We’re looking forward to some great tours with the Devo program this year, hopefully a bunch more trips and treks than we managed to do last year. Here are some shots from our first one around White Bear at Birch Hill - not the most exotic locale, but a good way to start preparing for some longer skis in more exciting places. Still tough to beat a nice long tour on good snow, with warm temps and lots of sunshine!
Judging from the level of desire it should take for a group of skiers to be willing to shovel 2-3 lanes of a snowy 400m track in order to run a 3000m test when the early season skiing conditions are as good as they are now, I figured I’d share a bit about the standards we use to grade our performance. It seems that within the group there is a strong desire to step it up a notch
The basis for our standards come from our neighbors to the east, specifically the Cross Country Canada Development Model. For a number of years now (if memory serves me), CCC has published standards for each age level for what their athletes should be capable of to be on track for international success. Since there always seems to be a certain bias in any dryland test and not every athlete within FXC is necessarily focused on becoming an international-level XC skier, we have adjusted these basic standards to suit our purpose.
First we have divided the standards into three levels: International, National and Regional. The idea is that a skier capable of achieving the international standard in the 3000m has the aerobic fitness to be competitive at the international level at their age. The same concept applies to the national and regional standards. Obviously, as skiers, there is more that goes into success on snow than being able to run seven and a half fast laps around the track (including strength, technique and aerobic efficiency which we measure to some degree in the other 3 tests we have done in the dryland season this year). However, we do get a sense of where our relative strengths lie as a skier, where we need to focus our efforts to improve, as well as a concrete goal to aim for.
In any case, after the best collection of treadmill tests we’ve ever had as a program and improvements across the board (yes, that means everyone improved), I think we are all looking forward to the showdown come Friday afternoon!
Last year's October 3k Test. The surroundings should be even whiter this year...
From tonight’s email because I’m lazy:
A couple of quick announcements this evening regarding the next few days. Due to the overwhelming desire within the group to run the 3000m test on Friday, we will take the following action:
1. For those that can make it, we will shovel the West Valley track at 3 PM tomorrow. It probably won’t take the two hours that a practice will, but I’m not sure how long it will take (depends on the number of people and shovels, so bring lots of both!).
2. Friday, because it is an early out from school, we will run the 3k test a bit early. Practice will begin at 1:30 PM, and we will begin the 3000m around 2:15. Practice should be done about 3 PM then. That should give you guys plenty of time to rest up for the strength test on Saturday!
OH YEAAAHHH!
(just for Pat)
If you haven’t renewed your USSA license yet, the deadline for renewal (without a late fee tacked on), is October 15. For Alaskans, besides the benefit of scoring USSA points to help with national ranking and seeding at various competitions (JOs for one), a USSA license is necessary to qualify for Junior Nationals (JOs), since without one you are not eligible to score qualifying points at Besh Cups.
DOT is an acronym borrowed from USST Head Coach Pete Vordenberg from an article he wrote on Team Today a couple of years ago. He summarizes the case for why the most valuable training that an athlete can get is from a coach who is there watching the athlete as they train each and every day. If you look around the world of skiing, you will see that an unduly large proportion of the major national teams’ rosters are made up of athletes who have come out of programs that train together with a coach on a nearly daily basis for most - if not all - of the year. In Norway it is often the ski academies like those in Lillehammer, Hovden, Geilo and Meraaker; in Sweden the names are different (Jaerpen, Mora, Torsby, Solleftea, Gaellivaere), but the idea and results are nearly the same. Same goes in Finland, Germany, Austria and so forth. In the US if you look at the ranks of athletes on the US Ski Team or in the top few slots on the results at JOs they are peppered with athletes that spent/are spending their junior years at programs like Sun Valley SEF, Bridger Ski Foundation, Stratton Mtn School, Burke Mountain Academy, Gunstock Nordic Association, Auburn Ski Club, Mount Bachelor Ski Education Foundation, Alaska Winter Stars, and APUNSC, to name a bunch. As you can imagine, it is no mistake that FXC is built on the principle of frequent training under direct coach observation.
Every technique in skiing can be broken down into a cycle, and the momentum a skier generates with each cycle is the fundamental building block of his or her performance on the snow. Link together some powerful cycles and you have speed, extend that speed long enough and it can be considered endurance. Power, speed and endurance are all things that happen in the real world, and are not developed on a sheet of paper, nor in a computer program, nor on past results lists, but in the here and now of training each and every day. So why not get the most out of the here and now? There is nothing that will help you do that more than a coach who is there, watching you train, watching how you do things, day in and day out. No bells and whistles will ever top that, no matter how fancy the heart rate monitor, how many cool graphs you can make in your training log, or how many lactates you take. Skiing takes place in the real world (at least for now), the one governed by the laws of physics, so you’d better make sure your training is getting the job done in the real world too!
This week various skiing websites published the photos we sent in of early season skiing:
(I wonder who Foxy XC-er is?)
…of the US Ski Team (and friends) for their fall camp in my old hangout of Lake Placid, NY. The uphill they are doing the hop-V2 on is STEEP.
It’s October 3 and early season skiing has arrived in Fairbanks!
A few changes to the comp team training schedule for this weekend:
Friday - we’ll do some double pole speed work instead of ski-walking.
Saturday - the morning session has been moved to Birch Hill and we’ll be doing an easy distance ski or distance ski/run for 1.5 to 2 hours. Strength/run is still on for the afternoon.
Sunday - We’ll ski on snow instead of roads for the OD, but we’ll still mix the session between a ski and a run.
Come 30 minutes early if you want to scrape or clean skis, and don’t forget running shoes!
Rachael and Skeeto doing some DP speed, first day on snow last year. 10/12/07
