Last season Ida Dahl won four events in the Ski Classics and finished second overall. Team Engcon’s new member has set her sights on the winter: “The goal is to win the yellow bib.”

January 9, 2022, was a day that Ida Dahl had been waiting for a long time. She was first across the finish line in a Ski Classics race for the first time.

Dahl did it in perhaps the most challenging competition, Prato Piazza Mountain Challenge, a tough climb in the Italian Dolomites. And over the next month after the first victory, basically everything Dahl set as a goal turned into gold. She changed the age from 25 to 26 and added wins in La Diagonela, Marcialonga, and Jizerská50. 

“The explanation for my season last year and the success during that period was that I had good training flow and stayed healthy and well. I got all the parts working; both life and training,” says Ida Dahl when Langd.se met her at her home in Östersund, Sweden, just before her travel to a full weekend of competitions.

Last Thursday, she started in the long-distance race at Toppidrettsveka (fourth place), followed by Saturday’s Alliansloppet (sixth position). And next weekend, she will be on the starting line in the Värnamorullen.

In between the competitions, Dahl partially spent the days at Torsby ski tunnel together with Team Engcon, training and testing skis.

After last and successful season in Team Ramudden’s colors, she has now moved over to Team Engcon, where she will, among other things, compete in the same team as her partner Eddie Edström:

 “I have had a good start in the new team. Then, in terms of training, there is no big difference compared to before. I still have Mattias Reck as a coach, and the structure and thinking are the same as before.”

From my point of view, the training among long-distance skiers is more and more focused on very long sessions. Do you agree?

“Yes, it has become extreme in recent years. A few years ago, nobody trained more than maybe 4-4.5 hours on the long session. Now I would say it is standard with at least one weekly session of 5-6 hours, so that has changed. And it’s clear that you get tagged when you see how others train, then there is perhaps a risk of being a bit incited, of being dragged along, says Dahl, who had a challenging period after the Blink Festival in Norway at the beginning of August:

“I had trained a lot during the summer and felt tired. I took it easy for a while and feel that the body is responding much better now.”

What does the training distribution look like during the pre-season for you?

“In the spring, I have chosen to train mostly alternatively, then there would be more rollerskiing during the summer, and then I will cycle part of it. However, I don’t run nearly as much as before. I think it’s fun to run, but considering the risk of injury, it has worked best for me to combine rollerskis with a bicycle. And I feel that long-distance skiers train very discipline-specific, and the double poling and the rollerskiing are as close to skiing as you can get,” says Ida Dahl, who was second overall in last season’s Ski Classics.

The number one was Britta Johansson Norgren, who, after the season, chose to put her skis on the shelf (read more about Britta’s upcoming challenges here). And also, several established and successful Ski Classics skiers have chosen to end their elite careers: Lina Korsgren, Marit Bjørgen, and Laila Kveli, to name a few.

“I think for sure that I will reflect on the fact that they are not in the first races, but you get used to it quickly. Then it may happen that the races take on a different character as these are skiers who have wanted to speed up the races. Maybe that responsibility will fall a bit on me now. But we know that, for example, Astrid (Øyre Slind) is also a skier who likes to speed up the races,” says Dahl.

What is the goal for the coming season?

 “I want to win the yellow bib. In order to succeed in that, it is necessary to maintain a consistent form throughout the season, and that was probably what I didn’t do well last winter. I had high peaks, but it got a little shaky towards the end. On the other hand, Britta had a stable form, so even if she had “a bad day,” she never failed. There are things to work on for me. Then, of course, I want to be in good shape for the four big races (Grand Classics: Jizerská50, Marcialonga, Vasaloppet, and Birkebeinerrennet). And if I had to choose which race I want to be in my absolute best shape, it would be Vasaloppet. I didn’t get it there at all last winter, so I want revenge,” concludes Ida Dahl, who also represents IFK Mora.