What's it like hosting a crew of Californians in Oslo, Norway? A junior coach with Heming IL and the Norwegian College of Elite Sports explains. He also brought a select group to the West Coast for U.S. Junior Nationals in Truckee, Calif.
FasterSkier tracked down Petter Eliassen, the 2014/2015 Swix Ski Classics overall winner in his rookie season, for an exclusive interview this month. The 29-year-old Norwegian happily shared everything from training and recovery tips, to advice on double poling.
Alaskan John Wood, 67, explains his journey in athletics after a serious knee injury at age 21, and how he recovered from a total knee replacement to win his age group at the 2015 Classic Birkie with the help of an Anchorage surgeon, physical therapists and the APU masters program.
The following is a tribute to a high-school coach who impacted hundreds of young skiers in Glens Falls, N.Y., over the last 30-plus years, submitted by a former athlete.
An intimate look at first-timer Seth Adams' adventures with NANANordic, which introduces youth to nordic skiing in remote regions of Northwest Alaska.
CXC masters skier and American Birkebeiner board member Charlie Dee recalls the story of two subsequent days of skiing in 2014 and the memories of late coach Igor Badamshim that came with them.
This weekend, Olivia Bouffard-Nesbitt, of Rocky Mountain Racers, will make her World Cup debut in Östersund, Sweden. Less than a week later, she'll appear at her first World Championships in Falun, Sweden, where she hopes to start the classic sprint and 10 k freestyle.
In this revived Pro Workout, Caitlin Gregg (formerly Caitlin Compton) explains how to deal with challenging and unexpected circumstances, especially before race day. “You need to have the ability to be flexible and to understand that there are some things you can’t control,” she said back in 2010. “But there are tons of options. The beauty of cross-country skiing is that we do lots of cross-training in the offseason.”
Optimizing performance is a tricky business for winter-endurance athletes. Climate variations, equipment choices and training methods are all factors in a successful performance, and frequently leave nutrition at the bottom of a long checklist. For many reasons, hydration is an overlooked aspect of winter-sports performance.
A master skier learns a valuable lesson about aerobic training while blowing out the early season cobwebs at the start of the season in West Yellowstone, Mont.
After a career-best finish on Sunday, Canada's Rosanna Crawford takes us through a typical week on the IBU World Cup and explains how and when she fits in intensity sessions, a.k.a. race prep.
What does a World Cup racer do after, say, a mini tour for recovery? We asked Canada's Alex Harvey, who placed 10th overall in last weekend's Lillehammer triple. He opted for an hour-and-15-minute run on Monday in Davos, led by coach Tor-Arne Hetland, who lives in Davos.
While many in the nordic community flock to West Yellowstone each November, this New Mexico master describes what Thanksgiving skiing in Crested Butte is like, with individual attention and a homologated 5 k loop on the edge of town.
This gem comes from Matt Gelso, which he wrote three years ago after taking fourth in two distance races in West Yellowstone. Gelso, now 26, made the podium at this year's SuperTour opener with a 15 k skate victory in West last Friday. "I require a longer and very substantial warm-up, some simply need a few minutes to move around," Gelso explained. "It is important that you find your own unique methods and progression that gets you perfectly warmed up before a race."
On Friday, Kris Freeman, 34, will start the season in West Yellowstone for just the second time in his life. He's had quite a journey since his last visit in 2005, and even in the last year, and he explains how he's recovered from chronic fatigue and two procedures, and kept it all in perspective with his diabetes work.
Reese Hanneman spent most of last March on the World Cup circuit in Europe, so being in Finland is a little like coming home for the 24-year-old SuperTour leader -- except that he's 11 time zones away from home in Alaska.
With Thanksgiving just over a week away, we take some of the research out of making dessert by offering some not-so-mainstream pumpkin recipes (some of which are vegan and grain-free) from POPSUGAR.com.
We caught up with Caitlin Gregg (Team Gregg/Madshus) before she hopped aboard several planes en route to Muonio, Finland, where she'll train with the U.S. Ski Team for the next week before the season-opening World Cup in Kuusamo.
Mark Rajack, a dual citizen of Canada and Trinidad and Tobago, started cross-country skiing just two years ago in 2012, but in the time since, he’s not only learned to ski and compete, but he’s also set his sights higher than many will in their skiing careers: namely world champs and 2018 Winter Olympics.
Part of the joy and the pain and, ultimately, the poetry of a lifetime of skiing is how the sport focuses one’s attention on natural processes that are both cyclical and unpredictable. This year Southcentral Alaska caught its first real snow on Oct. 20, and early season skiing has been great, but not in the usual ways or places.