Then a friend introduced me to skate skiing, “classic” Nordic’s zippy younger brother. If traditional Nordic skiing is a walk in the woods, then skate skiing — which was born only in the 1970s — is more like trail running. It’s swooping. It’s fast. It’s graceful. It’s even a bit sexy, something its buttoned-up older brother has never been accused of. No wonder that more runners and cyclists have discovered the discipline as a great winter counterpart. Purchase of skate skis has been on a slow, steady rise in recent years, accounting for 16 percent of cross-country skis bought in 2012-13.
There’s just one problem with skate skiing: It’s hard. While anyone can hop on old-school Nordic skis and at least poke around the forest, big lungs are hugely helpful in skate skiing — yet even more important is good technique. I tried to teach myself, bulling my way to proficiency. It didn’t work. On the trail, women in their 70s would chirp, “Good morning!” as they skated effortlessly past my gasping, lathered frame. I needed help. (...)
In traditional Nordic skiing, skiers drive forward in a linear kick-then-glide motion. Skate skiing, by contrast, is more like ice skating: It’s a V-stride in which a skier pushes off with the edge of one angled ski and shifts his body weight to the other ski, driving forward, then reversing the process — and, with luck, gliding down the trail. As a result the skis are several inches shorter, lighter and shaped differently; the boots have more ankle support; and the poles are longer. Skate skiing also isn’t done in set tracks like its cousin but on smooth, manicured (and usually flat to moderately hilly) terrain.
Now we worked on shifting our weight back and forth from one ski to another. Here came Tip No. 2: When you push off from one ski onto another, think “nose over knees over toes,” Mr. Paulsen said — a position called being “stacked.” When you’re centered like this, the ski can glide nicely instead of digging in, he explained. Learning how to efficiently glide is key as a skate skier. “The push is good,” Mr. Paulsen told us. “But the glide is better.”
“The big-timers who come out there, it’s just refinement of all this,” he told us. “Now, let’s get our poles and hit the trails and get a scenery change.” We skidded behind him onto the green (easiest) trails, a pack of wobbly puppies, until we reached a forgivingly wide, flat piece of trail.
The arms, and use of the poles, are the second half of a skier’s engine. “We’re going to get into the world of different poling techniques,” Mr. Paulsen said. “There are about five of them.”
by Christopher Soloman, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Bonny Makarewicz for The New York Times
