WCSN Blogs

This has been a season of ups and downs but the past two World Cup’s have been a true roller coaster ride. The last time I wrote in we were on our way to Stockholm for the annual World Cup sprint around the Royal Palace. Each year they truck in snow and lay it down over the beautiful cobblestone streets of old town Stockholm. It’s a classic city sprint with tight corners, narrow tracks, and it always has tight finishes.

In the days leading up to the Stockholm sprint I was feeling really strong. Each workout felt faster and quicker than the last. Even during the hectic warm up before the sprint I felt calm and ready to go despite the pouring rain and dirty wax conditions. During a city sprint race like this we sometimes only have 20 or 30 minutes to test skis, adjust wax, and memorize the course before they close down the tracks. This makes for a very rushed and frantic scene with wax techs and skiers running all over the place rushing to prepare within the small time window. Even during all this chaos I felt confident, calm, and ready to attach the course.

Even though it’s a pretty flat course there is still a solid uphill climb to the finish line so most skiers were going with klister skis. I started hard out of the gate double-poling into the first 90-degree corner around the Palace. I’m not sure if it was the sticking of the klister or just patch of ice but I went down quickly sliding onto my butt into the first uphill. It was one of those things that took me by surprise. I could hardly believe it was happening to me. I picked myself up off the ground pretty quickly, but my momentum into the hill had already been killed. I skied the rest of the loop as hard as I could crossing the finish line in 20th place. In the end I was knocked down to 35th place .6 second out of qualification. Crashing in the qualification was a very frustrating thing… but it might have been just what I needed to fire me up for Saturday’s sprint in Lahti Finland.

It was a short flight from Stockholm to Helsinki and we arrived in Lahti with only one day to test skis before the world cup. The morning of the race I was feeling good but there was still a little bit of apprehension. I had felt great in Stockholm just a few days ago and had my worst World Cup finish in two years. I knew one thing though… I was going to push it as hard as I could in qualification to redeem myself from the fall.

It ended up being my best qualification of the year posting the fastest time, 1.8 seconds ahead of second place. It felt really good to put together a fast qualification. At 1.4 k the course was one of the longest of the year but still pretty flat with a lot of V2. There were also a few sharp up hill corners where it was very important to carry a lot of speed out of them. Warming down after the qualification I continued to feel better and better and somehow I knew it was going to be a good day for me.

The quarterfinal heats had a lot of close finishes making it important to use some kind of tactics early on in the race. In my first heat I pulled a classic stop and go on the uphill, where I slowed a little bit at the top of the hill in order to accelerate faster over the top of the hill than the skiers behind me. I moved onto the semi-final and had another close finish but edged out some other racers to advance to the finals.

This was only my second final of the season so I was feeling a little nervous, but at the same time knew I was skiing as fast as anyone else out on the course. After one false start by the Swedish skier we were out of the gate and jostling for position into the first corner. The trail was pretty narrow and there was some lose snow so being in the front was definitely an advantage. I slipped into third and held my position over the bridge and up the first hill. Around the sweeping corner at the top of the hill I tried to make a risky pass on the inside but was stopped by Swedish skier Bjorn Lind. He didn’t think it was very cool and gave me a stare down and a hip check before chasing after the leaders. (check it out in the video it’s pretty funny). After a little contact with Lind and some other skiers I was forced into last position going into the final hill. I picked my line and stuck with it moving into third position just as some skiers to my left got tangled up with each other. Off the downhill into the stadium I was third place position and able to get a good sling shot into second just before the finishing lanes. This was the closest had ever been to a win and for a second I though I was going to overtake the Norwegian but ended up crossing the finish line in second.

To be back on the podium after a season of ups and downs felt amazing. This was my best World Cup finish ever and gives me a lot of motivation for the remaining races of the year. We’re heading right back into the World Cup action tomorrow with the annual Sprint in down town Drammen Norway. This is one of the biggest sprints of the year both in the size of the crowd and the competition. It’s going to be an exciting day!

Do world cup skiers race on some of the nicest trails in the world? The answer is yes. Sometimes, but more often than not, World Cups can be held on some of the scrappiest conditions imaginable. That has been the case for the past two weeks over here on the Tour.

We left the beautiful conditions of Canmore and flew directly to Otepaa Estonia. Estonia has not been a country very long in the general scheme of things and shares a unique balance of old Eastern Europe and a new development. We flew into the city of Tallinn and then took a 2-hour shuttle to Otepaa. I’ve seen some crazy drivers over the years during my travels abroad but little can compare to the drive from Tallinn to Otepaa. Where there should be a several lane highway there’s just a small two-lane road where you’re either passing or being passed by someone else. There are always a few times during the drive when you find yourself driving 140 km’s an hour into head on traffic.

The weekend of racing in Otepaa was a lot of fun but took a toll on our race skis. Three days of rain and fog leading up to the races made the already thin snow no more than just dirty, grayish colored ice. It was unbelievable. We would come back to the wax cabin after training with a nice layer of dirt and pine needles sticking to our klister. By the time Sunday’s sprint came around, there were standing puddles of water on some sections of the course making sprint tactics and choosing your lane even more important.

Looking at the results it wasn’t one of my better finishes this year but despite that I felt pretty good about the day. I felt a lot more snappy and quick than I did two weeks ago in Canada and felt like I was able to stride with the best of the world on the uphill. We had two days to kill in Otepaa after the race and thankfully it snowed the day after the sprint otherwise we would have been running with poles for training. The night before our flight we drove into Tallinn and walked around the old cobble stone streets and went out to dinner. The old part of Tallinn was amazing with some old gothic style castles around the central square.

By Thursday we had made our way to Prague and on to the town of Liberec, site of the 2009 Nordic world Championships. Liberec is a fairly big city and we were met with green grass and blue skies, making our hopes for better racing conditions pretty grim. The Czech Republic has been plagued by the same warm weather as the rest of Eastern Europe giving the organizers very little time to make any snow for the race trails. In the end, the World Cup distance race took place on a 1.8 km loop. During the men’s competition each racer had to do six laps around the mushy dirty snow covered loop.For the Sprint Relay the organizers really stepped up their game and actually put together a clean hard packed loop making for a good, fair competition. I paired up with teammate Torin Koos for the 3 laps each of the classic course. Again I felt like my fitness had improved over the week and like I was skiing as fast as I ever have this season. Unfortunately as a team we didn’t do that well and missed the final by a few places.

Things are looking positive going into the last three sprints of the world cup. We are in Falun Sweden right now where we will compete in a relay this weekend before heading to Stockholm for the annual Royal Palace World Cup. This is a really cool event! We race on the old town streets of Stockholm including a climb up the steps of the Royal Palace of Sweden. It’s for sure one of the coolest races of the year, and it takes place at night so there are always tons of fans. I will make sure to get some pictures and post them next week.

The World Cup field was as strong as ever for last week’s races in Canmore, Alberta, Canada. The two sprint races were action packed, and to say the least, with lots of tactics involved and some close finishes.

Wednesday’s classic sprint was a tricky race for the U.S. team. Although the waxing conditions were pretty easy and stable for a classic race, things are never that simple on sprint day. The course had two mellow up hills and the snow was running pretty fast in the track, so rumors of skiers double-poling on skate skis were buzzing everywhere. During circumstances like that, there tends to be a weird tension around the course during warm up. Everyone is looking around at each other’s skis and boots trying to get an idea of who will be striding and who will be just using their arms.

In the end, it turned out to be a good day to be double poling on skate skis. The last 400-meters of the course consisted of a long gradual down hill into a long straightaway finish so the skate skis were gliding a lot faster in the track. Unfortunately I decided to stick with the kick wax on my skis and it turned out to be a poor call and I ended up 17th on the day.

My frustration didn’t subside after the skate race either. I was really fired up going into Saturdays skate sprint because I knew it could be a good course for me because it was so quick and fast. I felt great in the qualification, posting the second fastest time, but when it came to the heats I made another tactical error by letting myself get boxed out heading into the finish lanes. I was skiing in 4th position heading into the final straightaway and there was a split second when I needed to make a decision to pass. I chose to make a risky move and shoot past someone on the inside lane and the other skier squeezed me right into the fence. I don’t blame him because I would have done the same thing, blocking well is a big part of cross country sprint racing. Looking back on it, there’s no denying that it was a bad call on my part.

So the Canmore races ended up not going my way. Finishing well in these races was a big goal for me this season, so I’m very disappointed that both days I made some tactical errors. With four more World Cup sprints to go this year, I’m going to try to focus on tuning up my fitness and trying to make it into as many finals as possible. World Cup sprint competition is so tight this year that one podium finish can really make or break the season.

Tomorrow we’re heading out of Canmore on a 4:30 a.m. shuttle (ouch!!) to go to the Calgary airport and fly to Sweden. From Sweden we’ll take another small flight to Tallinn, Estonia. From there it’s a short drive to Oteppaa, where the next sprint World Cup will take place.

Hey everyone! Happy New Year! Sorry it’s been a while since my last post. We have been on a little bit of a break from World Cup racing since Russia, but have been very busy nonetheless.

Ski racing in Russia was an experience like no other. Even though we were in what looked to be a pretty small town, spectators from all over just poured in for the event. The fans, the music, the food, the Vodka… are all part of an unbelievable XC ski racing experience in Russia. Cross country is more of a mainstream sport over there and the country’s XC skiers are some of their national heroes, so the sound from the grand stands was earth-shattering.

Despite getting tangled up with some other skiers in my semifinal heat, Sunday’s sprint race was a great day for the U.S. Ski team. Because of the fall, I was unable to move onto the A Final but raced a solid B Final, winning the heat and picking up the 7th place spot. On the women’s side it was a historical day for the U.S. with Kikkan Randal bringing home the first ever U.S. world cup win for a female!! The whole team was SO fired up! You should have seen the coaches jumping up and down in the finish area. It was rad. And despite not having a Russian on the top of the podium, the local crowd was amazingly excited to see the U.S. there.

After an unbelievable weekend of racing in Rybinsk, Russia, the U.S. XC team and I traveled back home for a short Christmas Break. It was nice to come home to plenty of snow in the East and cold temps… something we don’t always have during this time of year in Vermont. Coming home and skiing on my local trails of southern Vermont is always a highlight of the winter.

The break was short-lived however, when on December 31, I had to hop on a plane and fly to Houghton, Michigan, for our U.S. Short Distance Nationals. What a way to ring in the New Year, huh? I think we reached 2008 somewhere during the 20 minute decent on the small 30-seat airplane we were flying on. By the time we landed, it was already 15 minutes into the New Year and already time to start thinking about the next race.

Houghton is a small town on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with not a whole lot to do but cross country ski, snowmobile, and talk about the Packers. But, wow, did they have a lot of snow. It pretty much dumped the first three days we were there, making it hard to even see where you were skiing. Luckily by the weekend Sprints, things had cleared up and we had a tough, hard-fought competition. The Sprint this year was freestyle and I was stoked to bring home my second U.S. national title and repeat the victory from last year. There was some tough competition not only from the other members of the U.S. Sprint team, but also from some fast foreigners as well. The following day (Sunday) was the classic technique Sprint Relay event where my teammate, Torin Koos, and I were able to outsprint the Factory Team for the win. We had been edged out in this event before so I made sure to just put my head down and hammer the final stretch.

I made my way home from Michigan yesterday…. Only having to take THREE different flights! And now I’m back home in Vermont for another short week of training. The World Cup tour will resume in Canmore, Canada, in two weeks time. These are some very important races for us not only because they are in North America, but also because there are two separate sprint races in four days. So there are a lot valuable World Cup points to pick up. Check back to see how I’ll be preparing and training for those races!

The U.S. Cross Country ski team is racing and training in Davos, Switzerland. We have been here for about 5 days preparing for yesterday’s 15k classic race and today’s 4×10k relay. Several inches of snow have fallen since our arrival on Monday, making the skiing conditions great but very unpredictable. Unstable weather can sometimes make ski waxing conditions very tricky on race day.

Yesterday’s 15k classic race was a perfect example of how waxing-and timing-can sometimes make or break your race. We got hammered with snow 15 minutes before the start of the race and before long, the tracks had almost an inch of fresh powder in them. This doesn’t make things very fair for the first starters and unfortunately I was one of those first starters.

The first five kilometers of my race was a rough one. I had to stop once or twice to slap the snow off the bottom of my ski. Although I didn’t have much riding on yesterday’s distance race, is was still a little disappointing because it was my first distance world cup finish and it didn’t exactly go that well. Since I am primarily a sprinter on tour, I don’t get too many chances to start 15k races so it’s a little frustrating when the conditions aren’t going your way.

It was a good practice race regardless and will only help my fitness level going into Russia next week. The World Cup continues next weekend with a 30k and a sprint in Rybinsk Russia. After last weeks 4th place finish in Kuusamo, this will be an important race for me to try and pick up some more points. Last year was my first time going to Russia to race and it was intense! I’ll have to make sure to take some pictures. It will be a little bit different than the powder and sun of Switzerland.

Voukatti, Finland is a dark cold place. We’ve been training at the Voukatin Sports Center for the past couple days to get ready for our next sprint World Cup in Kuusamo, Finland. The sun looks like a glowing orange orb that pokes it’s face over the horizon at about 9:30 in the morning, but is ready to go down again by 2 o’clock in the afternoon. By 4 PM it’s as black as night.

Despite the short days and commonly cold temperatures, northern Finland is a sick place to train. Skiing is a mainstream sport here and it shows in the way each town prepares its ski trails. Even if there is not a lot of snow they will move as much as possible onto the trail or make snow if they can in order to accommodate all the skiers. Because of the lack of daylight, it’s also common for ski area to have several kilometers of lighted ski trails for afternoon training.

So life has been pretty good here at the Voukatin Sports Center. There is a distance World Cup going on right now in Norway, but Chris Cook, Torin Koos, and I skipped that stop in order to come to Finland and prepare for the World Cup in Kuusamo. Even though traveling to Europe seams easier and easier each time, adjusting to the sleep schedule over here has proved harder than normal. I think a lot of it has to do with the lack of sunlight, or for that matter lack of light in general, during the daytime hours.

The past five days have consisted of some solid training both on the ski trails and in the gym. Our Sprint coach, Chris Grover, is also here with us making sure we’re on track with each work out. So far the workouts have been fairly easy in order to preserve our health as much as possible. Traveling to Europe can put quite a big stress on your body, so the first couple days over here are always a balancing act of how much training you can put in without pushing yourself too far.

Another major health precaution I’ve been taking while over here is really watching out for my lungs. I think this is one area that has helped me stay fairly healthy over the past few years. As XC skiers we hammer on our lungs… there’s no doubt about that. And lets face it, there aren’t too many things our there more valuable to an XC skier than his or her lungs, so we might as well try to take care of them. The cold can be wicked harsh on them when we’re outside training for so long. One of they ways we avoid doing any damage is by wearing lightweight scarf’s over our mouth or these funny respirator things. The goal is just to warm up the air a little bit before it enters my lungs and I think it’s helped me avoid some bad respiratory infections.

We will be hopping in the van tomorrow for the 3-hour drive to Kuusamo. We’ll be there until the World Cups this weekend. For the next few days we’ll be testing skis and putting in some hard intervals on the course to make sure we have every inch of it memorized.

Hope there’s snow on the ground wherever you are and make sure to have fun skiing or snowboarding. Check back in a few for some Kuusamo updates.

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It’s hard to believe it has only been just over two weeks since the Düsseldorf World Cup. I’ve spent the majority of the past 14 days training at home in Vermont and trying to fine-tune the speed and strength needed to make it this winter. It’s a nice change to be training at home this time of year. In most cases, I leave the U.S. in November and don’t return back to the States until April. This year’s schedule is a little more forgiving, and with an entire week of races scheduled for Canada in January, I will spend more time at home than ever before. The only hard part will be trying to stay healthy during all the travel back a forth from Europe.

I felt fine the first few days back after my flight from Germany. Unfortunately I started coming down with something after my fourth day back. I have what most cross country skier’s possess and that’s sickness denial. It must be one of those things that we acquire over the years. But on that fourth day when I woke up feeling not-so-good, I pretty much did the worst possible thing I could have done: I went out and hammered out some sprint speed intervals fallowed by a hard strength session that evening. When I woke up the next day I could hardly swallow, my throat hurt so bad.

For me, staying in and not training is one of the hardest things to do as an athlete… Especially this time of year. You feel like the season is so close and there are only so many days to work out before it’s serious race time. It’s awful. The helpless feeling of not being able to do anything but sit there and get slower. Again, after being a cross-country skier for so many years, this antagonizing feeling of taking a day off could also be considered mildly insane.

As skiers, we hate the thought of taking a day off. But in reality, it can be the best thing for us. After all, it is mid-November, so if you’re not in shape yet and you haven’t put in the time over the summer…. You’re pretty much screwed. And sometime having a really easy week to help your body absorb the training in exactly what you need. This is what I had to keep telling myself while I couldn’t go out training for a few days.

Even though I was bummin’ on being sick, I was able to have a lot of fun on my time off in VT. I was able to hang out with all my buddies and do our normal redneck stuff. Watching football, grilling food, taking a good sauna, and driving VT back roads…. All the things I can’t do anywhere else but right here at home. One day after, I was feeling a little bit better. I did a four-hour roller ski/ run combo from my house in Shaftsbury all the way up to my Buddies’ house in Weston to hang out and watch the game.

I was forced out of my element for a few days, though, for the annual New York City USSA Ski Ball. This is a fundraising event that the U.S. Ski team puts on every year in downtown Manhattan. In some ways it’s kind just a fun get-together for all the trusties and sponsors of USSA. Now I don’t really belong in the city, and this is the one event a year that I put a suit on for, but it was still a really good night. I’m always stoked to get the opportunity to show folks what XC ski racing is really like. There was a good group of athletes from Alpine and Snowboarding there too, so it was awesome to see everybody and hang out for the night in the big city.

I am back home now with only a few more days to train before we head over to Finland for the next few stops on the XC World Cup. My next sprint race will be in Kuusamo, Finland, at the end of the month, and then it’s off to Davos, Switzerland, and Rybinsk, Russia. Once we start traveling I will have a lot more interesting things to write about so keep checking back.

A day after the opening world cup in Düsseldorf and I’m already on my way back to the States. The first sprint race of the year wasn’t the success I was hoping for but the “Düsseldorf” experience is definitely something that can get anyone fired up for the season.

During the months off in the summer, I sometimes forget the magnitude of the cross-country world cup scene. The echoing yell of the announcer, the smell of flouroes smoking off irons, the hustle of testing skis, and the sound of a couple hundred thousand Germans screaming in your face. Its almost like a wake-up call that takes you back to an athletes favorite place to be…a heightened sense of awareness, the feeling of being untouchable…being in the moment.

Nothing brings you back to this place better than the inner city sprint race that is the Düsseldorf Opener. Even though it’s 50 degrees out, they make snow indoors, and lay it down on the streets of the old city next to the Rhine River. With three different Germans taking the top honor of the World Cup over all champions in the past four years, xc skiing is big in Deutschland to say the least. It could be one of those things; if you have beer they will come, but every year Düsseldorf brings out some of the biggest crowds of the year. A reported 200,000 showed up on the day of the sprint and you could hear every single one of them as we raced though the narrow course.

The two-lap qualifier didn’t go as well for me as I’d hoped. Even though I kept my breakfast down, I ended up 13th on the list of the top 30 fastest prelim times. The qualifier doesn’t count for much other than whom you end up racing in the heats, but it serves as a way to compare your max speed to the other races. Just like the pole position in NASCAR. In a lot of ways xc sprint racing and NASCAR are very similar. Tactics like drafting, boxing out, and the slingshot are all commonly used race moves.
That’s where I ran into trouble on Saturday.

In my quarterfinal heat of six, I was able to slip into a solid 2nd position going into our final lap, but made a few tactical mistakes in the last 300 meters. I pulled out from behind Norwegian Peter Northug in order to box out some of the competition over the little hill, but by doing so allowed myself to get pinched out going into the final hairpin turn. The final stretch was quick and fast so I was unable to advance from my 4th position.

Despite ending up 19th on the day, it felt great to get back into the excitement of the World Cup. There’s really nothing that compares to having thousands of fans cheer you on as you race head-to-head against the fastest skiers in the world. It’s a gladiator-type feeling that you can’t find anywhere else other than on the streets of a city sprint. With a few weeks break until the next world cup, I’m going to stay home in Vermont and train on roller skis and in the gym to get ready for the next sprint. The team will be heading back over to Europe on Nov. 19 to train in Finland and get ready for the world cups in Kuusamo.

Check out the races from Düsseldorf, only on WCSN.com

There’s nothing quite like the feeling of cross-country ski racing. Being able to push yourself past your physical limits, blocking out the burning in your muscles and the pain in your lungs is something that all successful XC skiers need to know how to do. We spend all summer and fall practicing these skills, but no training session is the same as putting the bib on and racing a pack of other skiers.

This is what I thinking two days ago when I was hunched over in dark woods of Sweden violently pukeing into the dirt. We had driven up to Mora Sweden from the Torsby ski Tunnel, where we had spent the past 5 days, getting in some on snow training and preparing for the first World Cup of the year. Part of our preparation was this annual FIS classic sprint race in Mora.

Having a successful sprint race has a lot to do with what the skier does before and between the heats, as much as what we do on the trail. This is why no practice in the world can prepare you for a sprint race like the race itself. It’s all about timing…when and what to eat before the race, when to start your warm up to be best prepared for the prelim, how long to cool down, how much to jog between heats and at what heart rate, etc.

As sprint racers, we have these specific timetables ingrained in our minds but without consistent practice, things can go wrong. This is how I ended up trying to not splatter my own shoes with puke. When hammering as hard as you can on skis (like in a sprint qualifier) its easy to build up way too much lactic acid in your muscles. You reach a point when you body cannot handle any more, the acid seeps through your stomach lining, and your left unable to do anything other than bend over and barf. It’s all about warming your body up enough so that this doesn’t happen. But when it does you’re in a tough situation, and need to try to replenish and re-hydrate your body in time to get on the start line again for the heats.

So after I was done throwing up, I tried to cool down as best I could while also getting in a lot of sports drinks, gummy bears (for quick carbs), and flat coke (for sugar and caffeine). Its no wonder my dentist says I have cavities…but it really is the best way to get your energy up enough in a short period of time to be able to hammer again. Despite the episode in the woods, I was able to pull it together and ended up winning my first race of the season. My muscles and lungs felt good into the finals and I was able to put down a fast kick in the end for the victory. I was stoked! Not only was it good practice leading up to the world cup opener this weekend in Düsseldorf, but also it feels great to start off the season with a win and set the tone for the rest of the winter.

I will be flying to Germany tomorrow to meet up with the wax techs and get everything squared away for Saturday and Sunday’s races. Check back for updates to see what it’s like behind the scenes at the Düsseldorf Word Cup opener. Watch the Dusseldorf Sprint Final, only on WCSN.com