SEEFELD, Austria – He stood at the starting line of the biggest race of his career so far and had one thing on his mind: stay at the front for as long as he could.
Wausau native Adam Martin was in 33rd place, ranking among the top cross-country skiers in the world. It was March 3, and the 50 km (31 mile) race of the Freestyle World Ski Championships in Seefeld, Austria, was about to start. Adam and the other skiers moved their bodies, shaking their limbs to keep themselves relaxed. It was hot, about 60 degrees.
“I’m often a little surprised at how normal this feeling is in the moments leading up to a really big race,” he later said in an email interview. “I train all year round, often thinking about several events in the winter. But when the time comes right before a big event, it’s surprising how familiar it all seems.”
At age 24, Adam was the youngest American skier to compete in the World Championships. However, he is no stranger to high-stakes races and pressure cookers. He had been preparing for moments like this since high school.
The World Championships are the most prestigious competition for a cross-country skier outside the Olympic Games, and participating in them was a significant step in his career.
Adam sets detailed and refined goals based on personal development and reaching the limits of his potential, and competition at the highest level is the key to reaching this peak. If he achieves these goals, he could be on a similar starting line at the 2020 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China.
“I would definitely love to go to the Olympics,” he said. However, he cannot bring himself to set this as a specific goal as the definition of his success. He knows his sport can be fickle and too much is out of his control.
Nothing like this occurred to Adam at the start of the 50 km World Championships. His thoughts were focused on one path: staying in the lead group. Stick with the lead group. Stick with the lead group.
It was internal. He always forced himself.
Both of Adam’s parents, Paul Martin, a mathematics professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in Wausau, and Laura Martin, a physical therapist and stay-at-home mom, are avid athletes who lead lively outdoor lifestyles.
“We are most interested in long-distance and endurance running,” Laura said. Laura was a runner, Paul was more of a cyclist. They both love cross-country skiing.
Their children – Adam has an older sister, Sarah – have been involved in adventures almost from birth. Paul remembers carrying them around in his backpack when they were too adolescent to ski on their own.
By the time each child was 4 or 5, they were skiing on their own, and by age 8, “they were skiing pretty well,” Paul said.
When the children reached middle school, they both joined the free Night Gliders program offered by the Nordic Ski Club in Wausau. Night Gliders gives children weekly lessons and prepares them for a lifetime of skiing. And competition, if they so choose. Adam was a fifth grader when he ran his first race at the Nine Mile County Recreation Forest.
“I was incredibly nervous,” Adam said. He skied strenuous and failed to win in a field crowded with older and more experienced skiers.
But when the race was over, he knew it would be cross-country skiing This for him.
“I was excited. It was a really fun experience that hooked me,” he said. “I would even go as far as to say it was a euphoric experience.”
Laura remembers this race.
“He was addicted to ski racing,” she said. “It became a passion. And when Adam is passionate about something, it permeates everything in his life.”
Paul and Laura never pressured Adam.
“That was it in itself. He always pushed himself harder than we ever pushed him,” Paul said.
It didn’t take long for Adam’s work to start paying off. Before he was able to get his driving license, he qualified to race at national and international levels. He was 17 years old when he started his first international race in Estonia.
“Putting it into perspective.”
The 50 km race was Adam’s second race in the World Championships. The first was the skiathlon, a 30 km (18.6 mile) competition in which competitors must complete half the race in classic style and half in skating style.
The race took place on February 23, eight days before the 50 km race. Norwegian Sjur Roethe won the skiathlon with a time of 1:10:21.8. Adam finished 54th, almost eight minutes behind Roeth, and was disappointed with the result.
“I still put it in perspective,” Adam said a few days later in a Skype interview from Seefeld. “There are so many variables in ski racing and you have to really get your bearings.”
In another conversation a few weeks later, Adam was still disappointed with the breed, but had reached a level of acceptance. “I am honored and appreciative of this experience and this opportunity,” he said. “And now I have the motivation to dig a little deeper.”
When Adam was in junior high and high school, he often dominated races, many of which he skied alone, ahead of the pack. Laura stated that these races also did not satisfy him because they did not help him improve.
“He was always looking for ways to improve his conditioning and he always liked it a lot more when another player could push him,” she said.
So after graduating from Wausau East High School in 2013, Adam enrolled at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, which boasts one of the best Nordic ski programs in the country.
Adam developed there. He was a four-time All-American and in 2016 took third place in the 15 km classic race at the US Championships. Adam said his top priority at NMU was skiing, but he also earned a 4.0 grade-point average with two degrees at his 2017 graduation. , mathematics and computer science. He won the 2017 NCAA Elite 90 Award, which recognizes athletes who compete at the top of their sports while achieving the highest academic standards.
Once Adam finishes his relentless pursuit of skiing, he will likely graduate from college and pursue a career in computer science. When it will be? When skiing loses its sense of fulfillment for him, he said, “it’s like when I can’t enjoy racing or I stop enjoying the process.”
There is a tension between the appeal of sports and delving into the field of computer science.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m more attracted to a more traditional career. There is a more direct connection between effort and fulfillment. “I think in most careers you are judged by your production,” he said. “The worst part of being a professional athlete is the moments of self-doubt when I have a bad race.”
‘It was crazy.’
First half 50 thousand went exactly as Adam expected.
Adam said it was a hectic start, but the course soon picked up a rhythm as it wound through the Austrian hills.
“There’s kind of an accordion effect,” Adam said. Leaders will slow down as they go uphill and the herd will gather. It then stretches out as the leaders descend while their pursuers continue to climb the slope.
Skiers changed skis about halfway through the race, a common practice in longer races. After the change, the leaders methodically ran away from Adam.
“I got knocked out and started losing time on the descents,” he said. Again his skis were a little sticky, but this time the race felt completely different to Adam. Equipment didn’t seem to play such a big role in this race, and he proved to himself that he could match the best in the world.
Soon he was racing alone, with the leaders ahead of him, the slower skiers behind him. He saw several other skiers who had been dropped by the lead group, so he strained to catch them, but also relaxed.
“I felt a certain acceptance that I had been dropped. I mean, it wasn’t perfect, but I started to enjoy the experience,” Adam said. “We did a lap about every 18 minutes and drove through a packed stadium. We could see ourselves on the big TV screens that people were watching in the stadium. … It was crazy.”
Martin finished the 50km race in 1:58:01, just over eight minutes behind winner Hans Christer Holund of Norway.
“Pursuing something without sacrifice is fulfilling.”
The 2018/2019 cross-country skiing season has come to an end.
Adam is preparing to take some time off and go to Wausau to visit his parents and make maple syrup with Paul and other family members.
It was a good season, he said. He finished second at the U.S. Nationals in the 15K Classic and had eight World Cup starts, as well as qualifying and World Championship races.
After the trip to Wausau, he will practice in the offseason with his Craftsbury Green Racing Project team based in Craftsbury, Vermont. He joined this team before graduating from NMU, after his college ski season ended. Craftsbury pays for housing, coaching, travel and meals. Adam works and coaches at the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, a facility that offers training opportunities for cyclists, runners, rowers and cross-country skiers. “It’s kind of like an all-ages summer camp,” Adam said, only with running, biking and rowing themes.
It also earns income from sponsorship.
Adam is looking forward to off-season training. “I really enjoy training in the summer. For me it’s kind of a puzzle,” he said.
Last summer, Adam did a lot of volume training, long and relatively easier exercises that helped him build endurance. This summer, he plans to train fewer hours but increase the intensity of his classes.
“I felt like I was a little bit lacking in top speed this year in terms of being able to really push myself,” Adam said.
For Adam, the most significant thing is still passion and a way to honor the 14-year-old who fell in love with this sport in the first place.
“Fulfillment is,” Adam said, “in pursuing something without abandon.”
