Jim Galanes on why a training year should change the dose of aerobic, threshold, VO2max, speed and strength work, and never remove any one of them entirely.
Position: Program Director & Head Coach Employer: Plain Valley Ski Trails / Plain Valley Nordic Team Location: Leavenworth, Washington Reports To: PVST Executive Director, under goals set by the PVST Board of Directors Compensation: $50,000–$60,000 DOE, plus benefits Duration: Year-round, full-time Application Deadline: Open until filled Plain Valley Ski Trails is seeking an experienced Program Director & Head Coach to lead the Plain Valley Nordic Team into its next chapter. PVST is a 501(c)(3)...
Dear Cross Country Community, We are pleased to announce the XC Team for Period 1 of the 2026-27 World Cup season: Ruka, FIN 10 km C & Trondheim, NOR 10 km C Men Zach Jayne Objective 25-26 Overall SuperTour Leader Gus Schumacher Objective 12th Distance World Cup 25-26 Zak Ketterson Objective 36th Distance World Cup 25-26 Ben Ogden Discretion 11th Lake Placid World Cup 10 km C Zanden McMullen Discretion 18th...
Biathlon at a Crossroads: Inside the Alliance That Could Reshape the Sport in America
Matthew VoisinJuly 28, 2026
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. U.S. Biathlon’s board votes Wednesday on a formal operating alliance with U.S. Ski & Snowboard. Supporters call it the stability the sport has always lacked. Skeptics call it a surrender of independence. Both are working from the same set of facts. Here is what the deal actually says, and what...
Snow is the first question anyone asks about a ski trip. It is rarely the one that decides whether the trip was any good. Plenty of skiers have booked a week somewhere with a meter of base and come home flat, because the grooming was inconsistent, the trail network was a single 5-kilometer loop repeated until it went stale, or the lodging was a forty-minute drive from the tracks. The destinations people return to year...
Ben Ogden’s Spring of Silver and Setbacks
John SkavlemJuly 22, 2026
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. For Ben Ogden, the strangest change since taking home two medals from Milano Cortina has not been that more people started recognizing him around Vermont. He admits he is still adjusting to the newfound fame, but that part has mostly been fun. There have been school visits, community events and...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. This is a follow-up to my last article, Speed Creates the Load, Not Intensity. Before going further, it helps to define terms. Intensity is reflected in the heart rate response. Load is the physiological stress that drives adaptation. This piece takes a different angle, using high-intensity workouts and race heart...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Part two of a two-part series. Read part one here. A parent once cornered Adam St. Pierre to complain that he was letting the kids play games. St. Pierre had ten-year-olds on skis running sharks and minnows, shrieking and chasing each other across the snow, and the parent was...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. I originally wrote the following article in 2004. Twenty-two years later, I believe it remains just as relevant. To me it illustrates that while we tend to assume training has changed a great deal, in many ways it has stayed much the same. I have rewritten it here to improve...
The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay is hiring a Head Nordic Ski Coach to lead its men’s and women’s programs. The school’s goal is to build the premier program in the Central Collegiate Ski Association and send multiple student-athletes to NCAA Nationals each year, and it has backed that goal with scholarships, a full-time head coaching position, and graduate assistant support. The head coach recruits, develops, and retains student-athletes, directs training and technique, and manages the...
The Saint Michael’s College Nordic ski team is looking for an assistant coach for the 2026-27 season. The start date is flexible, though the ideal candidate would begin in mid-September and stay on through mid-March. Saint Michael’s College is a fully residential liberal arts college in Colchester, Vermont. An NCAA Division II institution, Saint Mike’s competes as a member of the Eastern Intercollegiate Ski Association (EISA). Responsibilities: Assist the head coach in planning and running...
The Only Kid He Beat Hit a Tree: How Adam St. Pierre Backed Into a Life in Skiing
Matthew VoisinJuly 9, 2026
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Part one of a two-part series. Adam St. Pierre finished second to last in the first cross-country ski race of his life. The one skier he beat had crashed into a tree. He was a sophomore at Fall Mountain Regional High School, a rural school in Charlestown, New Hampshire,...
The National Nordic Foundation (NNF) has kicked off its annual Summer Auction, running through July 13, with a fundraising goal of $30,000 to support grassroots Nordic ski development across the country. As of this week, the auction had already raised roughly $8,700 toward that target. The online silent auction features a mix of gear, experiences, and unique memorabilia, including a fan bib signed by Jessie Diggins, an entry into the Alley Loop 42k, a training...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Rosie Brennan has stepped away from the World Cup, though she’s still figuring out exactly how to define the next chapter in her life. Retirement is the easy word, and in some ways, the accurate one. She is done with the World Cup. She is done with the version of...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Most athletes view the warm-up as preparation for the hard part of the workout. The reality is that the warm-up is often one of the most important parts of the session, because it largely determines the physiological response that follows. The purpose of a warm-up is not simply to get...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. The five minutes Beckie Scott spent at the finish line in Soldier Hollow on February 15, 2002, lasted longer than most things in her career. She had crossed the line in what felt like third place. She thought she had a medal. She did not yet know. “It was actually...
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. A new study landed in my feed last week, and I will admit the algorithm has my number. It steered me toward a question I have chewed on more than once here at FasterSkier: when it comes to low-intensity training, are you better off concentrating volume into one big week,...
Auburn Ski Club (ASC) is a historic non-profit organization dedicated to providing snow sports opportunities to the greater Northern California region since 1928. Today, ASC operates a snow sports Training Center on Donner Summit that provides athletic programs, USSS/FIS competition and training venues, and youth snow sports teams ranging from entry-level to elite for Alpine, Snowboard, Nordic, and Biathlon. The Training Center’s cross-country venue also operates as a 25-kilometer Nordic Center open to the public....
The Wrong 30,000
Matthew VoisinJune 3, 2026
This article was made possible through the generous support of our voluntary subscribers. If you value coverage like this, please support FasterSkier with a voluntary subscription. Will Sweetser thinks American Nordic skiing is recruiting in the wrong places. Here is what he is building on Donner Pass to prove it. This is the second of two parts — be sure to read part one, to learn about Sweetser’s background and coaching philosophy — Keep Showing Up:...
Cross-country skiing demands stamina, coordination, and resilience. It’s not always easy to balance developing those skills with the demands of “real life”: work, family, and other commitments. But should you spend all of the time that you do have on improving your skiing directly, or cross-training? For cross-country skiers, cross-training might include strength training, martial arts, running, cycling, swimming, roller skiing, tennis, and any number of other activities. Is such variety necessary, or even beneficial?...