Blowing & Drifting

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 [...]

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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 could claim perhaps 2,000 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 – [...]

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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! [...]

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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 [...]

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Today I was lucky enough to watch the second half of the nordic combined team event at the Vancouver Olympics, a 4×5km 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, [...]

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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 [...]

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(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 Poland’s Justyna [...]

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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 [...]

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That was fun. Apart from a little transportation glitch* that led to the relatively minor problem of missing my start by a minute, the City of Lakes Loppet classic race could not have gone better. Okay, I might have skied faster – and will try, next year.
In brief, I started pretty well, maintained a solid pace [...]

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I wish I could do a race every two or three months. Everything about the experience – choosing an event, training for it, anticipating the race as it approaches, doing the race-eve prep, enjoying the race-day atmosphere, and of course actually racing – is fun, so much fun that I would like to do it [...]

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As I looked over my workout log the other day, I realized that the ski sessions I really enjoyed this winter – the ones that I noted with superlatives in the log or remember very clearly – almost all occurred in some sort of precipitation. The best of them, for instance, was a long ski [...]

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It’s early February, so I am getting psyched up for the City of Lakes Loppet, which will be run in Minneapolis on Sunday the 8th. This year – after some waffling – I decided to do the “Hoigaard’s Classic” race, which is run over a 24km (15 mile) course and uses the slower but (I think) [...]

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I spent Monday and Tuesday madly catching up work, so when I saw that the weather was beautiful today, I decided to trade my usual view (computer monitor, assorted paperwork, a cup of coffee) for this one and partake of the fantastic skiing in the Upper Arb.

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