UPDATES AND TRAINING FROM NEWELL: 2008: Winter Updates http://blogs.fasterskier.com/andynewell 11.29.07 RUUUKAAA! The team is in Ruka Finland for this weekends world cups in Kuusamo. This is the Nordic opening weekend so there will be competitions in ski jumping, nordic combined, and cross country. For the past 10 days wee have been training in Finland... mostly in the town of Voukatti. there is a good amount of snow here for this time of year and the weather has been cold keeping the track in good shape. this is one of the gnarliest sprints if of they year. the course is fast and there is a killer up hill. It's like a full on up hill drag race to the finnish. the team is looking fit and even though Dusseldorf didn't go as well as i had expected i think this ski season is going to be an exciting one. For the next few months i will be keeping up with a few blogs. one with WSCN and the other with Fasterskier.com so check in there for updates and results. 10.17.2007 It only took 17 hours to make it from my house to Sweden, door to door. Considering how long it can usually take to get to Scando it was a really fast and smooth trip. Traveling to Europe is one of those things that feels like it gets easier every time....and easier to adapt to the time change. This morning was our first training session in the tunnel. Its a weird scene in the tunnel. Its got the smell of a damp concrete basement and even though its only like 25 degrees... it fells way colder. The snow holds together well for the first hour of skiing, but it can get a little soft because of all the traffic. Norwegian junior skiers love xc skiing... the only thing they love more is xc skiing in a dark tunnel in Sweden. It seams like there are hundreds in there and someone's always trying to go faster than you are. But it is good practice for sprints because there is always someone right next to you while you're skiing. So the plan is to settle into training here for the next few days. There's a chance we'll head up to Mora for an out door on snow race on Saturday. so stay tuned for updates from that. 10.7.2007 We have been training in Lake Placid for the past week. The entire team is here, along with skiers form Sun Valley, CXC, Maine Winter sports, and junior skiers from around New England. So its a big group of roller skiers on the road. Yesterday we did some sprint intervals with everyone and it was pretty sick. I think its really good to practice skiing fast in big groups of skiers... especially for sprinting. The weather has been sweet for traiing so far. Today we started a 3 hour run over at the XC ski trails. We ran around for 1.5 hours and then decided to try to run back to the Olympic training center. we made it most of the way on trails, but had to bush wack for a good 45 mins down a river in the end. We eventually made it to the ski jumps, but our 3 hour run turned into a 4 hour death march. The leaves were really cool though. We have an off day scheduled for tomorrow, and then a solid week of hard training. Not too much volume but a lot of intervals. Level 3 on monday, d-pole level 4 on thursday, and a skate 10 TT on saturday. check out Team today for some sick pics. later 9.29.2007 Its hard to believe the start of the world cup season is only one month away. The US Team will be meeting up in Lake Placid NY on Monday for the start of a two week camp. This is the time of year when we have to really step the intensity on the training up a notch to get ready for the races. The plan for Lake Placid will call for a lot of speed training and three interval sessions a week, including two time trials. It's going to be pretty cool because there will be a lot of athletes outside from the US Ski team there training along with a number of junior skiers from around New England. 8.30.2007 After a short stop in PC after New Zealand, im back home in Vermont. Im stoked to be back in VT for the next few weeks before things really get going. It's hard to believe that the start of the season is only two months away. The whole team was looking great in NZ so we're all really fired up. I ended up putting in 2 solid 23 hour weeks with a lot of distance training. Coming back to the states kind of sucks, and it takes a good 5 days before you're sleeping right, but it's definitely worth it. After having a recovery week i'm feeling ready to jump into some intensity weeks. The plan will be to start to jack up the intervals and get ready for Düsseldorf at the end of September. It's going to be a fun holiday weekend here in southern VT. I'm sure there will be all kinds of fun red neck stuff going on. 8.10.2007 We were blasted with snow last night here at the snow farm, and its still completely white outside. We Were supposed to have a skate sprint time trial this morning but there was too much wet snow to groom so we were forced to drive down the mountain below the snow line to get some rainy roller skiing. We did a 3.5 hour double pole/ run combo along lake wanaka and even though it was nasty out the trails were still awesome. We've been on the "rock" for over a week now and aside from today the conditions have been great for skiing with hard wax kick on most days. If the weather clears up for tomorrow hopefully we'll get our sprint TT in. here's what we've been up to for training the past week: 8.3.2007 It took us 35 hours to get here, but the sprint team finally made it to the Snow Farm in NZ. The snow farm is a weird place.. its an xc ski area, hotel, and car testing track all in one, and over the 6 years we've be coming down here things haven't changed at all. The snow is a little bit this this year than in the past but there is still several k's of nicely groomed tracks great for testing out some new skis. I got 5 new pairs of Fischers from the factory just so i could bring them down here and test them on some winter conditions. Yesterday was our first day of skiing but the plan for the week will be to get some good notes on the new skis and compare them to some of the older ones. Even though this is only our second day here we're jumping right into the training. we did some speed work this morning with the timing lights so its easy to adjust your starts and technique. We're going to be here for 2 and 1/2 weeks so the training volume will be pretty high. I'll be posting our training plan as soon as i can, and check in at teamtoday.org for some pics. 7.25.2007 Vo2 max treadmill testing just finished here in Park City. The whole National team came out on Monday for a one week long camp before we head to New Zealand. My max test went well... threshold heart rates are more efficient and I was able to hold on for 54 seconds longer before a flew off the back. As a whole the US team is in better shape than in April and everyone is already getting fired up for the season. We have strength testing scheduled for tomorrow and some intervals for Saturday. The entire CC team is in town as well so the training atmosphere is better than ever. The youngsters are looking like they're really fit. I'm going to be putting up a lot of updates in the next month so stay tuned for testing and NZ training stories. 6.4.2007 The US ski team bend camp was one of the sickest camps i've ever been to. We had it all... fresh snow, bomber kilster tracks, sloppy mashed potatoes, and sunny skies. The training plan was pretty basic, but also kind of agressive for the end of May. we raced the pole pedal paddle one day, had two sets of threshold intervals, and a total distance volume of about 20-21 hours. It was fun to get the whole team together aand hang out. After the skiing we all went to the Oregon coast and stayed in Pacific City for a few days. We still got some training in, and had about 2 long surf sessions every day. the swell wasn't big, but we still had some fun small waves to trash around on. Aside from the ice cream head aches after duck diving tree waves in a row, the trip was a wicked good time. I'll be training in Park City for the next week, and then its back to VT for the red neck summer. 5.15.2007 I'm from Vermont i do what i want!!!! ha.. i'm just kidding around. I'm back home training for a little while though. It was a crazy spring with a surf trip to Mexico, a park city testing camp, and a trip to south Carolina with my girlfriend Jess. Mexico was some of the best surf i've ever had and i went down with Aj, Leif, Pat and some other skiers so it was a good time. But now i'm back in the green mountain state getting some training done. We've just started the second week of the training year and it's been sick... i dont think i've ever seen this many sunny days in a row in VT in a long time. We've been hanging out at Fosters house, taking saunas, and playing shoes, and Gus is coming down this weekend so summer is basically here. The ski team is going to be having an on snow camp in Bend next week, so i'll be heading out to that. I guess they've been grooming and the skiing is still really good. stay tuned for updates from the camp to hear about all the new training the us ski team is up to. later 3.1.2007 halla from Finland! Even though the 50k and 30k are still to go at Worlds the championships are over for me. We a left Japan a few days ago and the sprinters have been training just outside of Lahti for the past few days. I've been so fired up all year to do the relay at worlds, so im not too stoked we had to bail out early but the coaches and i though it would be better in the long run. But the sprint races in Japan were crazy. It was the highlight of the year so far to be in the finals a world. I know next time we'll be able to get a toe across the line for a medal. There are only 3 world cup sprints left and the World Cup sprint overall is a tight race that im fired up to be a part of. The season is going to be over before we know it so there's pretty much just one more three week push. stay tuned to team today for results and great pictures.
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