This coverage is made possible through the generous support of Marty and Kathy Hall and A Hall Mark of Excellence Award. Learn more about A Hall Mark of Excellence Award—or about supporting FasterSkier coverage—by contacting info@fasterskier.com. Ben Ogden was kind enough to spend a recent afternoon with FasterSkier assessing his 2022-2023 World Cup season, and discussing the sorts of plans he has for training in this off-season. We met in the barn at the Ogden...
As the saying goes, skiers are made in the summer. If that is the case, then many are forging their way to success in Stratton, Vermont this season. Depending on the year, various clubs around the country may play host to an increased number of athletes for a summer; from Bend, Oregon, to Anchorage, Alaska, to Stratton, the “hot spot” shifts periodically. This year, as SMS T2 Team Head Coach Perry Thomas put it, “we’ve...
Cross-country skiers are notorious for training high volumes during the off season in order to be in peak racing form in the winter. There is a common mantra used by coaches to help motivate athletes to train hard even though the racing season is months away: “skiers are made in the summer”. From my experience working with different coaches, the large bulk of the summer’s volume is intended to be on roller skis or foot...
On July 24th, Scott Patterson toed the line outside of Girdwood, Alaska, for his eighth run of the Crow Pass Crossing, a roughly 22 mile race with nearly 3,000 feet of vertical gain through the rugged Alaskan backcountry. Two hours fifty minutes and five seconds later, he crossed the finish line at the Eagle River Nature Center, shattering the 11-year-old course record set by ultrarunning legend Geoff Roes at the peak of his career by...
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...
This review is based on three weeks of product testing. During this time, the pack was used on ten outings, approximately 80 miles of running and one 20k rollerski. Since my introduction to endurance sports in high school, my two loves have been running and cross-country skiing. After moving to the Roaring Fork Valley in Colorado in 2012, a mecca for trail running, I took to running in the mountains and dipping my toes in...
Dan Cnossen is a badass. There. We said it. In the realm of para nordic sport, the 39-year-old medaled in each of the six biathlon and cross country events in which he competed during the 2018 Paralympic Games. At the 2019 World Championships, he Cnossen earned a silver medal in both the cross country sprint and middle distance races after a slew of podium finishes in World Cup events during the season. Prior to his...
Here we are in late August, halfway between the start of the training year in early May and the beginning of the competition season in late November. Volume is the name of the game during the summer and at this time of year, it is not uncommon for top athletes to train 20 to 30 hours per week. Typically, the training logs prescribe athletes to head out on long runs, rides, and rollerskis at a...
This Wednesday Workout comes to us from Matt Boobar who has been coaching the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) nordic team since 2007. In the fall, he also works with the cross country running and mountain bike programs, and leads cycling in the spring. Boobar has a B.S. in exercise science and has earned a USSA Level 200 certification. He has been the head coach of the New England Junior National Team eight times and was...
Ann-Cathrin Uhl will be a senior at the University of Anchorage Fairbanks (UAF) this year, but for the summer she was back in her native Germany as usual. Uhl made her first trip to NCAA Skiing Championships last season, finishing 30th and 34th at the races in Jackson, N.H. But she has long been a contributor to the UAF Nanooks effort both on the ski trails and as a cross-country runner. This summer, a group...
Editor’s Note: The following is the third post of a series proposed by Maks Zechel, a 19-year-old Canadian cross-country skier embarking on his first season training abroad. He recently made the big move to Norway, where he’ll be training and racing with Team Asker for the next nine months. Through these updates, Maks hopes to share his personal “observations, stories, and lessons learned” to help close the gap between North American and Scandinavian nordic skiing. Read...
For almost as long as Nick Lovett has been skiing at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), he has been thinking about how people train in other parts of the world. This summer, the Wyoming native went on a trip to find out, visiting teammate Jan Čech at his home in the Czech Republic. “I have been roommates with Jan for two years, and have been considering training with him in Czech for just as...
A World Junior Championships and World U23 Championships skier for Finland who had racked up top-10 finishes in her country’s competitive national-championships field, Krista Niiranen moved to the American Southwest last year. “I had been studying law in the University of Lapland in Finland, but for the last season I transferred to the University of New Mexico and represented the UNM Ski Team,” she explained. Niiranen made a splash on the SuperTour and NCAA circuits,...
Quick tips for working out when it's oh-so-hot and humid. It could help you feel better, get more out of your workout, and potentially save your life.
Several members of the U.S. Ski Team and National Training Group came out for Day 2 of the Lake Placid USST dryland training camp on Thursday, competing in a classic rollerski sprint. Over the two-hour time trial, six women and nine men raced four times — the women on a 1.3-k loop and the men over 1.5 k. Everyone advanced to the finals, and the idea was to go hard. Here is a recap...
