We caught up with Caitlin Gregg (Team Gregg/Madshus) before she hopped aboard several planes en route to Muonio, Finland, where she'll train with the U.S. Ski Team for the next week before the season-opening World Cup in Kuusamo.
Alex Harvey and personal coach Louis Bouchard were the first from the Canadian World Cup Team to arrive in Gällivare, Sweden, last Thursday. They spent the earlier part of the month acclimating to altitude in Davos, Switzerland.
St. Lawrence University Assistant Coach Adam Terko shares a dryland workout to get you ready for race day, and potentially 2015 NCAA Championships in Lake Placid. "A hard bounding workout with poles, done on the same terrain you race on, develops not only aerobic capacity and strong muscles but confidence and familiarity with a particular course," he writes.
Logging too many hours to ski fast? The debate is raging in Norway, where Olympian Frode Estil weighed in last week when he argued that many skiers are obsessed with logging hours at the expense of training quality. Longtime coach Mona Hjellsand strongly agrees.
Mark Rajack, a dual citizen of Canada and Trinidad and Tobago, started cross-country skiing just two years ago in 2012, but in the time since, he’s not only learned to ski and compete, but he’s also set his sights higher than many will in their skiing careers: namely world champs and 2018 Winter Olympics.
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."
This week's workout comes from U.S. Paralympics coach Eileen Carey, who shares a fun head-to-head speed session that works on both technique and tactics. "This type of workout is important for our program because we often have training sessions with athletes with a wide range of experience levels and/or with different impairments competing against one another," she says.
Part of the joy and the pain and, ultimately, the poetry of a lifetime of skiing is how the sport focuses one’s attention on natural processes that are both cyclical and unpredictable. This year Southcentral Alaska caught its first real snow on Oct. 20, and early season skiing has been great, but not in the usual ways or places.
Wonder how the pros train for marathons? Holly Brooks, who's gearing up for a full season of marathons on the international circuit, has some tips and a workout to raise aerobic threshold and build speed bursts. "One of my go-to workouts is quick and simple: Over & Under, L3 pace workout with surges," she explains.
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.
Approximately 40 athletes attended the USST Altitude Camp in Park City, Utah which concluded Oct. 19. The camp is a final opportunity of the best skiers in the country to fine tune their skiing before the winter season starts in November.
BSF skier Jennie Bender answers common questions about recovery: "How do you know when to listen to fatigue, and when to slap it in the face?" she writes. "If you take a rest week from training, how should you feel? What does a rest week mean?"
It's that time of year, and we've got a quick-and-easy recipe for the time-crunched athlete -- a spiced-up alternative to traditional oatmeal for those autumn mornings.
The Green Mountain Valley School is welcoming back former junior athlete David Sinclair to the team's ranks for the 2014/2015 season as part of the team's attempt at organic development. With several exciting developments for the rural Vermont academy including a new assistant coach, the future is looking bright for GMVS.
This week's strength workout comes from Team Hardwood Head Coach and Technical Director Ron Howden. "Athletes have all said after a couple of weeks, they feel more powerful and learn to pace themselves and work through pain in their upper body and legs," he explains.
Top nordic skiers from around the country converged on Park City, Utah in early October for the U.S. Ski Team and National Elite Group altitude camps. While the NEG camp concluded Oct. 12, the USST is continuing to train in Utah until later this month.
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.
Twice each fall, the University of Alaska Anchorage's nordic and alpine teams converge on their favorite sandbox for a sufferfest of sand-dune sprinting. "The family that plays together stays together and the ski team that suffers together can win together," Kastning explains of their larger NCAA goals.
We caught up with new CCC Women's Committee Chair Madeleine Williams, a former national-team member and 2010 Olympian who's passionate about keeping Canadian females in elite sports and has made public recommendations on gender equality.
At 22, Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt hasn't taken the most conventional road as an up-and-coming Canadian skier, but she's developed training smarts through experience and is now working toward U23 World Championships, Canada's 2016 World Cups and the 2018 Olympics with Rocky Mountain Racers in Canmore.