(Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Bongarts/Getty Images)
Cross country skiers are known amongst winter athletes as some of the most hard-core training athletes around. Their training regimen is brutal and lasts through the entire year. The race season may not start until November or December but dryland training, rollerski workouts, and cycling start up almost as soon the prior season ended.
This year’s FIS World Cup XC season doesn’t begin until December, but one of America’s best, Kikkan Randall, has already been training for months. Alan Abrahamson, one of the great Olympic writers in the US, has a fascinating profile of Randall posted on his blog, 3wiresports.com.
Randall is America’s first female world championship cross country medal winner. And, true to the reputation of cross country skiers the world over, she trains like a mad woman. In Abrahamson’s post he talks with Randall about her training and describes some of the Rocky-like methods she uses to prepare for the race season, including a run in one of Alaska’s most notorious races, the ‘Mount Marathon’ race – a brutal 3.5 mile up and down race covering 3000+ feet of vertical. Randall won for the first time this July after finishing runner-up 4 times.
It’s a great story about a great unsung American athlete. Head over to 3WireSports and check it out.
