ITA Showdown: Nordic v. Alpine

A couple of weeks ago when combing my fellow ITA athletes' blogs I realized that I was not alone in my new digs in the Vail Valley. I have never crossed paths with another ITA athlete unless you count going to middle school with Nicole De Yong back in the day. Meeting Sylvan Ellefson, Vail hometown boy and nordic shredder, was kind of like meeting a relative you know you're supposed to know but don't remember in person. I knew about him but I didn't know him. Not that it mattered, we struck up a conversation quickly and started trading stories about our respective plans for the winter. Pretty soon we were comparing our community service programs, and I learned a lot about how and where I could best serve my new community on behalf of ITA.

I frequently meet Sylvan at the gym, as we work out at generally the same time every day. During these sessions I have realized a few consistent themes in our workouts and our different physical, um, capabilities.

Sylvan and his nordic friends are better than I (and likely as an extension most alpine skiers) at:
- all things aerobic
- any ab workout
- arm/shoulder workouts
- turning a recovery workout into an extremely painful experience
- did I mention the ab workouts?

I have them in:
- jumping

I wasn't harboring any illusions that I would be able to hold a candle against a nordic skier in an aerobic exercise, but I was pretty surprised to see how many upper body sets they were putting into their routines. I would be doing an ab routine which I thought was pretty hard, only to look over and see Sylvan's group doing essentially the same exercise, only with a weight belt. I felt like I was in a gym full of skinny meat heads with the number of dumbbells that were flying around. Luckily there was a plyometric power output measuring machine in the room allowing me to salvage some dignity. Not that we were competing or anything.

Long story short: alpine skiers can jump high, and not much else.

Pulleys attach to the vest for added weight, we had it at 110lbs. Sylvan getting ready to jump.

Getting a foot of air never felt so difficult

Nothing says fun like double peace signs!