Houghton “Get Your Nordic On” = HUGE SUCCESS!

The Houghton ski community is AWESOME!

Top View!

As you know, I moved back up to Houghton in May, and since then I’ve really been trying to get to know the community here.  Well, on Wednesday, I met a ton of them!  I ran a “Get Your Nordic On!” technique clinic for the American Birkibiener Foundation and Portage Health, and we had over 35 people show up!  It was incredible!

We had all ages, all abilities!

The clinic focused on the very basics of good technique.  We ran through a series of of drills, starting with basic body position and adding little bits and pieces until we ended with a complete stride.  We did this for both classic and skate.  It was a lot of information to absorb at once, but everyone was up for the challenge.  There were smiles all around, and I think a lot of good progress was made!

Working on lateral weight transfer...

One of things that impressed me the most about the group was the sheer number of women who showed up.  I counted 25, and that’s a ton!    When I lived down in Hayward I was hugely inspired by the Ski and Tea women’s training group there.  They get together once a week,  ready to motivate each other,  work hard,  and do it with perma-smiles on their faces.  With 25 women showing up for this little clinic, I’m pretty sure we have enough interest up here to do something similar!

Here’s a little video from the clinic, when we were putting together everything we had learned about classic technique, into a complete “ski walking” stride.  HUGE thanks to Arnie Kinnunen at Portage Health, for promoting the clinic, and taking tons of great pictures and video!

This post was written by KO at 4:53 pm, Friday, September 25th, 2009, and is filed under "Uncategorized ". You can leave a response here, or send a Trackback from your own site.