Cross Country Skiing with higher age? Is it possible? Don't you have to do this already as a child so that it works out at all? Or do you have to be so fit that you could run a marathon anyway?
The picture that we had here in the Tannheimer Valley does answer the last question with ‘no'. At the slopes there are young and old ones, long distance lovers with backpacks including snacks and sportsmen that seem to train for the next Skitrail.
But how does it really work? We did the test.
Skis and shoes you can easily rent so that you don't have to invest much. The shoes are like hiking shoes. They are ankle-high and have a fortification. Otherwise they fit quite comfortable and give you a good hold. The skis are chosen after hight and weight. We learned why from our skiing teacher Andre.
We decided to do the classical style. For that you need a part of the ski, which has a grip so that you can push yourself off with this part. This part does normally not touch the snow. Only when you put all your weight on one food this part bends and touches the ground. The braking scales touch the snow and prevent the ski from gliding.
That's the idea so far. But we want to try it.
To connect the shoes with the skis isn't that easy. The binding needs getting used to.
Then it was: Go! Yes! Go! It is like walking. Only that you don't remember going with these things under your feet. But we where guided to it step by step (literally).
First walking. Step by step. Then the stable position.
Works out fine.
Then the tracks. I liked the tracks because the really lead you. On the skating part of the slope the ski led their own lifes and went together or apart. In the track this is impossible. You are on rails.
We went back and forth on our test area. Therefore very quickly the exercise “turn” came up. It is not that easy to change the position of the skis again and again. But altogether we got along quite well.
It wasn't as shaky as we suspected. And rather quickly we went from walking to gliding. This gliding that we saw at the skitrail. It works our. It is possible. Also for us.
With many small exercises we were guided to cross country skiing. Driving on one foot, or kicking like on a scooter, with sticks or with double stick push and so on. If we wouldn't have changed because we wanted to take pictures we would have got quite far in one hour. But we got the feeling for it anyway. It is good. It goes. And we will for sure continue if we have the possibility.
You need 4 – 5 hours of lessons before you get a real good feeling on skis according to our teacher. So that you can go on a trail. Braking seems to be critical with the classical style. But that you should know before you leave on a cross country ski run.
Conclusion
A nice sport that trains the whole body, can be learned at any age, can be done up to old age and leads you through beautiful landscapes. What else do you want?
Thanks
Here we would like to thank the company Eider for the nice winter clothes for the photo shoot, the Tannheimer Skiing School and teacher André for his patience and Sport Rief for lending us skis and shoes.
