CSS at Fortum Ski Tunnel
We left Oslo yesterday morning to make our way 2 hours northwest to Torsby, Sweden, home of the Fortum Ski Tunnel. I lived in Torsby and trained from May through September back in 1997 so I was familiar with the town and the training. Even before the tunnel was built three years ago, Torsby was a hotbed of Nordic skiing development for Sweden with their highly successful ski gymnasium. Torsby Skid Gymnasium has been the development grounds for Gunde Svan, Mattias, Tobias, and Bella Fredricksson, and biathletes Mikael Loefgren, Carl Johan Bergmann, and Mathias Nilsson, so the history of the place is impressive. My little brother Kai spent one post-high school year at the gymnasium as well, so to come here is a little bit of a “coming home” in some respects.My greatest concern for a 10-day camp anywhere that has summer snow was the balance between good training and either altitude or boredom. With glacier skiing like Dachstein in Austria, which was the summer/fall on-snow norm before the invention of the ski tunnel, you deal with very high altitude, rendering skiing quite slow and non-literal for technique purposes as well as incredibly vast changes in the snow over the course of a classic ski, requiring re-kick waxing every 30 to 45 minutes. The advantage of Dachstein is the sheer beauty of the surroundings? the wow factor. The obvious issue with a ski tunnel is boredom setting in. Weighing these options for these athletes, I felt the ski tunnel would be best.
Before yesterday, I had never spent any time in a ski tunnel as an athlete or a coach. Our choices for a ski tunnel were two tunnels in Finland, one in Oberhof, Germany, and Fortum here in Torsby. I chose Fortum for its length (1.3 km) as well as the skiers experiencing very strong ski culture. The flight and adjustment period in Oslo has already proven to be a good choice in that respect, with the excitement at Holmenkollen in preparation for this winter’s World Nordic Ski Championships, which promises to be nothing short of incredible.
I was extremely pleased with the skiing yesterday. I spoke with biathlete, Tim Burke, before we came here, to get a sense of what we should bring and how we should be prepared for the tunnel. The US Biathlon Team makes Torsby their home away from home in the fall in preparation for the December World Cups, skiing in the tunnel until natural snow lands somewhere north of here. He suggested we classic ski in the mornings because by his experience, the track breaks down in the afternoon with all the skiers. Apparently, the loop normally has a one-direction rule. So I was very surprised to go for our first ski yesterday afternoon to find the tracks still in very good condition and open to ski either direction. It seems we beat the late-summer/fall rush to the tunnel as we are the only people here besides a handful of independent skiers, making the skiing seem like a 2.6km loop rather than a 1.3km loop when you ski the loop one direction then turn around and ski it the other direction. Even more surprising was the terrain. The loop twists and climbs up and down to the high point in the clockwise direction, while counter-clockwise it climbs gradually to the high point rendering great no-poles diagonal stride training. Overall, we are all quite impressed with the facility. What makes this a great training center though are the options to train outside the tunnel. To stave off boredom and the poor house (it costs roughly $30 for each 3 hour session, meaning a double-ski day costs $60), we have a great rollerski loop right outside the tunnel, an excellent hillbounding hill next to the rollerloop, a weight room, and oodles of ski trails for running. Further, we are staying just 300 meters from it all, so we don’t need to drive anywhere to train, giving us more recovery time between workouts.
Recent CSS ski team grad, Caroline Lund met us here with her Swedish boyfriend and ex-Michigan Tech skier, Oskar Lund (no relation, obviously), and have skied with us yesterday and today. Besides them, we are sharing the tunnel with three Swedish club skiers, who seem to ski 3 hours at a time at Level 3. Oskar said one of them is very good, finishing 9th last year in the Swedish Vasaloppet. Today, we also ran into Norwegian, Oyvind Watterdal, who skied for Alaska Fairbanks for the 2009 season. So out of the 15 or so skiers in the tunnel today, 8 of them are current or former Central Collegiate Ski Association skiers. Small world! But as I write, 10 cars just pulled into the parking lot and are moving into rooms in our building, so it looks like the activity is picking up for the coming week.
We have a big 10 days here and we’re just getting into it. It’s very nice that the guys can ski at a very reasonable speed, not going too hard, and skiing with good technique. We will ease into some more intensity workouts on skis once we have our ski legs under us. Our sightseeing is now over and we are at least a week from the boredom stage in the tunnel, so spirits are high. Most importantly, it is great to feel the snow under your feet, have easy, consistent waxing conditions (though the abrasive nature of the snow makes keeping kick wax on a small challenge), and stepping out from the 20-degree tunnel back out to summer. Overall, this is already a very successful training trip.