I’ve been asked a few times lately about the current carbohydrate recommendations. The following guidelines are from Chapter 22: “Nutrition for Endurance Training and Competition” of “Endurance Training: Science and Practice, Second Edition,” edited by Iñigo Mujika. This chapter is written by Dr. Louise Burke, who is arguably the best high-performance nutrition researcher in the world right now.    I’ll give you some of my additional thoughts below.  All amounts are presented in grams (g) of carbohydrate. Sometimes this will be “g/kg” which is grams of carbohydrate per kg ..read more

TL;DR: When I tell you to do 5 minutes of  “Zone 5” I do NOT mean that your goal is to get your heart rate into Zone 5 for 5 minutes. Your goal is to stay set your power/pace/output to zone 5, and let your heart rate do what it will.    Zones  In order to allow us to survive in a large array of situations, our body has evolved multiple systems to supply energy to our muscles, allowing us to perform many different activities at many different speeds and for very different amounts of time. There are three different energy systems we use, and they’re all working at least a li ..read more

Badass pure and simple. Alba De Silvestro lives skimo. She’s an Italian, so could out ski pretty much all of us, and has a hell of a racing history. Two-time Trofeo Mezzalama winner, two-time World Champion, and winner of the 2022 Patrouille de Glacier (PDG). Oh and she’s recently married Michele Boscacci, another Italian skimo badass.  It’s hard to find many ways to follow what she does in English, but she watch her for a good 2023/2024 season!  View this post on Instagram A post shared by Alba De Silvestro (@albadesilvestro) How to find out more about Alba Instagram ..read more

Remi Bonnet is the current “big dog” of skimo and mountain running.  He just broke a 30-year-old record on the Pikes Peak Ascent, and his record on skis last year was pretty inconceivable, with 11 World Cup/World Champs starts, and NINE wins.  One of the things I like about Remi is that he’s a total homebody. He doesn’t race that much compared to a lot of the other big guns, because he likes to stay home and train and explore in his hometown of Charmey, Switzerland.  While surely is never going to be accused of being the biggest or loudest personality on the world’s stage, wa ..read more

If you’re measuring your performance regularly (hint: You should be), then you may notice that your numbers from testing aren’t linear. If you were to graph your performance over time, it should TREND up (if it isn’t, get a new process), but some measurements will actually be lower some weeks than the week before. Let’s talk about why that is, how much is good, and how much is bad.  First, I define performance in this context as a measured outcome. For most of the people reading this, this means distance over time, or speed. How long does it take you to run up that hill, how long does it ..read more

Holy crap where to even start with Kilian. He’s a icon, he’s the G.O.A.T.  He’s won pretty much everything there is to win. He’s won the ISMF World Championship seven times, he’s won the PDG, the Mezzalama, the Tour du Rutor, and the Pierra Menta FOUR times. On the running sides he’s won the UTMB four times, Hardrock five times, Zegama TEN times, and a baffling amount of sky/mountain/trail running World Championships. In addition to those race results, he has a project called “Summits of My Life” which highlights some of the boldest FKT attempts he’s made, like summiting EVEREST TWICE ..read more

Emily Harrop is a relative newcomer to the skimo scene. This French racer came onto the ISMF World Cup in 2020 with very solid results as a U23 racer, and then over the next couple years became a dominant force. By 2022 she was a regular on the podium of any race she entered, and in last winter’s 2022/2023 season, she won most of the races and was the ISMF World Cup Overall Champion. Incidentally her parents are from the UK, so a lot of the interviews she does are actually in English, which is pretty great for an American fan of the sport!  Because she’s so new she doesn’t have a ton o ..read more

Warming up is essential for optimal performance and injury prevention. A well-structured warm-up can make all the difference in how you feel during your race and how well your body performs. In this blog post, we’ll guide you through a 35-minute warm-up routine that gradually elevates your heart rate and prepares your muscles for the demands of an endurance race or workout. The Race Warm-Up Level 1 (5 minutes): Begin your warm-up with a gentle jog or ride at a comfortable pace. Focus on loosening up your muscles and getting into a rhythm. Take deep breaths and relax your body. Level 2 (10 mi ..read more

I have several athletes a year race stage races, and at the request of athletes I put some thoughts down on paper! Pretty much all of these apply to running stage races as well, it’s just a tiny bit simpler!  The first principles of stage racing:  Win the race to recovery – The more time you spend sitting on your ass between stages the better.  Win the eating contest – The more you eat, before, during, and after each stage, the better. Here are the basics:  Logistics – All the fitness in the world doesn’t matter if you mess up the logistics. The goal here is to spen ..read more

It’s September. The leaves are changing in the mountains, the mornings are crisp, and snow kissed the peaks before Labor Day. Your fitness is excellent right now. Perhaps it’s the best it’s ever been. You’ve been lucky: the schedule worked out well, the injuries stayed away, and it was a great summer.  You’re excited to skin, to ski, to adventure in the backcountry, but you’ve been here before. Last year was similar. You felt great, fit, and ready in September, but by the time the snow was good, somehow you were out of shape. How do you make this year different? There are many ways ..read more