By Gavin Kentch
May 1 has come and gone. Last season’s training hours now belong to the past. It is time for new beginnings, for new training plans, for new goals and the implementation of new microcycles and mesocycles to help you get there. “Make it new,” in the maxim of well-known Modernist ski coach Ezra Pound. Or was Pound referring to the attempt to write an original May 1 training roundup for something like the sixth time in ten years? Discuss.
[Read more: The World’s Great Age Begins Anew: Athletes Mark May 1 (from 2019)]
Anyway. Progress in endurance sport tends to happen on a rather measured scale. There is no way to succeed at the highest reaches of this sport without amassing vast quantities of annual training hours, be that 800 or 1,000 or 1,200. There is no way to reach those totals without doing a lot of easy distance. And this in turn means that, for a lot of athletes, the week containing May 1 looks a lot like a lot of other weeks on the calendar. Even if it is An Olympic Year™.
What I’m trying to say is that, for many of us, last week may not have been particularly dramatic. But you probably also had to figure out where your rollerski ferrules are, which may not have been on your radar in the final week of April.
In conclusion, here is a roundup of May 1–adjacent training from a handful of prominent skiers. This survey is arrayed from west to east starting in Alaska, as is my wont. Enjoy.
Novie McCabe, Rosie Brennan, Michael Earnhart, and basically every single other Anchorage-based skier you can think of: crust skiing.
Kendall Kramer: Road biking in Fairbanks as she graduates from UAF and approaches the end of her time in the Golden Heart City.
Sophia Laukli: a.m. trail run, p.m. bike ride from current training base of Boulder, where she is joined by partner Gjøran Tefre.
Zak Ketterson: Foot intensity at Wirth.
Julia Kern: Is (was) on Long Island. Went for a run.
John Steel Hagenbuch: A six-hour, 7,400′ backcountry ski day. Possibly in lieu of doing coursework, but also with the approbation of the professor in question. If it’s in the Strava comments, it must have happened.
Jessie Diggins: Classic rollerskiing near her home in the Boston suburbs, accompanied by husband Wade Poplawski. Also, doing PT exercises for her foot.
Jack Young: Three-hour road bike ride. “Happy new training year to those who celebrate,” Young notes, graciously expressing the leitmotif of this article for me.
Lotta Udnes Weng: On May 1, went for a run. On May 2, went for a rollerski.
Gus Schumacher: Running 50km in Kauai, just because.
Happy new year indeed. Happy spring training to all, wherever this may find you.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love dedicated to publicizing American skiing. We started with nothing and now we’re going to the Olympics. You can read more about our first three years here, and donate to the Olympics fund here. Thank you for consideration, and, especially, for reading.
so cool and inspiring! thanks for collecting all the posts! Fun to see Lotta’s among Americans’ and familiar Lillehammer’s grounds! 🙂