Marion Freijsen A blog about Sports, Fitness & Health

Crosscountry Skiing

Adding a bit of variety seems to be quite easy at the moment – the winter weather is throwing in all sorts of challenges and obstacles but at the same time – it makes it a great time to do something out of the ordinary. Ofcourse, you can continue your workouts as you did before indoors, but why not make the most of the cold weather (across a lot of the western hemisphere at least) and go out in the snow and on the ice?

Cross-Country skiiing – like many sports really – started out as pure necessity. A way of transport in nordic countries during months of snow and ice. It has since migrated and become a sport that people seem to either love or hate. Personally, I don’t care what it is, if it gets me out there in the cold/snow, I am very happy.

The effort you’ll have to put into an hour of cross-country skiing compares easily with an hours’ run or a somewhat harder hour on the bike – you will probably burn (depending on how many rests you’ll need!) between 350-500 calories per hour. Actually – the snow itself will be one of the determining factors in that burn-rate too – if you are lucky enough to get out in virgin snow, you’ll definitely be rewarded not just by clean snow to cut across, but higher amount of calories burnt as well as it is much harder going then on a loipe which has been hardenend and prepared by others/machines.

I found this little nugget on Wikipedia: As a sport, cross-country skiing is one of the most difficult endurance sports, as its motions use every major muscle group and it (along with running, rowing and swimming) is one of the sports that burn the most calories per hour in execution. One of the legends in cross-country skiing competitions is Bjørn Dæhlie (Norway). In a test performed by his physiologist, Erlend Hem, Dæhlie made a VO₂-max of 96 ml/O₂/kg/min. a world record.
Always nice to know that you are measuring yourself against legends