The U.S. Ski Team's annual May training camp began in earnest this week in Bend, Ore. A few inches of fresh snow greeted skiers at Mt. Bachelor on Wednesday morning, just in time for the group's first interval session: a set of 6 x 4-6 minute L3 freestyle intervals with intermediate sprints.
Leaving their rifles at home, the U.S. biathlon team is in Bend and today addresses a question that many skiers face come spring: how do you tackle the first couple overdistance workouts after a break? How long should they be, and what activity is best? Coaches Per Nilsson and Jonne Kahkonen assigned a three to four hour classic OD, and gave us their tips.
Nordic sports are pretty egalitarian, as far as athletics go - but women are still confronted, constantly, with stereotypes about what is and is not appropriate or possible for them to do. In southern France, two researchers are focusing on what effects these stereotypes have on women's participation and performance in a wide range of sports, and explained their findings in an interview.
Introducing FasterSkier's renewed training series: Wednesday Workout. This week, two-time NCAA Champion Miles Havlick takes us through one of his regular summer sessions, an extended L3 running interval.
It’s May 1. Do you know where your heart rate monitor is? To help motivate you to get out and start working hard again, four skiers share how they’re mentally and physically gearing up for the new season.
There's a correlation between the use of nutritional supplements and the willingness to dope; but why, and how? Does one cause the other? Plus, quick reads on whether caffeine improves ski performance (hint: it does!) and if minimalist footwear really helps approximate the mechanics of barefoot running.
Only days remain in the 2013 World Cup and there’s less than a month to go before SuperTour Finals and Canadian Nationals wrap up the competitive season for North Americans. For this edition in our workout series we asked Alex Harvey, Sadie Bjornsen and Lenny Valjas how they orchestrate an end-of-year taper and how their peaking plan for World Championships affected the racing that followed and is still to come.
Scientists have identified a handful of genes that control roughly a quarter of the variation in how people respond to endurance training. What does that mean for athletes - will we now be able to predict who might win a gold medal? FasterSkier talked to one of the researchers, Dr. Carl Johan Sundberg, to find out.
We look at two recent studies about interval training, each coming to a different conclusion about what's best - and then ask the question, how does this apply to real-life training? Pros and cons of academic research into endurance training, considered.
For this edition of the college workout, we're running stairs with the University of Denver. Get ready for your legs to shake.
After the Canmore World Cup, Alana Thomas decided to give up her spot on the Alberta World Cup Academy and resume training independently. Still living in Canmore, Thomas explains how she made the tough decision and what she's gearing up for now.
Middlebury College head coach Andrew Gardner breaks down a basic-but-important workout: no-poles skiing with a focus on endpoints.
A staple on the Australian national team for the last 10 years, Esther Bottomley wants to crack the top 30 in a World Cup this season, and she'll go for it in her first World Cup of the year in Québec this weekend.
Plus, two different studies look at how different types of muscle used in various athletic activities might inform training. In the first, static stretching is worse for cycling than running; in the second, think about small-muscle strength exercises.
If you live and train at high altitude, one of your biggest concerns probably centers on how to log sufficient intensity work without becoming overly tired. Colorado University Head Coach Bruce Cranmer talks about how to make the best of training at elevation.
Entering his third straight season with the Canadian Para-Nordic World Cup Team, Erik Carleton has already made some big decisions this year. Among them, he had to choose whether to race the Alberta Cross Country World Cup in Canmore or go for gold at the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) World Cup opener in Vuokatti, Finland. It must be tough to be Carleton, a competitive-nordic racer who doubles as a Para-Nordic guide for Brian McKeever, arguably the...
With the end of the fall rowing season upon us and Thanksgiving just around the corner, it’s time for the rowers to put up their oars and try their hand at skiing. In the words of Coach Roock: “Your rowing future depends on this, no pressure.” Temperatures have started dropping to the point where the [...]
STOCKHOLM, Sweden – Imagine if Charlotte Kalla or Marcus Hellner were caught this season with a positive test for EPO, or maybe a bag of blood in a hotel room. Or what if Ole Einar Bjørndalen showed up with HGH, or Petter Northug with steroids? If you can’t imagine any of these things, it’s because of a cultural change in Scandinavia in the last two or three decades that is the result largely of the...
There’s Dasha2: It Takes More.’ If you talk to the 2010 Olympian, that’s exactly how she’s approached this season. After largely individualized plan while complying with national-team standards. In doing so, she chose to train with Louis Bouchard, the World Cup men’s assistant coach and head of the Pierre-Harvey Training Centre (CNEPH) in Mont Sainte-Anne. That required a cross-country move and parting ways with Rocky Mountain Racers and its coach, John Jacques. She also signed...
There are few things in skiing more important than knowing physical limits of one’s own body. Just ask Patrick Weaver, head coach of the 2012 NCAA Champions at the University of Vermont. “More often than not, we find when we get to a race people don’t know how to listen to their body and go out at the right pace,” he said. “The common mistake is they go out too hard and then the second...