Blowing & Drifting

The cottonwood fluff was thick on the ground outside our townhouse yesterday, but alas: not thick enough that it could be skied.

[Read more →]

Sometimes spring skiing is great: warm temperatures, sunshine, interesting and fun snow. Today was not that day here in Northfield, but goddamn if I didn’t have One Last Ski™ - a solid and sweaty hour in conditions that included foot-deep slush, inch-thick ice, and various obstacles. I prefer to think of these obstacles as increasing the [...]

[Read more →]

I guess winter is well and truly over. Yeah, we might get one last storm, but even a colossal one won’t save the skiing, which is now finished until December – November if I’m really lucky. This isn’t all bad. The snow looks horrible right now – brown, filthy, icy junk – so it definitely [...]

[Read more →]

The 86th Vasaloppet, described as the largest (15,000 skiers), longest (90km), and oldest (1921) ski race in the world, was run in Sweden on Sunday morning. The race is an amazing spectacle and a magnificent athletic event. The Swedes pay attention to it the same way Americans pay attention to the Super Bowl, with the [...]

[Read more →]

In five (or six) units… 1. Articles I Read: A. Popular “God Said Multiply, and Did She Ever” (Joseph Berger, New York Times, February 18, 2010) When Yitta Schwartz died last month at 93, she left behind 15 children, more than 200 grandchildren and so many great- and great-great-grandchildren that, by her family’s count, she [...]

[Read more →]

The nordic events at the Vancouver Winter Olympic Games were colossally exciting to watch. The best single moment for me was Billy Demong’s gold-winning attack in the last nordic combined race, last Thursday. Demong’s medal – part of huge American haul in nordic combined which also included two silvers from Johnny Spillane and a silver [...]

[Read more →]

I know that for really fit and fast skiers, the men and women who win citizens’ races and better, 50 kilometers is a serious but not frighteningly tough distance to ski, either as training or in a race. On the other hand, this middle-of-the-pack racer found 50 kilometers to be an awfully long way to ski [...]

[Read more →]

In today’s nordic combined event at the Olympics, Americans Bill Demong and Johnny Spillane raced extremely well, working together to take over the race and then, with just one Austrian skier in tow, to launch a vicious attack that brought them to the finish line for a gold and silver. A GOLD AND A SILVER! [...]

[Read more →]

For nordic skiers in the US and other snowy regions of the world, late winter means ski marathons – long races that focus the fitness built up all fall and winter into some tough competition. The biggest ski marathon of them all, the 90 kilometer (56 mile) Vasaloppet, takes place in a couple weeks in [...]

[Read more →]

Today I was lucky enough to watch the second half of the nordic combined team event at the Vancouver Olympics, a 4x5km relay race in which the teams are seeded according to their ski jumps earlier in the day. The American team came in as one of the favorites, along with the 2006 Olympic champions, [...]

[Read more →]

The other day, Laura Valaas, an e-friend who happens to be one of the best cross-country skiers in North America, emailed me to ask if I would be willing to try out a new product she’d developed: the “BootBuddy,” a little plastic doodad that snaps into the front of your ski boot to protect the [...]

[Read more →]

The Vancouver Games are turning out to be pretty engaging, which means I’m writing a lot of stuff about the nordic skiing events, like this look at the unexpected results of today’s sprint races or yesterday’s assessment of just how bad Norway is doing. Perhaps you’ll enjoy reading them – or perhaps you’ll be appalled [...]

[Read more →]

(Cross-posted to Nordic Commentary Project) So excited am I about the nordic skiing Olympics that I’d happily watch coverage of the teams’ wax techs prepping skis for the racers. Just the same, here are seven competition-related questions that I’m especially eager to see answered. How many golds will be won by Norway’s Petter Northug and [...]

[Read more →]

I welcomed the Olympic Winter Games by knocking off early and going out for a long ski in Carleton’s Lower Arb. Conditions were magnificent: 20°F, no wind, cloudless blue sky, brilliant sunshine, and brand-new classic tracks everywhere. Fantastic. I love running on these same trails in the summer, but there’s nothing better than skiing on [...]

[Read more →]

Over the couple days since the City of Lakes race, the event photos have filtered onto the internet, and, not unrelatedly, I’ve mused up fifteen observations about the race: I could look photos of ski-race starting lines all day. Something about all those skis in tidy, multicolored rows… City of Lakes Loppet Classic Start (by [...]

[Read more →]