How easy can you go? XC skiing vs. Running vs. Cycling

Triathlon Forum
1

We’re having an internal debate in the wee hours of the morning. I know there are some XC skiers on here. Can you go as easy in XC skiing as you can go cycling, on a recovery day? In cycling, you can ride at 25-50% of threshold and you’re still moving forward. You’re still riding. In running, there’s no such thing, at least not for most of us mortal folks.

Or is XC skiing more akin to running, in that if you go easy enough, you end up ceasing to run, or ceasing to make forward progress (in running, we call this walking)?
(yes, I know there are folks on here who can run at 55% VO2max at 8:00/mile, and I’m not talking to you!)

Is there a bottom cutoff for intensity with XC skiing where you’ll just not be moving anymore, which necessitates that you end up always exerting above, say, 65-70% of threshold effort? Or maybe XC skiing is an in-between of the run vs cycling “recovery activity difference” paradigm??

I’m sure for me, XC skiing would be at least middling, but I was suspecting for folks more adept/skilled at it, it might be more akin to cycling because of the ability to glide without need for constant braking/propulsive forces, and ground reaction forces, (ie. energy waste) like running. I haven’t looked at the literature yet, and I’m more interested in hearing folks opinions and experiences.

Grateful for any feedback!

2

It’s not apples to apples because of the different xc techniques. Coaches like to call them gears but it’s more analogous to different swim strokes.

If I want to go easy and really focus on slowing down and there’s no hill/terrain to account for then intensity can get pretty low (~65% lthr). Not as low as a super easy bike but close. Running there seems to be a lower limit to intensity where I’m no longer running and might as well walk.

Overall intensity is still closer to running, eg I default to a comfortable 75-90% lthr while skiing and biking is considerably lower. I may be a better cyclist than runner or skier.

3

Helpful, thank you!

4

XC is 2 sports: classic and skate.

The intensity of both flavors of XC skiing can be heavily influenced by terrain

Ski areas specifically designed for skiing will likely have some trails that simply cannot be skied at low intensity by anyone with either technique: too demanding.

Ski areas that are repurposed in the winter, like a golf course, might not have any trails that are challenging for anyone: all easy.

In general, the minimum necessary intensity to “take flight” in skiing is greater with skate than classic. Like when swimming butterfly versus breaststroke. The mechanics of butterfly suddenly make sense at a certain higher speed while the mechanics of breaststroke can be scaled across a greater range of speed.

I think your question is … how easy can one make skiing.

The answer is … very easy.

Classic skiing on mildly rolling terrain is my favorite gentle workout, akin to hiking, but with a glide-mode. Weight bearing low impact, conversational and sustainable, all while employing the basic necessary techniques, including power phase on one ski followed by glide phase on the next ski.

The inverse question is … how hard can skiing be? Any you know the answer … infinitely hard. Seems like each endurance sport has its own “terroir” of demise; in XC skiing for me, that includes confusion, loss of coordination, and falling body temperature. Terrifying.

Long distance classic skiing is a mass participation sport that doesn’t require a lot of preparation as long as one respects a ceiling of effort and just keeps plugging along.

5

Awesome. I’ll be forwarding this to the team as they navigate how we amalgamate workout data into well-informed nutrition decisions. When Michelle reads it she’s going to want to live somewhere where XC skiing is an option. :slight_smile:

6

XC is 2 sports: classic and skate.

The intensity of both flavors of XC skiing can be heavily influenced by terrain

Ski areas specifically designed for skiing will likely have some trails that simply cannot be skied at low intensity by anyone with either technique: too demanding.

Ski areas that are repurposed in the winter, like a golf course, might not have any trails that are challenging for anyone: all easy.

In general, the minimum necessary intensity to “take flight” in skiing is greater with skate than classic. Like when swimming butterfly versus breaststroke. The mechanics of butterfly suddenly make sense at a certain higher speed while the mechanics of breaststroke can be scaled across a greater range of speed.

I think your question is … how easy can one make skiing.

The answer is … very easy.

Classic skiing on mildly rolling terrain is my favorite gentle workout, akin to hiking, but with a glide-mode. Weight bearing low impact, conversational and sustainable, all while employing the basic necessary techniques, including power phase on one ski followed by glide phase on the next ski.

The inverse question is … how hard can skiing be? Any you know the answer … infinitely hard. Seems like each endurance sport has its own “terroir” of demise; in XC skiing for me, that includes confusion, loss of coordination, and falling body temperature. Terrifying.

Long distance classic skiing is a mass participation sport that doesn’t require a lot of preparation as long as one respects a ceiling of effort and just keeps plugging along.

x2 on this. i ski in winter and mainly classic; i have crummy technique but can essentially make my classic workouts a long brisk walk if i want.

7

x2 on this. i ski in winter and mainly classic; i have crummy technique but can essentially make my classic workouts a long brisk walk if i want.

x2 - I spent this summer learning to state ski (double finger air quotes on “learning”) and I’d work up a lather just circling the beginner flat loop. Can do all day classic.

Frustrating - I’d watched dozens of YouTube videos, understand all the physics of skate skiing. Started with all the suggested progressions, still flail around like I’m overdosing on bath salts. My wife watched zero videos, started from the same experience, and just took off like Jesskaela Shiffdiggins. (because she’s also a baller downhill). She was a HS competitive downhiller - raced some eventual stars - probably helps a lot.

8

I found that XC skiing is more akin to swimming, since it’s so technique based, skate skiing in particular. If you’re learning and/or have bad technique, there is no easy. Once you know what you’re doing, on most terrain you can cruise for a long time with minimal effort.

Classic skiing is much easier to do with minimal effort IMO.

9

XC is 2 sports: classic and skate.
…
Classic skiing on mildly rolling terrain is my favorite gentle workout, akin to hiking, but with a glide-mode. Weight bearing low impact, conversational and sustainable, all while employing the basic necessary techniques, including power phase on one ski followed by glide phase on the next ski.

+1
classic on moderate terrain can be kept to a ‘brisk-walk’ effort, very enjoyable workout. I’d do a lot more of this if the drive up into the mountains wasn’t clogged with insane downhill skiers…

skate for me starts at intense, and quickly goes into unsustainable on even moderate uphills. No way to do an easy skate workout, unless it’s completely flat terrain.

10

I raced both classic and skate races for many years, was a ski instructor for about 10 years and a team coach for 3. Assuming flat terrain, properly prepared skis and reasonable snow conditions (i.e., not icy or mushy), it’s been my observation that there is an interaction between perceived effort, ski technique (skate vs classic), and skier technique or proficiency. Classic is easy to do badly as for most beginners it’s not much more than a hike on skis with a bit of gliding thrown in; as a result it can be about as easy as walking with hiking poles. Getting the weight shift at the right time and amount to put them over one ski and developing enough balance to stay there long enough to complete a kick is hard; lots of beginners struggle with this and even when they get it, at first it feels unfamiliar enough that their focus shifts from ‘how do I keep going’ to ‘how do I stop’. It was long an inside joke among my fellow instructors that a part of a late beginner / early intermediate skill development phase was a ‘stop skiing’ program :slight_smile: .

Any skating technique is much harder to do at the beginning, as there’s no way to fake the amount of weight shift and balance you need. Beginning skaters waste staggering amount of energy - typically as a result from frantically upping the tempo because they can’t balance on a ski long enough for proper coordination of arms and legs. This falls apart at some point when they just can’t move arms and legs fast enough with enough coordination to offset their incomplete weight shift and their insufficient dynamic balance.

One of the marks of a good technical skater is their ability to do V2 Alternate and V2 (these are the US names; I think the Canadian terms were 2 skate and 1 skate) slowly for extended periods. If you used body weight to drive the poles you didn’t need much leg effort to just keep going. I could easily hold a conversation with someone I was skiing with at this effort level.

11

interesting discussion. It’s kind of like those clickbait generic fitness/outdoors magazine articles that exclaim “You burn more calories (running/biking/ebiking/elliptical etc…) than some other activity!”. In some sort of order:

hiking: easy. shorten the stride when going up hill
road biking: depends if/when you run out of gears, do you try to stay on and ride it, or get off and walk (easy). No impact on the downhills
classic skiing: pretty easy, can always herringbone (duck walk) up hills. On less steep uphills, if you are on skis with less grip, you have to “work” to get the grip, this requires active skiing “bounding”, not just walking like you could if you have more grip. I have found that as long as there is a hill, I can push myself very hard (very high heart rates), but I don’t have the muscular endurance to double pole very hard if the terrain is flatter (can only get to moderately high heart rates). It’s like spinning out your highest gear on a bike. Better athletes might be able to go to the max.
skate skiing: you’ll always have the bailout herringbone/herringbone with glide “gear”, but if you don’t choose to use that (even the best skiers in the world can resort to that on long, steep, sustained final climb at the tour de ski) and offset, it might be hard to get up the hill. Can definitely max out the heart rates, even on flat terrain.
classic skiing- double pole: need fast skis or else it is a slog. Unless you have a strong upper body, muscular endurance will tap out long before cardiovascular limitations do on flat terrain. Uphill is very hard, unless you herringbone, then it is very easy.
mtb: harder, those little bursts to get up steep climbs start to add up.
running: can be hard if you try to maintain a running motion up hills

It will also depend on mentally how hard you push yourself if you aren’t strictly goverened by power output:
are you subconsciously pushing harder up climbs? into headwinds? into tailwinds? with an ebike motor assist like many clickbait articles claim?

12

Skating for me can be more intense than running, in the sense I think there’s a minimal amount of effort to move, and there’s upper body recruitment in addition to lower body. It depends on the slope and snow conditions though. Obviously downhill with beautiful snow is less effort than running and more like cycling, but certain types of snow can be more full body than running.

Classic is maybe different for me, in that I think I can do something more like “walking” often and still get glide; it doesn’t seem to have the same minimal effort investment as skating, and I can ramp effort up and down more continuously across the range. Skating it seems like there’s a lower range that isn’t there sometimes.

I guess I’ve always felt like cross-country skiing is sort of like running, sort of like cycling, and sort of not like either, or closer to rowing or something.

13

Classic skiing on mildly rolling terrain is my favorite gentle workout, akin to hiking, but with a glide-mode. Weight bearing low impact, conversational and sustainable, all while employing the basic necessary techniques, including power phase on one ski followed by glide phase on the next ski.

The inverse question is … how hard can skiing be? Any you know the answer … infinitely hard. Seems like each endurance sport has its own “terroir” of demise; in XC skiing for me, that includes confusion, loss of coordination, and falling body temperature. Terrifying.

Others have talked about the two techniques - Skating vs Classic and terrain. There is also conditions and grooming - huge variability here that can impact effort/speed!

If you have been skiing for years, and have good technique, and the terrain is not too severe - you can make both skating and classic reasonably, “easy”.

As I have become older, I find that for really long skis of multiple hours, in the 30 - 50k range, I’m finding that Classic is for me less taxing on the body physically than skating. It is typically slower than skating in the same terrain. But I am fine with that. I enjoy both techniques, but when going long, and if waxing conditions are good (not tricky) - Classic is what I prefer to do. It is becoming more of a game of Double Poling only on the flats. This past winter I worked a great deal on that - Double Poling as much as I could on the flats!

As for the top end - I probably recorded my highest ever heart rate in my life near the end of a 30km race a number of years ago. It was a Freestyle race, thus we were skating and I was battling it out with this other guy for a place in the top 10. About 500m+ from the finish there was this brutally steep hill that was maybe 100m long, gradually ramping up and steepest right near the top. I was trying to beat the other guy to the top, because I had noticed earlier in the race, his skis were running a bit faster than mine, and I knew that going over the top, and with the long gradual downhill to the finish I would need a bit of a lead. So I attacked and went all out up that hill! I recall going over the top, and I could literally almost feel my heart jumping out of my chest and was seeing double at the tope. Did not have an HRM on by it was at MAX!

14

If skating and some hills, then no, impossible unless you’re a top XC skier.

15

It’s not apples to apples because of the different xc techniques. Coaches like to call them gears but it’s more analogous to different swim strokes.

If I want to go easy and really focus on slowing down and there’s no hill/terrain to account for then intensity can get pretty low (~65% lthr). Not as low as a super easy bike but close. Running there seems to be a lower limit to intensity where I’m no longer running and might as well walk…Yup. Close.

The difference is in part due to cycling being actually sitting with a little core/upper body strength to hold yourself up. Whereas in skiing you’re standing on your whole weight.

Beginning skaters waste staggering amount of energyThis.

16

I am pretty proficient at XC skiing, at least my proficiency is at the same level as I am in cycling (my percent delta to elite athletes is roughly the same in all three sports).

I can go equally easy in all sports or equally hard. Yes, XC skiing has glide and no jarriing but it is weight bearing and the heart has to pump blood from heart, down to feet and back up from a standing position versus on a bike in a sitting position (heart rate always lower sitting in a chair than at a standing desk).

What I find is I am roughly equally fried on a 5 hrs bike vs 3 hrs skate ski, vs 2 hrs run vs 2 hrs swim going at steady aerobic.

And also my 20 min effort and 4 min effort in all four sports are identical.

17

Super helpful info. Thanks to all who answered here. I appreciate your introspection and sharing of data & experience.

18

Super helpful info. Thanks to all who answered here. I appreciate your introspection and sharing of data & experience.

Thanks. I did around 20 years for 2000km per year of XC skiing (mainly skate technique) and have lots of 8,000km-12000km bike years combined with + 2000-3000km run years, and last 8 years or so, dialed back the XC skiing and doing around 1000km per year of swimming and more like 5000km bike + 2000km ski.

Point being I put the volume in all sports and maxed out my proficiency in them to the point that my technique relative to pros and my engine relative to pros is roughly the same in all sports. You can get a really good 30 min 10km runner relative to pro runners who flounders on skis and can’t even keep up with ten year old club skiers. I when my running was still reasonable, I was equally close (or far off) to elite XC skiers and elite runners over a 10km distance (or actually in any distance other than a sub 2km spint where I would be further off because the ability to apply technique and fast twitch at key points in those distances, is just different in the way, that strong amateurs can’t apply power+endurance in a 200 fly like Michael Phelps can)…many years ago slowman wrote an article entitled “the high cost of good form” and part of that is having a big enough engine to do it. If I go to a masters swim meet, the 30 year old in the 200 fly do way more more hard dolphin kicks off the wall than 60 year olds. That’s the ultimate instantiation of the high cost of good form. The 60 year old athlete just does not have a the aerobic headroom to do 5 dolphin kicks off the wall.

The reason I am giving a bit of this detour, is because accessing the higher technical components at shorter duration require a massive engine, so at some point, the engine and wheels are not strong enough to be equally proficient in the various sports. If I take 12 second performance for myself in cycling vs XC skiing vs swimming vs running, I will do best in cycling because there is no mechanical technique limitation.

I hope the above banter provides some conversation worthy inputs. If take another sport I have done (speed skating) I can cruise quite well and in some winter tris involving speed skating, I always could stay with the lead pack in local events, because I am small, low to the ground and could just get towed along with the more locally elite skaters. But head to head in a 500m at the oval forget about it…I’ll get totally dusted. Same thing in a 10,000. My technical form at VO2max level or event threshold levels is not at the level of the other four sports mentioned above. It is decent at a local club masters level, but my gap to pros is much worse than other sports.

19

XC is 2 sports: classic and skate.

The intensity of both flavors of XC skiing can be heavily influenced by terrain

Ski areas specifically designed for skiing will likely have some trails that simply cannot be skied at low intensity by anyone with either technique: too demanding.

Ski areas that are repurposed in the winter, like a golf course, might not have any trails that are challenging for anyone: all easy.

In general, the minimum necessary intensity to “take flight” in skiing is greater with skate than classic. Like when swimming butterfly versus breaststroke. The mechanics of butterfly suddenly make sense at a certain higher speed while the mechanics of breaststroke can be scaled across a greater range of speed.

I think your question is … how easy can one make skiing.

The answer is … very easy.

Classic skiing on mildly rolling terrain is my favorite gentle workout, akin to hiking, but with a glide-mode. Weight bearing low impact, conversational and sustainable, all while employing the basic necessary techniques, including power phase on one ski followed by glide phase on the next ski.

The inverse question is … how hard can skiing be? Any you know the answer … infinitely hard. Seems like each endurance sport has its own “terroir” of demise; in XC skiing for me, that includes confusion, loss of coordination, and falling body temperature. Terrifying.

Long distance classic skiing is a mass participation sport that doesn’t require a lot of preparation as long as one respects a ceiling of effort and just keeps plugging along.

this:“Classic skiing on mildly rolling terrain is my favorite gentle workout, akin to hiking, but with a glide-mode. Weight bearing low impact, conversational and sustainable, all while employing the basic necessary techniques, including power phase on one ski followed by glide phase on the next ski.”

I am not a great XC skier, it takes skill to go hard or fast. If I want intensity I try to climb faster, but I can go as easy or easier than cycling. Classic, with waxed skis can be a very low intensity couple of hours of nice outdoor activity if the snow is good. We ski in the fields and forest near our house (basically walk out door, slap on skis and go), we create our own track and it is still easy when the snow is not too fresh or too deep. However in really deep snow (stupid idea to snow after or during a blizzard), I literally was at my max heart rate trying to climb a small hill with the snow up to my hips deep… that was an experience.

20

Not much I can to the other responses.

I will say that what a lot of noobs consider classic technique nordic skiing is just walking on skis.
If you’re just shuffling your feet, that’s walking.
Skiing requires you to actually glide.

And I can do a super easy workout in all three sports.

When I first took up skate skiing though, my technique was so bad that my HR would go through the roof.