That’s about all we were in for this past week, with T-shirt weather and snow that was quickly becoming water before our eyes (and under our skis).
With prep for Championship Season on the mind, the MNC Juniors worked on some speeds and fast skiing. On Tuesday, we we mixed together our second klister pot of the season in order to get things kicking for some classic intervals. Depending on each athlete’s race schedule the intervals varied in length and pace, but everyone was looking great!
Jumping is definitely something you’ve gotta incorporate when the opportunity presents itself. One of the big benefits of wet snow is just how maleable and packable it is. That meant that on Thursday I was able to skip my usual pre-practice activity of building fires in the Walker Building woodstoves, and instead use that time to put together a few fun kickers on downhill sections of trail (with the shoveling help of Carl Priganc). Why build jumps even for serious racers? If you’ve been watching any of the World Championships this week, you’ll have noticed a few key attributes:
- The courses are very twisty and full of corners and curves
- The downhills are really really FAST
- The pack skis incredibly close together and AGGRESSIVELY
So, we train for this kind of skiing both intentionally and unintentionally. Most training sessions, summer, fall, and winter, we almost always begin by just skiing easy loops around “Sprint” loop, the lap that goes around the building and up by the parking lot. Slowly but surely, as team members arrive the group of skiers grows. We ski at an easy pace for the most part, but we almost always end up racing the downhill section into the hard corner at the bottom. Again and again, up to 10 or 15 times every session. Poles get pushed, elbows get thrown, and aggressive moves get made.
Whether it’s on rollerskis or snow skis, this is a great way to intrinsically build comfort in tight situations and fast corners.
So when you add in some jumps, it makes it even more fun and you get a true skier-cross vibe. I didn’t get any footage of the whole group going down the backside of Sprint loop but in the clip below you can see Will and Aidan doing a test run!
As the clips also show, we do lots of drills practicing skiing very quickly on all sorts of terrain. On Thursday after warming up on the jump-enhanced Sprint loop we practiced group speeds around a tight corner in the stadium, and then worked on getting up a steep hill in the slush. As the video shows, the best way to get up a hill in the thick mush is to spend as little time on each ski as possible. A week ago in some thick but cold and fluffy powder, my term to people was to “surf” over the snow. In the slush I like the term “float” even better given the even further-reduced time the skis spend on the snow on the climbs.
Fast feet always moving, gaze always focused on the next move
Something we learned from Andy Newell’s agility clips: the arms don’t stop generating momentum!
This past Friday was the first day of High School State Championships, and Saturday was an epic Bogburn race, both involving plenty of slush, so the practice was well-warranted. Congrats to everyone at States and best of luck tomorrow! Check back for full State Meet recap after the conclusion of the freestyle races!
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