brooks, Saarinen, Becca Rorabaugh. (Kikkan Randall photo/www.ainokaisa.com)

Aino-Kaisa Saarinen’s got a lot on her plate. Finland’s celebrated cross-country skier is currently on Eagle Glacier with the North American Women’s Training Alliance, a group of about 20 women from the U.S. and Canadian national teams.

A multiple world champion with three Olympic medals, Saarinen, 33, has been in Alaska for more than two weeks, staying with U.S. Ski Team member and World Cup sprint champion Kikkan Randall during the first part of camp in Anchorage. Before that, she trained in Italy.

With just a few days left on the glacier before heading back to Finland, she said the summer wasn’t about to slow down. On July 14, Saarinen will marry her longtime fiancé, Tom Gustafsson, a former Finnish national league basketball player, and then she’s off to another Italian training camp.

Finland’s Aino-Kaisa Saarinen (r) with U.S. Ski Team member Holly Brooks during a rollerski session in Anchorage last week. (Kikkan Randall photo/www.ainokaisa.com)

FasterSkier caught up with Saarinen briefly on the phone Thursday while she was making lunch. Volume is typically the goal during the second part of the Alaska camp, and Saarinen said it fit well with her fitness plan.

“So far, I really love it,” she said. “There is a lot of snow and the track is in good condition, and we have had good training sessions here.”

Saarinen explained that she’s been training with the group, which includes top Americans like Randall, Liz Stephen and Jessie Diggins, and Canadians Chandra Crawford, Dasha Gaiazova and Perianne Jones. According to her blog, she was tired after the Italian camp, but said she’s been feeling good in Alaska.

“I remember when Kikkan sent me the program. I was happy to see that it was actually the kind of program that I myself had planned, too,” Saarinen said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re from Europe or if you’re from U.S.A. The training is quite similar.”

That was one of the reasons she decided to go to Alaska. Randall extended the invitation in March, thinking Saarinen would appreciate a change of scenery after more than a decade of racing and training internationally. She was right, and Saarinen immediately accepted the offer.

“I came here because I wanted to have something new and see some new places,” she said of her first time in Alaska. “When I came here [on June 12], we were training down on rollerskis and going hiking. The terrain was just great. The weather has just been great for us and everybody has been so nice to me.

“I just love this good energy here in this training camp; I think I have gotten what I came here for,” she added. “It’s good energy and [a] new place, and good terrain for training, so I’m satisfied.”

As for what Saarinen – a distance specialist — has gotten out of it? Hopefully, speed, she said. Saarinen has been working out with Randall since the day she arrived.

“It’s nice to get to know who you are competing with, and make some new friends,” she said. “Also, it’s good to see a little bit how people are training. Are they doing something different than you are doing? And of course, Kikkan is a very good sprinter, and also, many of those on the U.S. and Canadian teams are very good sprinters, so I hope I get also some speed from here.”

This coming season, Saarinen said she wanted to win an individual medal at the 2013 World Championships in Val di Fiemme, Italy. A strong classic skier, she was looking forward to the 30 k, sprint and relay.

In the meantime, she will have to get through what she called a “dream summer,” in an interview with iltalehti.fi. Saarinen is headed to a junior camp in Rovaniemi, Finland, and then she’ll enjoy a small, traditional wedding, and a combination of a ski camp and honeymoon in Toblach, Italy.

“Then I will go to Italy for a two-week training camp at the end of July. There is a lot going on,” she said with a laugh.

June 28, 2012
Saarinen Accepts Randall’s Invite, Arrives in Alaska

Finland's Aino-Kaisa Saarinen racing last November at a World Cup in Sjusjoen, Norway. (Photo: Flyingpointroad.com)

It was almost as if Aino-Kaisa Saarinen read Kikkan Randall’s mind. Longtime acquaintances, the two international cross-country superstars knew the best time to find each other – for a warmdown, a distance ski or just a chat.

Finland’s two-time Olympian and multiple world champion, Saarinen caught Randall before a morning run in March at the World Cup Finals in Falun, Sweden. Fortunately for Saarinen, the sprint World Cup winner was in mid-thought.

Kikkan Randall in Anchorage (Courtesy photo)

“I saw her and said, ‘Hey, you were just the person I wanted to see,’ ” Randall said in a phone conversation on Tuesday. “ ‘Would you like to come to Alaska to train with us this summer?’ ”

Saarinen, 33, couldn’t believe it. The last time she traveled to the U.S. was in 2001 for the pre-Olympics World Cup at Soldier Hollow, Utah. She had never been to Alaska.

“She said, ‘Me? Yeah, I’d be totally interested,’ ” Randall said.

Not long after, the two finalized the details and set a date to meet up again in late June – this time on the Pacific Ocean for a two-week camp in Anchorage. A U.S. Ski Team veteran, Randall hadn’t asked her coaches at Alaska Pacific University if it would be OK to invite Saarinen to the second annual North American Women’s Training Alliance, but she knew it wouldn’t be a problem.

They wanted to have a European at the camp, based in Anchorage and on snow at Eagle Glacier, but just didn’t know whom to ask. Randall and her American teammates were already close with the Swedish women. Anna Haag hosted Randall and Liz Stephen in Sweden last summer, and the entire U.S. women’s team is headed overseas in August for their first joint camp with Sweden.

Randall was thinking about her Swedish friends that morning in Falun when Saarinen came by. She had known Saarinen for more than a decade and traced their relationship back to the days when she was the only female on the U.S. team. In the last four years, they had grown even closer.

“I always found she was pretty friendly,” Randall said. “I also knew being an older athlete, she’s done a lot of the same training things and I thought maybe she’d want a different experience.”

Randall remembered Saarinen, a three-time Olympic bronze medalist, commented on her Facebook and Twitter posts about the Alaska camp last year. Back then, the American and Canadian women teamed up for the first extended period; this year, they took it one step further and invited a European.

After spending a few summers in Scandinavia, Randall was curious to see what Saarinen thought of the U.S., including their training methods and eating habits. Right off the bat, Saarinen couldn’t believe how long it took to fly from Helsinki, and Randall said her 13-hours of travel was about eight hours short of what it usually took.

On Tuesday, Randall completed a rollerski interval workout with teammate Jessie Diggins then picked up Saarinen at the airport. She said Saarinen was resting that afternoon before heading out with her and Diggins for a jog and evening strength session.

Saarinen would stay at Randall’s house for the next three weeks, and APU also helped her save money by paying for her connecting flight from Frankfurt to Anchorage.

When the camp officially kicks off on Monday, Randall has a feeling it won’t be long until APU head coach Erik Flora shows one of his favorite ski clips. It’s of Saarinen striding up what Randall called a “monster climb” at a sprint World Cup in Kuusamo, Finland.

“She really nails the course there,” Randall said, adding that she’s excited to observe Saarinen, especially in classic workouts.

“She’s the multiple world champion, Olympic medalist and one of the better technical skiers out there,” Randall added. “I’m looking forward to … seeing what I can pick up, and hopefully she can learn a little from us, too.”

June 13, 2012