This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Two older girls on the Edward Little ski team went looking for bodies. It was the mid-1980s, the boys’ Nordic program at the Auburn, Maine, high school was thin and not very good, and the girls’ team was strong. The two girls, Becky Flynn (SVSEF) and Sarah Pribram (NWVE), knew...
This is part one of a multi-part series titled “Limiting Factors – A Genesis of Blood Doping”. It comes to FasterSkier from Sammy Izdatyev. Sammy Izdatyev is the pen name of a Finnish sports enthusiast and unaffiliated amateur historian, who has been interested in endurance sports since the turn of the millennium. He hopes that his pro bono – research can provide more information into the body of literature of earlier underresearched areas of...
Dubbed “The Dirty 30” by Drew Holbrook, this L4/5 rollerski workout (with repetitions of 30 seconds on and 30 seconds off) comes from Gear West's Matt Liebsch. “Between 20-40mins the workout will feel unbearable at times… this is where mental fortitude comes into play," he explains.
Reigning two-time U.S. national nordic-combined champion Bryan Fletcher shares a cycling workout (which can also be done skiing or running) that he recommends doing once a month. “It works on both your VO2 max zone and Threshold zone," he explains. "Or Level 3/4 zone depending on what system you use."
The U.S. Ski Team’s cross-country athletes finished their final round of pre-season testing last week in Park City, Utah. Athlete blogs currently abound with documentation of skiers pushing themselves to the point of falling off the treadmill in order to collect data on how much they’ve each progressed since their last test. The importance an athlete attaches to his or her test results varies by individual, but in the lab and in training they can...
A few weeks ago 18-year-old Norwegian cyclist Oskar Svedsen turned heads by doing something no one has done before in the world of physiological testing: he recorded a V02max of 97.5 mL/kg/min. The number surpasses the high water mark long held by Bjørn Dæhlie (96 mL/kg/min), making Svedsen the young new king of aerobic capacity. Whether it has any significance or not, cross-country skiing can no longer lay claim to the best V02max in...