Casual Clothing: The list of items and prices are on the website. Send me you orders via e-mail. Really nice stuff and good color selection.  Choose your standard size.

Birke Tour: Who's doing it? Do you need a place to stay fri or sat night? Let me know. Carpools too. Anyone want to come along and watch and cheer. It will be quite a spectacle.

City of Lakes: Ride and Glide always has lots of participants and volunteers in this race.  It's a great event and it right in our back yards.  We just have to support it.  Lots of stuff to do for the non-racer as well.  Watching, Ice biking, Lantern Loppet, 10K Tour.  Ski-joring, etc.  We'll be collecting volunteers so let us know your interest.  The COL is the first weekend in Feb this year.  The event is our club championship as well.  Anyone want to do the Tour.  We can do it as a group like last year.

Ski Videos:  There are lots of videos on the internet you can use to help with your technique.  visualization really works.  Here's a list of some on youtube to check out

We broke intermediate skate into two groups. One that wanted to work on V1 and the other that would work on V2 and other things. Kurt and Steve T took the V2 group. The conditions were fantastic. Fast snow and good edge control. Perfect for learning V2. We had a great session. Just about everyone caught on to V2 using the Progression I describe below. The philosophy is to simplify the V2 and get people moving in a somewhat less than perfect form and get them comfortable in that form and then tweak the form to correct the "Less than Perfect" areas. V2 is very balance intensive and I find students can learn V2 easily if we remove some of the balance requirements. Note however this assumes the student already has a reasonably well developed free skate. Meaning they can skate without poles in a comfortable fashion with a relaxed glide. Here's the points we worked on to learn V2

1. Move slowly with light pole power. We don't want to move too fast. That stresses the balance too much.
2. Short quick poling with little follow through. That allows you to get the poles back forward quickly for the next cycle.
3. Elbows out, think "Chicken Wing" and do short little wrist flicks. Rotating the forearms about the elbow joint.
4. Don't follow through much past your hips.
5. Skis almost parallel. Just a small amount of splay.
6. Flat to slight uphill terrain.
7. Swing arms forward, plant almost vertical, exhale as you fall lightly on the poles. Easy push.
8. Remember the V2 timing. A regular double pole on each foot. Don't skate off until your hands reach your waist.
9. Light easy motions. Easy skate from side to side.
10. Very important: RELAX your shoulders and feel free to stand fairly upright. This is just timing practice.
11. Practice your V2 this way until it becomes natural. Almost a resting technique. You could do it forever on the flats.

Once you get the hang of the V2 in this fashion all you need to do is up the amplitude. Push harder with the skate off, push harder on the poles, follow though past your hips. Bigger longer glides. Bend your knees more and lean into it. All these new motions are easier because you mastered the timing and balance at a lower level. It helps to see this visually. So grab an instructor and have them check you out

Ben and Todd's group greeted the perfect ski conditions with approximately 20 advanced skiers. With this large group and some fairly new faces sprinkled within, we reviewed V2 and open field. We began the night at the Lexington Hill concentrating on getting our hips forward while hinging at the ankle and initiating our crunch by bending at the knees to optimize the weight transferred to our poles. Next, we attempted to maximize our kick by accelerating our ski at the end of our kick and tried to avoid stepping up the hill. After a few laps up the hill our V2 began to look efficient and dynamic. Open field was our next technique of choice. We focused on a complete weight transfer and rhythmically moving our arms to help provide forward momentum. We also talked about using our good double pole technique while using the open field technique, instead of staying completely upright and only using our arms for upper body propulsion. We concluded our session by talking about the importance of transitions in maximizing our efficiency. By applying a few strokes of the appropriate technique with a little vigor we can gain speed cresting hills and exiting corners.

This past Tuesday was my nightmare - after the count and sorting upstairs, Ken, Jenny, Arvid and I organized the evening's grouping. But by the time we left the warm-up area, I had quite a few more than I expected. Some were skiers who prefer my teaching style (thank you, thank you) but most were those who hadn't attended many of our on-snow coaching sessions. If I had known there were that many, I would have asked for a partner. The result was a widely diverse range of abilities, and speeds, which made the group a bit unwieldy. But it ended up okay, with all participants improving greatly through the evening.

One of the problems that was noted was the difficulty of skiing in the dark. That is a common problem for less experienced skiers, which is why I hog the glacier, under the lights. Other areas at Como are much darker. My suggestion is to ski as much during the daylight as you can fit in your schedule, so that you can focus on your technique and muscle memory, with less energy spent on evaluation of surroundings. The dark (like foggy glasses) can also mess up your sense of balance, resulting in falls or tentative glide.

I want to again encourage you all to read the full newsletter, not just the section by "your" coach. There is lots of pertinent info being presented each week. Last week, I found the write-ups of the cross-over skate/classic sessions to be highly interesting. The same instruction was reiterated in multiple forms, for multiple audiences. Each writer used their own wording, with their own way of explaining the actions, but it's the same message - full weight transfer, getting out over that leading ski (my wording) and timing of kick. If you missed that issue, click on the Newsletter Archives (on the web-page), then scroll down to Newsletter07_10 (Jan 11, 2010). And by the way, one correction - the photo captioned ABR December trip was actually taken at Elm Creek on New Years Day.

Now a reminder about "racing"- the race season is here, so you'll hear a lot about races. Tune it out if you want, as we can still have a lot of fun without "racing." At ABR last weekend, one group went snowshoeing as a cross-training activity. Great kick, lousy glide was our mantra. We hiked out and cheered the racers on the Peltonen Passout hills. Then later, some of the same group plus others skied the Taste and Tour event, an untimed event where we were given real food instead of "energy drink". Home-made noodles and marinara sauce, curried squash soup, mulled cider, egg rolls and chicken wings, chili, swedish meatballs, hot chocolate. Yum. It was great fun to ski it as a group, with everyone supporting the others in a non-competitive activity. We spent 3 hours covering the 10K, (with an exciting cruise for the home stretch) then sweet-talked the bus driver to drop us back at our lodging. Now that is my kind of event.

Cross Training

Home Stretch

Words from the editor - Shad Holland

I am sure glad this club is called RIDE and Glide. I have been out on the bike way more than on skis this season. From riding Theodore Wirth mountain bike trails, patrolling the 24 Hours of Telemark, riding the skatepark on my BMX bike, and communting, that makes me pretty active on two wheels. Skied a few times this season and it's been awesome! You can't beat these conditions....they are some of the best I have seen. Hope to see you out on the trail!