This weekend a couple of Norse skiers descended upon Loveland to train with Team Leever and myself. The training surface in Loveland has continued to impress and has remained rock hard, allowing for a serious spike in intensity when college boy turned World Cup master Leif Kristian Haugen showed up, fresh off his race in Sölden last week. Another Team Leever staple, Andreas Haug, was in attendance as was Norwegian wunderkind and DU freshman Espen Lysdahl.
English is the language of choice when it's just Haug and I, even if I make fun of him for not pronouncing his "V's" correctly (he's nice enough not to mention that I can't speak any Norwegian). However when I'm sitting on a chairlift with 3 wikings and they choose to speak in their native tongue I'm better off just putting my head down or laughing when I think one of them has made a joke. After a while they would usually take pity on me and go back to English. Nice guys.
Back to skiing, it's always good to train with better skiers as they act as a marker against how awesome you think you are. Nothing makes a skier focus in training like the fear of getting blown out by a training partner. Leif set the tone for the weekend on the first run by shedding all of his training clothing and ripping in his race suit. The intensity changed immediately as I realized that if I wanted to stay with him I'd have to go "full strip" to have any accurate comparison of my skiing. Everyone else in the group got into it and by the 2nd run we were all down to just our race suits.
The weekend ended up being a success, I skied well and even posted some top times. It was great to validate what I have been working on the summer and this fall training block. It was also helpful to hear from some top level skiers what they were working on and what they though was going to make them faster this season. Leif's answer: intensity.
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| Peter, Espen, Andreas, me, Leif, Dan |
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