By Gavin Kentch
It’s the week containing May 1, nordic new year. If you are a domestic athlete in this country, today marks 244 days until the first race at U.S. Nationals (I think; this assumes an opening race of January 2, which is pulled from bid documents but is not yet final). If you are an international-class athlete, today is 203 days until the start of the 2024/2025 World Cup season, and an even 300 days until the first race at 2025 World Championships.
And for the rest of us, the Birkie goes off on February 22, which is 295 days in the future.
So what are top athletes around the globe doing this week? Largely skiing, as you might expect, or rollerskiing, depending on one’s latitude and access to snow. The pro skiers are doing lactate testing, on either normal treadmills or rollerski treadmills. In general, though, it is nothing fancy, just the beginning of the slow, methodical accretion of easy-distance training hours that will support everything else that comes after, including those red-letter race days eight or nine months in the future. Except for Therese Johaug, who marked May 1 by dropping a 1:11 road half-marathon 🤯.
Here is an unscientific roundup of early-season skiing across North America and Europe. I’m pretty light this year on anything in the Lower 48 outside of New England and the Midwest; if there are more Instagram or Strava accounts I should follow for this, please advise. Otherwise, enjoy what I’ve found here, and happy training. This roundup goes west to east, reflecting my west coast media bias.
Alaska: so much skiing
I’m going to have several posts from the APU Elite Team to start things off. I apologize for the excessive Alaska focus here, but that said, my goodness, just look at these shots.
Briefly put, Monday (the first post here) is crust skiing in the Chugach front range above Anchorage; Tuesday (post two) is skiing on what are presumptively the last sea-level groomed trails left on the continent, in Girdwood; and Wednesday (post three) is skiing on the groomed trails at Independence Mine, at roughly 3,500 feet in the Talkeetna Mountains above Palmer.
With the massive caveat that as I write this on Friday morning it is currently 43° in Anchorage, overcast, and damp and dreary, it has been a pretty heady start to the training year for pro skiers in southcentral Alaska. Plus Emma Ribom, who has been putting in a cameo on local trails and mountains while spending time with beau JC Schoonmaker.
Sovereign Lake: again, so much skiing
Nordic Insights Canadian correspondent Gerry Furseth posts this recent shot from Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre, which has a healthy 20+ kilometres of trail groomed throughout this week.
Minneapolis: Zak Ketterson does treadmill testing and rollerskiing
Wednesday brought lactate testing for the Twin Cities–based Team Birkie mainstay and Timberwolves aficionado, while Tuesday saw an easy two-hour doublepole rollerski. Also, if you can beat his metrics of 260 meters and 546 average watts for a 45-second SkiErg power test, Ketterson would like to know.
New England: John Steel Hagenbuch goes rollerskiing
The man with the best mustache on the U.S. Ski Team is back in action on the roads around Dartmouth.
Oslo, Norway: Pål Golberg eases into the new year
Thursday saw the man who was third in last year’s World Cup men’s distance standings do a 1:45 rollerski, the year’s first, in the morning, then a 42-minute easy run in the afternoon. This is both utterly unflashy and a good reminder that the basic building blocks of endurance training are, well, pretty basic.
Also Oslo: Sophia Laukli eases into the new year with a three-hour rollerski
Wednesday, just after noon, saw the multi-sport star log a 3-hour, 47km rollerski on the roads around her Oslo home and training base. Thursday saw a 1:45 session on the Holmenkollen rollerski track, and Tuesday morning another 3-hour, 41km outing on area roads. Laukli has not logged any runs recently as she continues her recovery from knee soreness, leaving her spending a lot of time on rollerskis these days.
Valle d’Aosta, Italy: Federico Pellegrino is at work on the rollerski treadmill
“May 1, let’s go!” posted the longtime Italian sprint star on Wednesday morning. Pellegrino spent 1:39 skate rollerskiing on an Abilica treadmill to start off the new training year. His average heart rate for this workout was 115 beats per minute, with a max of 163, making this a notably chill distance session for an athlete whose MHR is somewhere north of 189 bpm.
Also, happily, Pellegrino at the time had (or was otherwise humorously figuring himself as) a happy baby, bimbo felice, which is better than the alternative.
Bruksvallarna, Sweden: Frida Karlsson goes skiing
It was shorts, sports bra, and heavy mittens season for the Swedish star as she skied on the beach-like trails of Bruksvallarna earlier today.
Kirkenær, Norway: Therese Johaug casually drops a 1:11 half-marathon
May 1 brought this year’s running of the Grue Halvmaraton, in the eponymous municipality in southeastern Norway. With the slight caveat that it is a flat and fast course — the men’s winner ran a 1:04:16 — one Therese Johaug, age 35, mother to an 11-month-old, on the first day of the training year, in her “other” sport, ran a 1:11:27 half-marathon to take the women’s win by, well, Johaug-like margins (full results here).
In other news out of Norway, on Friday Marit Bjørgen, Johaug’s longtime teammate on the national team, was announced as an assistant coach for the Norwegian women’s team, along with Pål Gunnar Mikkelsplass. The move was widely seen as clearing the way for Johaug to rejoin the national team in time for the 2025 World Championships at home in Trondheim. No pressure, everyone else.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American nordic skiing. Last season’s GoFundMe is literally the only reason why I turned a profit in year one of Nordic Insights, and in turn the only reason why there is a year two of Nordic Insights for you to be reading now: I was okay with working for very little money to get this love letter to American cross-country skiing off the ground, but I didn’t want to lose money for the privilege of doing so. If you would like to support what remains a brutally shoestring operation, this season’s GoFundMe may be found here. Thank you for your consideration, and, especially, for reading.
