Only 3 class sessions left. Then the Pizza Party!!

Video Taping: The video taping session will be Feb 9. Most likely at Como at 10am, but that may change. More info later.

Race Season: With the race season upon us we will start to offer some race oriented class sessions. Both outdoor activities and indoor Q&A sessions. If you are doing your first race this year don't pass up these opportunities to pump your coaches for information. We've all got a lot of race experience. We'll do some race simulation practice over the next few weeks for those who want it. Normal sessions as well. We'll just assign an instructor or two to take a group out and talk racing.

City of Lakes: Any more people want to do the COL Tour? Basically what this will be is a nice day out on your skis with people out there to hand you food and drink when you want it. You can't beat that. No sweating required, go at your own pace. We'll try to do it in a group but if you can't keep up you can go at your own pace. Maybe someone will come back with you. The big thing is to just enjoy the event. Hopefully the weather will cooperate. I think we've have 4 people right now. (Arvid, Dona, Colleen, Kathy) I know there are others out there that would enjoy this. I'll send out an e-mail with everyone contact info. Here's a link to the Tour info. There's a course map as well.

http://www.cityoflakesloppet.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10&Itemid=32

Race or Volunteer or just come out and cheer. Skijoring, Sprints, and Luminaries on Sat Feb 2 and the races and tour on Sunday. Come out and help Jyneen. She's already volunteered for 4 time slots. I won't see her all weekend. http://www.cityoflakesloppet.com

City of Lakes Loppet Volunteering (from Jayneen) Remember how you were offered a club membership discount for either racing/touring the City of Lakes Loppet or for volunteering to help with the race? Now's the time to fulfill that promise (or get a head-start on next year. In the past, Ride and Glide has been recognized for our group effort, and we want to continue that recognition. Information and sign-up is at this link. The data entry form is organized by time availability, so it might be a bit confusing if you've never done anything like this before.

In previous years, club members have helped out with race-packet organization and hand-out, food-stops, finish-line/medals and timing (including the ski-joring event), lap-counters, and course marshalls. Can't forget the all-important set-up and take-down teams. And special recognition goes to a hardy group who have helped with the creation of the 750 ice-bucket luminaries. I don't know what I'll be doing yet, but I have offered my list of windows of availability and trust that they will let me know where they need me most. The first assignment they gave me was: Recruit more volunteers!

So if you are unsure what you want to help with, let me know and I'll help you decide. There are lots of opportunities, from warm locations to cold spots, strength workouts (aka heavy lifting) to endurance activities, part of a group (for you shy guys) to leadership roles. It's a great way to experience the race, and instead of paying a race entrance fee, you get a nifty hat and specialized goodie bag.

If you sign up directly with COLL (on the link above) please also let me or Steve know, so we can keep track too. Thanks.

March Trip: With all the snow on the North Shore this year the conditions should be great. Weekend of March 15 We stay in Tofte. Some will probably take Friday off and head up early and ski on the way up. Let me know if you are interested. We stay at Superior Ridge Resort. This will be our 4th year

What a great night for skiing! The beginner skate group (all of whom are skiing very very well by the way) spent the night focusing on V1 and field skate technique along with hill transitions. We warmed up with some free skiing, then proceeded to do a double pole exercise. The double pole exercise focused on the basics of falling onto the poles - remember the dryland visual? A tree being cut off at the base (your ankles) and Timber, falling forward onto the poles. We emphasized falling forward from the ankles and getting a good forward hip position. The group then took this and applied it to the V1 - keeping forward lean from the ankles and good forward/high hip positions on the gliding ski.

We stayed on the front area of the golf course to take advantage of the lights and the hills on either side of the large flat area. This enabled us to ski along the flat practicing our technique and then climb a hill to focus on transitions. Transitions are very important because you rarely are skiing only on one type of terrain. Most ski trails have hills, rolls, angles, etc. To become a good efficient skier you must learn to transition and modify your technique to match the terrain. Once you become comfortable with it, you don't even think about it, it becomes natural and then suddenly you realize that your skiing long without having to concentrate on what technique to use on what part of the trail. It's a great feeling when this happens.

OK, so I realize that this is really hard to understand when it is written out… Trust me it is far easier to demonstrate than to try to describe. If you feel this is something you want to work on grab a coach and ask them for help. It will make a lot more sense when you have a visual example to go along with the explanation.

After working on V1 for a while we moved to field skate. The emphasis in field skate was becoming ambidextrous (did I spell that right?) where you can do it on either side. To accomplish this we went back and forth always poling towards the parking lot. This forced the group to be able to field skate on both sides. We discussed and demonstrated getting into a flowing rhythm for field skate. Rhythm is important for both field skate and V2. We also worked on transitioning from a field skate into a V1 for hill climbing. Two methods were demonstrated. In one you skip the swinging pole recovery as you skate onto your strong side ski, then do a 3-point V1 landing onto your other side and continue with a V1. In the other method you ride the glide slightly longer on your weak side and then transition into a field skate. (Again, if this is as confusing as the assembly instructions for your kids Christmas toys, just ask an instructor to demonstrate next week). Either method works and there are probably a lot of other ways to execute this transition. The key thing is to find what works for you in various conditions.

That's all for this week. Get out and ski. Noquemanon ski marathon is this weekend (www.noquemanon.com) in Marquette Michigan. Although it is a long drive away, it is an excellent race. The 23K half marathon is mostly downhill (see map), although there are a few, but only a few, beast climbs in it. The finish features hot showers (after you take all your ski stuff off of course) in the superior dome. Great race!


Noquemanon Ski Marathon Profile

We had about 20 intermediate skaters show up. It was only about 5 degrees but it really wasn't that bad. The snow conditions were some of the best for skating we have had. Everyone started out warm from being upstairs. So we had a good session. We split into two groups. We let John go Solo for this night. More fine tuning of people's fairly accomplished techniques. We finally had good enough conditions to practice downhill corners on the long downhills over by Lexington. No snowplowing allowed. Step turns. Quick and fast feet. The key move here is to get the weight on the outside ski and use that ski to push you around the corner. We did several stationary practice drills to help develop this feel. Next we took the students "Strong Side" pole away and made them ski up a hill with only the "Weak Side" pole. We concentrate so much on getting people over on the strong side during their V1 that we sometimes forget that the weak side has a pole as well. In many case it's "just along for the ride" This drill helps you feel what it is like to use the weak side pole. The when you get back to having two poles you can try to use them more equally. This is another example of how we teach beginners and intermediates. We want you to get to an acceptable level in a reasonable amount of time so we allow shortcuts and exaggerations to help you get moving and develop a passable technique that we can latter fine tune. If "Toe Knee Nose" helps you get out over the ski great. We let you do that for a while. If favoring the strong side gets you moving better fine. But once you develop enough balance and body control then we have you dial that back a bit to "Toe Knee Shoulder" A lot of our technique points are quite subtle and are wasted on students that are struggling with the basics. So we give you some crutches to help you learn and then take then away later to make you progress further.

The lessons of the night:

• The primary purpose of poling is to get a strong push off (kick); balance and forward propulsion are also involved, but secondary.
• Start each poling with an active ab crunch, supported by the shoulders – just like on the floor. Without that ab crunch, everything depends on the legs, which on hills leads to all sorts of inefficient workarounds (e.g., lowering one’s posture to get more out of the legs).
• Looking 3 feet ahead of the ski tips helps assure a rounded back, rather than an arched one. A rounded back is a stronger position to pole from, while an arched one gets sore after awhile.
• About a stride and a half before the start of an uphill, increase the striding cadence to a “quick, quick, quick” tempo. It should be fast enough to get up the hill, while still having energy to explode over the top with a double pole or kick-double pole; i.e. without going so hard it’s necessary to rest at the top (“charge the hill” is normally not good skiing). Something not commonly known: on most race courses, more time is gained between the uphills than on them.
• As a hill steepens, get more purchase in the tracks with each stride by moving the pole plant timing forward towards when the ski lands (towards similar to herringbone).