World's greatest female cross country skier destroys competition at 10 000m track

what is going on here wrote:

She looked at her watch 8x the first lap alone!

The hilarious thing about that is that she still ran the first lap in 68s, which is like 10s faster than planned.

I've won masters titles in both Nordic and road racing, so know a little bit about crossover.

Kristiansen did make an Olympic Nordic team as a teenager, so that's pretty much world class at the time. True was good at skiing but barely got into the top 10 at NCAAs, and probably would not have made any Olympic teams in that sport.

Agreed that running and skiing aren't that compatible at the elite level/DL-WC. you need to focus on one or the other at a fairly young age. Even at the college level rare are athletes that might be all-american at both, whereas 30 years ago you'd see it, usually with a Norwegian.

That said, David Norris is a sick mountain runner (breaking Jornet's record at Mt Marathon), and probably could have been a pretty decent XC runner if he'd focused on it.

OddDuck wrote:

3345 wrote:

Why are so many women such drama queens? You won. Great. Lay down on the track, right in front of the others?

+1

Also, dont they call out splits or have large digital clocks there? She looked at her watch every ten steps which had to take off from her time. She must have had an important meeting after the race.

Maybe she was checking her text messages.

LoneStarXC wrote:

CoolRunning wrote:

I used to think exactly like you about Baumann, until I read bis book (probably only available in German). I really do believe him now.

Hallo Dieter!

Erwischt! ;-)

3345 wrote:

Why are so many women such drama queens? You won. Great. Lay down on the track, right in front of the others?

With the skiers, I think it's taught- finish a race and you throw yourself into the snow at the finish to ice down the muscles.

I want to say Jessie Diggins was a decent high school runner before she went all in with skiing

People talking about her form, what about the woman who was in second place for the first couple laps. Now that is horrendous.

Coyote Montane wrote:...True was good at skiing but barely got into the top 10 at NCAAs, and probably would not have made any Olympic teams in that sport...

While I agree with most of what you wrote, I think you may be off base here. In the 2007 NCAA Skiing Championships, True was 8th in the 10k skate (interval start), was 3rd American only 1 second back from the top US citizen in that race. In the 20k classic (mass start) 2 days later he was 4th, top American, only 13 seconds back and raced with the front pack the whole race. I'm not able to find results from earlier in his college career, but I'd say these show better than "barely top 10".

It's so incredibly selective to make the US Nordic team for the Olympics or World Championships that you can't say anyone is ever a "lock". Looking at the men who comprised the 2010 and 2014 Olympics teams in Nordic for the US (True's expected "prime" years in skiing), based on junior, college, and U23 results I'd say True had a reasonable chance to make those teams had he stuck with skiing. 2010: Kris Freeman, Simi Hamilton, Garrott Kuzzy, James Southam, Torin Koos, Andy Newell. Koos and Newell were more sprinters, whereas True was a distance guy so not really a comparison there. Of Freeman, Hamilton, Kuzzy, Southam, True was more a contemporary of Hamilton and Kuzzy, and True beat both of those guys plenty of times so I think he would have been in the mix had he stuck with skiing. By 2014 a new generation had moved in (Bjornsen, Gregg, Hoffman) but Hamilton was still on the team so again I'd give True an even chance against Hamilton for one of the team spots.

XC Skier wrote:

XC skiing would never be dominated by Africans. Its entirely different. Has more to do with power. Kenyans would need to be much stronger and heavier.

BMI for nordic skiiers is 22+

They already tried this back in the 90s with Kenyans. I believe the experiment failed miserably.

Moo Goo wrote:

XC Skier wrote:

XC skiing would never be dominated by Africans. Its entirely different. Has more to do with power. Kenyans would need to be much stronger and heavier.

BMI for nordic skiiers is 22+

They already tried this back in the 90s with Kenyans. I believe the experiment failed miserably.

I wonder why? What about Ethiopians/Eritreans? Eritreans have had some success in cycling.

Not very bright wrote:

Armstronglivs wrote:

You don't know much about human physiology, do you? If ped's don't work because of living in cold climates then the same argument would apply to training, as that also affects human physiology as ped's do. But we see that Norwegians train like everyone else. And, yeah, they probably dope, too.

And you don't know much about trolling or LRC, do you? PNU was making fun of a well known poster here who claims PEDs don't work in Kenya.

You must be loads of fun at parties.

A party for LR trolls. Can't say I'm sorry I missed it.

Benoit runs like a woman. Johaug runs like a man with strong arm action. Definitely benefiting from xc sking.

She's also running in trainers!

The reason she’s looking at her watch is because she’s checking her heart rate. It’s all about five zone heart rate training for Norwegian XC skiers. She’s doing a workout in this event, monitoring her effort by HR. She repeatedly checks because she’s much less familiar with perceived exertion as it pertains to heart rate than ski racing.

That said, Johaug has always been an excellent running. She crushes local 5ks —-but most of her run training is on trails/uphill not on the track.

Goucher Needles wrote:

The reason she’s looking at her watch is because she’s checking her heart rate. It’s all about five zone heart rate training for Norwegian XC skiers. She’s doing a workout in this event, monitoring her effort by HR. She repeatedly checks because she’s much less familiar with perceived exertion as it pertains to heart rate than ski racing.

If that's the reason why she went out with a 68s lap (sub WR pace) before settling into 78s that's incredibly stupid. Her target HR might have been 170. After 50m, she looks at her watch and sees 120 - "damn I gotta get faster!" After 100m again, it's still only 125 "damn still too low, need to run 2:50/k pace now!" etc. until finally she reaches 170 HR after about 800m.

The aerobic system takes 90s-120s to ramp up, that's how long it takes to reach the 170 HR she was aiming for. She should just ignore the watch for the first 2 laps and THEN start tracking her HR. Probably missed out on a better overall time and built unnecessary fatigue with that 68s lap.

It's clear breathing like a fish is the key to running fast.

The thread mentions "world's greatest female cross country skier" ... which is Marit Bjørgen, and by a good measure. She retired lat year with 15 Olympic medals, the most of any winter athlete ever. She did a fair bit of running in the summer months but never posted any really spectacular times to my knowledge. As others have indicated, Nordic skiing has shifted toward a much more upper-body intensive style over the past decade or so. It certainly requires a big engine that can translate to running but a lot of adaptions are needed to switch from one sport to the other at an elite level.

I never knew Angus Young could run a 10K so fast, must be all that stage running he does.

http://bravewords.com/medias-static/images/news/2014/54776D9D-ac-dcs-angus-young-on-rock-or-bust-album-title-it-probably-sums-us-up-as-a-band-image.jpg

Not too surprising; they have huge aerobic engines. One of the oldest races in Alaska is the Arctic Valley Run, a 12.6 mile run with 6.3 to the top of a mountain and 6.3 back down. Climb is around 2500' I believe. The ridiculous course record of 1:06 was set back in 1982 by Jim Galanes, a three-time Winter Olympian in cross country skiing (76, 80, 84).

she will crush you wrote:

not the world's greatest female xc skier. not even close. go to google images and check out marit bjorgen. she would crush the pencil necks who post here

Bjorgen has retired.

Banana Bread wrote:

This got me thinking of Bekele. How much would he destroy the field if he did cross country skiing. He is already done it in cross country. It would be amazing to see him in a Winter Olympics.

A ridiculous idea. If you haven't learned to ski as a kid, you can never be anywhere close to the top even if you have the highest VO2max in the world. As someone pointed out, it's like swimming, where technique is crucial.

I've been trying to teach my boyfriend some cross country skiing and he's unbearably slow despite being a 32:45 runner for the 10k. (That's is like 5:30 faster than myself.) And still in skiing old grannies and toddlers are flying past him. With hard training for a few years I think he would just about be able to beat me, and I'm not an excellent skier either.