The Race to the Outhouse #2 is a funny name for an excuse to ski up a big hill, according to author and racer Jeff Kase. This year's overall runner-up describes his experience on April 2 (and in the months leading up to it) and why it's much more than an late-season 7.5 k race.
The Arrowhead 135 is a 135-mile, human-powered event in northern Minnesota. This year, Mike Brumbaugh broke the course record by 5 minutes despite skiing with a busted pole for 115 miles of it. “When I broke it at twenty miles, I stopped and stuck a stick in each end ... It just snapped again. Then I just carried it for sixteen miles." He had to get resourceful at a general store stop along the way.
The story of why one citizens skier trekked six hours (each way) for a race in a southern port city of Alaska. "Sometimes it’s important to travel for five days so that you can spend less than two hours racing, but do so on a course that goes from a mountain overlook to the shores of the Pacific Ocean," the author explains.
USSA released the final version of its SuperTour calendar for the upcoming winter of 2015/2016, with a December stop in Sun Valley, Idaho, as well as a mid-season East Coast visit to Lake Placid, N.Y., and Stowe, Vt.
It started with the renovation of a biathlon range last year. Now the Bridger Biathlon Club in Bozeman, Mont., is pushing to purchase both Bohart and Crosscut ranches within the next three years and plans to launch a $10 million dollar fundraising campaign to do so.
The buzz is building at the 2015 FIS Nordic World Ski Championships with the completion of the first races in Falun. Wednesday saw the individual-start distance qualification races take place with 45 women and 69 men and women skiing 5 kilometers and 10 k, respectively.
You heard what happened in the opening FIS races this past weekend in a couple of hotspots in Scandinavia (namely Beitostølen, Bruksvallarna and Gällivare), but what about the rest of the skiing world?
Sunday was for the distance racers in Gällivare, Sweden, with five Canadians -- four men and one woman -- getting a chance to test their form in the 10/15 k classic races. Alex Harvey notched his second-podium performance in third, Emily Nishikawa was fourth, Devon Kershaw fifth, Ivan Babikov sixth, and Graeme Killick eighth.
Sondre Turvoll Fossli, the runner-up of Sunday's 1.5 k classic sprint in Beitostølen, Norway, knew Petter Northug was coming for him sooner or later. Sure enough, Northug on skate skis passed him in the final stretch before the finish for a 0.4-second FIS victory.
Barbro Kvåle, a 22-year-old Norwegian junior world champion in ski orienteering, joined the ranks of Therese Johaug and Marit Bjørgen on Sunday, winning the women’s 1.2-kilometer classic sprint by three-tenths of a second in Beitostølen, Norway.
Regulars for the last week in Gällivare, the Canadians put themselves in the mix in Saturday's classic sprints with Perianne Jones winning the women's final, Alex Harvey taking second to Russia's Sergey Ustiugov in the men's final, Lenny Valjas placing fourth and Jess Cockney bringing it home in sixth.
Martin Johnsrud Sundby apparently doesn't need to be 100 percent on any given day to beat some of his most competitive teammates. The 30-year-old Norwegian national-team member won Saturday's 15 k skate by nearly 17 seconds despite feeling drained after a long Friday.
Johan Olsson reigned supreme in the first FIS race of the season in Bruksvallarna on Friday, edging fellow Swedish national-team member Calle Halfvarsson by 0.4 seconds because of an announcer flub (and a self-described cocky move) at the finish. Charlotte Kalla topped the women's field by 13.4 seconds with a surprise first-year senior, Sophia Henriksson, in second.
When it comes to opening distance races, Therese Johaug is a gamer. On Friday, she won the first 10 k classic of the season for the fourth year in a row and third-straight Beitostølen distance opener -- once again ahead of Norwegian teammate Marit Bjørgen.
Defending overall World Cup champ Martin Johnsrud Sundby took it to his Norwegian teammates on Friday, winning the 15-kilometer classic FIS race in Beitostølen, Norway, by nearly 23 seconds.
It has been an unseasonably warm and dry fall in Southwest Montana, with highs well above freezing and no snow events, but race directors are feeling better after the arrival of the first winter weather of the season shortly before the opening SuperTour races in West Yellowstone and Bozeman, Mont.
Rocky Mountain Racer (RMR) skier Maya MacIsaac-Jones recaps her team's two-week, high-performance camp in Park City, Utah. "Because of RMR’s cross-country/biathlon mix, Soldier Hollow was the perfect place for training," she writes. "Coaches were able to coordinate shooting practices for the biathletes with simultaneous rollerskiing sessions for the cross-country side of the team."
With two seniors and two postgrads on its elite team this year, Ski & Snowboard Club Vail decided to drop the name "HomeGrown" and call them the SSCV Elite, while spending more time and resources on junior development in Colorado.
There are a couple things one can count on in Canmore, including solid tracks and quality snow, even in October. At the first unofficial sprint of the North American season on Friday, more than 120 racers found both for the Frozen Thunder classic sprint, and organizers added what could be a new tradition to the mix: a zero-elimination format.
The Weston Ski Track just outside of Boston is a busy place, with 1,100 season-pass holders and 25,000 to 30,000 skiers each winter. So when the lights went out last year, the community sprang into action.