Paintball, next week, technique!

PAINTBALL
Even with all the rearranging of schedules, the paintball biathlon went off without a hitch today and it was a great event. While we only had three participants, they really made a day of it with some impressive skiing and shooting. The course was three loops of about 1km each for our two 6th grade superstars and then our lone 8th grade wonder had a big (and hilly) field loop in addition to the three loops. Everyone went into the range 3 times where they shot fluorescent green and yellow paintballs at the targets and into the trees! The snow was cold and a little creaky, but all in all, it was a beautiful day and temps were kind to us. Thanks to families for making the trip and for some excellent efforts out on the trail. I will let you know when I get results with all the times and everything.

NEXT WEEK
We will be skate skiing on Tuesday. Practice will go til 5:30 for those wishing to stay late to work on technique.

We will be classic skiing on Friday in anticipation of our classic race at Breadloaf on Sunday January 30th. I have gotten as much info as I can on this race. It will be on the race courses that will be used for the Bill Koch Festival (see more info on the festival here) with lollipop (the younger kids) going off at noon and then the rest of the races to follow in order of grade. They did not give me approximate start times for these races, but they are going to be run as mass starts so everyone starts at once!

TECHNIQUE VIDEOS
*If you click the YOUTUBE button, you can watch them on youtube and it will be formatted a bit more nicely. Sorry!
We have talked a bit about double poling and practiced for a very short time during that "course"/loop we did the other day and at the beginning of practice on Friday, but I thought it would be helpful to find a video for you all. I think it's best to start doing your double poling without worrying about getting up on your toes. As you get more into it and more confident, using more power in your double poling, you will start to get onto your toes naturally. It is difficult to do it at the right time if you are consciously trying to get up onto your toes and then you end up wasting energy. Some of the explanation in the video is a bit much - you don't have to remember everything since they are going into super detail - but it is a good visual for sure. (Around the 3:30, you can also see a good comparison with kick double pole with the skier on the right.)

This video goes more into the kick double pole (they are calling it step double pole) that you might use when classic skiing.



We have also talked about step turns and keeping your feet active on downhills (picking your feet up, freeskating, however you want to do it and whatever best agrees with the terrain) so that you don't end up freezing up/getting stuck in one position and then having trouble making it around a corner and shooting into the trees. So check this out!


And, oh, those uphills. When skating, while you have more time on flats and slight uphills to gather yourself and glide, once you hit a hill, your skis don't want to glide very far. You compensate for that by picking up the pace/tempo/turnover of your skiing -- you make quicker steps -- you glide for a shorter amount of time and step more often. You may even do a bit of a hop to get yourself up the hill. Take a look here! The skiing doesn't actually start until 1:44 into the video. At 2:08 the second to last guy (in red and white stripes) and the last guy (#21) do the hoppy thing...then at 2:48 a bunch of them are doing it, but it helps to just watch one guy at a time and you can rewind and just keep your eye on one guy at a time...then at 3:25 the second guy is doing it more. They have great turnover and you can see how much they use V2 as well. It's a sprint race, though, so it's fast and tactical, but once again I think just having a visual helps.


But let's not forget about V2! Once again, balance is key in this part of cross country skiing. You want to be gliding on one ski and then poling "onto" the next ski. Your poling is independent of when your skis are hitting the ground (unlike V1 when your poling coincides with one of your skis hitting the ground - remember you have 3 (one ski, two poles) and then 1, 3 , 1). But in V2, you are already gliding on a ski...then your poles hit the ground...and then you glide onto the next ski. I really like the idea of double poling first and then starting to skate with your skis, just small steps to start, and then making bigger movements to help with the timing of the poling as seen in this handy video.