Tomorrow sees the start of the fourth annual Tour de Ski. Oberhof, Germany is the location of the first two stages and will be the first time the 10-day competition has taken place in an Olympic year. Subsequently, some big names will not be taking part as they have prioritized the Olympics and the preparation [...]
The winter solstice is barely a week behind us and Anchorage is still very much in the dark. The sun starts rising around 9am. Fortunately, there’s no ” – ” in front of the 14F like there was last year. The distant Chugach Mountains make for a cool panorama around the city. We’ve been waiting to [...]
"I have long been irritated over the great distance between the ski tracks, because it disrupts good weight transfer and kick. If you were to use a narrower stance this would become completely natural," says ski enthusiast Eirik Høyem to (Norwegian TV Network) NRK.
img src="http://3.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kvhxl7xeDr1qzt3xbo1_500.jpg"/br/br/pIs there any ski shop that doesn’t have a metric crap-load of Swix Polar that hasn’t sold?/p
a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_H2SCM3lmKm8/SzvXJSGzYQI/AAAAAAAAB0w/PHTTO017v8w/s1600-h/IMG_1918.JPG"img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer;...
In high school I heard a saying that stuck with me: "Excuses are like backsides*. Everyone has one and they all stink." (*You can imagine what the backsides word usually is.) However, I have a couple weird excuses I'm dealing with now.br /br /As I whined to several of you about, I had a catheter ablation performed on my heart in mid-November in order to hopefully cure my atrial fibrillation. This problem started becoming noticeable soon after I ran the Twin Cities Marathon in 2006. My heart would skip around randomly at a high rate, and for no good reason. Within about a year, this was happening to me about every 7-10 days, and the episodes lasted for up to 24 hours or longer. When it happened, I couldn't even walk up stairs without getting winded. Then I could go out the next day after it was over and pound a 20 mile run...it was weird. br /br /After my collegiate track/CC teammate from Notre Dame, Ryan Shay, died of a heart attack in the Olympic marathon trials in November of '07, I decided I had to get checked out right away. (Incidentally, the last time I saw him was when we went out to dinner after that Twin Cities marathon the year before.) The doctors told me I had "A. Fib" and sent me on my way. I didn't try drugs until the summer of '08, and then added another drug in October of that year after I had to walk away from the start line of the TC 10 miler because an episode started minutes before the gun.br /br /The drugs didn't work well, so I went to Mayo to have the surgery done. I was out for about 8 hours, during which time the burned the portions of my heart containing bad electrical pathways in order to "open" those circuits. That's my extremely dumbed-down explanation, but the hope is that this stops the conduction of the erratic electrical signals that caused my Afib. Now, about 6.5 weeks after the surgery, I'm still Afib-free. br /br /However, two things are holding me back on the athletic front. First, my phrenic nerve was damaged, so my right diaphragm is partially paralyzed. It pushes up against my lung rather than going down when I breathe. Second, I started noticing lately that my heart rate is weird. My resting rate now is 90 (which is not so surprising since my resting rate when I'm healthy is usually way up in the 70s), but the absolute max I've been able to hit so far is 165, which I confirmed by wearing a monitor during a skate interval session on Monday. That is over 20-30 bpm lower than what I'm pretty sure it should be. I know it was generally not too difficult for me to stay in the 170s or 180s for sustained efforts before the surgery.br /br /The doc thinks that it's possible my sympathetic nervous system was affected during the ablation, and along with the phrenic nerve, it should heal over several months. But for now I'm left with a couple barriers to any success this season. I'm going to keep training hard and hoping things come around by late February for the big races. In the mean time, if I miss some Wednesday workouts (like tonight), it is likely because I'm still trying to do my own stuff where I experiment and watch what happens with my max rate. Hopefully things will get better soon, and I'm left with a strong Afib-free heart.div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/1572647974447867713-7121153133413060488?l=vakavaraceteam.blogspot.com' alt='' //div
The song is by Europe, the location of THIS final countdown (National Championships: the final Olympic qualifier) is Anchorage, AK.Last year it was cold. When I say cold, I must stress that last year's conditions redefined the word. It was so miserab...
The song is by Europe, the location of THIS final countdown (National Championships: the final Olympic qualifier) is Anchorage, AK.Last year it was cold. When I say cold, I must stress that last year's conditions redefined the word. It was so miserab...
The song is by Europe, the location of THIS final countdown (National Championships: the final Olympic qualifier) is Anchorage, AK.Last year it was cold. When I say cold, I must stress that last year's conditions redefined the word. It was so miserab...
The song is by Europe, the location of THIS final countdown (National Championships: the final Olympic qualifier) is Anchorage, AK.Last year it was cold. When I say cold, I must stress that last year's conditions redefined the word. It was so miserab...
A couple days ago, I dug up an old video of the men's relay at the 2005 Oberstdorf World Championships, which is a great race* but which also included a little preview by Jürg Capol (then and now the race director for FIS cross-country skiing events) of what was still being described as a ski version of the Tour de France. Said Capol:I guess today it's a little bit difficult to find out who is
It is a pleasure to announce the revival of the Western Canadian Masters Championships to be held in Golden BC on March 12-14, 2010. The dates have been revised to allow for participants and volunteers to make better use of the weekend. The race notice will go out around mid-January but for now, here’s the scoop: * It’s a fun, non-sanctioned event for Master skiers who are 30 years and older * Categories are 10...
click to view a href="http://mvnordic.com/team/results/2009DECBlast.pdf" target="_blank"Biathlon Blast Results/adiv class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/489212310283984495-65470527079709...
Due to thin snow conditions in Mazama, the traditional Rodeo race was cancelled, and instead the MVNT and MVSTA hosted a rodeo-like time trial at the Klipchuck trail on Sunday, December 27th. br /br /Almost 40 skiers participated, and Olympic hopefuls ...
Is it possible to go for over a week without internet? Yes. And it’s good to know the world keeps on spinning without it. garrottkuzzy.com is back, signing in from Anchorage, Alaska. For now, though, let’s take a look back at several highlights from the past week. I’m not really into politics, but one politician I respect [...]
First, let’s go over some statistics from yesterday’s hour and a half ski: Number of Moose seen: 5 Number of FedEx planes on approach: 7 Average temperature at venue: -4 degrees Celsius Number of Alaska Winter Stars, and other volunteers preparing the course with shovels: 153 If that temperature statistic threw you off, I’m not surprised. The location is Anchorage, and I have been here since the 26th getting ready for the upcoming US National...
The following is an interview with Sugarbowl’s new head nordic coach Jeff Schloss. http://www.sbacademy.org/
img src="http://9.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kvf4dqi3oK1qzt3xbo1_500.jpg"/br/br/
pLake Placid has Russian Hill, Soldier Hollow has Hermod’s, the Birkie has the Powerline accent yet in Alaska, everything is bigger and while the courses at Kincaid will be challenging, selective and fair, the obstacles will come in larger, more foreboding packages. Here are three of the potentially toughest obstacles facing competitors and coaches at the National Championships next month./p p1. a href="http://mountredoubtvolcano.b1231.com/"A Volcano/a. That’s right, the stuff of a href="http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/images/cd/large/Joe_Vs_Volcano_SRS2014.jpg"bad comedies/a may threaten the quality of the event. The photo above is a review in case you missed it last March duringa href="http://www.ussadistancenationals.org/index.php?option=com_contenttask=blogsectionid=0Itemid=9" distance nationals. /a/p p2. a href="http://www.businessweek.com/news/2009-12-28/attempted-airline-attack-raises-new-security-concerns-update2-.html"Airline Security./a “Seriously, Ma’am, there’s only 1 pair of alpine skis in this bag that weighs 85 lbs.”/p p3. a href="http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/local/99509?site=www.google.comcm_ite=CityPagepar=igooglecm_pla=forecastpagecm_cat=www.google.comcm_ven=igooglepromo=currrentconditions"The weather./a Weather was a bit warm last week, though current conditions are solid. The snow base was a little bit thin, so race organizers shoveled a lot of snow on to the course. The forecast for now is 25 degrees and stable with snow in the forecast. Which means it will rain, then move into deep freeze before settling back into rain again. Think East Coast conditions (with variable Volcano)/p
