Nordic Nuts-Home

12/30/05
Wow, great couple days there. We finally made it down to Seeley yesterday and got in an hour and a half ski on the Birkie trail, which was actually in pretty good shape. We then hit up the Alley to hear Five Spot Jazz and saw a ton of folks. Today I have been taking a long awaited day off, and doing a bit of snow removal. Word on the street is that if you show up at Mt. Valhalla at 10 am tomorrow (Saturday), there might be a few people there looking to see how fast they are. There has been talk of a sprint relay.

12/27/05
'Nuther great ski today at Mt. Valhalla. Scott Nesvold got out on the groomer and things are looking really nice up there. Hard and fast,and it should be soft enough to be maintained as it cools more. My very professional opinion (without having skied there) is that the Ashland trails are probably not worth your time for any kind of real workout, but still skiable in some form probably. I'll try to cruise by tomrrow if I have a chance. We're going to ski at Valhalla in the morning and then cruise down to Seeley so Tyler can pick up some stuff and then rock ski at North End or Seeley or something. In case you missed the memo on skinnyski.com, the Double Pole Derby has been cancelled, and I have to say I'm a bit bummed out. I was looking forward to a good hard race. I'm hearing rumblings of a possible short notice race this weekend somewhere in Northern Wisconsin. Stayed tuned to this bat channel for more info. Email me if you've heard any more about any racing to go down this weekend, or if you want to be kept in the loop.

12/26/05
Wow, it amazing what a couple of easy days will do for you. I skied light Saturday and Sunday, and went out for a nice 2 hour classic ski today at Mt. Ashwabay with CANSKI. The snow conditions here in town are getting pretty marginal, so I was surprised by how nice it was up at the hill. I used good skis no problems, and as we always do when skiing Ashwabay, we skied some sweet downhill action on Swiss Miss and the bunny hill. The klister was in full effect today and kicking really nicely. Oh, and those easy day made me feel money today. I have a photoset from today here.

12/23/05
I've been feeling pretty demolished lately with fatigue, and a fun kink in my neck the last day or so. I classic skied yesterday for almost three hours before things got real warm, and worked all afternoon, but have been feeling it, so I cancelled the afternoon ski today and just did a light hour with Doug and Zach. Things were a little damp, but pretty skiable, and the roads were surprisingly decent. I took a two hour nap this afternoon, and am feeling much more chipper. I also finished getting the Racing Pictures page caught up, so czech that out. The rain is a serious bummer, especially when the snow has been so great lately. And there is a new random list of "You might be a cross country skier if..."in etc. Enjoy. Email me with suggestions for additions or if you think any of the items are particularly lame. That's all for now, Merry Christmas or whatever other holiday floats your boat!

12/21/05
Happy Winter Solstice to everyone! I think by the time 24T rolls around, I will have so much skiing in the dark, without a light, that skiing at night with a light will be child's play. We've been skiing at Valhalla for CANSKI every Wednesday night, and I haven't used the light much even though the last hour is pretty dark. Tonight I did chicken out and slip on the LED light for the last 15 minutes, but it was after the monster hill where I could have done real damage. Last week, it was snowing so hard that the light actually made it harder to see because it illuminated the snow flakes right in front of my face, and didn't cut through to much else. Most of the time you can see pretty well without a light up until I leave by 6 as long as you let your eyes adjust. All that said, I'll definitely be rocking the bike light at 24T because all of that light lets you ski more aggressively, especially in the transitions. We did a couple of short intervals followed by a pretty long warm down. I was totally down with only a couple intervals, as I've been feeling pretty drained following last week. It was nice to get the heart really pumpin' though.

12/20/05
I had a light ski yesterday and took today off for a little well deserved recovery. The trails in Ashland are shaping up, now if we can only hold off that rain on Friday... There's an updatd snow report from Monday. I just got an email from someone looking to rent a place in Ironwood to skiers for weekends and whatnot. If you're interested, email me and I'll get you contact info. I've got a growing number of racing pictures up, so peep that section. That's all for now folks.

12/17/05
Amazing ski at Mt. Valhalla today. I have some pictures up so check them out. The snow was great, grooming was great, and the skiing was amazing. We had 3/4 of the 24 hour team out with Doug and Dennis and myself. We were joined by Brian Hammond, and we did an easy two hours of skating. I stuck around for an extra couple of hours after the rest left for a total of four hours. It was a pretty awesome ski and I had a blast even though it was ridiculously long. Tomorrow I have the legs only session I missed yesterday and an hour easy, and I'll have my big volume week done.

12/16/05
Ashland finally picked up some semi-significant snowfall! We got about three inches overnight and this evening picked up another inch or two, and things are shaping up at the trails in town. Read all about that in Snow Report. I did a nice hour and a half skate today which was supposed to be a leg strength session, but turned into technique because the trails were pretty soft and I didn't want to mess them up, plus shoveling the snow, I seemed to re-tweak my back, which I messed up this summer shovelling dirt of all things.

12/15/05
Wow, what a great couple days. Mt. Valhalla got a bunch of snow from the storm, and I had a great ski Wednesday night as the snow was piling up. Of course we haven't gotten any significant snow here in town, but it will come, and even the inch we got will help. Today I classic skied on ungroomed snow at Valhalla again and it was awesome. Nice three hour classic ski. Abigail Larson came up huge with a 30th place in the 10 skate at the World Cup in Canmore today. Awesome! Sarah Konrad got a 23rd in the same race. In the men's 15k, Kris Freeman seems like he might be a touch off, with an 18th and Carl Swenson seems to be somewhat recovered from his cold with a 30th. Read all about it, or at least my ramblings, in the Race News section.

News 12/13/05
Well, I hope everyone likes the new look.If you do/don't/whatever, or if something doesn't work email me and let me know what you think. It was time. I'd been wanting to do this since I did some pretty serious work on a site about a year ago. Some of the sections hadn't been updated for ever, some don't make any sense since I'm not at Gonzaga anymore. Some chunks of the old site will remain for now. Everything except the racing pictures page should be pretty much up and running, and some places won't have much content for now, but should in the future. That's all for now.

News 12/12/05
Quick update for y'all. I've got pictures up along withe the race report from Saturday and Sunday. Many thanks to Catie Cogger for taking pictures while I was racing. The inch or two of snow we picked up here in Ashland did some good on the trails here in town. On the GNC scale things have gone from poor to fair. A few more inches snow is forecast for this week, which would do a lot to get us up to some really nice skiing.

News 12/11/05
Another great day of racing in Ironwood. They picked up about 10 inches of snow overnight, so things were a little mushy, but all in all, a good time. Read all about it in Race Reports. World Cup action continued up in Canada with some sprints, eh. Newell rocked it in 11th, but Cook was next in 12th. Wisconsin represent! I have a bunch of pictures, which will be up prontissimo, I promise, or you can just go check them out at skinnyski.com. Ciao.

News 12/10/05
Racing is on! I did the classic half of the Big Snow Country Pursuit today. It went pretty well. Well enough that I don't think I'll move to Puerto Viejo. I've got an update in the Race Reports section. Results are up on skinnyski.com. There are a few pictures from today, which I'll get up tomorrow along with a bit on the skate half of the pursuit. World Cup action today in Silver Star. Frankly, I was surprised the US team didn't have some better results. I think they'll round into shape next weekend, and we may see some fast skiing tomorrow in the sprints. Huge props to Abigail Larson for being the top placing US woman!

News 12/6/05
I've been skiing a ton lately, over in Ironwood and elsewhere. Valhalla is shaping up nicely. If we get the predicted snow tonight, it will be a big step. I skied at Trollhaugen after visiting a friend in the cities this past weekend. One word: smooth. Yes, I was skiing in circles, but nice, fast smooth snow was great. I was bummed that I left the good skis at home, though the B skis felt surprisingly good. Wolverine was great yesterday, and conditions should be great for the races this weekend, especially if they get a bit more snow. That's all for now, I'll have an update after the weekend's races, unless I embarass myself so badly that I decide to give up skiing completely, move to Puerto Viejo and start a chicken restaurant and pick up listening to Bob Marley as my primary athletic endeavor. I don't embarass easily, so I doubt that will happen, but if this website all of a sudden turns into "Lounging Lunatics" with an advertisement for "Pablo's Casa de Pollo," you'll know why.

News 11/27/05
The skiing over in Ironwood has been great. I drove over Saturday with Hans Wildebush, and I had the pleasure of classic skiing for about three and a half hours at Wolverine on really nice snow. The rain may put a damper on the skiing for a couple of days. Today I ended up riding the trainer, which was a little less exciting than nice kick and glide. I guess that's November, eh? In other news, Carl Swenson has turned in a couple of truly awesome performances overseas in the World Cup races this weekend in Kuusamo, Finland. An 11th in the classic and 12th in the skate race are both great results. Over on this side of the ocean, the races at West Yellowstone seemed to be a bit more competitive than the previous Super Tour races, with Kris Freeman being relegated to fifth. Justin Freeman took the win over Dave Chamberlain. From the sounds of it, the snow conditions were pretty epic. Wendy Wagner took the women's race in dominant fashion over NMU's Lindsay Williams. Our former 24T teammate Abigail Larson turned in an awesome 4th, and is headed to the Canada World Cups!

News 11/21/05
A great couple days of skiing. I've been over to ABR a couple times. Friday was great. I classic skied for about and hour and a half, and then went out skating for about the same amount of time. I worked Saturday at the shop, and then it was back for another couple hours on Sunday with Catie Cogger. We had a nice two hour ski half classic, half skate, though things were a bit more chewed up than on Friday. With any snow at all, it will be worth a trip back over on Wednesday. It was a lot harder to get out on rollerskis today after getting on that snow...

News 11/16/05
We have snow! I went skiing today! After a couple days of pretty chilly bike rides, we got some snow that stuck. I was out on the golf course on a couple inches of snow here today, but the Bayfield penninsula and Ironwood got significantly more snow so we should be doing real skiing by the weekend! Having snow earlier than expected is pretty much the best reason ever to have to significantly modify the old training plan.

News 10/27/05
It was a great summer here in Northern Wisconsin. I done graduated and worked at Bay City Cycles over the summer. Now I'm working on finding something new, maybe long term so that I can stay in the area. I had a great summer of training and I'm really looking forward to getting on snow and skiing! We did 24 Hours of 9 Mile and had a good time and just did a century last weekend. We're also working on the team for 24T so we should be there in full force this year. I'm putting together a cyclocross race for November 5th. You can check out the website here. For the time being, the next incarnation of Nordic Nuts has been put one hold, but the website may see a facelift. Think snow!

News 3/11/05
Here's another update comin' at ya. Please pardon any mistakes in this one, grammatical or otherwise, as most of it has been done late at night, and I haven't read over any of it. Most of it is up in the Race Reports section. Enjoy. I've been home in Wisconsin for the week skiing a ton around Ashland and up at Valhalla. I did the River View Loppet last Saturday, and the details are in the Race Reports. Its been a blast. That's probably going to just about do it for this ski season, since there isn't much snow left back at school and its March Madness baby! Check back sometime though, you never know when I might be moved to add something here.

©2005 Paul Belknap All rights reserved.
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My disclaimer: The opinions expressed on this website are mine and mine alone and they do not reflect the position of Gonzaga University, if they did, you would be hearing as much about their nordic ski team as their men's basketball team. :)


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12/30/05 Wow, great couple days there. We finally made it down to Seeley yesterday and got in an hour and a half ski on the Birkie trail, which was actually in pretty good shape. We then hit up the Alley to hear Five Spot Jazz and saw a ton of folks. Today I have been taking a long awaited day off, and doing a bit of snow removal. Word on the street is that if you show up at Mt. Valhalla at 10 am tomorrow (Saturday), there might be a few people there looking to see how fast they are. There has been talk of a sprint relay.
12/27/05 'Nuther great ski today at Mt. Valhalla. Scott Nesvold got out on the groomer and things are looking really nice up there. Hard and fast,and it should be soft enough to be maintained as it cools more. My very professional opinion (without having skied there) is that the Ashland trails are probably not worth your time for any kind of real workout, but still skiable in some form probably. I'll try to cruise by tomrrow if I have a chance. We're going to ski at Valhalla in the morning and then cruise down to Seeley so Tyler can pick up some stuff and then rock ski at North End or Seeley or something. In case you missed the memo on skinnyski.com, the Double Pole Derby has been cancelled, and I have to say I'm a bit bummed out. I was looking forward to a good hard race. I'm hearing rumblings of a possible short notice race this weekend somewhere in Northern Wisconsin. Stayed tuned to this bat channel for more info. Email me if you've heard any more about any racing to go down this weekend, or if you want to be kept in the loop.
12/26/05 Wow, it amazing what a couple of easy days will do for you. I skied light Saturday and Sunday, and went out for a nice 2 hour classic ski today at Mt. Ashwabay with CANSKI. The snow conditions here in town are getting pretty marginal, so I was surprised by how nice it was up at the hill. I used good skis no problems, and as we always do when skiing Ashwabay, we skied some sweet downhill action on Swiss Miss and the bunny hill. The klister was in full effect today and kicking really nicely. Oh, and those easy day made me feel money today. I have a photoset from today here.
12/23/05 I've been feeling pretty demolished lately with fatigue, and a fun kink in my neck the last day or so. I classic skied yesterday for almost three hours before things got real warm, and worked all afternoon, but have been feeling it, so I cancelled the afternoon ski today and just did a light hour with Doug and Zach. Things were a little damp, but pretty skiable, and the roads were surprisingly decent. I took a two hour nap this afternoon, and am feeling much more chipper. I also finished getting the Racing Pictures page caught up, so czech that out. The rain is a serious bummer, especially when the snow has been so great lately. And there is a new random list of "You might be a cross country skier if..."in etc. Enjoy. Email me with suggestions for additions or if you think any of the items are particularly lame. That's all for now, Merry Christmas or whatever other holiday floats your boat!
12/21/05 Happy Winter Solstice to everyone! I think by the time 24T rolls around, I will have so much skiing in the dark, without a light, that skiing at night with a light will be child's play. We've been skiing at Valhalla for CANSKI every Wednesday night, and I haven't used the light much even though the last hour is pretty dark. Tonight I did chicken out and slip on the LED light for the last 15 minutes, but it was after the monster hill where I could have done real damage. Last week, it was snowing so hard that the light actually made it harder to see because it illuminated the snow flakes right in front of my face, and didn't cut through to much else. Most of the time you can see pretty well without a light up until I leave by 6 as long as you let your eyes adjust. All that said, I'll definitely be rocking the bike light at 24T because all of that light lets you ski more aggressively, especially in the transitions. We did a couple of short intervals followed by a pretty long warm down. I was totally down with only a couple intervals, as I've been feeling pretty drained following last week. It was nice to get the heart really pumpin' though.
12/20/05 I had a light ski yesterday and took today off for a little well deserved recovery. The trails in Ashland are shaping up, now if we can only hold off that rain on Friday... There's an updatd snow report from Monday. I just got an email from someone looking to rent a place in Ironwood to skiers for weekends and whatnot. If you're interested, email me and I'll get you contact info. I've got a growing number of racing pictures up, so peep that section. That's all for now folks.
12/17/05 Amazing ski at Mt. Valhalla today. I have some pictures up so check them out. The snow was great, grooming was great, and the skiing was amazing. We had 3/4 of the 24 hour team out with Doug and Dennis and myself. We were joined by Brian Hammond, and we did an easy two hours of skating. I stuck around for an extra couple of hours after the rest left for a total of four hours. It was a pretty awesome ski and I had a blast even though it was ridiculously long. Tomorrow I have the legs only session I missed yesterday and an hour easy, and I'll have my big volume week done.
12/16/05 Ashland finally picked up some semi-significant snowfall! We got about three inches overnight and this evening picked up another inch or two, and things are shaping up at the trails in town. Read all about that in Snow Report. I did a nice hour and a half skate today which was supposed to be a leg strength session, but turned into technique because the trails were pretty soft and I didn't want to mess them up, plus shoveling the snow, I seemed to re-tweak my back, which I messed up this summer shovelling dirt of all things.
12/15/05 Wow, what a great couple days. Mt. Valhalla got a bunch of snow from the storm, and I had a great ski Wednesday night as the snow was piling up. Of course we haven't gotten any significant snow here in town, but it will come, and even the inch we got will help. Today I classic skied on ungroomed snow at Valhalla again and it was awesome. Nice three hour classic ski. Abigail Larson came up huge with a 30th place in the 10 skate at the World Cup in Canmore today. Awesome! Sarah Konrad got a 23rd in the same race. In the men's 15k, Kris Freeman seems like he might be a touch off, with an 18th and Carl Swenson seems to be somewhat recovered from his cold with a 30th. Read all about it, or at least my ramblings, in the Race News section.
News 12/13/05 Well, I hope everyone likes the new look.If you do/don't/whatever, or if something doesn't work email me and let me know what you think. It was time. I'd been wanting to do this since I did some pretty serious work on a site about a year ago. Some of the sections hadn't been updated for ever, some don't make any sense since I'm not at Gonzaga anymore. Some chunks of the old site will remain for now. Everything except the racing pictures page should be pretty much up and running, and some places won't have much content for now, but should in the future. That's all for now.
News 12/12/05 Quick update for y'all. I've got pictures up along withe the race report from Saturday and Sunday. Many thanks to Catie Cogger for taking pictures while I was racing. The inch or two of snow we picked up here in Ashland did some good on the trails here in town. On the GNC scale things have gone from poor to fair. A few more inches snow is forecast for this week, which would do a lot to get us up to some really nice skiing.
News 12/11/05 Another great day of racing in Ironwood. They picked up about 10 inches of snow overnight, so things were a little mushy, but all in all, a good time. Read all about it in Race Reports. World Cup action continued up in Canada with some sprints, eh. Newell rocked it in 11th, but Cook was next in 12th. Wisconsin represent! I have a bunch of pictures, which will be up prontissimo, I promise, or you can just go check them out at skinnyski.com. Ciao.
News 12/10/05 Racing is on! I did the classic half of the Big Snow Country Pursuit today. It went pretty well. Well enough that I don't think I'll move to Puerto Viejo. I've got an update in the Race Reports section. Results are up on skinnyski.com. There are a few pictures from today, which I'll get up tomorrow along with a bit on the skate half of the pursuit. World Cup action today in Silver Star. Frankly, I was surprised the US team didn't have some better results. I think they'll round into shape next weekend, and we may see some fast skiing tomorrow in the sprints. Huge props to Abigail Larson for being the top placing US woman!
News 12/6/05 I've been skiing a ton lately, over in Ironwood and elsewhere. Valhalla is shaping up nicely. If we get the predicted snow tonight, it will be a big step. I skied at Trollhaugen after visiting a friend in the cities this past weekend. One word: smooth. Yes, I was skiing in circles, but nice, fast smooth snow was great. I was bummed that I left the good skis at home, though the B skis felt surprisingly good. Wolverine was great yesterday, and conditions should be great for the races this weekend, especially if they get a bit more snow. That's all for now, I'll have an update after the weekend's races, unless I embarass myself so badly that I decide to give up skiing completely, move to Puerto Viejo and start a chicken restaurant and pick up listening to Bob Marley as my primary athletic endeavor. I don't embarass easily, so I doubt that will happen, but if this website all of a sudden turns into "Lounging Lunatics" with an advertisement for "Pablo's Casa de Pollo," you'll know why.
News 11/27/05 The skiing over in Ironwood has been great. I drove over Saturday with Hans Wildebush, and I had the pleasure of classic skiing for about three and a half hours at Wolverine on really nice snow. The rain may put a damper on the skiing for a couple of days. Today I ended up riding the trainer, which was a little less exciting than nice kick and glide. I guess that's November, eh? In other news, Carl Swenson has turned in a couple of truly awesome performances overseas in the World Cup races this weekend in Kuusamo, Finland. An 11th in the classic and 12th in the skate race are both great results. Over on this side of the ocean, the races at West Yellowstone seemed to be a bit more competitive than the previous Super Tour races, with Kris Freeman being relegated to fifth. Justin Freeman took the win over Dave Chamberlain. From the sounds of it, the snow conditions were pretty epic. Wendy Wagner took the women's race in dominant fashion over NMU's Lindsay Williams. Our former 24T teammate Abigail Larson turned in an awesome 4th, and is headed to the Canada World Cups!
News 11/21/05 A great couple days of skiing. I've been over to ABR a couple times. Friday was great. I classic skied for about and hour and a half, and then went out skating for about the same amount of time. I worked Saturday at the shop, and then it was back for another couple hours on Sunday with Catie Cogger. We had a nice two hour ski half classic, half skate, though things were a bit more chewed up than on Friday. With any snow at all, it will be worth a trip back over on Wednesday. It was a lot harder to get out on rollerskis today after getting on that snow...
News 11/16/05 We have snow! I went skiing today! After a couple days of pretty chilly bike rides, we got some snow that stuck. I was out on the golf course on a couple inches of snow here today, but the Bayfield penninsula and Ironwood got significantly more snow so we should be doing real skiing by the weekend! Having snow earlier than expected is pretty much the best reason ever to have to significantly modify the old training plan.
News 10/27/05 It was a great summer here in Northern Wisconsin. I done graduated and worked at Bay City Cycles over the summer. Now I'm working on finding something new, maybe long term so that I can stay in the area. I had a great summer of training and I'm really looking forward to getting on snow and skiing! We did 24 Hours of 9 Mile and had a good time and just did a century last weekend. We're also working on the team for 24T so we should be there in full force this year. I'm putting together a cyclocross race for November 5th. You can check out the website here. For the time being, the next incarnation of Nordic Nuts has been put one hold, but the website may see a facelift. Think snow!
News 3/11/05 Here's another update comin' at ya. Please pardon any mistakes in this one, grammatical or otherwise, as most of it has been done late at night, and I haven't read over any of it. Most of it is up in the Race Reports section. Enjoy. I've been home in Wisconsin for the week skiing a ton around Ashland and up at Valhalla. I did the River View Loppet last Saturday, and the details are in the Race Reports. Its been a blast. That's probably going to just about do it for this ski season, since there isn't much snow left back at school and its March Madness baby! Check back sometime though, you never know when I might be moved to add something here.
©2005 Paul Belknap All rights reserved. Why do I do this? Check out About Contact Me My disclaimer: The opinions expressed on this website are mine and mine alone and they do not reflect the position of Gonzaga University, if they did, you would be hearing as much about their nordic ski team as their men's basketball team. :)