This week’s workout comes from Caitlin Patterson, a Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP) skier and 2018 Winter Olympian. We asked the 28-year-old Patterson, an accomplished mountain runner as well, about training and racing with poles while hiking or running. When and what type of terrain does she typically use them for, and what kind of workout would she recommend with poles? *** It may come as no surprise that many of Caitlin Patterson’s dryland workouts...
When it comes to U.S. Regional Elite Group (REG) training camps, there are a few running themes that remain consistent across the country and from year to year. In the West and
As with other epic modern-day adventure race series, the fabled origin of Seward, Alaska’s annual Mount Marathon — held every July 4 — began with beer and a bet: who among us can run from the streets of downtown to the top of the 3,022-foot mountain crowding Seward’s skyline, then back to the bottom the fastest? What about within the hour? While the footrace race has evolved massively since the port town’s pioneer miners took...
Race results and records from the last 10 year of the Climb to the Castle rollerski race up Whiteface Mountain near Lake Placid, N.Y., courtesy of the New York Ski Educational Foundation. Guess who's won it five times?
Inside the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation center on Tuesday, Morgan Arritola made her usual rounds, visiting longtime friends and coaches and introducing them to her new addition – a puppy. A staple of the team for nearly a decade, the 25-year-old Olympian affectionately known as “Mo” wasn’t stopping in for training plans. She hadn’t just finished a workout and she wasn’t preparing to start one, either. Arritola was on a lunch break from her...
ASPEN, Colo. — Morgan Arritola (SVSEF) was officially back to full form on Sunday at the Owl Creek Chase. After appendicitis forced her to skip U.S. Nationals and subsequent SuperTours, she won the 21 k point-to-point mass start freestyle by nearly four minutes over Lenka Palanova (BNJRT). Chelsea Holmes (SVSEF) finished third (+4:48.6). “This was my kind of course: hard, uphill,” said Arritola. “I just went out as hard as I could—that’s kind of how...
With the weather changing drastically throughout the morning today’s West Yellowstone SuperTour was quite a spectacle. The ladies skied 10km, the men competed for 15km and the FasterSkier crew tried to keep up at several different locations on the course. Ladies’ 10km Skate: Men’s 15km Skate: Contributing camerawork by Audrey Mangan.
In her first time racing the SuperTour opener in a number of years, Morgan Arritola (Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation) seemed to feel right at home in West Yellowstone, MT, taking victory on Thursday in the women’s 10 k freestyle by 14.7 seconds over runner-up Jessie Diggins (Central Cross Country) and Caitlin Gregg (CXC, +27.9). “It was tough,” said Arritola after finishing. “[I planned] to go out and ski as well and controlled as I...
About halfway up Sun Valley’s Bald Mountain, Chelsea Holmes strained to see the top. Without much luck, she put her head down and poles forward, reciting a familiar mantra to push her to the finish. “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming,” a little fish sang out in her head. In her first time racing Idaho’s Baldy Hill Climb on Saturday, the 24-year-old Holmes wasn’t hallucinating. She actually felt pretty good scaling 3,140 vertical feet on...
Morgan Arritola and Liz Stephen showed the running world what being a cross country skier is all about on Sunday by claiming the top two spots at the Xterra Trail Run National Championship at Snowbasin Resort, Utah. Arritola won the women’s overall division by almost two minutes, finishing the 21 k course in 1:29:09. Stephen, in her third appearance at the race, clocked in at 1:30:54, nearly two more minutes ahead of former US Mountain...
Colin Rodgers, a longtime member of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) Olympic Development Team (ODT), has been named its head coach. He is taking over for Travis Jones, who stepped down this spring after three years on the job. “I am very fortunate for this opportunity,” Rodgers told FasterSkier in an interview. “I am going to be able to work with some great athletes that I already know really well.” A native of...
The U.S. Cross-Country Ski Team (USST) for the 2011-2012 season is expected to be announced in a few hours, according to John Farra, the program’s director. The nominations haven’t been made public yet, but in making them, Farra and Chris Grover, the USST head coach, have faced a familiar dilemma: add a number of athletes to the squad, and dilute an always-tight budget, or preserve the higher levels of support that come with a smaller...
In the U.S. National Championship in the 30 k last year, Kikkan Randall (USST) somehow pulled off a win in northern Maine just 72 hours removed from racing in Europe. This year, with a full week to recover from World Cup Finals, at least Randall’s biological clock was set to the right time. But Sunday’s classic race presented its own challenges: the Alaskan had to overcome a brutal course, the strength-sapping effects of altitude, and,...
The 38 women that aren’t wearing bib one in today’s U.S. National Championship in the 30 k classic have a tough task ahead of them: figuring out a way to beat Kikkan Randall. The 28-year-old Alaskan is in the midst of the best season of her life, having collected four sprint podiums, two wins, and a career-best 11th place in a distance race. She’ll be the favorite in Sunday’s 30 k in Sun Valley, and...
The American women have had highs and lows at World Championships in Oslo this week, packing three finishers in the top 30 in both of the first two races but also watching Kikkan Randall’s medal hopes in the sprint evaporate in a crash. And while the U.S. made the final in the team sprint and placed ninth in the relay, neither of those performances were quite as good as some were hoping for. On Saturday,...
The US women continued a solid start to the 2011 World Championships, placing three skiers in the top-30 for the second consecutive race in the women’s 15km pursuit. With an almost impenetrable fog blanketing the Holmenkollen ski stadium, spectators traded ears for eyes – the roar of the crowd alerting those just 100 meters down the track that the racers were coming. The pea soup certainly did not slow race winner Marit Bjoergen (NOR), who...
At least there’s another week until Oslo. That was the take-away for the Americans after Saturday’s 10 k classic race in Drammen, where the top U.S. women struggled on a tough course, in a stacked field of Norwegians. In her World Cup debut, Sadie Bjornsen (USA) led the way in 52nd, 3:19 behind the winner, Marit Bjoergen (NOR). But none of the other American women came within three-and-a-half minutes of Bjoergen’s time, leaving them with...
The three day Beitostolen FIS race series in Norway concluded with a frigid race, featuring delayed start times and shortened distances. But this did not stop American skiers from continuing to turn in strong performances on the track. The races were originally scheduled as 15/30km freestyle events, but with predicted highs in the low single digits, the always cold-wary Norwegians opted to cut the distance to 10/15km. The US women packed the top of the...
Europe seems to suit Sadie Bjornsen just fine. Nearly a month into her first long-term overseas tour, Bjornsen is skiing fast and appears to be getting faster. She led a contingent of a US World Championship skiers in the 5km classic FIS race in Beitostolen, Norway, placing 8th overall. The race was won by former overall World Cup runner-up and current Norwegian World Championship team member, Astrid Jacobsen. The veteran posted a time of 15:02,...
AUBURN, N.H. — Fischer Skis announced today that seven of the fourteen athletes selected to the 2011 U.S. Cross Country World Championship team choose to compete on Fischer Skis. The seven Fischer skiers competing in Oslo, Norway, at the famed Holmenkollen venue will be led by Kikkan Randall, the 2009 World Championship Silver Medalist. Randall, who just scored her second World Cup victory last week in the freestyle sprint in Liberec, Czech Republic, is joined...