I went to Madison WI for a few days before I headed to Vermont, and was so excited to have 14 women attend my PlayNordic clinic in the park!

PlayNordic is a traveling clinic series I started to encourage women to stay young at heart.

I have met many individuals through my travels, and am drawn to those who maintain a spark for life. This spark can be passed on, and this is my method of doing so. Sometimes life starts to become a dull routine, and exercise can be boring. My mission was to put together a workout that was out of the ordinary, and that I would want to do now, and 50 years from now.

We have to remember to always challenge ourselves, and to break out of our comfort zone every so often. I named it PlayNordic for two reasons. For one, through my nordic ski training, I have realized that just about anything can be good exercise as long as you are moving your body. I incorporate many core, arm, and lower body strength exercises that work your nordic ski muscles without realizing it. Two, I have seen many adults give up on ”playing”, and shy away from trying new things due to social expectations for their age group. For this reason, I hold the clinic at a park with a big playground, and we most certainly use every inch. Little children, move outta the way!

 After the clinic, I asked for a show of hands for who did something today that they hadn’t tried in the past 10-15 years. As the hands shot up with smiling faces, I knew it was mission accomplished.

Stay tuned for postings of when my next PlayNordic clinic will be, and I hope you can join!

The RunForSnow in Madison that same weekend was a big hit. Renee, Dave, and Yuriy, did a great job with the logistics, and I was surprised to see that it was actually a hilly difficult looking cross country course! Link HERE 

Meanwhile, in Benderland, life has been rough. That’s about all I can say without a few hours, a chocolate bar, and box of tissues. Good news is, I have started training, and days are progressing in a slow but positive manner. Lymes disease and Mono be damned.

I saw a quote recently that puts it in perspective:

“If everyone put their problems in a bag, and threw the bags in a pile, once everyone saw everyone else’s bag they would grab their own and run away.”

YOU Vs THEM

Nygren

 After 3 great weeks of volume training in Colorado the past week was all about recovery.  Telluride was nothing short of incredible and the training spectacular.  We put in a great training camp and proper rest afterwards was crucial.  I made sure I took a full recovery week and then I was really excited to get back at it.  The goal of going to Colorado was to develop a great base fitness to use as a spring board for intense fall training.  As a result, as training moves forward intervals and intensity will start to be a larger focus.  It is important to be fit before jumping into too much intensity otherwise you get tired instead of faster.

September camp starts next weekend up at Telemark and intensity is going to play a much larger role as we start to develop race form.  In preparation for a big week coming up I put in a two solid controlled interval sessions this weekend.    It felt great to get thing going a little and do some intensity at sea level after a good rest week to assure I am firing on all cylinder for September camp .  Here are some links to video from this morning.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=697398800455

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=697399434185

By: E. Wolcott

Over the past few weeks the CXC crew has been living and training in Telluride, CO. The emphasis of the camp has been overall volume. We have been taking advantage of all the great terrain around the area and have been working specifically on our hill climbing technique. Igor has been running us through the gauntlet with bungee and mobility drills to activate certain muscle groups.

The highlight of the trip for me thus far has been all the hiking we’ve put in. Telluride has amazing access to a great network of roads, and single track and we’ve tried to take full advantage. Last Saturday we loaded up the car and headed to Lizard Head Pass. From there we entered the Uncompahgre National Forest and set our sights on Wilson Peak. Wilson Peak a.k.a. the mountain on all Coors cans and bottles, turned out to be a great day hike that had the  whole crew running, scrambling, and climbing for a solid 8 hours. Here are a few pictures I took over the course of the day, enjoy!

By Caitlin Compton Gregg

Hello From beautiful Colorado! I am currently at my first full training camp of the year in Telluride with the CXC Team. It’s been a great camp so far filled with mostly distance training in the form of long hikes/ runs and roller skiing. We typically hike 5-7 hours and take advantage of all of the vertical gain we can get here compared to the Midwest. Rollerkiing has been a little trickier, we have been driving to a town called Norwood were we found a quite road that has great terrain.

Logging some vertical

I have had a blast hanging out with the rest of the CXC team here in Telluride. It’s been fun to catch up with everyone about what they have been up to over the summer.  Plus, it has been nice to take a break from studying.

The View from the top! Site of the Music Video Production

So Strong!

We will be here in Colorado until Thursday and I will then join Brian in the Methow Valley for some more training.  It feels so good to have completed my work and school last week and to now be able to train again!

Lizard Head Pass

Nygren

All set for intervals with new classic skis and skate wheels. Thanks Finnsisu!

We finished up a great CXC Team camp at Telamark last weekend and I am home for two weeks until I leave for Telluride for an altitude camp next weekend. There was a large group training at Telemark with the CXC Team, Central REG Camp and junior camps all overlapping. It was a fun atmosphere with a large group of skiers all excited to get out and train.

After a hard camp rest is really important so I took a couple of days really easy earlier this week.  Knowing the training is going to be super in Telluride but the pace slow given its elevation of 9,000 ft I decided to put in some intervals before leaving.  Some video is up on CXC’s facebook page.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=691211749355

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=691212902045

The intervals have felt solid largely because I have paired them with a fair amount of rest.  The focus has been on quality over quantity. A few more interval sets early this week and then just easy skiing and rest before heading west.

One thing I really like about intervals is my total workout time is usually less.  When I am not at work I can usually be found sitting in the garage working on the 1977 Kawaski 650 I am rebuilding/custominzing.   I just picked up all the metal parts from the powder coater and now it is time to put everything back together.  Today was an off day so I spent the morning drinking coffee and getting started on the engine.

By Brian Gregg

After an abnormal week of rain, high winds and cool temperatures the sun finally showed its face here in Washington with a beautiful day just in time for an over distance run.  It is hard for me to believe talking to my teammates in Minnesota that is 90 degrees back in the Midwest right now. My brother Chad came back to the Methow for the weekend and we joined up with our friend Andrew for a 2.5 hour run.

Andrew and I enjoying the vista up valley from Black Bear Trail up at Sun Mountain

Over the last few years Andrew and his business Altius Physical Therapy has helped me a ton with my running bio-mechanics.  I used to never really think much about running technique but since working with Andrew I have dropped my 3000m running times by 10%.   It is pretty fun when you can make just a few small technical changes and improve by so much.  Although we certainly discussed running and ski technique  during our adventure it is nice to get out and just run as friends.

17 miles marked the longest run of the year for both Chad and I.  We both felt pretty good but the cool pond felt pretty good on our legs.

Today marked my first substantial run in the new Salomon: XR Mission shoe

The XR Mission shoe is designed to take you from the door to the trail and is basically  Salomon’s version of a road shoe.  The trails we ran on today were mostly well buffed out single track and dirt roads which is perfect for the XR Mission was great.It is a neutural shoe and is lighter than a regular trail shoe but still has the traditional Salomon toughness to it.  Over the last few years I have really enjoyed running in a light weight neutureal shoe such as the Speedcross or the Crossmax.  The XR Mission is quickly becoming my favorite shoe for loops with a mix of trail and road.

If your looking to test out the best Salomon shoe for you check out:

https://www.facebook.com/SalomonTrailTour

The Salomon trailer has been traveling from coast to coast  with demo shoes in all sizes.  I had a great time last fall during the Gear West Super Fit with Josh and all the latest shoes.

Nygren

Summer might not officially begin for another 2 weeks but in terms of skiing summer training is in full swing.    May was a time to build back into training and now that June has arrive training is really taking off.   Over Memorial Day weekend we had a short training camp at Telemark and laid out the plan for the coming year. With Igor as the new head coach camps and training this year will be structured a little differently.   As Igor said change and diversity is good for the body and what make you fast so I look forward to coming year.  I believe Igor’s immense experience will be hugely beneficial and a great compliment to the largely Norwegian training model we have followed in the past.  One large thing I am going to work on with Igor is skiing more relaxed.   Igor is all about fluidity, flexibility and balance which all areas in which I need improvement.

Anyone who knows me well will tell you I have a tendency to break a lot of equipment.   I guess it just comes with the territory when you use equipment hard day in and day out.  That being said I have come up with some good tricks.  Recent I discovered that a Zippo provides a strong, reliable enough flame to quickly change a rollerski tip on the fly.  You have to be a little careful not to over heat your pole but with a lighter and tip in my drink belt I was thriller to change a broken tip in under a minute last week in the middle of a ski.

The next CXC Elite camp starts June 14th up at Telemark.