Hey everyone and welcome to my blog!! I was stoked when the guys at Fasterskier.com asked me to come on board for this project. Not only did it give me an excuse to finally buy a digital camera, but it’s also a great way to show people what it is like out on the World Cup. On this blog you’ll get a little bit of training talk, a small amount of racing recap, but mostly you’ll get glimpse behind the scenes as we travel to different world cup races and a look at what it’s like to be an international ski racer. I will be sending in updates any way I can via computer and cell phone, and whenever possible posting photos and video clips. So stay tuned!!

Justin Freeman made his first trip on skis at the age of about 30 hours. He has been self powered on skis since 27 months, and has been racing continuously since he was seven years old. While Justin is still in retirement denial, he became a father in October of 2006, and lives with his wife and daughter at New Hampton School in New Hampton, NH, where he teaches mathematics and physics and coaches cycling. His primary goal this season is to win his second significant ski marathon (and first since 1999).

My name is Scott Perras and I am 24 years old. I started Biathlon pretty late in my life compared to most of my competition especially considering I didn't have neither a Cross Country or Shooting background.

I love cross country skiing for it's dynamic and health-oriented nature, and find learning technique and how to use it both meditative and gratifying. I'm really excited to have a place to post my adventures and training experiences here on FasterSkier.com. Skiing fast is all about living well and maintaining a high level of coolness in your life, so I will be writing about Nordic skiing, backcountry skiing, mountain running, camping, traveling, all with a training and racing lifestyle twist because that's how it should be.

FasterSkier editors will post regular column on current issues facing the sport of cross-country skiing, opinions, and general observations.

The Fairbanks Alaska Ski Team is a collection of athletes from, you guessed it, Fairbanks. Most elite skiers travel with more pairs of skis than there are athletes on FAST; and one volunteer coach with plenty of experience leads the small group. However, what the operation lacks in size it makes up for in quality; there are dozens of U23 and World Junior race starts among the group, with a few of the members looking to compete for World Cup start positions.

Hi there, my name is Brooke Gosling. I am very honored to be a part of the Fasterskier blogs and I hope that I can provide some interesting insight into the cross country ski world in Canada, if at anytime it gets too cheesy or boring, please let me know! For the last 3 years I have raced for x-c.com, however they have decided to not run a racing program for the 2008/2009 season. This year I will be racing under the Alberta World Cup Academy and I look forward to continuing my pursuit towards the 2010 Olympics and the 2009 World Championships under the direction of the AWCA.

I'm Nat Herz, and I'm a collegiate skier at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, in midcoast Maine. Fasterskier.com decided to trust me with a blog, so I'll use this site to bring you updates on training, racing, and hopefully some other exciting things, like epic weekend hiking excursions.

I started out as a Nordic skier but after one summer biathlon camp in 2002 and the few more months it took for snow to arrive I was determined to be a biathlete. I spent the 2007/2008 season preparing myself to enter into the biathlon world as a senior. The MWSC biathlon program under Gary Colliander in Fort Kent, Maine gave me the boost I needed to make it to the national team. I have the unique situation of attending classes at Dartmouth College during the spring and summer where I’ve figured out how to delicately balance academics with a hefty summer training load. Through this blog I’m hoping to set a good example on how to progress as an athlete while living an intensely academic lifestyle and hopefully be a model to young athletes who are unsure of which path to take when faced with similar options. I’m also hoping to provide a picture of the biathlon circuit and inspire any of you who have considered what fun it would be to combine shooting and skiing to give it a shot! I hope I can prove to everyone out there that you really can do it all.

Hello and welcome to my blog! I'm thrilled to be a part of the FastkerSkier bloggers. I'm a Grand Rapids, Minnesota native and a student of Williams College in Massachusetts who is spending a full year studying abroad in Lillehammer, Norway. I hope to use this blog to communicate and share my experiences and thoughts with all those back home, wherever that home may be. As you might have noticed, the title of the blog is in Norwegian together with the title of each blog post. I did this to add a little 'flavor' to the blog, but will offer a translation at the beginning of each post.

Hello ski fans! Welcome to my Fasterskier Blog! I am very excited to have this opportunity to share my experiences as an international ski racer and bring everyone along for the ride. Through this blog I hope to provide a female perspective, covering a variety of topics including random thoughts from the trails and racing details, as well as photos and videos. It’s sure to be a wild ride so check back often. Cheers!

With three individual NCAA national champions and over 15 NCAA All Americans in the past five seasons, the University of Alaska Fairbanks has established itself as one of the top Nordic ski programs in the country. Recent graduates now compete professionally in the US as well as on the World Cup circuit. This blog will give fasterskier.com readers a look inside Alaska Nanooks' training, racing, and studies with written reports, photos, and video. The blog might also dispel some of the myths about Fairbanks ("It's too cold in Fairbanks to get fast", "They train indoors all winter", "Those kids never go to school"). We hope you enjoy it.

My name is Robert Duncan Douglas. As an impressionable teenager I tried to take the Alpine World by storm. When I realized that this was not going to pan out, I decided to turn to running, so I ran three sports seasons ( cross country running, indoor and outdoor track) after my sophomore year in high school. From there I attended St Lawrence University for almost 2 years, initially as a runner. After a couple of running injuries, I made the decision to become a cross country skier. Against advice from the Track and Nordic Coaches ("These kids have been skiing since they could walk, You have no possibility at all of making the team"), I tried out anyway.

I grew up in the "Bulwark Against the Kingdom of the Antichrist,"** better known as the state of Massachusetts. I started Nordic skiing my freshman year after a cute older girl told me to join the high school's team (if you're reading this Amelia Bishop, thanks). I kept racing in college at Harvard University, and now that I've graduated I'm assistant coaching at Bowdoin College.

Burke Mountain Academy’s Nordic Team is signing onto the FasterSkier Blog Squad, and is looking forward to sharing experiences and ideas with skiers from all over the ski world. Burke Mountain is located in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom and provides an opportunity to train for Nordic or Alpine skiing, and to continue with high level secondary academics. At Burke the Athletic and Academic programs mesh and cooperate. Goals of Burke’s Nordic program are to help athletes to an understanding of a lot of the “why’s” of training, and to develop training intelligence and independence. Our Nordic team is small, but busy. We travel a lot and are eager to share trips and camps with other teams. We are developing a post grad program for focused skiers looking to put in a training year after high school, and before or during the college experience. We’ll do our best to keep you up to date on our doings, and look forward to hearing from you.

Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) is proud to join the FasterSkier Blog Team. Based in Sun Valley, Idaho, SVSEF provides training and coaching in four disciplines: Nordic, Alpine, and Freestyle skiing, and Snowboarding. All programs offer a team structure to provide training to athletes competing at both developmental and nationally competitive levels. The Nordic program consists of four different teams: the Olympic Development Team (ODT), the Competition (Comp) Team, the Prep Team, and the Devo Team. Athletes from the ODT and Comp Team will contribute to this blog as they train, race, travel, and live the life of an elite ski racer. Hopefully this will help to spread the ‘All In’ attitude across the country… Read On!

Welcome to my blog. I skied my first race at the age of six. I have had a burning desire to ski fast ever since. I will be posting updates on my heavy training load and world cup race schedule on this blog. My website www.krisfreeman.net will continue as a more physiological examination of my performances. I will also post a few diabetes specific articles on my personal site.

Hello Everyone! Welcome to my new Fasterskier blog!!! I am psyched to have this opportunity to give everyone a glimpse into my life as a member of the U.S. Continental Cup Team and the SVSEF ODT team. Check back often for the latest from U.S. Ski Team camps, SVSEF ODT training and other random adventures!

I have been racing my cross country skis since I was seven. Now I am thirty one with no end in sight. With this blog I will try to keep you updated on what keeps me at this sport.

A big hello to Fasterskier readers! We are excited to be joining the ranks of Fasterskier blogs so we can share with parents, friends, and alumni our experiences training and racing in the foothills of Mount Mansfield at the University of Vermont. The quiet country roads, bike paths, and roller-ski trails are ideal for roller-skiing in the fall. The mountains are great for hiking and skiing in the winter and the 6 cross country ski areas within an hour of campus allow for a wide variety of training and racing opportunities in the winter. UVM is centrally located in New England which keeps our travel times to a minimum and lets our student athletes strike a good balance between studying, training, and racing.

The University of Utah Ski Team is psyched to start a blog on FasterSkier.com. Tune in here for the latest updates on our training, racing, and happenings from the Beehive State.

My name is Ian Nesbitt, I am a senior Nordic captain at Holderness School in New Hampshire. I was really psyched when FasterSkier offered me a chance to have a blog. It certainly is an upgrade from my previous half-serious training blog. Through this blog, I will document my day-by-day training throughout the summer and into the running and ski seasons as a way for other young skiers to be inspired. I will also post GPS/heart rate training analysis of these two sports through the MotionBased.com training website.

Hello cross country skiing! As a former basketball, soccer, and softball player, I played lacrosse at DII St. Thomas Aquinas college in NY. After graduating I moved out to Wisconsin to live and work at Camp Gray (a Catholic summer camp and year-round retreat center). I was worried that, without a team to be a part of and nothing to train for, I would go out to lunch (apparently that's a synonym for crazy). Fortunately, a couple friends started telling me about skiing. Almost instantly, I began training. Even before the first snow fell, skiing had taken over my life. six months,over a hundred inches of snow, and two races later, I am now at the beginning of my first full year of training and racing. Though I am new to this sport, have no sponsors, little money and a full-time job outside of skiing, I still have dreams as big as any elite athlete. If all goes will I will soon be an elite skier, winning races and dreaming of the Olympics. Until then I will be sharing all of it here on my blog: training, work, elaborate schemes to elicit sponsorships, crazy dreams, and more! In my life, everything relates to skiing.