Casting Off Sloth: A Look at the Motivation of Skiing
By xcskiworld.com Contributing Editor Andrew Gardner
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There is an aisle in every bookstore than makes me uncomfortable. It seems harmless at first glance: the shelves are similar to those found in “New Hardcover” or “Classics,” but a closer look reveals pithy titles that begin with “Chicken Soup for the…” It is the motivational section and it houses a collection of vapid authors pawning off their wares to a vulnerable consumer. Success Seminars, 7 habits of Highly Effective People, Tips for Life- all of it rubbish with a binding and a sunset on the cover. The number of these books is unreal, the amount of money people have spent on them is unworldly. Motivation, it seems, has long been in short supply.
The medieval Italian poet Dante, who’s Commedia was later renamed Divine by the peoples that read and reread it, wrote of climbing an impossible hill and slumping exhausted, breath “milked away from the lungs.” His master (liken him to a coach--envision Trond Nystad, Nikolai Anikin, or Torbjorn Karlsen if it helps) scoffed at the pasty Italian,
“Now it behooves thee to put off sloth”
My Master said; "for sitting upon down,
Or under quilt, one cometh not to fame,
Withouten which whoso his life consumes
Such vestige leaveth of himself on earth,
As smoke in air or in the water foam.
And therefore raise thee up, o'ercome the anguish
With spirit that o'ercometh every battle,” (Inf. XXIV)
By and large cross-country skiers are not given to bouts of laziness or sloth. Most skiers are grossly competitive, highly intense, unyielding focus-machines. These are people that combat a national lack of financial support, a race schedule that spans seven lunar cycles, and a cultural recognition of their efforts that ranges just above the yawn-worthy sport of curling. These are people like Justin Wadsworth, who “retire” to a simple life of Adventure Racing. Look down your list of fellow cross country skiers and they bite off more than most ever put on their plate.
Yet, there is a time, even in the uber-motivated factions of cross-country ski racers, when motivation is lacking. When the breath of training is “milked away.” It typically comes in this season, when the road weary pole plants of summer are felt in the elbows, when the bleary-eyed days of video analysis are too much to sit through, when the pull-up bar seems to be growing taller.
It is at this point, at this moment of self-reflection that skiers become champions, heroes. I read an article on “Mental Toughness” when I was fourteen at a junior race in the Midwest. The article, printed in the still-living Master Skier, held a phrase that sticks with me, “indomitable perseverance.” I’ve been trying to put a feeling, or a place in the spectrum of living to “indomitable perseverance.” I have seen what it looks like.
This well of stubbornness is plumbed by skiers like Kris Freeman, who registered disgust at his doctor’s phrasing, “you’ll probably be able to ski.” Freeman responded with a simple precept for combating his well-publicized diabetes, “Evaluate what you want to do in your life and what you have to do to get there.” It is not an easy prospect.
In the end it is the difficulty of this sport that buoys us. The sheer impossibility of skiing fast is what makes the pursuant so persistent. My colleague Mark Clark claims that it takes three life-time reincarnations to master classic ski technique alone. The Scandinavians say a decade. My father is on his third of each and is still working away with a spirit that o’ercometh every battle.
Motivation is elusive. Every human struggles with “will.” Those with the most integrity persist. Those with the most integrity persist.
Andrew Gardner skis for Atomic and the Swix Tech Team. He is the Director of the Colorado Rocky Mountain School Nordic Program in Carbondale, CO.
