By Clark Fair
Redoubt Reporter
Last weekend, some of the top Nordic skiers in the state — including the girls overall champion, Kinsey Loan, of Chugiak High School — took part in a midsummer dry-land training camp held by the Alaska Nordic Racing program in Kenai and Soldotna.
About two dozen kids from central peninsula schools, Anchorage and Matanuska-Susitna area teams, ran and biked, roller-skied, bounded and ski-walked up grassy slopes, performed core-building exercises and competed in obstacle course events as they worked to stay in shape for next winter’s ski season.
Participants in the ANR camp finish up a brief morning run on the Tsalteshi Trails at Skyview High School.
The four, two-hour sessions ran Friday and Saturday mornings and afternoons, and were a special segment of this summer’s eight-week ANR conditioning program. ANR head coach Ja Dorris, Eagle River coaches Stan and Gretchen Carrick, and Kenai Peninsula coach D’Anna Gibson ran the kids through their paces while attempting to maintain the kids’ energy and enthusiasm.
For Soldotna-Kenai kids a few years ago, taking part in such a program would have meant traveling to Anchorage or Fairbanks. Since Dave Feeken’s initial efforts in 2005, however, the benefits of ANR have been coming home to a larger and larger group of local skiers.
Several members of the summer conditioning program for skiers follow a ridgeline above Slaughter Gulch in Cooper Landing. At least once a week, program director D’Anna Gibson offers students in her local conditioning program a longer change-of-pace activity, such as this hike in mid-June.
Eagle River ANR junior coach Stan Carrick, who has been coaching with the Chugiak High School Nordic ski team for years, instructs attentive competitors on the intricacies of the obstacle course in which they are about to participate.
When Feeken, who died last year, was working with local Nordic skiers in the Junior Nationals program, he became acutely aware of the advantages some of the Anchorage and Fairbanks kids were gaining by being part of ANR. So Feeken began a satellite club in the Kenai-Soldotna area and called in Gibson to help him run it.
Gibson, now a skiing coach at Kenai Central High School, was excited for several reasons: First, she herself had benefited from a summer conditioning program when she was in high school. Second, she knew that her daughters, Bree and Kailey Mucha, could benefit from the training. Third, she hoped that her experience and expertise could begin to translate into overall 
improvement for area skiers.
“The entire peninsula will become more competitive with the Anchorage and Fairbanks areas if they are training more consistently year-round,” Gibson said.
Being part of ANR provides athletes with expert direction and, during racing season, invaluable assistance concerning waxing.
A group of competitors hurry through some bench dips during an obstacle course event set up near the Tsalteshi Trails at Skyview High School. Kailey Mucha, left, and her partner, state skiing champ Kinsey Loan, of Chugiak High School, finished first overall in the event.
ANR itself was founded in the mid-1990s as an expanded version of the Eagle River Nordic Training Center that began in 1994. According to its Web site, its programs are available to skiers from junior to master levels, and it focuses on a three-tier approach: “Our program is built around the premise that athletes are best served when their training enriches them through education, proper technique, and most of all, a love for a sport.”
To that end, during each week of the program, Gibson works her athletes hard but tries as much as possible to keep the atmosphere fun. Consequently, they frequently end their two-hour workouts with games — such as ultimate frisbee or capture the flag — and on most Fridays they usually embark on a longer, nonski-related
Palmer High School’s Davis Dunlap bounds up a hill during the ANR camp that focused on ski-centered motions and strength/core building.
activity, such as their recent hikes up Slaughter Gulch in Cooper Landing or the Exit Glacier trail near Seward.
Gibson and Feeken began their local ANR club with about a half-dozen local athletes. This summer Gibson has 25 enrolled.
“I’ve got some kids who are brand new this year,” Gibson.
said. “They will see some benefits if they’re racing this year, but really it’s a building process. So now you do it again next summer, and look what your results are next year.
“My main concern is to keep the kids going, keep it serious enough yet light enough at the same time, so, one, you’re not wasting their time, and, two, you’re not burning them out.”
For athletes who train year-round, she added, “Burnout is such a threat, and that’s the last thing I want to see happen. I want to get ’em in shape.”
Shannon Wyatt, left, and Bree Mucha attempt a high-kicking skipping drill designed to work on core strength.
Kailey Mucha holds her position during a core-building exercise called the side hold.
Ryan Sanders puts his all into a leap during a practice session in the standing broad jump, one of many exercises used by ANR coaches to help build core strength in Alaska skiers.
Kinsey Loan takes her turn striding up the incline at the start of the Tsalteshi Trails at Skyview High School. Loan, who was last year’s state champion Nordic skier, was practicing a ski-walking technique that mimics the stride of a classic skier.
