Training Tricks

There's no secret to getting faster. It simply takes work. It takes showing up at practice every day, week after week, year after year, and being ready to push yourself to improve every time you ski. That's all.

Occasionally we get something new to entertain us in aside from the standard sequence of intervals, distance skiing, strength training, & more intervals. This week we harnessed up and tried a new drill. We took turns pulling each other around a small loop out at the Hilltop trails. Aside from the fun of being able to tell Kikkan to "mush, girl!" and getting a nice ride around the loop I learned a ton about skiing from this drill.

Because there was someone trying physically to hold me back, I had to fight to get down the trail. This made me realize how much I had to actually want to go forward. There's nothing like having somebody trying to hold you back to make you determined not to be held back. Maybe us skiers are just ornery like that. Anyway, I had the best forward lean of my entire ski career to date. I hope that I can remember that feeling and use it in my unharnessed skiing.

Getting rigged up and feeling like I was on a leash


Kikkan Randall working on her forward lean with back pressure being applied by Laura Valaas.



Getting pulled behind Kikkan, everything's more epic in the dark.

what is the purpose

Every morning when I wake up the first thing I think about is what I'm doing for training that day. Okay, actually the first thing I think is, "do I really have to wake up right now or can I sleep for another ten minutes?" Which would make the second thing I think about my training. While skiing is my first priority I keep a smorgasbord of other activities on tap and find that they continually bring me new perspectives on skiing and enrich my life. (Working with my Elementary School students definitely falls under this category but that's not the topic for today.)

I had to do something new today, something that I knew I wasn't going to be able to do well, which is how I like to do things. So after 2hrs of skiing this morning I started thinking about this next task. The task, without getting too sidetracked, involved communicating in what I'll describe as coded English. I was nervous and probably as anxious as I ever get. I did all the prep work I could but I knew it would be obvious that I was a complete novice.

I was right, of course, I messed up just about all of my communications. Some things take experience and a comfort level that I frankly didn't have today, couldn't have possibly had. I came away with a list of things-to-do-differently-next-time that would have inked my entire forearm if I'd been taking notes.

I may have bungled all the details of the exercise but I managed to accomplish the main purpose. I didn't do it exactly right but I did it. Afterward I mentally took a step back and considered the experience. I realized (similarly to how you've already realized this was leading to an epiphany) that the important thing was to accomplish the main purpose of my task. I had been getting hung up on the details. Sometimes I get so flustered on the supporting details of what I'm doing that I forget what I'm actually... doing.

When I'm ski racing the main point is not to increase my tempo or pick good lines or get complete weight transfer, the point is to Ski As Fast As I Can. Truly, all the details are there to assist the Ski Fast goal but if I focus on the details sometimes I'm too consumed with skiing well that I forget that I'm supposed to be skiing fast. Plus, when my mind is full of details, a myriad of potential things to do wrong, it is prohibitively intimidating. There's no possible way I can get everything right every race. And if I tell myself that I'm not going to get everything perfect there's a very real possibility that I'll concede defeat before the race even begins. Must not be done. Really, what I need to focus on is the main purpose. I have spent endless hours training and working on my technique. I need to have faith in that training and let go of my technique concerns, my obsession with the details. When I'm ski racing I need to think about covering the most amount of ground in the least time.

I also took a deep breath today and acknowledged that being inept at something wasn't all that bad. I'm still learning. A lot. In all areas of my life. And it's okay to be wrong and mistaken and imperfect.

Alaska is beautiful

Inner Lake George

I am so grateful to live somewhere I can bask in the beauty of my surroundings. There are so many breathtaking places around Anchorage and many more that I haven't even discovered yet.

Knik Glacier

Knik Glacier

Independence Mine, Hatcher Pass