Whether cycling, rollerskiing, or apparently spring skate skiing, road rash is almost inevitable. Maybe more annoying than painful, but definitely damaging to the ego, road rash is not necessarily difficult to treat. Contrary to popular belief, it acts much more like a burn than an abrasion. Also, contrary to popular belief, treatment should not attempt to dry it out. Step 1. Cleaning Make sure your hands are clean or gloved. Clean the area with water. If...
Due to the start of the rollerski season, we are republishing this story to help promote best practices when rollerskiing on the open road. Making yourself visible while rollerskiing is a must. And with a recent reminder from U.S. Ski Team (USST) World Cup coach Matt Whitcomb, the time of year has come when many skiers are training on roads in lower angle sunlight as we tip away from the Sun in the Northern Hemisphere. Below...
Depending on where you live, rollerskis may seem like a distant memory, retired to a storage closet not to be looked at again until next May. For others, sliding on snow might not be the agenda for another month. Perhaps you are foregoing Thanksgiving travel to snow this year due to the pandemic, or you are an urban-dwelling weekend warrior whose usual routine of traveling regularly to snow has come to a halt. Regardless of...
The koan that skiers are made in the summer has been around for longer than this website. The related truism, that summer snow time is necessary to effectively compete as a high-level skier come winter, also has a venerable history. For example, here’s Luke Bodensteiner, writing in Endless Winter about why he had journeyed to a place where “the weather sucks all year long” to ski on the Sognefjellet snowfields in August 1993: “We all...
Last year, we ran a story on Virginia Tech’s Bicycle Helmet Ratings titled: Every day is Safety Day. That much remains true, every day is safety day. With some medical systems around the country stressed with obvious fall out from the pandemic, we thought it wise to republish parts of the piece we ran last year. Virginia Tech presents a methodical process to determine the safest bike helmets. Although the testing is not specific to rollerskiing,...
Snow has melted out or is melting out, and it may be time to sharpen the rollerski ferrules. For those looking for ski-specific workouts, the go-to is often rollerskiing. It goes without saying that the poles, rollerskis, bindings, and boots should all be checked before heading out. The safety gear should include some hi-vis items. And it should literally be topped off with a bicycle helmet. That’s where the engineers at Virginia Tech (VT) come...
It's a tall task to find perfect pavement for rollerskiing, but harsh road vibrations can be a downright downer. Rundle Sport, based in Canmore, sells the FLEX rollerski. In the niche world of rollerski design, they may just have developed a rollerski that makes rough pavement tolerable.
www.RollerskiShop.com
A day after turning 58, FasterSkier contributor Peter Minde shaved 6 seconds off his time in the insanely tough Climb to the Castle. Here, Minde shares three workouts that have helped him get the most out of each week, while balancing work, family and training for skiing in New Jersey.
Brian Gregg brings another take on a steady state threshold workout with some beyond threshold components. He likes to call the workout over under intensity and it can help improve more than just your threshold buffer.
Alice Flanders, a CXC Team athlete based in Houghton, Mich., gives a list of responses to the age-old question rollerskiers get asked: "How do you stop on those things?"
Rosanna Crawford was aggressive on her final lap around a rain-soaked Norwegian city loop, taking top honors in the biathlon sprint. Four other North Americans also made the finale, while Barbro Kvåle and Calle Halfvarsson won the cross-country sprints. Plus, video of the whole festival.
Norway's Pål Golberg tells FasterSkier why Lillehammer has been good to him in the past (and it's not because he lives there) and why he rollerskis through the winter, at least once a week, and plays golf as much as he can.
Good workouts never get old. This week, we bring back a Pro Workout of the past, which Devon Kershaw wrote almost exactly four years ago, just before leaving for Europe in early November. "A great workout this time of year – especially if you are coming off some volume (at altitude or not) and feel your body needs that lactate tolerance work to 'shock' the system," Kershaw writes.
Anchorage and Eagle Glacier are happening places these days, with the North American Women's Training Alliance (including Norway's Celine Brun-Lie and 13 top U.S. skiers), a couple of French biathletes and the U.S. men's team, which recently arrived for its first unified training camp in Alaska.
Are your a winter warrior but springtime sally when it comes to skiing? This author asks the question that several not-so-elite skiers might be dying to ask: are rollerskis right for us mortals, and if so, how do we use them without risking road rash?
School is back in session, the days are getting shorter and there's limited time to squeeze in a workout. It's time to pull together everything you learned over the summer and be efficient and effective with the planning of your fall workouts. Pete Leonard, the experienced junior coach at the Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks, Alaska, explains how.
It happens all too often. Inexperienced skier takes off from the start of a distance race as though it is a sprint qualifier, only to struggle through several more kilometers. Will Sweetser, competitive programs director at the Maine Winter Sports Center, has a workout that encourages athletes to take an honest look at their individual ability and find a sustainable pace for every distance.
Justin Wadsworth, head coach of the Canadian National Ski Team, made a deal with his athletes two years ago: if they collectively produced four or more World Cup podiums, he would bring them to Hawaii for a summer training camp. The team surpassed that benchmark and delivered six podiums in 2010-2011 in addition to World Championships gold. Off to Maui they went in June 2011 for Canada’s first camp on the islands. Wadsworth raised the...
The Blink Ski Festival, touted as the largest summer ski event in the world, takes place in Sandnes, Norway, every July and attracts some of the best skiers in the world. This year its international lineup extends to the US; Kikkan Randall and Liz Stephen will be joining an impressive lineup of other world-class nordic athletes at the festival, which runs July 19 – 21. The rollerski festival features biathlon and cross-country events for juniors...