J3 Newsletter Updates from Gro
· Fri Mar 6, 11:43 AM by Kristen Westesen
February came and went in a whirlwind. We skied on the same old snow that fell in December and it just got faster and better, especially on classic klister days, with the exception of the last week when our skiing at Lindley unraveled quickly. Water-skiing in February and crossing raging rivers of melting snow is not exactly what is in the textbook but it all makes for some interesting days.
We kept working on lots of technique, especially classic we seem to be getting the hang of. Everyone is looking smashingly good in striding – those sloping hills at Lindley make diagonal-skiing really fun. Dragan helped us with V1 skating, double-poling and trying to ski more efficiently with your energy going into forward motion as and of course with our “smooth” skiing progress. Embla’s mom, Grethe the MSU Nordic Coach came out and helped us video one day of classic and one day of skate. The videos were analyzed at a pizza-eating seminar at Sam Miller’s house. Grethe gave us lots of insight and we went home with images of adjusting hips, timing our kick the right way and getting rid of crazy arms.
Two Saturdays we got to ski at Bohart: The “Ultimate World Championship Relays” were dominated by some surprisingly exotic nations. Nice work to all J4s and J5s who hung out with us. The second Bohart day turned out to be just the best powder day, the J3 back-country ski team emerged that day (think S-turns), fun, fun. We also one day got to work as YSL instructors, trying to teach YSL skiers how to act like J3s!!
Many of us travelled down to West Yellowstone for the last Intermountain race weekend of the season and we got to race a real sprint format. Doing an individual prelim 1 km in the morning and then running through heats in the afternoon is awesome deal for J3s. It is great to see our kids against kids from the other teams duking it out. Next up is the Youth Festival in Sun Valley where we have the sportsmanship award to defend and where we need to leave it all out on the obstacle course and flying downhill to hopefully this year conquer the strong home-team.
For the BSF J3 Team
GRO
January provided us with consistently good skiing. No days on dryland this month! There were some exceptionally good klister-days at Lindley and a Bridger Creek day that we unfortunately ended up skiing at in quite mushy conditions. All interesting and a tribute to the exciting sport we are pursuing – the snow-conditions are always changing so we never know what to expect from one day to the next. That is why it is do fascinating to kick-wax – it always changes!
Because of the blazing fast klistery conditions we got to work on some great cornering and downhill technique at Lindley. Those “flat” trails are not exactly flat and boring after you have screamed through some of those corners on fast corn snow! One Saturday at Bohart our goal was to get air on Psycho Pit . The jumpers on the team got lots (you know who you are!) AND the rest of us got a little. Fun, fun. We will keep working on fundamental technique throughout the rest of the ski-season so that everyone should finish the winter with a good grasp of basic skate and classic movements.
Some of us J3s travelled down to West for a Spam Cup, some went to the two first Junior Qualifiers races in Jackson Hole and Soldier Hollow, and we participated in the second Lindley World Cup, the crazy lycra one, a duathlon with one leg classic and one leg skate. February events include the last Junior Qualifier races in West on the 14th and 15th and of course the Youth Festival in Sun Valley at the end of the month where as many as possible of the J3s should plan to attend! We need many, many BSF’ers to have a chance at the team championship again!
Remember consistency pays off: the more you ski and fully participate at practice, the easier and more enjoyable it gets to ski.
Thanks to great helpers Danny the Man Gorder, Ben Ruffato and Heidi.
For the BSF J3 Team
GRO
17 kids aged 12and 13 or “J3”s are training this fall with the BSF J3 Team. We are many, many girls and a few good men. The team is an exciting mix of newer skiers and kids who have skied up through Youth Ski League, J5 and J4 and for us to continue to get to know each other and by developing as a team is a fun process. We have been meeting four times weekly since winter started November 1 and 8 of us travelled to West Yellowstone for our annual on-snow Thanksgiving camp while the in-town crew managed to ski a couple of times at Lindley on an extremely thin layer of snow on top of frozen grass! Good work to all BSF’ers in town and to the J3 campers who skied around 16 times!! down in West during camp.
We have been preparing for winter with a mix of running, ski-walking, hiking, strength-training, ski-imitations both with and without ski-poles as well as high-intensity relays and games mostly at Lindley and Triple Tree. We even had one ski-session up at Bridger Bowl where we hiked up to Pierre’s Knob and skied from there! We are getting in shape and eager to see if the ski-imitations we have done will work on snow as they are translated into gliding effortlessly over that white stuff we are all waiting for.
As you read this we hopefully will be flying on skis in town at Lindley working on classic and skate drills and playing games and training on snow. We will see if the snow-dances we did for training in early December worked!
For the BSF J3 Team,
Gro
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