Klassisk stil

Here's video from Kincaid Park this afternoon for technique analysis; Karina and Adam:

Karina:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUfsPjOn6PQ
Adam:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHx3NixismA

Karina:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc12ok4Xi4s
Adam:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUfsPjOn6PQ

Music Videos

I wasn't able to attend last week's 6-day UAA Ski Team Thanksgiving Training Camp at Glynn & Ed Strabel's place at Hatcher Pass, but Davis Dunlap was there, and he submitted this report:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0ui1tKnZTY&feature=share

Alaska Cup Day 2 - Anchorage Daily News

Story here:
http://www.adn.com/2011/11/20/2181423/uaa-defeats-uaf-to-take-nordic.html

Video from Alaska Cup Day 2 (Skate)

See them here:
Lukas:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmodLiY_WkU

Callum Watson from Australia:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ku67DJx1Uug

Lasse:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGb6V2cv7vE

Nevio:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml-LE7-_TfQ

Lutz & Davis:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqWvAOWWA5Q

Jaime & Laura:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqWvAOWWA5Q

Steffi:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGyWdZ0SsFk

Maya:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9wr4ah6D2M

Alaska Cup in the local press

Here's some local press about this weekend:

http://www.adn.com/2011/11/19/2180037/apu-skiers-dominate-in-nordic.html

http://www.adn.com/2011/11/19/2179824/alaska-nordic-cup-ski-race.html

Alaska Cup Win

UAA won the Alaska Cup today. This is the annual early-season two-day showdown between UAA and UAF.  Today the women raced 5km on a tough, hilly Spencer Loop race course, while the men did two laps for their 10km race.  If all the UAA women beat all of the UAF women again today as they did yesterday, then we needed at least one of our men to beat at least one of the UAF men to get the win.  Lukas Ebner was the one who got the job done for us with a 3rd place result (overall), beating all the UAF men and ensuring that this year's Alaska Cup would go to UAA. 

I was busy taking video of the women today, so you only get to see photos of the men:

Lasse:

Nevio:

Davis:

Lutz:

Lutz & Davis:



It's only November - a long time until the NCAA Championships in March. It's nice to win the first meet of the season, but we have a lot of work ahead of us.  We'll get some of that work done next week when we go out of town for our Thanksgiving training camp.  This coming week will be our biggest week of training of the year.  We'll come back to Anchorage tired but ready to start the process of getting faster during the early and middle part of the winter, to be at our best in early March.

But it's colder in Fairbanks

The first races of the season (The Alaska Cup) are this weekend.  The Alaska Cup is the annual early season showdown between the Universities of Alaska in Anchorage and Fairbanks. Today we had a 5km classic race, and tomorrow we'll have a skate race.  These races were originally scheduled for Fairbanks, but it's minus one thousand degrees in Fairbanks right now so the races were moved to Anchorage.  It was pretty cold here, too.  We were scheduled to race at 11am but it was too cold so the race was moved back to 2pm.  Tomorrow it's supposed to be warmer for the skate race. 

Our men were destroyed by UAF this afternoon, while our women crushed the UAF women... so in the end we're in a tie between the two teams with 21 points each.  Tomorrow, we'll break the tie one way or another. 

Taylor, Anna, and Anais:

Thank you so much to the UAA alpine team who came out in the freezing cold to cheer us on!  It was great to see you out there and we really appreciated your support!

 Taylor, Davis and Anais:

There are a few very amateur short video clips at these links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aaz5Z0Itrtw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMfH0M1tME0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHtpnfzc4Ok

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGjCGB7N0y8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi_vf4BtjpQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMHrnIhnglM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oI8XsJbov_U

Kincaid Kold

Today the team started preparing for the the first races of the season this weekend in Fairbanks, where the temperature is forecast to be minus one thousand degrees, which is typical for this time of year in Fairbanks.  To get ready, we went out and did some skating intervals at +9 degrees (F) at Kincaid Park this morning.  I really enjoyed this workout today, maybe because I skipped the hardest interval with the excuse that I needed to film the team so they could see video of their skiing technique. (An experienced coach knows when and how to use the most appropriate excuses for each situation.) 

Anyway, there's very short, very amateur video of the women at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xtqP3gGMvw and the men at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Errs2wk965Q

During the cool-down, I took these pictures:

Lukas and Tor:

Galen, Davis, Lasse, Lutz:

Lutz and Lasse:

No Explanation Necessary

More snow, more intervals

After several days of missing practice because my "day job" has kept me in airplanes, flying around the countryside, I was finally able to make it to practice again today for the team's last hard day in a block of intensity training.  It felt good to get out there again and ski fast for a little while!  Unfortunately, I was too busy trying to keep up with the boys to take any pictures during the hard part of the workout, but I took a few pictures during the warm down.  It's nice to have good snow in Anchorage!

It was too sunny for Lucky; he had to cover his eyes.

Lasse, Tor, and Nevio:

Lucky and Davis:

 

Dette bildet går ut til Lasse's foreldre. Er ikke snø, sol, vintervaer og høy fart mer interessant enn baby bilder?

After practice, I jumped on a plane to Kodiak.  Here's Anchorage this afternoon:

Harding Icefield:

The Kenai Peninsula:

Ski videos

Secret video from last week's interval workout on one inch of snow at Hillside is available here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZuJL9-fd8I and here (most of the rest of the team): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upnePh0Zsh0

Skiing in Anchorage

Conditions for our skating interval workout today was only 49% rocks - the other 51% was snow!!

 Lutz:

 Jaime.  It wasn't foggy out there.  Apparently, it was just foggy in my sweaty pocket.

There's video, too, but somehow Youtube's not working for me today.

Never a bad time to ski

The UAA Ski Team thinks you get more exercise doing ski intervals on the golf course than golfing on the golf course.