Skiing on the web 3
- FasterSkier.com
Date first posted on eCommunity - 10
June 2007
FasterSkier.com is a very large website – it has a
lot of categories
and there is a lot of material in each category. It says it
is "North America's premier website for cross country skiers", a
claim that it supports persuasively with statistics showing 10,000
daily readers and 30,000 unique monthly readers.
It is a commercial site, making its living from advertising and
sponsorship. Big brands are there, like Fischer and Atomic, as well
as smaller concerns like independent gear shops.
Its prime focus is on ski-racing.
The HOMEPAGE gives breaking news items, many of which will be of
interest only to the dedicated ski-racer. ("Magnar Dalen continues
as head coach for the Finnish national team." "Jens Arne Svartedal
of Norway won a demonstration sprint race in Tallin recently".) Some
of these stories come via reciprocal arrangements with other
websites like www.langrenn.com, the big Norwegian one.
Away from the homepage, the site is organised into four main
sections: Racing, Training, News and Features. These are all big
sections. FasterSkier.com was founded back in 2002, just before the
Salt Lake Olympics, so it has had several years to build up material.
RACING
The largest part of this section is about North America, with
subsections devoted to the US National series, the Continental Cup,
Junior racing and Collegiate events.
Of wider interest is the section's reportage of Ski Marathons. This
encompasses Worldloppet events as well as other well-known races.
Some of the latter are large, like Skarverennet with its 12,000
competitors. Others are more homely, like Iceland's Fossavatn -
after which all 240 racers "were treated to a buffet of home baked
cakes and pastries at the prize ceremony".
One of the racing subsections complements the on-snow race coverage
by featuring dryland events, chiefly in USA and Norway. Mainly this
section features rollerski races, but there are also mountain
marathons and "ultras".
TRAINING
Here you will find "a wide range of training articles to help make
you a faster (and better) skier".
It's a nicely eclectic section. Recently it has featured articles on
strength training (for example a focussed piece on dead lifts and
squats), and more general work on post-season recovery and
motivation. At one end of the spectrum there are articles from top
coaches, like the "Message to the U.S. Cross Country Ski Racing
Community" from Pete Vordenberg, Head Coach of the U.S. Cross
Country Ski Team, which exhorts: "If we want to win medals
internationally two basic things are true and vital. One - this task
rests on us. We are the solution; there is no one else. Two - Now is
the time. There is no tomorrow; it is all about what we do today."
At the other end of the spectrum there are articles that are, well,
younger, like Laura Valaas' piece on over-training: "So I dance, my
intellect with my body, through these days of training. Like
following my dance partner in a salsa dance, where the coming move
is communicated through eye contact and slight pressure through the
hands, training between the descending cliffs of under and over
training requires attention to the subtlest warnings my body sends."
There are training subsections on rollerskiing and on health
(predominantly reportage about injured competitors and about doping)
and there is a subsection entitled Adventures – with articles
like "Why is a 70-Year-Old Swede Roller Skiing Across the Entire
Country of Canada?"
NEWS
This section contains news features that are more general than the
reportage that appears on the home page.
There are also interesting interviews with a wide range of people
involved in XC skiing. A recent one is with Marty Hall, past Head
Coach of US and Canadian XC ski teams. Another is with Bill
McKibben, a prominent environmentalist.
The section also contains job vacancies and news from the site's
sponsors. And there is a useful subsection called "gear news" where
you can learn, for example, how to construct a "hot box", a sort of
slow oven in which you leave for several hours your newly-waxed
skis, to help them absorb the wax.
FEATURES
This section has a subsection on Adventure Racing and another that
features reviews of XC related articles in the mainstream press.
There is also a semi-regular feature on "coaches around the
country", in which the coaches give their training advice and also
comment on more general topics.
If you are new to FasterSkier.com it might take you a little while
to get into it. Partly this is simply because it is such a large
site. And partly it is because around 85% of the readership is from
North America, which inevitably means that much of the news
reporting won't mean much to people based in the UK. However there
is a lot of very good general stuff that travels well and any reader
should find a lot that is of interest.
And if you find that you really like the site – and if you have a
bob or two to spare - you can buy it. FasterSkier.com is up for
sale, and has been since March 2007. You can find details on the
site itself. The for-sale notice promises:
"FasterSkier.com as a business would be ideal for a ski enthusiast
(or group of enthusiasts) who enjoys following cross-country ski
racing and training, and likes to write. The desire to travel and
the desire to interview other skiers and coaches are helpful
attributes as well."
Tempted? Perhaps here at last is that glamorous, ethical and well-
paid job you've been hunting for . . .
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