Cross Country Skiing Quotes

Cross-country skiing is fine as long as you live in a small country.

Old trees want to hurt you. It doesn't matter if you're snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, or just taking a walk in the woods. Old trees want to hurt you, and I think they'd kill you if they could.

Eventually, I decided to count my daily walk or cross-country ski as a treat—my time for myself in a day otherwise filled with responsibilities. Somehow, that made it much easier to make it a priority.

The Danes’ fondness for clubs and associations is shared by their Nordic neighbors. The Swedes have an even greater trade-union membership and in their spare time are particularly keen on voluntary work: they call this instinct for diligent self-improvement organisationssverige, or “organization Sweden.” The Finns are famed for their after-work classes, particularly their amateur classical musicianship and fondness for joining orchestras, while the Norwegians’ love of communal outdoor pursuits, most famously cross-country skiing, is one of their defining characteristics.

There's plenty to do without Steve. You can go to Niagara Falls - obviously - building a snowman, go tobogganing or cross-country skiing, make a snow angel, go ice skating." Half an hour later Mackenzie had created an entire Operation White Christmas Pinterest board. When she was finished, she sat back, folder her arms across her chest and stared at Hollie with a satisfied grin. "Who said you need a man?

Most men I met in Finland appeared to be these silent, unemotional types. Their symptoms were not as pronounced as those of the man on the plane, perhaps, but they were the type of men of whom I met very few in England: Taciturn, introvert, joyless, reserved, and perfectly happy to be solitary, engaged in pursuits that were absolute anathema to me such as hunting, trekking and cross-country skiing. Presumably their incapacity to experience joy rendered sport quite attractive, because it would elevate their endorphin levels. It also appeared to render alcohol extremely inviting.

Yosemite is so large that you can think of it as five parks. Yosemite Valley, famous for waterfalls and cliffs, and Wawona, where the giant sequoias stand, are open all year. Hetch Hetchy, home of less-used backcountry trails, closes after the first big snow and reopens in May or June. The subalpine high country, Tuolumne Meadows, is open for summer hiking and camping; in winter it’s accessible only via cross-country skis or snowshoes. Badger Pass Ski Area is open in winter only. Most visitors spend their time along the park’s southwestern border, between Wawona and Big Oak Flat Entrance; a bit farther east in Yosemite Valley and Badger Pass Ski Area; and along the east–west corridor of Tioga Road, which spans the park north of Yosemite Valley and bisects Tuolumne Meadows.

It was a year-round, full-service lodge nestled away in one of the southside canyons, with snowmobiling, cross-country skiing, horseback riding, trout fishing, and hunting in season.

... the place is one of these clubs with mirrors on all four walls that force you into displays of public self-scrutiny that are as excruciating as they are irresistible, and there are huge and insectile-looking pieces of machinery that mimic the aerobic demands of staircases and rowboats and racing bikes and improperly waxed cross-country skis, etc., complete with heart-monitor electrodes and radio headphones; and on these machines there are people in spandex whom you really want to take aside and advise in the most tactful and loving way not to wear spandex.

the one with the lower rate. A few unique things to see in Stockholm include the Nobelmuseet, the Nobel Museum, which tells of the creation of the Nobel Prize and the creativity of its laureates, and the Spiritmuseet, where you can learn about the nation’s complicated relationship with alcohol. Sweden is associated with design (and not just Ikea) and many shops sell Swedish‐only design. Oudoor activities in summer include hiking trails through the islands and archipelago. Winter activities stretch to cross‐country skiing, ice skating and snow hiking. Nightlife is expensive, cover charges to bars can be high and, bizarrely, the minimum age for drinking varies in an arbitrary fashion as it is up to each establishment to make its own decision – it can be anything from 17 to 27. So take identification with you. There are two airports serving Stockholm. Arlanda is 40 kms north of the city and serves main airlines. Skavsta, 100 kms to the south, serves the budget airlines. Both airports have coaches to take visitors directly to the city centre. Downside: Many independently owned restaurants and cafes close for holidays between July and August which can limit the range of places to eat. To read: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. This trilogy of a financial journalist and the tattooed genius with a motive to fight the dark right‐wing forces of Swedish society romped through the bestseller lists.

Langlauf – cross-country skiing – at that; which isn’t even proper skiing, it’s just a way of tricking people into what’s really exercise).

Many people have something they love passionately. It could be collecting old farm implements, cross country skiing, foraging for mushrooms, or playing the harmonium. They devote themselves to their interests—obsessively practicing, learning, researching, and talking with those who share their passion. But when it comes to the person we love most in our lives, we don’t do any of this. And then wonder how it all went wrong.

And then I did what no other athlete has done before. I won 2 Olympic gold medals in 2 different sports in the same afternoon. First I won the cross-country ski race. I went from home to Miller’s Pond and won by so much I couldn’t even see my competitors. But

So training smart, training effectively, involves cycling through the three zones in any given week or training block: 75 percent easy running, 5 to 10 percent running at target race paces, and 15 to 20 percent fast running or hill training in the third zone to spike the heart and breathing rates. In my 5-days-a-week running schedule, that cycle looks like this: On Monday, I cross-train. Tuesday, I do an easy run in zone one, then speed up to a target race pace for a mile or two of zone-two work. On Wednesday, it’s an easy zone-one run. Thursday is an intense third-zone workout with hills, speed intervals, or a combination of the two. Friday is a recovery day to give my body time to adapt. On Saturday, I do a relaxed run with perhaps another mile or two of zone-two race pace or zone-three speed. Sunday is a long, slow run. That constant cycling through the three zones—a hard day followed by an easy or rest day—gradually improves my performance in each zone and my overall fitness. But today is not about training. It’s about cranking up that treadmill yet again, pushing me to run ever faster in the third zone, so Vescovi can measure my max HR and my max VO2, the greatest amount of oxygen my heart and lungs can pump to muscles working at their peak. When I pass into this third zone, Vescovi and his team start cheering: “Great job!” “Awesome!” “Nice work.” They sound impressed. And when I am in the moment of running rather than watching myself later on film, I really think I am impressing them, that I am lighting up the computer screen with numbers they have rarely seen from a middle-aged marathoner, maybe even from an Olympian in her prime. It’s not impossible: A test of male endurance athletes in Sweden, all over the age of 80 and having 50 years of consistent training for cross-country skiing, found they had relative max VO2 values (“relative” because the person’s weight was included in the calculation) comparable to those of men half their age and 80 percent higher than their sedentary cohorts. And I am going for a high max VO2. I am hauling in air. I am running well over what should be my max HR of 170 (according to that oft-used mathematical formula, 220 − age) and way over the 162 calculated using the Gulati formula, which is considered to be more accurate for women (0.88 × age, the result of which is then subtracted from 206). Those mathematical formulas simply can’t account for individual variables and fitness levels. A more accurate way to measure max HR, other than the test I’m in the middle of, is to strap on a heart rate monitor and run four laps at a 400-meter track, starting out at a moderate pace and running faster on each lap, then running the last one full out. That should spike your heart into its maximum range. My high max HR is not surprising, since endurance runners usually develop both a higher maximum rate at peak effort and a lower rate at rest than unconditioned people. What is surprising is that as the treadmill

Nesseby broke new ground in other ways as well. The fixture consisted of a ski-jump, followed by a separate sprint-like cross-country race. This was the first known Nordic combination in the modern sense.

She was not alone. “There’s a definite panic on the hip scene in Cambridge,” wrote student radical Raymond Mungo that year, “people going to uncommonly arduous lengths (debt, sacrifice, the prospect of cold toes and brown rice forever) to get away while there’s still time.” And it wasn’t just Cambridge. All over the nation at the dawn of the 1970s, young people were suddenly feeling an urge to get away, to leave the city behind for a new way of life in the country. Some, like Mungo, filled an elderly New England farmhouse with a tangle of comrades. Others sought out mountain-side hermitages in New Mexico or remote single-family Edens in Tennessee. Hilltop Maoists traversed their fields with horse-drawn plows. Graduate students who had never before held a hammer overhauled tobacco barns and flipped through the Whole Earth Catalog by the light of kerosene lamps. Vietnam vets hand-mixed adobe bricks. Born-and-bred Brooklynites felled cedar in Oregon. Former debutants milked goats in Humboldt County and weeded strawberry beds with their babies strapped to their backs. Famous musicians forked organic compost into upstate gardens. College professors committed themselves to winter commutes that required swapping high heels for cross-country skis. Computer programmers turned the last page of Scott and Helen Nearing’s Living the Good Life and packed their families into the car the next day. Most had no farming or carpentry experience, but no matter. To go back to the land, it seemed, all that was necessary was an ardent belief that life in Middle America was corrupt and hollow, that consumer goods were burdensome and unnecessary, that protest was better lived than shouted, and that the best response to a broken culture was to simply reinvent it from scratch.

One fragment from Vis consists of a ski tip, under which there is a wedge-like protuberance. It is carved in the shape of an elk’s head facing towards the rear.3 It was evidently designed as a brake to prevent slipping backwards – a forerunner of modern waxless cross-country skis.

A national obsession with a particular sport does not occur in a vacuum. Something lights the match. In the early twentieth century, Finland was a poor, nonindustrialized country where many people worked outdoors and got around on foot and (during the winter) on cross-country skis. These fertile conditions produced Hannes Kolehmainen, who won three gold medals in running events at the 1912 Olympics. Kolehmainen’s triumphs ignited an intense running craze in his home country. Every Finnish boy wanted to be the next Olympic hero. The result was a quarter-century of Finnish dominance of distance running, a dynasty that produced a number of athletes whose performances far surpassed those of the man who’d started it all. Ultimately, the passionate and widespread participation in running that Hannes Kolehmainen inspired had a much stronger impact on the performance of Finland’s top runners than did the conditions of poverty, lack of industrialization, and human-powered transportation that produced the first great Finnish runner. Sociologist

Denys Overholser reported back to me on May 5, 1975, on his attempts to design the stealthiest shape for the competition. He was wearing a confident smile as he sat down on the couch in my office with a preliminary designer named Dick Scherrer, who had helped him sketch out the ultimate stealth shape that would result in the lowest radar observability from every angle. What emerged was a diamond beveled in four directions, creating in essence four triangles. Viewed from above the design closely resembled an Indian arrowhead. Denys was a hearty outdoorsman, a cross-country ski addict and avid mountain biker, a terrific fellow generally, but inexplicably fascinated by radomes and radar. That was his specialty, designing radomes—the jet’s nose cone made out of noninterfering composites, housing its radar tracking system. It was an obscure, arcane specialty, and Denys was the best there was. He loved solving radar problems the way that some people love crossword puzzles. “Boss,” he said, handing me the diamond-shaped sketch, “Meet the Hopeless Diamond.” “How good are your radar-cross-section numbers on this one?” I asked. “Pretty good.” Denys grinned impishly. “Ask me, ‘How good?’ ” I asked him and he told me. “This shape is one thousand times less visible than the least visible shape previously produced at the Skunk Works.” “Whoa!” I exclaimed. “Are you telling me that this shape is a thousand times less visible than the D-21 drone?” “You’ve got it!” Denys exclaimed. “If we made this shape into a full-size tactical fighter, what would be its equivalent radar signature… as big as what—a Piper Cub, a T-38 trainer… what?” Denys shook his head vigorously. “Ben, understand, we are talking about a major, major, big-time revolution here. We are talking infinitesimal.” “Well,” I persisted, “what does that mean? On a radar screen it would appear as a… what? As big as a condor, an eagle, an owl, a what?” “Ben,” he replied with a loud guffaw, “try as big as an eagle’s eyeball.

He decided to take the C downtown and fumbled through blizzardy wind to Central Park West. Once there, he stepped inside the park. The wind dropped magically away. In the stillness, Gregory noticed that every twig and branch held a delicate stack of snow. Snow swarmed like honeybees in the golden glow of the old-fashioned streetlamps; it slathered tree trunks and sparkled like crushed diamonds at his feet. He heard a whispering noise and saw two people glide from among the trees on cross-country skis. A lavender lunar radiance filled the park. It was a world from childhood: castles and forests and magic lamps and princes scaling walls of brambles.

Dr. John Porcari, leader of the study, said, "So they were burning at least 20.2 calories per minute, which is off the charts. That's equivalent to running a 6-minute mile pace. The only other thing I could find that burns that many calories is cross-country skiing up hill at a fast pace." That's 1200 calories per hour y'all. And that doesn't even include the afterburn. I knew kettlebell training was awesome, I didn't know it was that awesome. But it totally explains the results people get. Read about the study in the January/February 2010 ACE FitnessMatters

Unless you are training to be competitive in elite endurance sports like cycling, swimming, running, triathlon, or cross-country skiing, a single workout per week in this zone will generally suffice.

They've had a good life. Compatible from the start, a smooth coast. Like a pair of cross-country skis...never straying far from each other's sight, but keeping separate enough, with plenty of room to maneuver and come together again. It never occurred to him that her course might veer, that he would ever find her out of reach.

sculpted and refined by hours upon hours of exercise, walking stairs that lead nowhere, riding bikes that go nowhere, rowing phantom rowboats, wearing immovable cross-country skis.

TRAIL DESCRIPTION Begin Segment 8 on the west side of CO Hwy 91 (no parking) at mile 0.0 (9,820). Camping is prohibited the next 4 miles. The trail enters the forest southwest and follows a few switchbacks uphill as it skirts the golf course, crosses a bridge, and passes under a power line. The CT then heads northwest and traverses ski runs, goes under a ski lift, and passes nearest the Copper Mountain Resort at mile 1.6 (9,768). There are restaurants, sporting goods shops, and some grocery shopping at the base of the ski hill. The trail passes underneath the American Eagle Ski Lift and then becomes single-track at mile 2.1 (9,988), following a few roundabout switchbacks up the hill. There are two streams ahead, followed by great views of the Tenmile Range. At mile 3.4 (10,345), bear sharply to the right and leave the horse trail the CT was following. A cross-country ski trail merges from the left at mile 5.0 (10,519), but the CT continues straight ahead. At mile 5.2 (10,480), pass Jacque Creek, immediately followed by Guller Creek. There is a campsite just up the hill between the two. Continue upstream along Guller Creek following an elongated meadow to mile 6.2 (10,854) for additional camping and water. Janet’s Cabin, a popular ski hut, comes into view as the trail climbs out of the canyon.

I've never really done much cross-country skiing before. I tried telemarketing once—" "Telemarketing?" Conor burst out laughing. "Did you say 'telemarketing'?" "What," I said. "I think you mean telemarking." I grinned. "Oh yeah. That sounds better." And everyone at the table starting laughing at me, and both Sean and Conor were laughing, too. The one time they agreed on something, and it had to come at my expense. "Yeah, that's the worst kind of skiing," Conor said. "You have to hold the phone to your ear while you're going downhill. There's the do-not-call list, and then there's the do-not-fall list," Connor added. "Very funny," I said. But I couldn't stop myself from smiling, because it actually was.

I was fortunate to grow up in a place where snowfall was abundant, exclusion from private property was frowned upon, and outside my door were thousands of acres of forested hills to explore. By the time I was ten my feet were as big as my mother's, and I pinched her leather cross-country ski boots and a set of wooden skis and poles from Finland that had stood neglected in the cellar for years. I never had any instruction in Nordic skiing technique, but as soon as I pushed off it was obvious that this was an easier way to move about in the winter woods. To this day I have a hard time thinking of skiing as a sport and have felt self-conscious the few times I've skied in prepared tracks among the athletic and sleek-suited crowd that frequents Nordic centers. For me skiing is just the way you walk when there's snow on the ground. It's walking in cursive, and I love to walk.