Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Birkie Class Jan 24 High on Life

“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal
lobotomy” said Paul Braun after getting through with our “cold shutdown” last
night. We would all like to stretch, warm up and start respiring before we
start a race, which would be a nice story; too bad ski racing is not like that.
We are forced to start the engine, and floor it! Hardly good for fuel economy
and that is what ski racing is…saving energy. You do what you can to be efficient.
You breathe deep, ski smooth and long and get with the bunch that is smooth…
like you! Races are never won at the beginning, that said you want to maintain
contact. The Birkie has a lot of elevation gain early and as a rule hills
require a lot of breathing [jeenyus I am]. I mention that because when tired a
lot of skiers lower their heads effectively cutting off breathing. See the parallel?
When the dude two skiers in front of you plants his pole between his feet I
want to see it and move seamlessly left or right so that I don’t have to waste
energy either by stopping or losing momentum. Breathing is your pal, do it
often, do it hard and with gusto.
This is a great video of the lassies of the USST during a
training camp last May (nice). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDZTHQlc1N8
Note in the V1 the triceps not just up but traveling parallel to the slope. Get
that picture in your upright head. The fastest skiers spend “quality time” re-enforcing
good technique. You should too. A couple notes more. I notice upper body strength
improved greatly as a whole. Dips in particular look strong. Show me good triceps
and I’ll show you a good skier. Things are coming along, we just need to ski.
The camp was very skiable today and great snow is found most places north of highway
8. Afterglow is getting good reviews, see http://www.skinnyski.com/
for more. We are having a wax clinic tonight at 6:00pm http://www.incompetition.com/ and for your
calendar the Nicolet Norski 36K and 7K coming up Feb 4th see http://www.skiwithanst.org/ and on Feb 18th
the Stump Farm Open 12K (a great tune up for the Birkie) Tim McCoy is on his
way now to the La Vuelta PR http://www.vueltapr.com/
bike race, 375 mile in three days, uhhh. Good luck to all of you doing the
Noque this weekend. The weather looks good, hopefully it won’t snow and the
course is 100% good. Nice effort last night, I promise we may not do that
again. Watch that video and go do your TOD this weekend. Next week at 5:55.

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