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.