I would think you could get much of the muscle development you're
looking for with an elliptical machine (arms, legs), the kind where the
foot pieces can go forward and back, and the forward position allows
being upright or forward leaning. Pedalling backward is really good for
the quads and anyone with a bad knee. Forward gives all around legs
and conditioning. It's not nearly x-c skiing in aerobic demand, and
there won't many long distance like sessions, but it does help a lot.
I use one regularly at the gym, such as for getting race pace intervals
from 3 to 30 mins on the cheap.

Gene

On Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:10:06 +0100 (BST)
wrote:

In article ,
wrote:

Nick, you're very brave to give this a try again given longstanding
balance issues (at 66, I've found my balance is much better than when
younger, in good part due to the demands of x-c skiing and
rollerskiing).

Or a complete loon :-)

At 64, I decided to try downhill skiing, on the grounds that it was
then or never. Half of my friends said I was a total loon, and
the other half said "Go for it". Well, 150 hours of practice (and
I mean that) later, I can handle blue and the easier red, but I
have to concentrate 100% for that, so it's VERY tiring. I am OK
on green. That's all parallel turning.

If you pursue this, then I think it's a choice of picking your
poison: get the longest commercially available rollerskis (Marwe
combi
+ wirewheel at about 825mm for classic; maybe the longer Jenex for
skating?); or you can build something that will be too unwieldy for
the physical conditioning you desire. ...

I am not quite sure about the latter. It's really the muscles at
the front of the thigh and hip that I am thinking of, and the
length of the ski doesn't matter. I would be using a very long,
straightish stretch of tarmac, so turning isn't an issue.

I take the points about protective kit on tarmac - I don't mind
falling on snow or moorland, but rock and tarmac can break things.
The problem about other exercise is that it wouldn't help much
for the muscles and ligaments that I remember suffering. It took
me a week to be free of pain when I was 30, so only the second
week was entirely pleasurable!

P.S. Your estimate of 10-15 mph seems way high, assuming we're
using the same system. Ten mph is a mile every six minutes, which
translates to ~3:45/kilometer, if my calculation is correct. At any
age, it's unlikely balance is a serious issue at that speed. My
hunch is something more in the 7-9 min/mile range, which if you're
having balance problems is fast enough to be quite scary at times.

That could well be. I failed to find any reasonable indicative
speeds of rollerskis, and was guessing from my cycling and old
skiing speeds. 6-10 MPH might be more plausible, but it doesn't
really help, as the real damage comes from the falling down from
a standing height.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.