Last May, FasterSkier wrote about the retirement of University of New Hampshire’s (UNH) legendary ski coach Cory Schwartz, who had been with the University for 42 years. This summer, UNH named Shane MacDowell— the team’s former assistant coach— as Schwartz’s replacement. Following in the footsteps of a person whose career stretches back to the Reagan administration is a daunting task. Doing so at a university which has a dedicated and passionate alumni base is even more of a challenge. Shane MacDowell was generous enough to take time to speak with FasterSkier about taking on the challenge of following the career of a legend, and the difficulties involved in coaching a high profile ski program.

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

FasterSkier: First off, congratulations are still in order. You’re still kind of in the early honeymoon phases?

Shane MacDowell: Thanks. Yeah, summer was kind of the perfect time for this to happen. So, it’s kind of easing into it before the chaos begins.

FasterSkier: Shane, where do you call home?

Shane MacDowell: The past three years my family and I’ve been back and forth between Lake Placid, NY and New Hampshire. But now we’re going to be living in Somersworth, New Hampshire.

FasterSkier: Let’s start with one of the harder questions right off the bat. You’re obviously following in the footsteps of Cory Schwartz, who was at UNH for over four decades, and that has to be a challenge— following in the footsteps of a person who has become pretty much an institution. So how are you approaching that aspect of it, if you’re even considering that aspect of it?

Shane MacDowell: Yes, I’m considering that aspect of it. I’m definitely trying to be my own person, and my own coach, with that thought, I feel as though I’ve had an incredible experience running up to this point. Right out of college I worked for Boulder Nordic Sport with Roger Knight and that set me up on the waxing side of things. From there I worked at Green Mountain Valley School and then at Northern Michigan University (NMU) which gave me some really unique perspectives on coaching and leading a program, especially with Northern Michigan under Sten Fjeldheim. I got to really see what a top tier program is like, and then obviously working with Cory (Schwartz). Like you said, he’s an institution, and I had the pleasure and ability to ski for him when I was in college and then to come back and to be able to work with him and see how things work on the other side from being an athlete. I think that helped. It really set me up to be in this position because at UNH it’s not just about being a coach. We do a significant amount of fundraising, and our alumni outreach and alumni engagement are a huge part, which is great. I think what makes the entire ski program unique is because all the alumni are so engaged with the current team and how the program is doing. They want to give back and they want to still be a part of the program. Following in Cory’s footsteps is my goal, and not disrupting the foundation that he has laid, but also adding my own layer to it or my own character to it by doing things just a little bit differently. I think if somebody would come into this program after everything Cory has done to make it what it is — saving it on several occasions—and then to change everything about it, would be making a massive mistake.

FasterSkier: Whenever there’s a coaching change in any collegiate sport program after a long term coach has left, there are inevitable comparisons which get made and you’re going to face that as well. Is that something you’re prepared for?

Shane MacDowell: I think I’m prepared for it, and I think it makes it a little bit easier in that transition because it’s not like I’m coming from the outside as a new hire. This will be my 4th year coaching with UNH. I wouldn’t say it’s as stark as like, a Division One football program coach coming in from a whole different program and those comparisons being made … I’ve been part of the program.

FasterSkier: So you think having been an assistant coach at UNH for the last three years, is going to make the transition easier for you?

Shane MacDowell:  I think that makes it a little bit easier. There’s obviously a lot more things that I need to take on, with being a program director as well, that it’s going to take me a little while to get up to speed on. Cory did an amazing job of that alumni outreach that I spoke of before. And, getting up to speed on that and keeping that engagement going is definitely going to be one of the biggest … I hesitate to say hurdles to overcome, but it’s a big step to add on to, trying to run the Nordic program and oversee Alpine as well. So yes, on some of it, it is going to make it easier to transition, but there’s definitely going to be challenges along the way as well.

FasterSkier: Let me follow up with that. Your official title is director of Skiing and Head Nordic coach, which is the same title that Cory had. That includes directing and supervising downhill as well. Do you feel that position holds or creates any tension between the downhill and cross- country programs, especially when you have the head coach whose background predominantly is cross country?

Shane MacDowell: I don’t think it creates tension. There are a couple of other programs around the country that do it the same way and in certain cases, the Alpine coach is the director of the Nordic program. When Cory was in the position, or when I’m in the position, it’s not like we’re telling the Alpine program what they can or can’t do or how they should be training or anything like that. We’re one team that is headed by the director of the program. We’re not looked at as Alpine and Nordic. So to have one person, whether it be the Alpine head coach, or the Nordic head coach be the lead on that, I think it’s beneficial. Because I think when you separate the two, we would start competing for fundraising dollars within our alumni base and this way, when it’s looked at as one program, we’re doing it all as one unit.

FasterSkier:  In your position, will you actually be involved in coaching the Alpine athletes at all or working with them in any capacity?

Shane MacDowell: Coaching No. I won’t be on the hill coaching them, going through gates, that’s what Brian Blank and Parker Costa are doing. Interacting, yes. I said we’re one team, so we certainly interact as a team. Our Alpine and Nordic are very close with one another. Sometimes we’ll have training sessions together for dry-land, usually like our more explosive workouts, doing plyometrics, or sometimes we’ll get a speedball game going. I’m not sure if you know what speedball is?

FasterSkier: I don’t.

Shane MacDowell: It’s kind of a combination of two hand touch football and soccer. But you know we have those engagements where we get the two teams together and it keeps the team close and reminds them that we are in this together. It’s not just one team or the other. So, in that regard, I hesitate to call it coaching, but definitely coordinating to get together and keep that initiative going that we are one team working towards the same goal.

FasterSkier: In your remarks at your introductory press conference, you mentioned the time you spent at NMU (Northern Michigan University) under Sten Fjeldheim— who I think it’s fair to say is another legendary coach. You’re in a unique position where you’ve worked under both of these legends. Can you expound a little bit on what coaching lessons you learned from Sten and maybe if you can make a comparison of Sten’s methods versus Cory’s?

Shane MacDowell: I strongly believe that when I went and worked with Sten at Northern Michigan, I very much went to school with him on training methods, and technique. Sten is a technician when it comes to all of that, and I had the opportunity to work with him, who I think was probably one of the most successful coaches that the U.S. has ever had— so many national champions and some pretty incredible teams. Let me go on with Cory before I kind of compare the two. With Cory I had the background of the training and being able to write plans and have confidence in it and evaluate technique when I came to UNH. But with Cory I think I learned— and this isn’t to say I wasn’t learning it under Sten either—I learned how to find my coaching style a little bit more, work on the coach-athlete interaction, a little bit more patient scenarios and how to approach certain situations. And then also the other aspect of the program too is with fundraising, and I keep coming back to that which for our program is just huge. They have two pretty distinctly different styles, but I think it’s by necessity of the program. With UNH, fundraising and alumni engagement is huge for us because it has to be. Fundraising and alumni engagement was present at Northern Michigan, but it wasn’t as much of a must, so you could certainly focus a lot more time on the training aspect of things.

FasterSkier: I think it might be fair to say that NMU might have a little higher name recognition when it comes to attracting international athletes? Is that something that played into how the coaches handled athletes or affected the coaching at all?

Shane MacDowell: It’s actually kind of funny because it surprised me when I was working for Sten that his first international athlete wasn’t until when I was actually skiing in school in 2005, 2006. Up until then, he had only had Americans. And even when I was working with him, we had a couple of foreign athletes, but I would say the majority of the team was all Americans. My first year there, we had the best men’s team in the country at the NCAAs and they’re all from the Midwest which is pretty unique. You can’t take anything away from Sten and Northern on how successful they were. But to compare the Northern program to the UNH program or any program that has an Alpine team as well is like comparing apples and oranges. Because when you have an Alpine team as well, all of a sudden, your scholarships get cut in half for both programs. You’re allowed to have X number of scholarships, but then that gets split between Alpine and Nordic. With Northern they’re allowed the same number of scholarships, but it’s only for Nordic, so the power of having that many more scholarships just on the Nordic side, might play into being able to entice that foreign talent a little bit more.

FasterSkier:  NMU has an Alpine program but it’s a separate entity, right?

Shane MacDowell: Yeah, it’s a club team, so they don’t even compete in the same league.

FasterSkier: Working with Sten, can you put your finger on one or two major takeaway coaching lessons that you learned from him?

Shane MacDowell: The biggest takeaway from him was writing a training plan; writing one that can help the athletes be successful and improve throughout their time on the team. He was just incredible at knowing what an athlete needed and prescribing the right training and holding them to it and making them accountable. So, I would say, a combination of knowing training, but then also having that ability to get the respect from the athletes because they know that you know what you’re talking about and holding them accountable to get that work in to reach their best potential. And then the second is probably his ability to analyze technique and really hone in on where an athlete’s deficiencies are and being able to relay that in a way that the athlete understands is probably another big take away.

FasterSkier: Moving back to something else that you were talking about earlier regarding the importance of alumni outreach. UNH’s Nordic fan base is different than it is at a lot of other schools—it’s more involved. The importance of fundraising is high on the list of things that you have to do. As the head coach having to be involved with the fundraising, the training of athletes, and the administration of the program … it’s a lot for one person. What’s your strategy for tackling all that, because it seems like it’s just so much?

Shane MacDowell: It’s not really just all on one person. For the Nordic program we just hired a new assistant coach to replace myself with Brandon Herhusky, who was the assistant at UVM the past few years. So, it’s not all just falling on me. As mentioned before, we’re working as one team so we’re not engaging just the Nordic program, we’re engaging all of our alumni. Having our Alpine staff there to assist with that and help our program to have even greater outreach is great because then all of that responsibility isn’t necessarily just falling on one person’s shoulders.

FasterSkier: When you were an assistant at UNH, were you able to kind of sit back and watch how Cory processed and worked with the alumni and alumni relationships and saw how he managed it?

Shane MacDowell: Yes, and I think that’s been one of the biggest advantages of stepping into this role. I’ve had that experience of being able to see how Cory engaged with the alumni not only through email and social media, but to try to have at least one alumni event a year. During the Carnival season this past year we had it at the Dartmouth Carnival. So, we had as many alumni that wanted to come and had sort of a little banquet style dinner with everybody, and they actually got to come and watch the races as well. So just having that sort of engagement with them, keeping alumni involved as much as possible and up to date with who’s on the team, what the team’s doing— their successes both on the ski trails and in the classroom goes a long way. Our alumni obviously look at the team and their time on the team as being very special and still want to be involved with that and give back in in any way that they can.

FasterSkier: You don’t see it as quite the same daunting task as an outsider does looking in terms of managing all these different aspects of the program. It seems that there is an infrastructure in place, with people, to help manage all that?

Shane MacDowell: There’s definitely the infrastructure in place and like I mentioned earlier, Cory did an amazing job of laying that foundation. I would be sorely mistaken, if I were to say I’m not going to screw this up a little bit at one point or another. There’s going to be growing pains for me because it is new, but there are those other aspects to the program that help you tackle all the tasks that we do have.

Please revisit FasterSkier for part II of our interview with Shane MacDowell.

Skiing-wise, Ian Torchia has nearly done it all. And now, in life, he’s ready to do some more.

In an Instagram post following the American Birkiebeiner, Torchia announced that he is retiring from professional skiing with his trademark blend of gratitude and humor, saying, “In the end I won’t remember the races won (a few) or lost (many more) but the lifelong bonds of teammates, the support of friends and family, and how special the ski community as a whole is.”

Heading into retirement, Torchia seemed to take a victory lap through the Midwest marathon circuit, starting with a win in the 37 k classic City of Lakes Loppet in Minneapolis on February 5th. He then went back-to-back to the following weekend at the Mora Vassaloppet, winning both the 48 k skate and classic races within one weekend. At the Birkie on February 26th, Torchia finished 5th in the 50 k skate, roughly 15 seconds behind the winner, Gerard Agnellet of France. Not a bad run.

That skiing contains truths about how to live a good life is not a unique notion, but Torchia had a one-of-a-kind knack for finding those truths and sharing what he learned. He also did so, of course, while racing very fast. Torchia lived out the wildest dreams that every young Midwestern kid has when lined up for the Junior Birkie – coming from Rochester, Minnesota to win a junior national title, ski for legendary coach Sten Fjeldheim at Northern Michigan University (NMU), add to that program’s legacy by winning a NCAA title in 2018, be nominated to the US Ski Team, race the World Cup, win the Birkie in 2021, and become training partners with some of the best athletes in the US, like Jessie Diggins.

It’s been a busy path that’s seen him in constant movement. But that suits Torchia.

When FasterSkier caught up with him less than a week after his announced retirement, he was stepping out from a visit to the St. Louis Aquarium on a day trip with his brother’s kids. Already on the move, Torchia was gracious enough to share what’s next, and what, in these early days of retrospection, he has learned from our sport.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

On the decision to retire and what comes next:

Ben Theyerl / FasterSkier (FS) : Starting with a pretty simple question; how are you feeling right now?

Ian Torchia (IT): I’m feeling great. I’m in St. Louis with my brother’s family and their five kids. It’s been a little bit of a whirlwind. I’m just taking a week off – not running or doing anything which I haven’t done in a long, long time. But I’m just feeling very energetic about what’s next.

I’m looking forward to a second interview for a job right now. I want to get some experience as a medical scribe before going to medical school to become an osteopathic physician. Between that, taking the MCAT, and a few prerequisites, it’s going to be a busy next two years.

FS: I know you just retired, but have to ask, any plans to throw your hat into citizen races the rest of the season?

IT: Maybe the Great Bear Chase. Realistically, my next race effort is going to be in Marquette, MI with my college buddies. There’s a route [in Marquette] where you go down County Road 510 to the Lake (Superior) and back, it’s 18mi or so, and we’ve wondered whether on an icy day you could do it in under an hour.

FS: Have you thought about what racing looks like next season for you?

IT: I want to do Senior Nationals in [Houghton, Michigan]. I wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t in Houghton (Torchia is based out of Ann Arbor, MI). And probably, the Birkie.

FS: Which races would you want to race again at Nationals? Like are you targeting the 30 k, or have you thought that far yet?

IT: I mean, I had a lot of fun with sprint’s this year, and I qualified for my first final at Nationals, so while I haven’t thought too much about it, I’m going to miss doing those types of races so why not do one more? It’s more just that I want to do the races that I know that I like racing. A shorter, classic race is not really my forte, but like a longer classic race, or a skate marathon, I’m game. I think it’s a skate 30 k at Nationals next year, so that would be cool.

FS: With your goals set towards medical school, have you put any thought towards where you’d like to go?

IT: This is all early, but Pacific Northwest University in Yakima, Washington has an osteopathic school, and I think it’d be really cool to move out West for four years. But Kameron and I (Torchia’s wife) have definitely talked about coming back to the Midwest when everything’s said and done. And specifically, Marquette. We just love that place so much.

FS: Backing up, what was the process of coming to the decision that now is the right time to step away from professional skiing?

IT: I think it started at the beginning of the training season in May. I talked about it with my wife, and we both agreed that I should give it my best shot to qualify for the Olympics, because that’s always been my goal. At the time we also looked out beyond this season and said, ‘you know, the journey to become a doctor is a long one,’ and I need to get started at some time. I wasn’t thinking beyond this season with skiing, and personally, I was okay with that.

A lot of it comes down to just wanting other parts of my life. It’s hard being away from Kameron and our dog. I give a lot of props to the members of the US Ski Team who are away from their loved ones for four to five months every winter. It’s hard to do it, and yeah, one big reason to retire was actually being able to live with my wife.

Number two is, and I don’t want it to be misconstrued, but skiing at a professional level means being a little selfish – it is a big focus on you and yourself, and everyone around you is working for you. I think about life, and at some point, I wanted to step back and give back, and I think that’s the main goal I have now. My goal to become an osteopathic physician is based around helping others, and there’s a lot of cool things in skiing to do that work on inspiring the youth and inspiring each other.

FS: Yeah, on the skiing end, I think I can say I’m sure there’s at least a hundred kids who would sign up for an “Ian Torchia skate clinic” at Wirth Park (in Minneapolis) anytime.

IT: (Laughing) Well, thanks. That’s something I want to try to bring here, actually, to Ann Arbor and downstate Michigan. When I go skiing on the one snowmaking loop around here, I really don’t see that many kids out. So if in these next few years, I could get something going where I can help bring even more kids out from Detroit and get them on skis, it would be really cool. I’d love to do that.

On a life, so far, spent skiing:

FS: I know it’s early, but I wanted to go all the way back and get your retrospective on your time in skiing, if you’re okay with that?

IT: Oh that’s all I’ve been thinking about, so yeah.

FS: You’re from Minnesota, which is pretty well-known, but what’s glanced over is you’re from Rochester, which is I-90, not I-94 — it’s south of most of the ski leagues and big clubs. Coming from there, what drew you to Nordic skiing over say, running, which you and your older brothers were also very successful in?

IT: I credit my mom for starting all of this. Like, they put me on skis the day before I turned two, apparently, and I definitely don’t remember that.

Beyond that, my parents started the high school team here in 2000 when I was five. I have four older siblings who are all four plus years older than me, and so since my mom had no choice but to bring me along, I was an honorary member of the team. That Rochester team has just grown and grown over the years – right now there’s like 200 kids every year and over half of those are newcomers who just want to try it out. I think they’re getting their first snowmaking loop now, which with the way things are going is important to being able to have a place to ski [in Rochester].

It was an unusual place to start skiing. My family was building the team, and I got to help build the trails. I look back and it may be what led me to love skate more than classic, since we didn’t have classic trails in high school.

I loved it. It was unique, but I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.

 FS: Then from there it was a Junior Nationals title, the Northern Michigan (NMU) team, NCAA championships, the US ski teams, the Birkie win. You’ve seen a lot of the sport. What does that journey look like from where you’re sitting right now?

IT: (pausing) I mean, yeah, it really is just looking back on it all. It sounds funny to say, but I look at that Junior Nationals title my junior year of high school as a pivotal moment in my life. I give a lot of credit to Sten Fjeldheim who met with me like a week after that happened. I was thinking I was going to run in college, and I ended up winning my first junior nationals race, he sent me an email, and the rest is history. It’s the one moment I look back on and go, where would I be now?

So I guess I would say to Sten, ‘Thanks for finding me and putting me on the path I’m on.’ I’m grateful for everyone who’s helped me out on the way. The support, as I look back on it, is insane. My best friends have come from skiing. My wife – I wouldn’t know her if it wasn’t for skiing (Kameron and Ian were teammates at NMU). It’s shaped my life.

Yeah, I’m done with the professional side of it, but I’m going to be doing the Birkie for many years to come.

FS: To return to that moment, you mentioned Sten and NMU. That’s a big legacy in Midwestern and US skiing that you were instrumental in sustaining. What made Sten and that experience special?

IT: I was just getting a massage from this guy in Marquette, and we were talking about Sten, and my masseuse of all people was like, ‘man, Marquette would be a different place if Sten Fjeldheim had never been here.’ And it’s so true. He transformed not only the Northern Michigan team into a powerhouse but helped make Marquette a skiing community. And he’s just a force of nature. The first time I ever talked to him, even across the phone, I was getting fired up. As soon as I hung up the phone, I wanted to ski for that guy. He has a way of lighting a fire inside you and getting you to be your best self. I definitely miss being coached by him. 

Marquette is my favorite place in the world and I’m lucky to say that it’s my wife’s too. It just has everything that you could ever want. Every year, it seemed I would find a new thing that I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, you can do this here.’ Freshman year it was just running on trails all the time, the next it was mountain biking, and the next I discovered surfing on Lake Superior. It’s a cool playground with a Midwest community and a Midwest vibe, and it would be great one day to return there. I have a pipe dream that my friends could all live next to each other, and yeah, that would just be too good to be true.

FS:  That’s going to be quite the lineup in the waves out there.

Both talking here and reading back on a few interviews you’ve done with FasterSkier, I keep being struck by just how much you seem to revel in both the sport of Nordic skiing, and the people who you do the sport with. A couple of years ago, you said [to FasterSkier] that one of your all-time favorite moments was having three All-Americans from NMU in the same year with you, Adam Martin, and Jake Brown.

What is special about nordic skiing as a sport for you? What’s been at the center of the sport for you as you kind of climbed up its ranks?

IT: It sounds cliche, but it’s not the destination. It’s the journey along the way. My favorite memories are out, training on the roads, doing three-hour ODs, the trails and the van rides.

It’s crazy people who love to be out in crazy weather pushing their hardest. Like, you don’t need any team bonding activities when you’re out on a rainy cold three-hour OD. That’s the thing bringing you together.

FS: Two-part question: Looking back over everything, what’s one – your favorite result? And two – your favorite moment?

IT: Favorite result; winning NCAAs was really special. It wasn’t the hardest I’d pushed in a race, but the tactics are what I’m really proud of. I think oftentimes I feel like I have a responsibility in a pack to go hard, and so it was a testament to my teammates that a sprint developed there and I was able to come out on top.

Favorite moment: The Birkie Classic [last year] because I hadn’t won the day before (the 2020 Birkie was raced over four days, with a Saturday race featuring an elite skate race, and a Sunday race featuring an elite classic race) and there were just crazy conditions. I bonked and pushed through it.

FS: I mean, I’ve been on the Birkie trail all my life, and watching you trudge through those conditions (a couple of inches of new, wet, heavy, snow covered what was essentially ice during the race) was one of the crazier scenes I’ve ever seen.

IT: It was hard to understand-type ‘crazy.’

FS: Picking the Birkie as a favorite moment reminds me that you’ve really been one of the more fun athletes to watch at that race the past couple of years. Not only last year, but also the year before — I have to imagine skiing with Niklas Dyrhaug was pretty cool.

IT: Oh yeah, thanks for bringing that up. I was proud of that one too, because I was having cramps about halfway through and pushed through those and just kind of stayed in it. I wasn’t battling it out with Dyrhaug at the end, but got into a sprint for second and ended up with it. That was definitely a special race too.

I mean, just doing this is making me realize there’s many little special moments along the way. Just a lot of special moments…

FS: Which brings you to where you are now. I know that’s a lot of big questions but…

IT: I should also say that Stratton (Mountain School) was huge the past couple of years. I hadn’t had a great last year of college, but they still brought me on the team and that was just the most unique experience. Getting to learn alongside Jessie (Diggins), Simi and Sophie (Hamilton), and Kyle Bratrud. Pat (O’Brien) especially drew me to that team. It was just like Marquette with it being another special pocket of the world in Vermont where Nordic skiing is just the thing.

FS: Yeah, like you just rattled off being teammates with Jessie, Sophie, and Simi – that’s three of the most influential athletes in US skiing history right there…

IT: I mean, yeah. I have an Instagram post about it from right after Jessie won the silver (medal, in the Olympic 30 k freestyle). I had a matched interval bounding workout last fall where I was at threshold, and she had max. five-minute sets. We’re fifteen seconds into the first one and she was already breathing like a truck. Then she just keeps it pinned there for the next, I don’t even know, thirty or thirty-five minutes.

I was watching the Olympic 30 k live and was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve seen this film before.’ When you see her doing that on the television, it’s pretty cool. When she’s right next to you it makes you go, ‘Ok, if I want to be that good, I have to work this hard.’

FS: She goes out and turns in a performance that’s not just the iconic moment of the Olympics for skiing, but for the whole country. That’s a pretty unique way to experience it.

IT: Just one of the coolest.

FS: So, after all that then, do you have any other thoughts?

IT: I’m just lucky, and happy…and probably gotta get back to the aquarium. 

FS: Well then, I’ll end by saying congratulations from all of us out there in skiing.

IT: Thanks man. Thanks everyone.

Sten Fjeldheim, the cross-country ski coach at Northern Michigan University announced his retirement on March 30th. He coached and mentored at the school for 35 years. This piece from The Mining Journal speaks to Fjeldheim’s legacy and the many accolades NMU skiers achieved under his tutelage. Below are thoughts about Fjeldheim from former NMU skier, U.S. Ski Team athlete and Head Coach, Peter Vordenberg. According to a NMU press release, Fjeldheim had this to say about Vordenberg’s 1993 individual NCAA National Championship: “Of course Peter Vordenberg winning the NCAA National Championship in 1993 I’ll never forget. We had just moved into the NCAA in 1992 and to have a national champion a year later was really exciting.”

***

Sten is a pure jolt of electric fire. He is energy.  

Sten has spent decades electro charging hundreds and hundreds of ski racers.  Electricity doesn’t pass from one to another without a jolt, without that shock, that zap, that spark. Electricity doesn’t amble, it jumps. Zip!  

It crackles.  It singes, burns, ignites.  

Get shocked, and you can taste it, smell your own hair on fire. Sten is fury and passion and joy and love. Sten Fjeldheim can drive without looking. 

In my day he could beat almost everyone on the team and most of the rest of the racers in the U.S. too. At Senior Nationals back in the early ‘90’s, I recall Sten waxing team skis late into the night, kick waxing in the morning, shepherding the team on course to race and then pulling his own bib on. I want to say he was top-10. I’m certain he then drove the van back to the hotel without looking at the road once, telling outrageous stories the whole way. That’s how I remember it.

The vein. That’s what we called it when Sten got mad. He was balding in that Scandinavian sort of way; blond hair pulling back off his forehead but still flowing behind.  The vein descended as a zig-zag lightning bolt from upper temple to down near his eye. Seeing that vein bulge out was not a good thing. 

Fire heats, and fire burns.  

The vein meant you were about to get burned. Sometimes that fire got you out the door, lit a fire under your butt, as the saying goes.  And as the saying goes, Sten’s passion for skiing spread like wildfire. Sten is the ignition point. From there the whole team catches it, passes it, from one to the next until the whole team is on fire. That’s how a team gets hot. That’s how a team gets on fire. You need someone to light it and fan the flames, and that someone is Sten.

I don’t have any facts. Which is something that wouldn’t slow Sten down either.  So here it goes. I am pretty sure the NMU Wildcats have won more NCAA cross-country ski titles than any other team. I mean cross-country only, rather than combined with alpine. And what about homegrown NCAA champions? I mean American kids – has anyone coached more American kids to NCAA titles? I doubt it. 

I’m not going to count.  Electricity doesn’t stop to count. 

I can’t imagine Sten not coaching. What does electricity do when it stops moving?  Static electricity doesn’t stay static for long, get close enough and Zang!  I’m not getting anywhere near the U.P. if Sten is retired.

I never saw Sten sit still. I’m really trying hard to remember a single time. I can’t.  I’ve never seen it. Most of my memories of Sten are out skiing, running or rollerskiing. Some of the best times of my life, running through those vibrant colors of a U.P fall with Sten and my teammates, everything on fire, exhilarating, vibrating, charging down those sandy trails through the woods.  

And come winter flying along the trails up and over those punchy Midwestern hills just knowing we were on the right track to success. Just knowing it. I recognize that now as what people call faith. It was something you felt, something you just knew. 

Sten could have been a preacher. Fire and brimstone style, getting the whole congregation speaking in tongues, believing in themselves as ski racers, leading us to some kind of ecstatic snake worship type thing. Yes, he could have been a snake oil salesman too. 

It’s hard not to believe in something when it’s backed by pure electric fire. I’m talking about passion. Sten loves skiing so much you fall into it too. Maybe not everyone did. But, I was in the front row, waving my hat in the air, shouting amen, hallelujah and praise be.  

But it wasn’t really like that. Sten wasn’t preaching so much as living it with you.  We trained together, dreamed together.  He pulled you in with him, didn’t stay up above. That’s for sure.  

If there was a fight, Sten was in the middle of it. He is a human and all the humans I know come in somewhere less than perfect, Sten included. Me included too, and same with you. Imperfection never stopped any preacher from preaching. I promise you that, and Sten isn’t a preacher, just a guy who really, really loves ski racing and is a genius for sharing that passion. And it was more than a passion for ski racing it was a belief in you. He believed you could do it so much you started to believe it too and before long you just knew it. 

I came to NMU in fall of ’91 never having made the Jr. World Team. By winter of ’92, I was on the Olympic team. In ’93 I won the NCAA championship for the Wildcats.  It was the first of many for NMU skiing. I’m proud of that. 

I like to think I added to the intensity of the fire, stoked the flames up a little higher.  Later, I certainly brought some of that Fjeldheim intensity to my own coaching with the National Team and again I’m proud of that. I like to think I helped bring the flames up higher there too. I owe much of that fire to Sten.  I carried it with me for many years. That’s what I wanted to do. If there is one thing I learned from Sten it is this: If something is going to happen, you have to want it to happen first and want it bad.

 “You have to want it!” – Sten Fjeldheim.

 Thank you Sten.  U.S cross-country skiing owes you much.  I sure do. 

Back in January 2016, Tad Elliott emerged back onto the national championship scene with a win in the men’s 30-kilometer freestyle mass start at U.S. Nationals in Houghton, Mich. It had been some time since the skier originally from Durango, Colorado had felt unleashed from the grips of the energy-sapping Epstein-Barr virus.

Elliott went on to make the 2017 Nordic Ski World Championship team in Lahti, Finland. There, it was hard to miss his stunning effort firing up the first big climb out of the stadium as he skied the third leg of the U.S. men’s 4 x 10 k relay. Talk about lightness and upward momentum. In Lahti, he also notched a 27th in the men’s 50 k skate. He is a former member of the U.S. Ski Team and a three-time World Championship team member. (Let’s not forget this is a two-sport athlete. On two-wheels, Elliott crushed as an elite mountain biker. He won two U23 National Championship in mountain biking.)

Known as one of the finest skate skiers of his generation, Elliott’s upward trajectory unraveled in 2013 as he began struggling with symptoms of the Epstein-Barr virus. The winner of multiple national championships, Elliott began literally walking towards a life and a career premised on rest and recovery with the occasional aerobic stimulus to gradually bring him back into form.

In this episode of Nordic Nation, we tracked down the now thirty-year-old Elliott on October 9th, where he has begun undergraduate studies in sport physiology at the University of Northern Michigan. Elliott is also applying what he learned during his racing career as an assistant coach with the storied NMU program. He has also begun a side gig consulting athletes struggling with recovery and those wanting to develop sustainable training plans.

We have the go-ahead to post his email. You can reach out to him at tadelliott2@gmail.com if you’ve got questions as it relates to his experience with overtraining and the rebound. And he drives an El Camino that we are informed is stored indoors somewhere back east.

(Elliott also works with Nordic Team Solutions.)

(To subscribe to the Nordic Nation podcast channel, download the iTunes app. If you have iTunes, subscribe to Nordic Nation here.)

Two summers ago, with just five miles left of the Marquette Trails Fest 30-mile mountain bike race, all Ian Torchia could hear in his head was the voice of Krystof Kopal, his Northern Michigan University (NMU) teammate, snidely saying, “You drop out again?”

Fifteen minutes earlier, Torchia had careened into a tree. After dusting himself off, he remounted his bike, but not before noticing his left wrist was badly injured.

For a moment, Torchia considered pulling out of the race. Thoughts of Kopal, however, kept his feet on the pedals. A few months earlier, Kopal had given Torchia ceaseless verbal flak for dropping out of the 2016 Spring Series 50-kilometer ski race due to cramping. 

“[Kopal] was playing in my head … so I finished the last five miles with a broken wrist,” Torchia, now 22, recalled on the phone this summer, noting that it wasn’t until after he had finished the race that he found out it was broken.

About a month before his crash, Torchia had been nominated to the U.S. Ski Team (USST) D-team and invited to two national-team training camps that summer. Torchia had intended to attend both camps, regardless of whether his wrist was healed or not.

Fourteen days after his accident, Torchia departed Marquette, Michigan, his “home” since he began attending NMU in 2014, and headed for Eagle Glacier, Alaska, the location of the first USST camp.

On the glacier, he skied with either one pole or none at all. When he returned to Marquette, the pattern continued for another two months. It wasn’t until the end of August that he had his cast removed. 

“I kept training super hard with the broken wrist,” Torchia said.

All that training led Torchia to what he recalled as being “in pretty good shape” leading up to November. Then things started to go south. Fast. Right around Thanksgiving, Torchia was exhausted and experiencing severe night sweats.

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“If you type in ‘mono’ on Google and look at the symptoms, I probably had seven out of the eight,” he said. “But I at the time was thinking ‘It’s just a bad virus. It will pass.’ ”

The symptoms continued. Torchia’s girlfriend suggested he get tested for mononucleosis. He didn’t. 

“I didn’t want to believe her,” Torchia said. 

Soon enough he had to. In mid-December, hypothermia forced him to drop out of a race. At 2017 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Midway, Utah, he felt sluggish and “off” during training, so he visited a walk-in clinic in Park City. The doctor tested for mono, and the results came back positive. 

“The doctor was kind of nonchalant about it,” Torchia said. “He came in and was like, ‘Oh yeah, you’ve got mono, but nordic skiing isn’t a contact sport so you should be good to go and ski at nationals. I was like, ‘Oh, sweet…that’s not how it works.’ ”

Following the diagnosis, Torchia decided to skip nationals and return to his hometown of Rochester, Minnesota, for the holidays. He stopped exercising for a month before gradually returning to training.

“A lot of different skiers messaged me saying, ‘On this return, you need to take it really easy,’ ” Torchia said. (One of those skiers included Tad Elliott, who caught the Epstein-Barr virus in 2014 and went on to win a national title in 2016).

Torchia took their advice, as well as that of his NMU head coach, Sten Fjeldheim, who has helped other athletes diagnosed with mono safely return to training. The two worked out a meticulous day-by-day plan for Torchia’s return. Torchia redshirted the 2017 college season, but by March, he was back on skis.

“I wasn’t really thinking about what other people thought,” Torchia said when asked if he was worried whether others were questioning his USST nomination during that time.

“I was thinking more about the next steps,” he continued. “Like the day to day, ‘Oh, my morning heart rates are going down,’ or ‘This next weekend I can start running again.’ … I think before [mono], I was riding really high on skiing, and it was … a big, big part of my life. Getting mono kind of let me take a step back and realize, OK, there are other things [besides skiing].”

Mono not only gave Torchia a little perspective, but also an extension on his time to compete in college. By redshirting in 2017, Torchia retained eligibility to compete in 2018 (as a junior) and 2019 (as a senior). In his fifth year at NMU, he is currently working toward a master’s degree in exercise science.

This past March, he won the 20 k freestyle at NCAA Skiing Championships to become NMU’s seventh NCAA champion in program history. In the other race at 2018 NCAA’s, the 10 k classic, he placed fifth for All-American status. Earlier last winter, Torchia qualified for and competed at U23 World Championships in Goms, Switzerland.

“I try to look at the positives that mono brought,” Torchia said. “That first season of being on the USST brings a lot of pressure and inadvertently getting mono kind of lessened that. Afterward, when I got renominated to the team [last spring], I was like, ‘OK, they’ve given me this second chance, so I need to take it.’ ”

Torchia was renominated to the D-team for 2017/2018 and again this past spring for the 2018/2019 season. After his third-straight nomination, he approached his summer with revitalized vigor. For the first time since enrolling at NMU, he decided to spend some time training outside of Marquette, largely as a result of a wedding invitation from his USST teammate, Erik Bjornsen. In July, Bjornsen and Marine Dusser were married in Villard-de-Lans, France.

“After getting Erik and Marine’s ‘save the date’, I knew there was no way I was missing the wedding,” Torchia explained.

After the wedding in early July, Torchia remained in France for the USST men’s training camp. The camp lasted 10 days and featured what Torchia described as “hard rollerski intervals and epic mountain runs.”

He was accompanied by three teammates, Bjornsen, Simi Hamilton and Paddy Caldwell, and their coach Chris Grover. French national-team member Adrien Backscheider joined the group for interval sessions.

Following the camp, Torchia had made arrangements to stay in Europe for another two and a half weeks, which was partially prompted by his Norwegian teammates at NMU. Over the years, many had encouraged him to travel to Norway and compete in the famed Lysebotn Opp, an uphill rollerski race in Norway’s Blink ski festival.

Before heading to Sandnes, Norway, for Blink, Torchia made two stops. First, Oslo, where he stayed with his former NMU teammates Fredrik Schwencke, a native of the city, and Kristen Bourne, an American citizen currently training with the Lyn Ski Club in Olso.

“Pretty lucky to have so many great friends and teammates that put me up throughout the trip,” Torchia wrote in an email.

Torchia spent a week in Oslo before traveling to Kragerø, where he visited his current NMU teammate Mathias Aas-Rolid. A native of Redalen, Norway, Rolid has a cabin in Kragerø that he opened up to Torchia for “a pre-Blink training camp”.

Following Kragerø, Torchia headed to Sandnes for the Blink races. Canadians Evan Palmer-Charrette, Scott Hill and Bob Thomson had rented an Airbnb in Sandnes for the weekend, and keeping with his summer nomadic style, Torchia crashed on their couch during the festival.

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He competed in the 60 k distance race as well as the Lysebotn Opp. The 60 k was what Torchia referred to as “an add-on to the main focus of Lysebotn.

“For the 60, I made a big blunder by not bringing a water pack and counting on getting feeds along the race course,” he recalled. “Turns out trying to get a feed from a stationary volunteer at 20+ mph is not very effective.” 

Without feeds, Torchia explained that he “bonked” halfway through the 60 k and ended up finishing 55th. The result left him ready to “turn it around” for the 7.5 k Lysebotn Opp the next day. He managered to position himself well early on in the race’s mass start and within the first kilometer, found himself with the likes of Russia’s Sergey Ustiugov and Finland’s Iivo Niskanen.

“After the 1 k tunnel, I passed Ustuigov and Niskanen and probably got a little too excited and blew my load about 2 k from the finish,” Torchia wrote of his Lysebotn start. “ ‘Twas a long 2 k in from there and almost managed to catch Harvey but just missed the auto qualifying for the mass start (top-10) by about 15 seconds. I’ve never done a rollerski race, period, so competing in Norway in the strongest field they’ve ever had was a hell of a way to start.”

Torchia placed 13th, just over 2 minutes behind the winner (and 2018 Olympic skiathlon gold medalist) Simen Hegstad Krüger of Norway and 15 seconds behind Canada’s Alex Harvey, who placed 10th.

Torchia’s summer adventure ended after Blink, and he flew back to the U.S. on Aug. 6.

“Getting to do intervals with Adrien Backscheider, [South Korean/Norwegian skier] Magnus Kim, and then race with a World Cup field at Blink served me a big piece of humble pie but was a good indicator that the summer progress[ed] well,” Torchia wrote.

Torchia is now back in Marquette, focused on school and skiing. Beyond college races, Torchia is targeting 2019 U.S. nationals in Craftsbury, Vermont, 2019 World Championships in Seefeld, Austria, and 2019 World Cup Finals in Québec City.

“It’s been some ups and downs and definitely a learning experience,” Torchia said of the years since he was first nominated to the USST. “But it’s made me stronger in the process.”

Many mornings, Eliška Hájek Albrigtsen’s husband, Tobias Albrigtsen, has to peel her out of bed. Living the life of an early bird like her spouse is nowhere near the top of her list — partly because she spends most nights prodding her hubby awake as he finishes his work, partly because she is strung out between four jobs of her own.

Being in charge of three ski programs while assisting a fourth is not where the 29 year old envisioned herself when she moved to Madison, Wisconsin, this past June to work for Central Cross Country (CXC). But a lot can change over the course of a summer and for Albrigtsen (formerly Hájková), a lot did.

After relocating to the Badger State’s capital from Lake Tahoe, California, to serve as CXC’s Community Olympic Development Director, Albrigtsen’s responsibilities began to accrue.

It started with the addition of coaching CXC’s online master’s program. Then she had an interest in helping with CXC’s Paralympic and adaptive athletes. Finally, in late August, Andy Keller left his head-coaching position with the CXC Team to join Northern Michigan University (NMU) as an assistant coach, and Albrigtsen was in a prime spot to take over the reins. 

“When Andy took the assistant coaching job at NMU, it was kind of natural that I got the CXC Team head coach position,” Albrigtsen, a Czech Republic native, said during a recent phone interview. “For me, it’s not like a big promotion, it’s just more stuff to do while I still do all the stuff I was doing before. I have a lot of responsibilities all of a sudden that I didn’t start with.”

Among those responsibilities, she has been busy making informative videos for CXC Academy under the job title of Community Olympic Development Coach.

Getting stuff done — and a lot of it, efficiently — seems to be somewhat second nature for Albrigtsen. Back in 2016, she placed sixth in the senior women’s distance race at U.S. nationals, despite having three jobs and indicating that the only training she had done in preparation was with her Boulder Nordic Junior Racing Team (BNJRT) athletes during practice sessions.

While attending the University of Colorado-Boulder (CU), she finished in the top 10 of 45 out of 48 races over the course of her college career, according to a CU press release, all while maintaining above a 3.5 grade-point average.

After three seasons coaching the BNJRT in Colorado, Albrigtsen moved to Kings Beach at the north end of Lake Tahoe last year, where the juggling act continued. There, she served as the head coach for Tahoe XC, while also volunteering with the Auburn Ski Club’s elite athletes, taught private ski lessons for Tahoe Donner, coached an online master’s program, and once again raced U.S. nationals, placing 12th in the 20 k classic mass start. 

She’s also raced more than two dozen World Cups, most recently in 2014.

Though Albrigtsen indicates that she “never stops officially training or racing” this year might be a little different as it will be her first season coaching senior elite skiers. Still, the idea of more challenging practice sessions is enough to draw her in, even if it means scaling back her training a bit. As a coach she brings not only race experience, but the empathy and understanding of an athlete.

“With U14 kids, I mean, I was challenging them, but I was not getting challenged,” she reflected. “I think being challenged as a coach, being able to hang out with your athletes, you really see and you can really feel their pain. When you’re right on their butts and doing every exercise, you can see, ‘OK, I know that in the Level 4 on the fifth minute, during the sixth interval you died, so let’s figure that out.’ I think that’s one of my powers, that I can really be there when it’s happening.”

When asked of her strengths as a coach, CXC Executive Director Yuriy Gusev was quick to respond.

“Her racing experience, number one,” he said on the phone. “And [she’s] just very energetic and hardworking and organized.”

Albrigtsen will work with three CXC Team skiers this winter: Felicia Gesior, Kyle Bratrud and Sam Elfstrom. All three graduated from NMU, are currently based out of Marquette, Michigan, and will set their focus on the first few SuperTour races and U.S. nationals before re-evaluating their season goals. The fourth CXC Team member, Nichole Bathe (who graduated from the University of Alaska Fairbanks) remains on roster, but headed to Europe earlier this fall to train in Norway with a goal of making the 2018 Winter Olympic Games for Great Britain’s national team.

Until the first week of SuperTour racing in early December, the amount of time the other three CXC elite skiers and Albrigtsen work together will depend on the athletes. Albrigtsen wanted to keep the summer and fall schedule fairly flexible so her athletes would not feel restricted in the amount of paid work or fundraising they could accomplish while training for the upcoming season.

For example, Gesior made a trip to Madison earlier this fall for a training session on CXC’s rollerski treadmill with Albrigtsen, but will spend most the next few weeks training in Marquette and preparing for a fundraiser she’s organizing: the Bergkönig trail run on Nov. 11. The event features 10 k, 5 k and 1 k races and was originally created by Maria Stuber and Bryan Cook in an effort to raise money for local cross-country skiers looking to continue their ski careers post-college.

Gesior also works as a substitute teacher in Marquette, and most of her training this summer and fall has been with the NMU women’s team. Similarly, Bratrud and Elfstrom train with the NMU men’s team.

“I think that’s OK that they follow [NMU],” Albrigtsen said, “That’s kind of the program that really took them where they are and they have something to top it. They don’t train like college skiers; I mean, it’s their job right now so they do train more. But the base is very similar and [NMU Head Coach] Sten [Fjeldheim] is being really nice about allowing them to train with them. Not all college coaches are that way, so we’re definitely really lucky.”

According to Gusev, partnerships like the one CXC has with NMU and other programs in the Midwest are the reason for CXC’s expansion. Over the last decade, he said CXC has grown from a $50,000-dollar organization to a million-dollar one.

“It’s all of those partnerships,” Gusev said of the CXC programs’ continued growth. “They’re incredible organizations so we’re able to work with all of them together and help them work together.”

The organization hopes to continue its expansion with the addition of a $12-million-dollar training complex just outside the Madison suburb of Middleton, Wisconsin, which is currently in the planning stages. The facility would not only include a competition venue, but snowmaking equipment, a lit rollerski loop, and 30,000-square-foot facility open for recreational use as well.

The idea behind the complex, Gusev indicated, would be to provide CXC athletes with a training venue, while simultaneously encouraging community members to get outside and active, using skiing as an example. The center already has one complex, the CXC Center of Excellence in Madison, complete with rollerski treadmill. 

“With the CXC Team, our number-one goal is to support the athletes that need the support. That’s as simple as that,” Gusev said. “But overall, our goal as an organization is to grow the sport at all levels.”

To Albrigtsen, the new facility is another reason Madison and CXC seemed like a good choice for her and her husband, Tobias, who is CXC’s media and communications coordinator, when moving from Tahoe to the Midwest. That, and the cost of living. 

“We always talk about what can Midwest offer that other regions can’t. We don’t have the mountains, we don’t have the best winters, but what we really have is the best quality of life,” Albrigtsen said.

“You can live much cheaper here than anywhere else in U.S. and still make somewhat good money,” she continued. “Not everybody, especially in the U.S., there’s maybe 10-15 people who can do this professionally and get paid being skiers, otherwise you have to work and that’s something Midwest does have to offer. You can have a normal life and be a skier. You can do it here.”

While Albrigtsen’s “normal life” is somewhat busier than others might prefer, she is in no way deterred.

“I am a total sport addict, and I think every coach has to be, otherwise it’s not really worth it,” she said. “Tobias and I, we’re just trying to do what we love and give something back.”

Give something back, and get a little training in at the same time, even if it’s in between her multiple jobs.

“My motivation is also to fit in my jeans, wearing tight dresses,” Albrigtsen added with a laugh. “I have a five-year-younger husband so I have to take care of myself.” 

On the eastern side of the Northern Michigan University (NMU) campus, where Fair Avenue and Presque Isle Ave intersect, a righthand turn presents visitors with a view of the Berry Events Center and the school’s 26-year-old Superior Dome — a semi-Star-Trek-like outcropping in an otherwise conventionally secular setting. Between the two recreational buildings sits another building, the college’s Physical Education and Instructional Facility (PEIF). Designed predominantly as a practice venue for basketball players, the complex attracts other NMU athletes: nordic skiers.

Skiers who crossed the PEIF threshold glanced fleetingly at the fluorescent-lit, green-and-white basketball courts before heading toward the real reason they’d entered the building’s glass doors, the nordic-ski room.

Like any ski room, wax benches line the walls and the slight smell of particle board hangs in the air. Skis from the 1970s wait on one wall in an eternal yearning for snow. Certificates honoring the school’s former and current All-American athletes create a collage with newspaper clippings taped here and there. Race bibs and posters scrawled with faded signatures from national champions and graduated NMU Olympians cover any remaining open space.

As a prospective student sitting on one of the couches that corners the room, Adam Martin was struck by the number of athletes’ names honored and the extent to which many of them took their cross-country careers. An 18 year old in the midst of training with the Central Cross Country (CXC) post-grad program at the time, Martin’s visit was the result of a scouting search by NMU Head Nordic Coach Sten Fjeldheim, the ski room an auspicious scene to any dedicated skier.

Still, Martin never guessed that three years after enrolling at the university, he would be an adorned member of its accolades — earning four All-American National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) results before graduating in 2017. The results weren’t what he’d expected, nor were they even really part of his plan.

“I’m not totally into setting very specific outcome goals,” Martin, a Wausau, Wisconsin, native, explained on the phone from New Zealand in late August. “I try to focus a lot more on becoming a better skier, becoming  more fit and really focus more internally on improving myself and then seeing where that puts me at the end of each year.”

That being said, by the end of his junior year at NMU, Martin had earned All-American status in both classic and freestyle races. He also competed at the 2016 Under-23 World Championships in Rasnov, Romania, leading the U.S. junior men in 23rd in the classic distance race. To top it all off, earlier that same season he raced to third place in the 15-kilometer classic at the 2016 U.S. nationals in Houghton, Michigan.

Before that nationals podium, Fjeldheim tallied Martin’s on-snow time as minimal. The team had not skied on snow until the week competitors arrived in Houghton. In all likelihood, the top contenders Martin faced had logged anywhere from two to three times as much — many of them had already raced two SuperTours, one in West Yellowstone, Montana, and the other in Sun Valley, Idaho.

“I really feel like a lot of athletes these days, they’re distracted,” Fjeldheim said during a recent phone interview. “I think you need to have a lot of mental energy to be a ski racer and you’re getting it sucked out of you by reading all this, I’m not talking about scientific research, I’m talking about stuff. You know, so and so is doing this, so and so is doing that. … You’re not thinking about it in terms of what you need to do and what works for you … It’s not about being able to be on a glacier 24/7. It’s not about being able to be on snow … a lot of U.S. skiers can’t.

“Adam had his best U.S. nationals when he had five days on snow,” Fjeldheim continued. “How do you explain that? Because it’s from May through December that matters.”

Martin spent his summers training in Marquette, Michigan, with his then-teammates Kyle Bratrud (now a member of the CXC Team coming off a 2017 national championship), Ian Torchia (now a senior at NMU and a second year nominee to the U.S. Ski Team D-team), and Sam Elfstrom (a 21 Title Defender), among others. Martin turned down internships so he could ski. He made skiing his life, not his results.

In his senior year, he once again earned All-American (top 10) honors in both the NCAA classic and freestyle competitions, and competed at the 2017 U23 World Championships in Midway, Utah.

“From a dedication standpoint, I think I pursued skiing as well as I could, had I set that goal [of a nationals podium or an All-American finish],” Martin said. “Had I really said specifically that I wanted to do those, I don’t think it would have changed anything in a positive manner.”

Fjeldheim reflected that any time Martin walked into his office, he knew a slew of questions would follow. Martin regularly prodded him, researched Fjeldheim’s answers and returned with more questions. The curiosity stemmed from a desire to not only understand his training, but arm himself for the future.

“Never a lack of questions from Adam, he really dug into it,” Fjeldheim said. “He empowered himself with a pretty big body of knowledge about physiology, technique and race strategy.

“It was enlightening for me,” Fjeldheim, an NMU staple for the last 31 years, continued. “Having this young whippersnapper, can-do, nothing-can-stop-me type of kid.”

As a kid himself, Martin, who turns 23 next month, began skiing at an early age with his parents, not getting competitively involved until his middle-school years. By the time he reached high school his skiing only got stronger, his interest in it as well. He was the state champion his senior year, before taking a gap-year in Hayward, Wis., training partially with the CXC team.

“I didn’t race very well that year,” Martin reflected. “In terms of putting things in perspective, and maybe even maturing a little bit, though, I’m very glad I did it.

“Somewhat ironically, because I think most people consider taking time off just to ski as giving up a part of your academic career, I think for me it had quite the opposite effect,” Martin continued. “I really appreciated academics more and put a tremendous amount more time into my academics in college than I did in high school.”

While at NMU, Martin studied mathematics and computer engineering, eventually earning degrees in both. Along with being a double major, Martin’s four-year grade point average topped out at 4.0, earning him a nomination from the College Sports Information Directors of America’s 2017 Academic All-America First Team and the 2017 NCAA Elite 90 Award.

Still, even if Martin made his studies look easy, they took effort on his part. His missed many classes for training, 10 alone this past spring for U23 World Championships (which he jocosely pointed out in a FasterSkier profile was still less than last year). He met with instructors outside of class, making his skiing work in large part due to his diligence and his rapport with professors.

“I was very fortunate at NMU,” Martin explained. “The math department is pretty small and I knew all my professors on I’d say on a personal level, so they were extremely understanding of me going to ski races. I developed a certain amount of respect from them. They let me [leave class] because they trusted that I’d figure things out.”

Martin’s skiing would not be bogged down by school, and vice versa. The two went hand-in-hand, he could keep his mind off one and become consumed by the other. If Martin’s situation was unique, it wasn’t because of the subject he studied.

“Find a situation where you have a good relationship with your professors and they’re more than just a person in a lecture hall. I think that’s super important,” Martin said of balancing academics with skiing.

In deciding his next steps after college, Martin decided that if he were to pursue a profession in skiing, it would be now rather than later. In his search for a ski program, the inquisitive nature that guided his undergraduate years directed him once again: Where would he see himself get the most out of his skiing? What did he need as a skier and what did each program have to offer?

Last winter, he found his answer. Nestled in northern Vermont, the Craftsbury Green Racing Project (CGRP) presented itself as a clear solution. Not only did he connect with CGRP Head Coach Pepa Miloucheva, but the program was also financially favorable to him. Under the CGRP, his lodging and food would be covered by the Craftsbury Outdoor Center (COC) and much of his training and race travel by Concept2.

“I looked at a couple different programs and talked to Pepa in the winter and was very impressed with what she had to say in terms of what she thought I needed to do to get better, how perceptive she was of where I was at without me explaining very much, just from watching me race,” Martin said.

“Additionally, the Green Team is incredibly well funded. It’s one of the most professional ski teams I think you’ll find in the U.S. and it’s pretty cool to be on a team like that, to feel like you’re absolutely taken care of,” he continued. “That’s a large amount thanks to [COC owners] Dick Dreissigacker and Judy Geer and their support with the Outdoor Center and Concept 2.”

Four years of college tuition in the back of his mind, CGRP offered not just security, but independence. He would not need to turn to his parents nor spend all his spare time working a second and third job, though he currently works on small-scale computer projects for the Outdoor Center.

“Obviously my parents are extremely supportive, they have to be for me to have made it this far in skiing, but after graduating college, it’s not really an ideal situation for me to have to ask for a ton of support from them,” Martin explained. “So finding a team that covers all this was a huge help and pretty important in terms of not having to worry about that on top of training.”

Most recently, Martin made the trek to New Zealand for a month-long on-snow camp with the CGRP. He has been working with Miloucheva as well as his Craftsbury’s teammate Ben Lustgarten, who joined the CGRP at the start of last season. On its website, the team lists 12 athletes, four of which are men.

“He is really great to work with,” Miloucheva wrote of Martin in an email. “Very motivated, works really hard to improve every detail of his technique and fitness, asks lots of questions and always the right ones, which means he thinks about what I say and what I ask him to do. And he is genuinely nice person.”

While Martin acknowledges that many U.S. skiers are aiming for the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, his skiing goals, like the equations he works with, tend toward the conceptual as opposed to concrete.

“I have not set that specific goal, although I certainly will try to be in my best shape during the qualifying period … and give myself as good of a chance as I can,” he said. “Beyond that, while I’m pursuing skiing, I think my goal would be I would like to strive to be a competitive World Cup distance racer … whatever avenues would lead towards that.”

Two-and-half months into her summer training last year, Kristen Bourne woke up in a cold sweat. Her temperature read higher than normal and no amount of lozenges could soothe her sore throat. The Northern Michigan University (NMU) skier went to a doctor and received antibiotics to treat what was thought to be strep throat.

But two weeks later, Bourne still didn’t feel like herself, and she wanted to know why.

Behind her were 215 logged hours of summer training in Marquette, Mich., a 6 1/2 hour drive from her hometown of Lake Elmo near Stillwater, Minn.

Ahead of her was a promising junior season at NMU, with plans to attend the university’s sports-science graduate program in the winter of 2018. She had redshirted the year before and gained an extra year of development under NMU Head Nordic Coach Sten Fjeldheim, as well as an extension on her National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) eligibility.

The investment she had put in her season was nothing to scoff at; neither was her uncharacteristic exhaustion at practice. After finishing one session in late August feeling especially spent, Bourne returned to the doctor, and this time, was able to pinpoint the issue.  

“I went to the doctor that day and they did a mono test,” Bourne explained on the phone.

The results tested positive. With fall training just around the corner, and a sudden uncertainty about where she was headed, Bourne began to worry. What did this mean for her season? Was there any way out? Were all those hours of work and training for nothing?

“I was so bummed,” Bourne, who turns 22 later this month, said. “It was the best I had felt training; when you put in all this work and then realize that you’re not going to do anything and for that long, it’s really concerning.”

The mononucleosis put her out of training for two months, from the beginning of September until the end of October. These months are not dispensable as they often incorporate a new cycle of intensity sessions, hours and gym time.

But for Bourne, it was the beginning of a learning process and careful track back to top form, thanks in part to Fjeldheim and his connection to the NMU sports-science department.

The First: Fielding Mono with Fjeldheim

What exactly is mono? How does it affect athletes? How might it affect athletes as they return to training?

These were some of the questions Fjeldheim had when he encountered his first case of mono among his student athletes. While coaching NMU’s cross-country running team, one of his top runners came down with the illness at the end of the summer. (Fjeldheim coached for the NMU running program for more than 20 years, and now solely coaches nordic).

With the cross-country running season only lasting about eight weeks, there was limited time before some of the more important scoring races, like regionals, appeared next on the calendar.

Fjeldheim wasn’t deterred. He approached Dr. Phil Watts, NMU’s sports-science program coordinator and professor. Sitting in Watts’s office — a room Fjeldheim had visited when he was a Wildcat — the two discussed the costs and benefits of de-training to the body and ultimately developed a way to help the runner make a full recovery.

“We laid out a plan with the team doctor on how to bring her back,” Fjeldheim said. “I think she got [mono] in early August and then by early November we ran our regionals and she got third. That’s after running only one other running race before the regionals. I think she ran a running race at the end of October and then second week in November, she’s third in our regionals.”

After that, Fjeldheim worked with a few other athletes who came down with mono early in their season yet went on to become All-American athletes. Though Bourne would not earn this accolade, she came close.

By the end of her season, Bourne won both races at the Central Collegiate Ski Association (CSSA) Distance Championships and also qualified for NCAA Skiing Championships. There in Jackson, N.H., she finished 17th in the 5 k classic and was the top NMU woman in the 15 k freestyle mass start two days later, placing 13th and within two seconds of All-American status (top 10).

All after having mono. How?

Bourne’s comeback was not without meticulous and methodical planning. Her return to training was slow and her situation was unique: not only did her coach, Fjeldheim, have experience working with athletes who had mono and successfully returned to racing, but Bourne was also the type of athlete who made the return more amenable.  

Over the course of an entire summer, Bourne routinely checked her heart rate each morning, before getting out of bed. She wrote it down and kept track of fluctuations and differences. Every day.

When she was diagnosed with mono, knowing her base heart rate was crucial. After two months off and having her spleen examined to ensure it was no longer enlarged, she started exercising again. Each week entailed meetings with coaches and every day, she assessed her resting heart rate and how far off it was from her previous one.

“We used the morning heart rate as a guide,” Fjeldheim explained. “Once her morning heart rates were back to normal, within say two or three beats of what her base morning heart rate had been for months and possibly years, then we just started with getting back into moving again.”

He emphasized that this came after making sure Bourne’s spleen was a normal size. Then she safely began training again while agreeing to listen to what her body was telling her via her heartbeat and lactate tests. And she had to keep it to a minimum.

“When I started working out, it was 15-minute jogs,” Bourne said. “Then every week, I’d sit down with my coaches and re-evaluate how I felt, how that week went. Every two weeks I was doing some lactate tests to monitor my heart-rate zones … then every week adding a little bit if I was ready. Come November, I started actually doing more systematic training instead of just doing low distance.”

Fjeldheim also monitored Bourne’s sleep patterns to make sure there weren’t disruptions and whether she was gaining or losing weight.

If any of the numbers were off, she rested.

“You don’t mess with mono,” Bourne emphasized. “If you don’t feel good, you do nothing. You can’t try and push it out of your system it just doesn’t work that way.”

This perhaps was the hardest part. While Bourne rested in bed, her teammates were out training. When Bourne finally began training an hour and a half again, her teammates were out doing three. She missed out on more than three months of interval training. And when she did reincorporate hard efforts, she didn’t always feel good.

“Mentally, it’s really tough,” Bourne said. “I just had to trust what my coaches said and trust myself and keep my fingers crossed and hope that my season would work out. We figured that I wouldn’t start doing well until February because I didn’t actually start doing intervals until the end of November. … I have to give so much credit to my coaches reassuring me all the time and my teammates being so supportive about it, being like, Kristen if anyone can do it, you can do it.”

Rather than get caught up in what training she couldn’t do, Fjeldheim advised Bourne to focus on what she could do, like improving her technique. 

“As I told her, hey you know, you’re going to come back from this. It’s not cancer, it’s not debilitating, you didn’t find out you’ve got some rare disease,” he said. “You have mono and we’re going to figure out a plan. You got to have a plan and then they got to buy into it.”

The experience gave Bourne not only some of her best collegiate results, but also a new edge on her training. She plans to ski for NMU next winter and is considering continuing to race competitively after she graduates.

“A lot can happen in a year and I can’t set any expectations for myself right now,” Bourne wrote in an email. “We’ll just have to wait and see!”

***

Author’s note: This article is not intended to be a guide on how to train through mono, but rather track one athlete’s recovery from illness.

1. Biggest change in your life in the last five or so months since the ski season ended?

I attended two training camps with the US Ski Team, broke my wrist in late June during a mountain bike race and had to one pole rollerski for 2 months, learned how to surf, and started loving classes again since changing my major to Exercise Science.

2. Biggest change in your training?

Slight increase in yearly volume but not much change other than that with Sten [Fjeldheim]’s plan. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.

3. Major areas of improvement you’ve seen so far?

Breaking my wrist was a blessing in disguise as my legs are stronger than ever.

4. Whom you’ve been working closest with this offseason (coaches or training partners)?

Learned a lot from the US guys at the training camps but the bulk of my time has been under Sten and assistant coach Shane MacDowell’s tutelage with the Marquette Training Group (MTG) men.

5. Best trip in the last five months (and why)?

Tossup between the two camps in Bend and Anchorage. I’ll give the nod to Bend for having 2 functioning wrists and an unreal Broken Top crust cruise but salmon fly fishing with Bjornsen in AK is a close second.

6. Favorite cross-training?

Mountain biking and surfing on Lake Superior.

7. Favorite non-athletic activity or pastime this summer?

I love a good game of Settlers of Catan.

8. Song that was your jam this summer?

My roommate Oscar Friedman produces music so definitely his song Shine (GWYLO remix). Check it out on Spotify!

9. All time favorite race moment?

Either getting 3 NCAA All Americans for NMU in the 10k freestyle with my teammates Adam Martin and Jake Brown or moving from 60th up to 11th at Junior Worlds in Kazakhstan in the skiathlon.

10. First thing you pack in your bag when you leave for Europe?

Buffalo Wild Wings BBQ hot sauce. Makes Romanian mystery meat taste great!

11. Venue/event you’re most excited to visit this season?

Soldier Hollow for U23’s. Time to defend our home turf from the Russians and Norwegians.

12. Who will win the World Cup title this year?

Sundby and Heidi Weng. Simi and Sophie for Sprint World Cup!

13. Biggest sacrifice you feel you’ve made choosing this career path?

There are some sacrifices but I mostly feel very blessed to be surrounded by great teammates and friends and live in a place like Marquette with so much to offer.

14. If you could change one thing about your sport, what would it be?

Stop NMU students from asking if we’re the alpine team. Bring back the daily Hoff blog. Give the Nordic Tribune a Pulitzer Prize.

15. What did you have for breakfast this morning?

An asiago bagel with jalepeno cream cheese, 2 eggs (hard), and quite a bit of yogurt. No coffee, just naps.

16. In 5 years, I’ll be ____?

Slowly chipping away at my Ph.D in Exercise Science and hopefully skiing on the World Cup.

17. In 50 years, I’ll be ____?

An old grey-haired retired professor trying to keep up with my kids skiing, surfing and mountain biking.

As the youngest in a family of five, it’s no wonder that Ian Torchia, an incoming junior at Northern Michigan University (NMU), considers himself “scrappy.” It’s also no wonder that, when it comes to sport, Torchia takes on skiing with tooth-and-claw grit. Within the first few hours of being a freshman on the NMU ski team, the Rochester, Minn., native established himself as tenacious if nothing else.

“Watching him ski on the treadmill the first time I worked with him, he was just raw,” Sten Fjeldheim, head coach of the NMU men’s and women’s nordic teams reflected in a phone interview. “His technique was, well, not pretty, but I knew he had a heck of an engine from his running times.”

After Torchia finished his freshman year just outside qualifying for NCAA Skiing Championships, he made it a goal to reach the championships the following year. As a sophomore, he not only qualified for NCAA’s, but he went on to place second in the men’s 10-kilometer freestyle and fourth in the 20 k classic mass start at the 2016 championships in Steamboat Springs, Colo.

By the end of his first two years at NMU, the 20-year-old Torchia had also tapped into another tool: technique. He asked his college coaches ceaseless questions, watched countless ski videos and began to implement what he saw on the screen into his own skiing.

“He’s just really good at being a student of his own sport: skiing,” Fjeldheim said of Torchia’s technical improvements. 

However, the sophomore’s upward climb last season didn’t end with his work on the NMU ski team. In January, he won the junior men’s 10 k freestyle at U.S. nationals in Houghton, Mich. Also at nationals, he placed seventh among seniors in the men’s 15 k classic, and at 2016 Junior World Championships in Romania, he raced to 15th in the junior men’s 15 k freestyle.

Most recently, Torchia discovered he was among 16 athletes nominated to the U.S. Cross Country Ski Team.

“I was on my way to go cliff jumping when Bryan Fish [U.S. Ski Team development coach] called me,” Torchia said on the phone. “The celebratory back flip didn’t go too well.” (According to Torchia, the backflip was more of a “back flop.”)

Though perhaps brazen when it comes to black flips and Lake Superior bluffs, the main sentiment Torchia spoke of was that of humility.  In his eyes, the opportunity to ski for U.S. Ski Team ‘D’ (or development) Team is an opportunity to once again put his tenacity to the test.

“You know, there’s still two more levels of the U.S. Ski Team to go,” Torchia said of the ‘A’ and ‘B’ team levels. “If anything, [the nomination] just motivates me to train harder. I mean, the way I see it, it’s an honor to be named. I get invited to the camps and I get the uniform. It puts a bigger target on my back, but I’m OK with that.”

U.S. Ski Team (USST) Head Coach Chris Grover explained in an email that the team was “looking for athletes who can deliver big results in Europe against tough fields,” he wrote. “Ian was the standout USA male once again at World Juniors and posted his second consecutive top-15 result there.”

At the 2015 Junior World Championships in Kazakhstan, Torchia notched 11th in the 20 k skiathlon.

Moving forward, Torchia plans to accept the nomination and attend the two USST summer training camps, the first one taking place in Bend, Ore., this month and the second in Anchorage, Alaska. According to Fjeldheim, not much will change for Torchia in regards to training.

“He’ll pretty much be on the same training plan that he’s been on,” Fjeldheim said. “But I think the opportunity for him to ski with some other national-team skiers is going to be good.”

Along with accepting the nomination, Torchia also plans to continue attending NMU as a full-time student and eventually earn a degree in exercise science.

“I think my mom would kill me if I wasn’t in school,” Torchia said.

But his reasons for staying in school extend beyond his so-called death sentence, even if it means suffering through organic chemistry finals. To Torchia, continuing his education sends a broader message to other nordic athletes, especially those trying to determine whether skiing in college can lead to a ski career.

“One of the main reasons why I wanted this to happen is to show that you can do it while you’re in college,” Torchia said of his national-team nomination. “It is hard to balance school and skiing, but it’s doable. [College skiing] is a pipeline.”

School, Torchia insisted, also gives him options outside of skiing.

“Make sure to have balance in your life between skiing and make sure skiing isn’t the only thing in your life,” Torchia said of how he found success in sport. “We kind of take that mentality here at NMU. We have the top GPA of all the sports teams here, so it’s both skiing and school. It’s a lifestyle and we love it. It’s hard, but you got to go for it.”

Beyond the importance Torchia finds in education, his NMU teammates and coaches also played a large role in his decision to continue his ski career on the college path. He cited post-practice conversations and training plans his coaches provided as a staple to his success.

“I could not have done this without Sten and [NMU assistant coach] Shane MacDowell,” Torchia said.

“Ian always shows up with a smile on his face,” Fjeldheim said. “Yeah, he like to pull pranks on me and his teammates every now and then and we prank him back, but he’s a great kid to have on your team as far as sportsmanship goes and manners. He’s very humble.”

“It’s a lifestyle and we love it. It’s hard, but you got to go for it.” — Ian Torchia, NMU junior and U.S. Ski Team rookie

With teammates like Adam Martin and Jake Brown, both first-team All Americans at this year’s NCAA Championships, Torchia views his peers as motivation and proof of where they, too, are headed.

“You can never get too big of a head around here because there will always be someone to serve you a piece of humble pie,” Torchia said. “I can say that I won’t be the last one to be named [to the U.S. SKi Team] out of NMU.”

With the nomination, Torchia is undecided as to where his ski career will be drawn after graduation day. Though not currently on the CXC team, joining the program is one potential route for him post-college. 

“Kind of this past year, I guess I really thought about skiing after college,” Torchia said. “Right now, Kyle Bratrud is [in Marquette] skiing for [Central Cross Country] and we’re getting [Dartmouth grad] Oscar Friedman up here. I think we’re going to make a return to the days when CXC was a really a powerhouse. I can see myself here. We’ll see. It’s still a long way away.”

While Torchia’s five-year plan remains flexible, his 14 weeks of summer are at least set to go. This includes attending the two USST training camps, training in Marquette, Mich. (potentially with the likes of Kris Freeman, he said), and wedding crashing.

“I’m going to go home, surprise my mom on Mother’s Day and then head out to Bend for the camp there,” Torchia said. “Then I’ll come back [to Marquette] for June and then go out to Anchorage for that camp. And then it’s my sister’s wedding in Colorado. So it should be a fun summer.”

Particularly fun due to the training crew he plans to surround himself with.

“Basically the entire [NMU] guy’s team is going to be [in Marquette] this summer,” Torchia said. “We call it the Marquette Training Group: MTG. So, MTG 2.0 is kicking off this summer. We’re hoping that a few guest stars show up; there’s rumors that Bird [Kris Freeman] and Tad Elliott and Paddy Caldwell and Brian Gregg might be up here. So it’s going to be pretty kickass.”

While the USST nomination makes him a new training target to many, Torchia remains humble of where he’s been and where he’s headed. For now, he appears to prefer taking it one step at a time up the ski ladder — even when it comes to housing.

“I’ve got the Trailer Park Room,” he said, indicating that as one of the younger athletes, it may have fallen on him to take on the tiny living quarters in the NMU men’s ski house for the summer. “It’s the smallest room in the house, but I kind of like it. It doesn’t have a closet, very narrow and small, but I don’t know, I like it.”

Note: FasterSkier is seeking photos from the nordic races at 2016 NCAA Skiing Championships. Please email info@fasterskier.com with photos of top finishers or for more info.

***

Two juniors, one from Montana State University (MSU) and the other from the host team, the University of Colorado-Boulder (CU), claimed the ultimate collegiate titles on Thursday at 2016 NCAA Skiing Championships in Steamboat Springs, Colo.

It was the first of two days of nordic racing at Howelsen Hill, and Anika Miller (MSU) and Mads Strøm (CU) emerged as the individual winners in the 5- and 10-kilometer freestyle races, respectively.

Miller led four Bobcats in the top 10, winning the women’s 5 k freestyle individual start in 13:06.1. Her teammate, Cambria McDermott, placed fourth, 9.4 seconds back.

“When I finished, I had no idea how I’d done actually until my teammates jumped on me and were screaming,” Miller told NCAA.com. “I had no idea. I just started crying.”

A native of McCall, Idaho, Miller bested second-place finisher Petra Hyncicova (CU) by 7.9 seconds for the win, becoming the first MSU skier to win an individual title since 1978, when Dan Brelsford (now the director of skiing) won the slalom race, according to an MSU press release. She is also the first female skier to win an individual title for MSU.

Just one-tenth of a second behind Hyncicova, Sloan Storey (University of Utah) reached the final step of the podium in third.

An NCAA champion in 2014, Strøm achieved his second freestyle title in the men’s 10 k freestyle on Thursday in 22:06.8. His time proved to be 10.6 seconds faster than runner-up Ian Torchia of Northern Michigan University (NMU). Denver University’s Moritz Madlener placed third (+19.8).

For Strøm, the win was his fifth in a row and seventh total this season, according to a CU press release.

“It feels awesome, it feels amazing,” the 24-year-old Norwegian told CUBuffs.com.  “For ten months this has been my goal and to accomplish my goal is amazing. I was so nervous. I knew there was going to be a mass crowd out. I just had to find good skis, good pacing, and push it as hard as possible. It was definitely the best win of the year. Pulling it off when it matters the most is great.”

Strøm explained he had to “push it all the way to the end,” so hard that he was physically ill across the line.

“I was so tired in the end,” he added. “As soon as I crossed the finish line, I had to lie down.”

With his seventh win, Strøm is the winningest male nordic skier in CU history. He exceeded the amount of wins of Per Kare Jakobsen (who won six races in 1989) and Ove Erik Tronvoll (six in 1999). It was also the 89th individual win by a Buff, the most of any school in NCAA history, the CU release stated.

For women’s runner-up Hyncicova, a 21-year-old sophomore from the Czech Republic, second stood as her best result of the season and matched her career best.

“It was so hard, but it was really nice in the end. I didn’t hope for getting second, so it’s really nice,” Hyncicova told CUBuffs.com.  “I really didn’t have any idea what I was hoping for. In each race you want to win, but I didn’t expect that I would win here because I was always around fifth [place] this season.  I went to Romania a couple of weeks ago [for U23 World Championships], so I was really tired and didn’t feel that great.

“I was really nervous before the start,” she added. “But once I saw everyone here — the alpine’s and everyone who cheered for us — I was like, ‘Yes I have to do it. I have to do it for the team.’ ”

“I feel somewhat relieved but happy,” CU Nordic coach Bruce Cranmer said.  “Compared to racing, coaching is way more stressful.  You are worried about everyone and getting the right wax. I am still trying to calm down. I get so fired up.

“Mads did great,” Cranmer added. “The guy that got second [Torchia] is one of the top U.S. [skiers] that went to World Juniors. [Mads] was on really good form before he got here, so I had high expectations without trying to get too caught up.

“As for Petra, we were hoping for a top five finish. That is we thought she was capable of.  … For her to finish in second is awesome. … She does really well in skating.”

Late last month, Torchia led the U.S. junior men in Romania with his top individual result of the week in 15th in the 15 k freestyle. It was his second-best at Junior Worlds since placing 11th last year in the 20 k skiathlon.

Following Torchia in second, Northern Michigan had three in the top 10 with Adam Martin in fourth (+28.4) and Jake Brown in ninth (+56.1).

“We knew that if we had a good day, all three of those guys were capable of winning and we just didn’t know which one,” said NMU Head Coach Sten Fjeldheim told NCAA.com. “We weren’t shocked or surprised that they’re all in the top 10, but you never know at altitude.”

The base elevation of Steamboat Springs’ Howelsen Hill is about 6,700 feet.

Through four events (two cross-country and two alpine) at 2016 NCAA Championships, Montana State leads the team standings with 282 points and Utah is second with 264. Denver is a close third, with 263 points after two days of racing. With a win and second-place finish on Thursday, CU moved into fourth in the standings, with 214.5 points.

MSU’s previous team best was seventh, which it achieved last year with 259 points. The University has already exceeded that total at the halfway point of the championships. Racing wraps up Saturday with 15/20 k classic mass starts.

“The momentum definitely helps our mindset, but the bottom line is we’ve got to go out and race the same way that we race everyday. That’s the way to succeed,” MSU Head Coach Matthew Johnson told NCAA.com. “Trying to mix it up and change it for the championship isn’t going to go well. Coming in with too much excitement isn’t going to go well, but skiing like we’re in the lead and skiing like we’re champions is going to do well for us.”

5/10 k freestyle results | with splits

Top 10 men: 

1. Mads Strøm (CU) 22:06.8
2. Ian Torchia (NMU) +10.6
3. Moritz Madlener (DU) +19.8
4. Adam Martin (NMU) +28.4
5. Sawyer Kesselheim (MSU) +28.6
6. Petter Reistad (CU) +35.1
7. Nick Hendrickson (DU) +40.6
8. Lars Hannah (DU) +50.1
9. Jake Brown (NMU) +56.1
10. Jack Hegman (UVM) +56.9

Top 10 women:

1. Anika Miller (MSU) 13:06.1
2. Petra Hyncicova (CU) +7.9
3. Sloan Storey (Utah) +8.0
4. Cambria McDermott (MSU) +9.4
5. Emilie Cedervaern (UNM) +12.8
6. Natalia Mueller (Utah) +13.1
7. Taeler McCrerey (DU) +13.4
8. Linn Eriksen (DU) +13.6
9. Ane Johnsen (CU) +14.7
10. Mary Kate Cirelli (UVM) +17.5

We can’t imagine anything much more exciting than making an event like World Championships for the first time, so we contacted the North American skiers living that exact dream this year. The U.S. Ski Team announced its 16-strong senior World Championships team on Jan. 26, and Cross Country Canada selected nine to its squad on Monday. On Tuesday, the U.S. added Ben Saxton as its 17th member.

Instead of interrogating them with the usual “tell us how you’re feeling,” we decided to pose the following 10 questions to each of the North Americans headed to their first World Championships from Feb. 18-March 1 in Falun, Sweden.

Kyle Bratrud is a unique addition to the World Champs rookie squad. The Northern Michigan University skier is the only American team member currently on a college ski team roster. At the age of 22, Bratrud is not the youngest skier on the squad (Saxton is 21-years-old), but he does have the least international racing experience. In 2013, Bratrud traveled to the Czech Republic for the World Junior Championships. More recently he competed in the 2015 U23 World Championships in Kazakhstan where he earned 19th in the 15 k freestyle and 37th in the 30 k skiathlon.

On the domestic front, Bratrud has found much success on the college circuit earning eighth at the 2013 NCAA 20 k freestyle and sixth in the 2014 NCAA 10 k classic. At the 2015 U.S. Cross Country Championships in Houghton, Mich. he had a breakout performance in the 15 k freestyle, which he won by roughly 50-seconds over veteran Kris Freeman.

After competing in Kazakhstan, Bratrud joined the U.S. Ski Team in Östersund, Sweden for the World Cup weekend before competition gets underway in Falun. Sunday’s 15 k freestyle will mark his first World Cup start.

1. What was the first thing you did when you found out you were named to the World Championships team?

“I had woken up from a nap and opened my phone and thought I was seeing things, but eventually I realized it was real so I went for a run and ran way too fast.”

2. What’s been the biggest performance of your career so far? Which race stands out the most and why?

“Probably the 15k skate at Nationals. I had a really good day and beat some guys I never thought I would beat, also my teammates rocked the day.”

3. What are you most looking forward to at World Championships?

“I am extremely excited to soak it all in. Ostersund will be my first World Cup ever and than obviously Falun will be my first World Champs, so I am really excited to see the best skiers in the World compete and get to be in the same race. Also, I am stoked to see just how passionate the Scandinavian fan base is.”

4. Whats your biggest motivation while racing?

“My biggest motivation is to get that deep hurt and still feel like I can go forever. Certain races in my career (both distance races at Nationals) have given me this exciting feeling that no matter how much pain I am in, I can keep pushing, so I am always searching for that feeling when I race.”

5. Which race(s) do you hope or plan to compete in?

“15 k Skate”

6. If you could race the team sprint with anyone in the world, who would it be?

“Probably Federico Pellegrino because he is skiing extremely well this year and with me sprinting, the team would need him to do all the work.”

7. Which World Cup skier would you least want to meet in a dark alley (or in the last 100 meters of a race)?

“Alexey Petukhov. Have you seen the guy?!”

8. What will be your key to success in Falun?

“Enjoying myself and racing like it is just another race. This will be a great opportunity to take away valuable World Cup experience.”

9. Finish this sentence: If I made the podium at World Champs, I would … 

“Go over to the hottest girl I saw and ask her to what she was doing later. Never underestimate the power of speed goggles.”

10. Name someone who’s had a major influence on your skiing career.

“[NMU Head Coach] Sten Fjeldheim. He has taught me how to train effectively, handle the physical and mental stresses of racing, and stay true to myself and the process that is the life of a cross country skier.”

When Kyle Bratrud woke up Sunday morning, he thought, great — a couple inches of fresh snow, temperatures hovering around the single digits — perfect.

The 21-year-old Northern Michigan University (NMU) senior was actually serious when he talked about reveling in the conditions after the men’s 15-kilometer freestyle individual start, which kicked off a blustery and snowy first day of U.S. Cross Country Championships.

“As a smaller guy, the slower the better for me,” Bratrud said.

And the longer the race, like twice around a new 7.5 k loop at the Michigan Tech Trails, the better, he added. “I’m a pretty endurance-based guy,” he said.

Three weeks ago, Bratrud placed third in a 15 k classic mass start and fourth in a classic sprint, both Central Collegiate Ski Association (CCSA) races held on the same courses in Houghton. NMU is 100 miles southeast in Marquette, Mich.

Sunday marked his first time skating Michigan Tech’s new 7.5 k course, at least in a race, yet he already knew it well. And when he burst out of the start in bib 35 of 197 men, he quickly found he was the race leader through every point he received splits.

“I never actually got a number [for time ahead], but just to get the first split, to hear that I was the race leader, it felt like a Central race,” he recalled. “I get leader splits a decent amount there so to get it here was something else. I definitely wasn’t expecting that.”

With just five other A-seeded skiers behind him, Bratrud realized he was beating top contenders like Kris Freeman (Team Freebird) and Matt Gelso, of the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation (SVSEF) Gold Team, who started before him.

By the end of the first lap, he had a 27-second lead over Freeman in second. One of Bratrud’s friends and summer training partners at Alaska Pacific University (APU) in Anchorage, Logan Hanneman of ranked third through 7.5 k, another 4.2 seconds after Freeman.

Bratrud said he never knew exactly how much he was leading by, but he did know that if he kept it up, he was on his way to his first national title and his best national finish by 23 places.

With U23 World Championships on his mind in his last year of eligibility (Bratrud turns 22 on Feb. 9th), the Minnesota native held his own and won the 15 k in 42:01.6, exactly 50 seconds ahead of Freeman, who started three minutes ahead of him.

“I was just excited the whole way; I’ve never been in the top 20 at U.S. nationals so that was a little bit an improvement,” he said with a laugh.

Last year at the U.S. championships in Midway, Utah, Bratrud posted a best result of 24th in the classic sprint. He was 29th in the 15 k classic and 48th in the 30 k freestyle mass start. Two seasons ago, he made it to the 2013 Junior World Championships in Liberec, Czech Republic.

“Last year [nationals] was at altitude and I don’t ski very well at altitude, so I didn’t feel like my results there were very indicative of where I should be,” he said. “I’ve had some good results at NCAA’s [Championships] and I knew at least a top 10 was possible, that was my goal, so to win was something else.”

His goal had been to peak at nationals, less than 1,000 feet above sea level in Houghton. With a win, he put himself in a prime spot to be nominated to the U23 World Championships team, which will be announced after the final national race next Saturday.

“To make U23s, you’ve got to race well at nationals,” he said. “I’ve been skating well all year so the 15 k was kind of my goal and I’m really excited for the 30 k as well, but it’s sweet to start the week with a win.”

His family was also there to watch him do so, including his mom, dad, sister and brother. Bratrud said he was happy to ski well in front of them, as well as several Midwest (and non-Midwest) friends and parents.

“Being from Northern Michigan, we ski here almost every weekend … so I knew the course really well and I knew where I could push myself and where I need to take it a bit easy,” he explained, emphasizing he attacked the long, gradual uphills as opposed to the steepest terrain. “It just felt like another Central Region race for me, just a few more people, but it was really good.”

Bratrud led two NMU skiers in the top five with sophomore Fredrik Schwencke in fifth, 1:11.6 back. In his second season at NMU (after coming to the university from Norway with assistant coach Haakon Baanerud last year), Schwencke also knew the Michigan Tech Trails well.

On Dec. 21, he won the CCSA 15 k classic race, edging Bratrud in third by 1.1 seconds.

“We know this course very well, we’ve raced here a lot and we know we have a good team,” Schwencke, 22, said after Sunday’s race while standing near his dad, who was visiting from Oslo, Norway, with his mom and brother.

While he was pleased to race well in front of his family, in Michigan for a week and a half and leaving before Thursday’s 30 k classic mass start, Schwencke thanked NMU head coach Sten Fjeldheim, the 2014 national collegiate coach of the year.

“I was hoping for great skis and we had really great skis today,” Schwencke said. “I think our team benefits from slow conditions. We’re not that fast of skiers so we do well when it’s slow.

“It’s been two exciting years,” he added. “Today was a really good day. I feel much better in classic so it was kind of a surprise doing that well in skate so I’m really excited for the next couple races.”

Also for NMU, Adam Martin placed 13th and Ian Torchia was the top junior in 16th.

Fjeldheim called the men’s team’s performance “solid” and a direct result of an entire season of training. He was also proud that they’re all full-time students who trained 85 to 92 hours a month from September through November.

“Our guys have been super positive and they have been a really fun group to coach,” he said. “They have been working together really, really well. Not just our top four guys, but our whole men’s team; we have seven guys. We have some young enthusiasm in the team .. and right now, it is just good energy and solid training, you know, there is no secret.

As for Bratrud, Fjeldheim referred to him as a straight-A student with a “hell of a motor.”

“He has really made a huge commitment to this sport,” he explained. “We work a lot on balancing the athletes’ life between academics and athletics and I think that is what has really helped him. He has kept a really good perspective and I know and Kyle knows now that developing to be a good skier takes anywhere from five to ten years.”

Now that Bratrud has almost four years of collegiate-skiing experience, Fjeldheim said in another six, he could be “one of the best skiers we have had in a long time. He has just a really, really solid attitude.”

Freeman Second, Caldwell Captures Third

Freeman in second was surprised to see Bratrud at the top of the results list, but said that’s what nationals is all about.

“He wasn’t really on my radar, but I guess that’s what nationals is for — for people to come out of the woodwork,” the 34-year-old,16-time national champion said.

After a slower start than he would’ve liked, the four-time Olympian rallied to post the fastest splits through 23 starters.

“I was surprised I was behind in the splits early and I just fought as hard as I could,” Freeman said. “[In] the initial couple kilometers, I was twenty seconds down which was not normal and I didn’t go out easy, either, so I’m not sure what was going on there.”

He tried to latch onto Scott Patterson (APU), who started 15 seconds ahead of him, and closed on him in the first kilometer, but Patterson began to pull away on the initial long climb back up.

“I was getting pretty discouraged until we got to the top of the course and both he and [Sun Valley’s] Miles [Havlick, who started 30 seconds ahead of Freeman] came into view,” he added.

The three skied together and Freeman clawed back the time on Paddy Caldwell (Dartmouth College/Stratton Mountain School T2/U.S. Ski Team) and Gelso, who started behind him.

“I guess it was OK,” Freeman said of his result. “I was second to Kyle, who had a hell of a day so, what can you do?”

The eventual third-place finisher, Caldwell was fifth fastest at the halfway point, 0.7 seconds behind Gelso in fourth, 1.1 behind Hanneman, and 5.3 back from Freeman — whom he started 30 seconds after.

“I was hearing five to twenty [seconds] behind Kris most of the time,” Caldwell recalled. “I saw him only once in the beginning of the race and then I was just hearing that I was some distance behind, but that’s all I heard.”

The 20 year old ended up third overall for his first senior-nationals podium, 2.7 seconds behind Freeman and one-tenth of a second ahead of Gelso in fourth. Last year at nationals in Utah, he was 16th in the 15 k classic for his previous best.

“That was awesome,” Caldwell said of Sunday’s race, after pulling his neck warmer over his eyes for a moment to defrost his eyelids. “It was definitely an intense race: real cold, snowy, a lot of people out there, which is really fun, but … tough. But it’s awesome doing a 7.5 k loop. I don’t know if I’ve ever done that, that was pretty fun.”

At his last race at the Eastern Cup in Middlebury, Vt., Caldwell won the 15 k freestyle mass start by a minute and 17 seconds. He explained that he used that event — which was of the same distance and skate format on a similarly hilly course — as a tuneup for nationals.

“I wanted to go as hard as I could that race … because I knew today was going to be a day with a lot of solo skiing, which it was” he said. “I skied by myself about the entire time [today] so I really wanted to test that out a couple weekends ago.”

Gelso started 1:45 behind Caldwell and nearly matched his time, but fell 0.1 seconds short.

“I am slightly disappointed in that. I was hoping to be a little higher,” Gelso said of fourth place.

After starting 15 seconds behind Schwencke, he caught up to the Norwegian within the first two kilometers and the two stayed together for much of the race. Schwencke called sticking with Gelso his “main task.”

“It was kind of nice … he caught up with me, I just tried to hang on,” he said. “He gapped me a bit at the very end, but … I benefited from that.”

Gelso topped Schwencke by 18.8 seconds at the finish. He spent the holidays at his home in Truckee, Calif., training at some 6,000 meters above sea level.

“Coming from altitude, I just wanted to go out hard because I would have the benefit of being able to recover quick,” Gelso reflected. “So go out hard and keep it rolling.”

At points throughout the race, he heard he was in second or third. At 7.5 k, his time ranked fourth, 0.4 seconds behind Hanneman.

“I knew it was super tight,” he said.

Rogan Brown of the University of Vermont placed sixth, 1:19.4 behind Bratrud, David Norris (APU) was seventh (+1:26.2), Matt Liebsch (XC United/Gear West) eighth (+1:27.3), Lex Treinen (APU) ninth (+1:45.6), and Patterson 10th (+1:49.7).

Hanneman ended up 11th (+1:53.9), and Havlick was 12th (+2:02.5).

One of APU’s World Cup skiers, Reese Hanneman was listed to start but did not race. According to APU Head Coach Erik Flora, he had been planning to race three out of four events at nationals.

“Going through Period 1 [on the World Cup] is a good stress and a good experience, and coming here, we are looking at the sprint races and the 30 k,” Flora said. “We thought focusing on the three out of the four was going to be a good way and that was going to give him an extra day of prep as well.”

During the women’s 10 k on Sunday afternoon, the sprint race was rescheduled from Monday to Tuesday because of forecast sub-zero temperatures and high winds. Flora said if they’d known about the switch beforehand, Reese Hanneman might have done the 15 k with an extra day of rest before the sprint.

Former U.S. Ski Team member Tad Elliott, of the Ski & Snowboard Club Vail Elite Team, was also missing from Sunday’s race as he recovered from “some sort of flu/cold” in Durango, Colo., he explained in an email.

“Then [I] coughed so hard I injured my back!” Elliott wrote. “I am on the mend and hope to show up later in the week to race. I am still in Colorado getting mom’s love and soup and broth!”

— Lander Karath contributed reporting

Results

Editor’s Note: This is an ongoing series on junior and collegiate racers in the U.S. and beyond. While nordic sports are certainly not the largest, there are still thousands of  great stories that most of us are not familiar with. We will be picking athletes out of this pack to feature in future stories; nominations for outstanding or interesting nordic skiers can be sent to info@fasterskier.com with the subject line: “From The Pack.” We are looking for unique stories, not necessarily the fastest skiers. Nominations should include a brief explanation of why we should profile the athlete.

***

Much of Kyle Bratrud’s skiing career has been greatly influenced by his coaches.

First it was his Eden Prairie High School coach, Doug Boonstra, who pressured the cross-country runner to join the ski team.

“My ski coach (Boonstra) came to my classroom one day and pulled me out of class because he was doing that with a couple of the top younger runners,” Bratrud said in a phone interview.  “He basically more-or-less intimidated me into doing it.”

Bratrud soon joined the nordic ski team under the guidance of Boonstra several weeks after the season started and found that he enjoyed the sport. As Bratrud continued to ski, he became aware of junior national qualifiers through teammate Erik Fagerstrom. By the time his senior year rolled around, Bratrud placed 15^th in the 15 k classic mass start at Junior Nationals.

When Bratrud began looking at colleges, the University of Northern Michigan appealed to him not only because of the university’s history of producing quality athletes, but also because of the coaching staff.

After visiting the university, the nordic ski team’s head coach Sten Fjeldheim, the 2014 National Collegiate coach of the year, convinced Bratrud to come to Northern Michigan.

Bratrud entered the college circuit with good results, but felt that he had a lot of ground to cover to ski at the level of his teammates.

According to Bratrud, Fjeldheim is the one who got him there. The rising senior credits Fjeldheim for much the success he  the university, including a trip to the 2013 Junior World Championships, receiving an all-American honor in the 2013 NCAA Championships, and finishing as the top American in the 2014 NCAA 15 k classic.

“I think Sten is one of the better coaches in the country. He won national collegiate coach of the year so I’m not the only one who feels that way,” Bratrud said.

“He’s the kind of coach that if you put in the time and effort he’ll put it in back. I don’t know if I would be as fast if I hadn’t had Sten as a coach. I contribute a lot of my success to him.”

In the upcoming year, Bratrud has impressive goals. He wishes to return to Europe to race in the 2015 U23 World Championships and gain a podium at the NCAA Championships in Lake Placid.

After college, Bratrud has his eyes on a program that boasts another nationally recognized coach. While the decision to go professional after school will be made later in the school year, the Minnesota native pictures himself skiing for Alaska Pacific University under the U.S. Olympic Committee’s 2014 National Coach of the Year, Erik Flora.

Bratrud is currently in Alaska training under Flora with the APU team for the summer and is excited about the future prospects.

“Since coming here [to Alaska] I obviously have met Erik Flora and I think he’s a really great coach; probably the best coach that the country has,” he said. “Since being here my eyes have been open a little further to where I can go.”

Despite long-term goals of making the U.S. Ski Team and possibly the Olympics, Bratrud is taking his skiing “one day at a time.” One thing is certain however. Whatever success Bratrud may find in skiing, he will always remember the influence of his coaches.

Now the new coach of the Middlebury College Nordic Team, Johnson continues to use the workout with the athletes under his direction.

What you need: bounding poles, rolling terrain (ideally an 8-12 minute loop of a ski trail to monitor pacing).

The workout:

“The workout instruction is to run the flats and downhills at about a level 2 pace and ski-bound the uphills,” Johnson explained.

After a 30-minute warmup, the duration of the workout for Johnson’s college skiers is 25 to 60 minutes, depending on time of year, athlete ability and level of exertion during the bounding portion. The length and grade of each hill dictates whether the bounding is at peak intensity or ski walking. The jog down the other side is recovery time, but Johnson stressed that one should maintain a steady effort and find a pace sustainable for the entire workout.

“I think it simulates skiing quite well without having to be on rollerskis, which is a hard thing to find,” Johnson said. “Anyone who’s done much bounding knows that it’s a great simulation of trying to get up a steep hill in a classic race, and there aren’t many ways to experience that effort and pain without snow.”

As a coach, Johnson appreciates the simplicity of the workout when he explains it to a large group of athletes. He also likes the infinite variability of the intervals; if the day’s goal is to not exceed Level 3 intensity, the athlete must adjust how they climb and descend accordingly. It can also be ramped up to maximum effort.

Pete Vordenberg, the accomplished USST racer and eventual coach, was training on the Northern Michigan University campus the summer Johnson first learned of this workout 17 years ago. It was the subject for NMU coach Sten Fjeldheim’s “Continuous Bounding” session, and Johnson recalled a Fjeldheim story claiming the workout was “pivotal” for Vordenberg, too.

“I can’t remember all the details from the workout that day [in 1996], but I remember it really resonating with me as a fun and quality workout that I knew I wanted to start using in my regular training,” Johnson said.