Central Cross Country Ski Association is pleased to announce the 2008 Coaches Conference organized in conjunction with the CXC Regional Elite Camp on June 30 — July 2, 2008. “This is a great opportunity for coaches at all levels to learn and observe how US National Team coaches work on technique with top athletes. Presentations will be focused on planning the training process, progress identification and training adaptation analysis as well as presentations by US...
Monday morning was sunny. Temps overnight got into the upper 20's in the high country and the crust cruising was excellent. Things started to get a little slow around 9:30 due to the fresh snow that had fallen over the past couple of days. The trailhead picture where we started skiing is 3.5 miles up a good road from Crested Butte! It is sure great to still be skiing this close to town. This is...
This has been a weird year for weather, and the fall has certainly been no exception, with the longest-running Indian summer here in Northern New Mexico, and pretty much nationwide, that I have experienced in my lifetime. With only a few days being the exception, I could have been in shorts riding mountain single track on my bike (usually the first activity to go with the onset of fall/winter weather) right up to Thanksgiving. Colorado...
The US Continental Cup Team has been in Park City for over a week now. For many of the CC Team athletes this camp serves as an acclimatization camp before the Super Tour races kick off in West Yellowstone, MT. Since most of the races this fall will be at altitude we took advantage of the elevation in Park City to start the acclimatization early. Some key steps to adjusting to altitude: 1. Intensity –...
The CXC Team joined in on the US Ski Team for the October camp at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid, New York. Other Olympic Development programs and a handful of top junior athletes also participated in the camp, making this camp a unique opportunity to train with other top skiers prior to the ski season. Training volumes and training load is presently high, so our goal is to limit travel, focus on individual...
Burke Mountain Academy’s Nordic squad is settling back into the routine of school after returning from ten days of training and the season’s first race in Torsby and Mora, Sweden. Burke’s schedule is laid out in blocks of academic time interspersed with periods of training time that are long enough to take advantage of training opportunities in other parts of the country or the world. The Fortum Tunnel in Torsby had been getting great reviews...
The USST members were not the only ones showing their preseason muscle recently in Lake Placid. Many juniors from the New England region did not hesitate to hop in and rub shoulders with the big guns. NENSA capitalized on the opportunity to schedule a fall camp that coincided with USST training camp so their skiers could put some hours in alongside (or maybe a little behind) the top skiers in the country. Among the junior...
Winter is getting closer and over the last couple of weeks the Alps saw the first snow of the year. Skiing at Dachstein (Ramsau in Austria) in fall is always a special experience. The skiing last week was excellent, with the first two days nice and sunny with temps in the high 30s and first class trail conditions. There were few national A-teams, but plenty of junior teams from Eastern Europe and Scandinavia. The focus...
Team Today reports on the ongoing camp, detailing workouts and providing excellent photos. And Head Coach Pete Vordenberg answers a few questions – Question 1. We only have X amount of time to train? Thought: maximize that time by focusing on 1 to 2 things every workout and making sure you accomplish those things within the time you have. Waste no time. If it is rest, rest well, eat a lot and drink lots of...
Far West Nordic Junior skiers began the transition from summer training to Autumn intensity last weekend at the first-ever Virginia Lakes Fall Camp. Set in an incredibly beautiful canyon in the Eastern Sierra, at 9,400 ft elevation, Virginia Lakes offers a great combination of high-altitude roller-skiing and hiking amid the pine and aspen forests of the Sierra Nevada. The weekend was designed as a high-intensity mini-camp for some of the top athletes in the division...
The CXC Team kicked-off their September training camp with a four day camping excursion in the scenic Porcupine Mountains State Park of Upper Peninsula, Michigan. Athletes embraced the wilderness as they settled into their rustic accommodations along the shoreline of Lake Superior. The Porcupine Mountains, or Porkies as they are fondly referred to, offered picturesque rollerskiing and running terrain for the CXC Team. The first full day of training in the state park entailed a...
The Norweigan Sprint Team recently gathered in Trondheim to undergo the season's toughest camp. One of the key workouts was a wickedly tough uphill workout under the supervision of 800 meter gold medalist Vebjœrn Rodal, who has been collaborating with the sprint team over the past few seasons. The sprint national team is in a very difficult training period and the camp in Trondheim included a large number of challenging workouts. Under the instruction of...
The athletes and coaches of the Central Cross Country (CXC) Olympic Development Team will be holding a weekend of enjoyable training and extensive technique work from October 26-28. Join them at scenic Rainbow Resort in Northwestern Minnesota, for a pre-season ski clinic. The Resort is located on a beautiful lakeshore and surrounded by a network of forested groomed trails and roller ski roads on the challenging Western slopes of the Laurentian Divide. CXC athletes and...
APU skiers just finished their third week-long camp on Eagle Glacier with sunny skies and excellent skiing conditions. Similar to the two previous camps the main focus was to ski a lot (volume) and to keep improving on-snow technique. Can this really be Eagle Glacier in August?! With one more on-snow camp under our belt we are confident our skiers have a good start to fall training. Since the month of May some of our...
“Where are all the girls?!?” is the main question on Chandra Crawford’s mind when she meets the numerous ski teams who come through Canmore, Alberta for training camps. Even on her team (the Canadian Senior National Team) the ratio of boys to girls is 2:1. Don’t get her wrong, it’s great having lots of strong guys around wearing spandex, but this is an awesome sport that should see equal participation from the chicks! Fast and...
WANAKA, N.Z. (Sept. 6) – U.S. Ski Team athletes found midwinter snow for cross country training again in New Zealand while some teammates fine-tuned their own training with their grassroots club or personal coach at home. “There's more than one way to get the job done,” World Cup sprint racer Andy Newell (Shaftsbury, VT) said of the individualized training approach. The annual U.S. Ski Team camp at The Snow Farm was blessed with a storm...
It’s been an incredible summer of Nordic training in the Far West region, with the division wrapping up it’s final training event of the season over Labor Day weekend at the 3rd Annual Bliss/Lake Tahoe camp. We thought we’d share a few notes and photos with the FasterSkier.com readers. For lots more photos, you can click to www.farwestnordic.org and go to the Photo Gallery pages for a complete list of camps and images. All photos...
The Callaghan Valley Training Centre (CVTC), a National Athlete Development Centre based out of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic venue, just completed its third glacier camp of the summer with the Cross-Country BC team in Smithers, BC. The 5 day camp included 4 days of glacier skiing along with plenty of rollerskiing, core strength sessions and stretching. The glacier in Smithers is a low-altitude glacier with a lot of varied terrain. Because of this, the athletes...
This will be a great opportunity to learn from two-time Olympian Andrew Johnson, who will be working with coaches on Skate technique and drills. This will be one of a series of clinics designed to give coaches an opportunity to take a module of the Level I coaches education curriculum, or learn new information! The clinic will take place in Jericho, VT at the Ethan Allen Firing Range Rollerski Loop. Start time is 12:00, following...
Day 1 The introductory meeting stated the purpose of this camp – to enable the athletes to have a group training environment which may not be readily available on a consistent basis; For the coaches to offer support during the training sessions, and provide technical feedback; and to have lively and productive roundtable sessions in which athletes, coaches and guests can share their experiences on topics such as managing a long term ski career, technical...