This week's workout comes from Colette Bourgonje, a 10-time Paralympian who recently retired from the Canadian Para-Nordic Team with 10 Paralympic medals to her name. "I like this workout because of the change in pace, which makes you focus on technique with speed and adds variety with the distance you end up putting in," she says.
"It's not about skiing," Shungnak School Principal Roger Franklin wrote in an email to FasterSkier about NANANordic, newly expanded and known as Skiku. "It's much more, and it's saving lives daily." This year, the program brought skiing to 27 villages in Northwest Alaska.
Taylor Fletcher is not a master blaster, but the 24-year-old U.S. Nordic Combined skier does like to get out for a hard, group road ride a few times a month. Here's an example of a 2 to 2.5-hour workout, or race, depending on your viewpoint, called Wednesday Night Worlds.
Got nothing for mom yet? If you live close, try these Breakfast of Champions bars to make her feel like the superwoman she is. No cooking necessary!
Anyone who follows U.S. racing closely knows the name Patrick O'Brien. He's been a staple at Craftsbury for the last four years, captained the Dartmouth ski team, and is now delving into a career as head coach of the Stratton T2 Team -- something he didn't necessarily anticipate but sees as a good fit and ideal transition.
This week's workout comes from Ezekiel Williams, FasterSkier's newest intern and an athlete at the Alberta World Cup Academy. This time last season, Williams said he really enjoyed doing what his team called, the Agility Sprint Track Workout. "Combine the agility work and lactate threshold building into the short 1:30 hour workout time and it makes for a solid early training-season session," he says.
There could be such a thing as national-team walk-ons as a result of an upcoming US Biathlon tryout camp, a new format of its kind aimed at talented endurance athletes in the J1, OJ or collegiate age category.
“When I look at a trail, I look at it as a big earth sculpture,” Thom Perkins says. It’s the old joke: what do you do with a fine-arts degree? For Perkins, who spent the last 38 years as executive director of the Jackson Ski Touring Foundation, degrees in sculpture and photography led to sculpting land.
Having the opportunity to teach 8 days of cross country skiing to the remote villages of Alaska is both rewarding and demanding. It’s hard to pin down an exact ‘workout’ we do up there, because by the end of just one day, your feet burn, and your mental focus just got tested by 100+ eager Inupiaq kids, thirsty for time on skis. There can, however, be progress made toward personal growth depending on how you want to slice it.
Holly Brooks was the one well-known name left off the U.S. Ski Team's nomination list for 2014/2015, and that's by her choosing, she says. Rather than retire, she's hoping to tweak her training to get back to podium contention, especially in marathons and distance races.
This interview with 19-year-old Austin Huneck gives a glimpse of what it's like to be a postgraduate skier and make the transition to full-time training and racing after high school. Huneck liked it so much, he's onboard with the MWSC for the second-straight year.
Wishing you were with NANANordic teaching skiing in Northwest Alaska right now -- or wonder what the program's like? Check out these videos.
Two days after nearly 36,000 people ran that Boston Marathon on Monday, we’re willing to bet there are more than a couple still feeling the pain of the 26.2-mile run from Hopkinton, Mass., to Boston. Here are some tips for minimizing post-race stiffness and soreness.
Unless you’re the audacious Liz Stephen or Overall World Cup Champion Therese Johaug, you’re probably not a huge fan of hill climbs. However, when the mid-April temps turn our favorite trails into puddles, nordic ski enthusiasts have to get creative to get their on-snow skiing fix before spring training begins.
One author shares his uneasiness with training plans and investigates CXC Academy, an online subscription service that provides nordic tips and regimens for skiers of all ages. "You will go faster when you want to go faster and it will be a lot more enjoyable," founder Yuriy Gusev says.
What could be more fun than going for a trail run or backcountry ski with a primal purpose, like bringing home dinner? Lex Treinen shares his love of what he calls "old school biathlon," a hunting-and-gathering workout off the beaten path.
The Wednesday Workout is back with featured contributor Aku Nikander sharing some of his secrets to success while skiing for the University of New Mexico.
This past weekend, nearly the entirety of the adult population of Midwestern skiers made their way to Hayward for the annual get-together of the ski community: The Birkie. The American Birkebeiner (or Birkie, for short), is the biggest ski race in North America. For many skiers, the race represents their culmination of training for the whole year. Read a first-timer's perspective on the race, the trail, and Birkie Fever.
German biathlete Evi Sachenbacher-Stehle was caught using a banned stimulant at the Sochi Olympic Games, as American cross-country skier Kikkan Randall called her “the last person, really, that you would suspect.”
This week's, Colin Foley of the Callaghan Valley Training Centre details one of his favorite intensity workouts, which felt like a sprint qualifier: max aerobic speed at 15-second intervals. "It’s something that we’ve done a few times and I really hope we do more in the future," he writes.