Most days of the week, Alex Harvey hits the road to Québec City, where he works out with the Pierre-Harvey National Training Centre, undergoes physio treatments and studies law at Laval University. The drive along route 440 from Mont Sainte-Anne (MSA) to Québec’s capital is about 45 kilometers and lined with views worth pulling over for. Just outside the city, there’s Montmorency Falls, the province’s largest waterfall and 30 meters (98 feet) higher than Niagara...
What do skiing, mountain biking, sunburns, snowstorms, rainbows and lots of roundabouts all have in common? They can all be found in Bend, Oregon in the month of May. For the first time in recent memory, the US Biathlon team sent a group of athletes ...
They spend half the year competing against Norway every weekend in Europe, but for a few days this June, U.S. distance specialists Kris Freeman and Noah Hoffman will be welcomed into the Norwegian National Team’s training camp on the snow fields at Sognefjell. If you don’t happen to read every paid advertisement that goes up on this site, you may have missed the announcement of this website, Alsgaard saw Hoffman ski last December in Davos,...
BEND, Ore. – The U.S. and Canadian national teams are here in Bend to get on snow, and they seem to be loving it. But what about skiers who are already located in the Oregon Cascades? On several days, local high school athletes have also made the drive up to Mount Bachelor to ski and soak in the atmosphere at North America’s own version of the Dachstein glacier. Unlike senior World Cup athletes, most juniors...
The Maine Winter Sports Center (MWSC) officially grew by two on Thursday, adding U.S. Ski Team veteran Kris Freeman and US Biathlete Annelies Cook to its roster. They join another national team member, biathlete Russell Currier, and three others on the Caribou-based club’s Olympic development team. While the MWSC’s competitive program took off in earnest 11 years ago and produced several Olympic biathletes and cross-country Olympian Ben Koons, the recent signings mean more good news...
BEND, Oregon – Biathlon Canada Head Coach Matthias Ahrens, a native of Germany, had never been to Bend until this month. But now that he’s seen what the town has to offer, he anticipates being back. “It’s perfect,” he told FasterSkier as his athletes did an interval workout on Wednesday. “It’s so nice that now we have winter conditions – every day it has been perfect conditions for skiing, plus you can go down and...
BEND, Ore. – It may have been spring at Mount Bachelor this weekend, but by the time Wednesday rolled around, it was more like winter. Snow had fallen overnight and stuck to the mountain’s flanks, and flurries continued to drift from the sky as the U.S. and Canadian national ski teams competed in relay races with several club teams. Canadian Olympian and current Alberta World Cup Academy coach George Grey skied the course before the...
BEND, Ore. – Jessie Diggins had a big year in 2012. After thoroughly dominating the domestic racing scene in the fall and early winter, the CXC and U.S. Ski Team athlete headed to Europe, where she immediately made a splash on the World Cup. In her first race there, in Milan, she finished 18th in the freestyle sprint, then followed it up with a second-place finish in the team sprint with Kikkan Randall. Diggins went...
In the months following its first camp of the year in Bend, Ore., the U.S. Ski Team (USST) has several new training destinations planned along with its old standbys: the men and women will split up and head to Alaska, Sweden, Austria and Germany over the course of the summer. And for the first time since its first trip to New Zealand 10 years ago, the Snow Farm is completely off the schedule. The women’s...
BEND, Oregon – Even though the U.S. biathlon national team did not compete in the Pole Pedal Paddle on Saturday morning like their skiing counterparts, the athletes still didn’t get to sleep in for their weekend. After all, this is training camp. Instead, they headed up to Mount Bachelor to do intervals, and had to start early so that they could be off the race trails before the five-sport extravaganza began. “Early in the morning...
When Carolyn and Santi Ocariz clicked into their rollerskis slightly more than two months ago, neither really knew what they were in for. The Wisconsin couple heard plenty of stories about the places they’d travel through. They took to heart the warnings about crazy drivers, snakes and treacherous temperatures while crossing America’s heartland. It might not be hot when they left, but it could get brutal, and the elements could change 180 degrees by the...
Tell Kris Freeman something he doesn’t know about racing with diabetes. Better yet, give him hope that he can ski faster. That’s exactly how Dr. Jim Stray-Gundersen piqued Freeman’s interest two months ago in Norway. Without having seen him race, Stray-Gundersen got right to the point in Oslo. Forget about what happened in the past; let’s look to the future. How do you feel about racing with a CamelBak? For Freeman and his personal coach...
For most, the ski season as come to an end. This usually results in one of two different mindsets: 1) Excitement for dry-land training and spring/summer or 2) Bitterness that the snow is gone and a complete and utter lack of motivation to begin training for next season. On the motivation front, experienceing a very wet/cold spring makes getting out the door less enjoyable. But on the flip side, spring is theperfect time for unstructured...
For many Nordic skiers, April marks the end of the season and May starts the new one. With some variation, the Nordic year is made up of 13 four-week-long periods. Each period has a different training emphasis and within each, training rhythms weave through the choices of intensities, training methods and forms, and time spent. April to May and May to June are a transition period; a time for relaxation, the return to dry land...
That last ski of the season might not have set well this year. You weren’t exactly ready. Some places enjoyed sufficient snow dumpings this winter, but on the whole, it just wasn’t enough. It ended too soon. Certain parts of the country aren’t quite in summer mode yet. Snow has been known to make April appearances, and some ski towns recently saw a late-season blast of the white stuff. But in Hayward, Wis., home of...
I received an email recently from a reader who pointed out to me that Marit Bjørgen completed the 30k classic mass start in Oslo this season in 1:26:09.8, last year at World Championships Therese Johaug did the same course, mass start, skating in only 1:23:45.1, which is only a difference of about 2.8%. Surely, skating [...] Related posts:
With the Atlantic Ocean to their left and the Pacific Ocean more than 3,000 miles to their right, Carolyn and Santiago Ocariz started striding toward the latter, one at a time across the United States. The newlyweds from Wisconsin weren’t entirely sure where they were going, or the reaction they’d receive while rollerskiing across states like Alabama and Mississippi, but they had a tentative route and plenty of inspiration to keep them going. Every mile...
When the phone rang and Alana Thomas answered to hear the voice of Tom Holland, Cross Country Canada’s high-performance director, she had a sense of what was coming. The 23-year-old Nakkertok racer, who lives and trains in Ottawa, had been waiting for a similar call since she started skiing competitively more than seven years ago. With a considerably better-than-average start to her season this year, Thomas knew this might be her best chance to earn...
BENNINGTON, Vt. – Inside an organic lunch spot in downtown Bennington, two Wisconsin natives glanced at an oversized chalkboard filled with sandwich options. A moment later, they turned to each other to confirm they had made up their minds. Maria Stuber and Bryan Cook hadn’t lived in the area long, yet they already figured out the basics. Bennington, southern Vermont’s largest city, wasn’t huge, but it had more going on than the hamlet of North...
If you are prepared for this and you weather it, it does indeed build character. However, this is not where you want to be. If you are not prepared, chances are the ship could go down with all hands. This sort of grim scenario doesn’t play out often on a shorter trip, and the tastes of it serve only to prepare you better for a longer trip next time. For the first trip, take the...