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Torchia on the Ups, Downs and All He’s Learned Since His First USST Nomination

Ian Torchia (front) leading L3 intervals with the Stratton Mountain School (SMS) team in June. (Photo: Pat O’Brien)

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.

The NMU men’s ski team with Ian Torchia (third from r) in late August. According to Torchia, the paper he’s holding is a contract. “If we win [the] team NCAA title [this winter], they get to tattoo my gluteus maximus,” Torchia wrote. (Photo: Andy Keller)
Shortly after, Torchia had his wrist examined by doctor and was told he would need to have surgery. The procedure — scaphoid fixed via percutaneous fixation–left Torchia in a cast.

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].”

Ian Torchia (1) on the shoulders of Northern Michigan University Head Coach Sten Fjeldheim after he won the men’s 20-kilometer freestyle race at 2018 NCAA Skiing Championships in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. (Courtesy photo)

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.

Right to left: Ian Torchia, Paddy Caldwell, Adrien Backscheider, Simi Hamilton, and Erik Bjornsen during a post-interval cool down in Villard-de-Lans, France. (Courtesy photo)

“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”.

Ian Torchia rollerskiing up Alpe d’Huez, two days before the Tour de France on July 17, 2018. (Photo: Chris Grover)

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.”

Ian Torchia (l) with girlfriend, Kameron Burmeister, hiking in Franconia Notch, N.H., during an East Coast road trip they took in June. (Courtesy photo)

October 11, 2018
After Winter Marred by Mono, Brennan Breaks Record at Alaska Run for Women

Rosie Brennan (center) celebrates with her APU teammate Sadie Bjornsen (r) and former teammate Holly Brooks after winning the 2018 Alaska Run for Women on June 9 in Anchorage, Alaska. (Courtesy photo)

The last time Rosie Brennan was focused on competitive running, she was sporting a red, white and black singlet as a senior at Park City High School in Utah. In the 11 years since, the former U.S. Ski Team member’s running has shifted from a seasonal sport to supplemental training for her true passion: cross-country skiing.

Yet earlier this month, on June 9, Brennan surged to the front of the Alaska Run for Women in Anchorage, Alaska, where she lives and trains with the Alaska Pacific University (APU) nordic ski team. She was first across the line in the 5-mile road race, finishing in 27 minutes, 31 seconds. Brennan also broke the course record by 5 seconds (in 2002 Chris Clark won it in 27:36). Notably, Clark raced to 19th in the 2000 Olympics marathon in Sydney, Australia.

Prior to this spring, Clark had been the only woman to break the 28-minute mark in the Alaska Run for Women’s 26-year-long history. Brennan, 29, joined her ranks, along with 28-year-old Anna Dalton, who finished four seconds behind Brennan for second place in this year’s race. Nineteen-year-old Caroline Pennacchio placed third with a time of 29:53. More than 5,000 women participated in this year’s race, an event Brennan’s former teammate Kikkan Randall has won numerous times.

While Brennan ran the race casually with friends a few years ago, the 2018 Run for Women marked her first real race on pavement since high school, according to the Anchorage Daily News.

“I’ve always hesitated to actually race it,” Brennan told FasterSkier during a recent phone interview. “The part I was most worried about was getting an injury.”

The 5-mile course covers paved roads and bike paths, and Brennan feared that a hard effort on that kind of surface would take a toll on her body. But this spring, she said she wanted to “spice things up.” That, and she wanted to test her recovery after a long bout with mononucleosis.

An uphill battle

Looking back through her training log, Brennan can pinpoint the exact day she began to feel off. In late December, at the end of the first period of World Cup racing and just before the 2018 Tour de Ski, she described her sensations as “going up and down.”

Rosie Brennan racing to 17th in a World Cup 10 k skate on Dec. 10 in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo: Reese Brown / U.S. Ski & Snowboard)

At the time, she assumed the source of her fatigue was from the previous four weekends of racing. She had started the 2017/2018 World Cup season with four top 30’s and two top 20’s, her strongest Period 1 results to date. Perhaps her body was adjusting to the new level of fitness and racing she was putting forth.

Thinking the flagging she felt might be warranted, Brennan decided to enter the Tour de Ski. She finished the first race, a freestyle sprint, with a season-best result of 15th. But that Dec. 30 race was the high point of her World Cup season.

“My first race of the Tour was one of my best races all year, so I didn’t really think anything bad was going on,” Brennan reflected. “But that was a sprint race and for whatever reason, my sprinting wasn’t affected. … After that race I didn’t have any good races in the Tour. It was kind of just downhill from there.”

Brennan pushed through the Tour’s seven stages, finishing the final pursuit-style hill climb on Jan. 7 in 24th overall (out of 32 women), with the 17th-fastest time. That strong performance cap to a tough Tour, however, was no omen for the weeks to come.

“After the Tour, I just wasn’t recovering. I mean, I just felt miserable,” Brennan said. “But when you’ve raced like that, it’s easy to just be like, ‘Oh, it was just the Tour; it was really hard this year or the conditions were challenging. I was trying to make due, rest and get back to normal.”

Heading into the new year, Brennan sat out of the World Cup sprint weekend in Dresden, Germany, and resumed racing Jan. 20 in Planica, Slovenia. Even so, Brennan still felt off. She opted out of the Planica distance race to rest up for the following World Cup weekend in Seefeld, Austria, the last one before the Olympics. Less then a month before the Olympics began in PyeongChang, South Korea, Brennan’s APU coach, Erik Flora, flew to Europe and met with Brennan in person to discuss what might be going on.

“We both felt like I had probably gotten a virus,” Brennan reflected. “But with a virus there’s nothing you can do, so we decided just to rest it out and play the course and see what happened.”

In Seefeld, however, there was no remission. After the first 2 kilometers in the 10 k freestyle mass start, Brennan was spent. Wanting to investigate more, she had her blood count tested that weekend. The results showed nothing extraordinary, but they did indicate some sort of viral infection.

“There was nothing for me to do except rest,” Brennan said. “I didn’t get a mono test or anything at that point, because I was not showing any extreme symptoms.”

With her departure for PyeongChang just days away and the buildup of her first Winter Games, Brennan worked to get into an ideal headspace.

“It was really hard place to be,” she explained. “I was headed to my first Olympics and the last thing I wanted to do was convince myself there was something wrong with me. So at that point I just decided to do the opposite, tell myself I was fine, I just needed to rest, everything was going to be fine. That was kind of the approach I took, just rest it out, try to have fun, get back into the groove of things, be excited for the Olympics, and hope things will turn around.”

Unfortunately, her mono reached its peak in PyeongChang. She was offered a spot in the opening women’s race, the 15 k skiathlon, and not wanting to miss her Olympic debut, she started.

“You only get what opportunities you get,” Brennan said. “I had to take that skiathlon start and just hope that things would turn around, and I think that was unfortunately probably the peak of my mono.”

That race, which she finished in 58th place, turned out to be her only start at the Games. After the Olympics, she finished out the World Cup season, but not without difficulty.

“Every race was kind of the same: I would ski 2 to 3 k and then everything would just fall to pieces,” she said. “You don’t really realize how much of hole or like a tunnel you’re in until you step out of it. If I were to do it again, I would have just come home after the Olympics to try and figure it out.”

But as they saying goes, hindsight is 20/20.

“At the time, you just keep telling yourself, OK, you’re going to get it this weekend, things are going to turn around,” Brennan said. “It’s really hard to not have that attitude when you’re over there because you’re trying to have fast races and you’re trying to make the most of the bad situation.”

Getting answers, moving forward

The women’s classic sprint top six at 2018 SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vt., with (from left to right) U.S. Ski Team members Kikkan Randall in sixth, Sophie Caldwell in second, Jessie Diggins in first, Ida Sargent in third, Sadie Bjornsen in fourth, and Rosie Brennan in fifth. (Photo: John Lazenby/Lazenbyphoto.com)

When Brennan did return to her training base in Anchorage, it was late March after competing at SuperTour Finals in Craftsbury, Vermont. An Anchorage doctor with whom Brennan had been corresponding with agreed to run a few tests upon her return. One of those tests was for mono.

“That came back positive,” Brennan said. “It was nice to know, because after awhile I was starting to think that I was going crazy, but I was also frustrated because I had just spent three months trying to race when I probably shouldn’t have been. … My biggest fear was that by racing that whole time, I had driven it so far into my body that I would never come out.”

With that in mind, Brennan took April slow. Training took a back seat, as it does for most professional cross-country skiers that month. Brennan went biking, but for minimal amounts of time. When she felt tired, she stopped. By the time May 1 rolled around, Brennan decided she was feeling strong enough to jump into APU’s start-of-the-season training. It was then that she also decided she would enter Alaska’s Run for Women.

In order to train for the race, Brennan didn’t stray from her ski-specific training plan. Her biggest change was running her strength warmups and cool downs on pavement.

“Racing on roads requires a lot more leg speed and that was the part that I was worried about, whether I had enough leg speed,” Brennan said.

She also did one-minute strides with the APU team when they incorporated them into their training sessions. Otherwise, her road-running prep was minimal. When race day finally came, Brennan forgot to start her watch at the start.

“Retrospectively, I’m really glad that I did [forget] because I would have slowed down if I had known how fast we were running,” she said.

Rosie Brennan (r) chases Anna Dalton during the 2018 Alaska Run for Women on June 9 in Anchorage, Alaska. Brennan went on to win the race in a record-breaking time of 27:31. (Photo: Becca Rorabaugh)

Brennan and Dalton averaged around 5:30 minute/miles for the duration of the race, though for the most part, Brennan indicated she couldn’t hear any of the splits she was being given.

“At one point someone yelled, ‘That was a 5:15 mile!’ and I was like, ‘Haha, that’s really funny,’ ” Brennan recalled with a laugh.

Assuming that Dalton would make a move in the last 1,600 meters, Brennan hung tight to the experienced runner and aimed match her strides.

The move from Dalton never came. With about a minute left in the race, Brennan took the lead through the course’s final turns before the finish, which was on a final curve of a 400-meter track.

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“Once I went, I realized that I actually had close to nothing left,” Brennan said of her final move. “I was like, ‘Oh no, she is going to pass me, she’s going to pass me. When I finally turned to the final 75 meters, I could see the clock it said, like, 27 something, and I had a rough idea what times were for the race, so I knew that was really fast. Then I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I hope I actually get to the line.’”

Brennan did, taking the win and the record with it.

“I had no idea that we had broken the record,” Brennan said. “Once Anna finished, she came up to me and said she thought that we had both gone under [the course record], that was when it really hit me, how fast we had been running that whole time.”

Olympians Tyler Kornfield (l) and Rosie Brennan (r) with a young Skiku skier this spring. (Courtesy photo)

The road-race win was Brennan’s first ever. At a running time trial with APU the weekend before, she had come close to a personal best. Both performances gave her confidence as she looked ahead to the rest of the training season.

“I definitely surprised myself,” Brennan said referring to her running victory. “To have that race really reassured me that I am moving in the right direction.”

A U.S. Ski Team member until this spring (she was originally named to the national team in high school, then after a six-year absence was renamed in the spring of 2015), Brennan was not renominated for her fourth-consecutive season in May. But even apart from the national team, she remains focused on racing internationally on the World Cup.

“I’m hoping for some World Cup starts and World Championships,” she said. “I’ll be working towards those.”

June 22, 2018
Kristen Bourne on Recovering from Mono and Making NCAAs

Northern Michigan University’s Kristen Bourne (c) after the 5-kilometer classic race at the 2017 NCAAs in Jackson, New Hampshire. (Photo: Jackie Schneider)

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.

NMU junior Kristen Bourne racing to 19th in the 15 k skiathlon at the 2017 U.S. SuperTour Finals on March 27 in Fairbanks, Alaska. (Photo: Lance Parrish, Fairbanks)

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.”

NMU’s Kristen Bourne (c) topped the podium at the 2017 CCSA Distance Championships in early February in Houghton, Mich. (Photo: Jackie Schneider)

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.”

NMU junior Kristen Bourne racing the freestyle leg of the mixed relay at the 2017 U.S. Distance Nationals in late March in Fairbanks, Alaska. (Photo: Lance Parrish, Fairbanks)

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.

May 18, 2017
Domracheva to Skip Entire 2016 Biathlon Season Due to Mononucleosis

Darya Domracheva of Belarus en route to a victory in the sprint in Oslo, Norway, one of her nine wins last season. The 2014-2015 World Cup Total Score winner will not compete in 2016. (Photo: Fischer/Nordicfocus.com)

Darya Domracheva of Belarus announced about a month ago that she had mononucleosis, a viral disease that leaves sufferers with severe fatigue. After struggling to cope and recover, things are not going well and Domracheva has decided to skip the entire 2015-2016 biathlon season.

“You can, of course, push it and and still act this winter, but after consulting with experts and listening to them, I came to the conclusion that a more sensible solution would be skipping the season,” she wrote in a post on sport.tut.by. “I’m sure it would do me good, will restore strength and get me motivated for the next year.”

Domracheva won the World Cup Total Score last season; previously she had placed second in the 2012 and 2013 seasons and third in the 2014 season, where she also won three individual gold medals at the Olympic Games.

Darya Domracheva (Belarus, center) won the 10 k pursuit in Antholz, Italy, by a landslide over Daria Virolaynen (Russia, left) and Kaisa Makarainen (Finland, right). (Photo: Fischer/NordicFocus)

She wrote that by the end of the 2015 season, she was exhausted, and considered stepping back to either take a year off or compete less frequently on the World Cup. But after a rest she regained her enthusiasm for training and the next season. Her body “wasn’t fooled,” though, and mono was a signal that she should rest.

“Next month, on doctor’s advice, I will start in a very calm and gentle way,” she wrote. “Next I will gradually begin a basic training course, based on well-being and performance analysis. In the winter I plan to do detailed testing and selection of my skis for next season, and this year I’m getting a great opportunity to do so... To diversify and make the work more interesting, I plan to have a custom training plan for me to exercise, and to work out with experts from other sports. In general, I am considering the year for as a kind of reboot for myself.”

A number of biathletes have come down with mono in the last several seasons, with varying effects. Martin Fourcade, the Total Score winner on the men’s side, had a bout of mono last season, but it didn’t seem to harm his season; the biggest thing he had to give up was a desire to race in the FIS Cross-Country World Cup which began before the biathlon season.

A few seasons before, Canada’s Jean Philippe Le Guellec struggled with mono too, and said that it did significantly affect his performance.

Domracheva is undeniably the biggest star in women’s biathlon at the moment, and her loss will be felt greatly. Organizers of the 2016 World Championships in Oslo, Norway, are already lamenting her absence.

“It is clear this will make interest [in the competitions] smaller, particularly in Belarus,” NRK commentator Ola Lunde said. “It’s incredibly sorry for the sport. Meanwhile, the Norwegians are rid of an important and tough competitor, so there are greater chances for medals at the World Championships in Oslo.”

Biathlon will face an environment similar to cross-country skiing next season, where last year’s dominating star Marit Bjørgen is taking the season off to have her first child.

In biathlon’s case, the most likely heir to Domracheva’s throne is Kaisa Makarainen of Finland; she finished second to Domracheva in the Total Score in 2015, and the pair were head and shoulders above the rest of the field. Makarainen also won the Total Score in 2011 and 2014.

But there are plenty of other women nipping at her heels, who won at least one World Cup race last season. That includes Valj Semerenko of Ukraine; Veronika Vitkova and Gabriela Soukalova of the Czech Republic; Tiril Eckhoff and Fanne Welle-Strand Horn of Norway; Marie Dorin Habert of France; Laura Dahlmeier of Germany; and Ekaterina Yurlova of Russia.

In other words, despite race organizers’ fears, there’s unlikely to be a lack of excitement on the World Cup.

August 4, 2015
Bender Bouncing Back from Lyme, Mono and One Heck of a Summer

Jennie Bender (CXC) while training for the 2012 Telemark Forest Mountain Bike Race in Cable, Wis. Upon discovering she had both Lyme disease and mono, she wasn’t able to compete in the 28.5-mile race on July 14. (CXC courtesy photo)

The symptoms started at a July training camp with Central Cross Country (CXC) in northern Wisconsin. The runner-up from last year’s SuperTour series, Jennie Bender, 24, wasn’t feeling well.

For two to three days at a time, she’d experience bouts of nausea. Then her neck felt sore, along with her jaw and teeth. One night, she tossed and turned with cold chills, and feared that she’d wake up a leper. The next day, she pushed on with her team during dryland training. Bender didn’t know what was wrong, but was sure she’d muscle through it.

Things got worse. Bender’s eyes started to get puffy and dry, she felt an unusual frequency of headaches, and finally, fatigue set in.

She went to the doctor and learned she had Lyme disease, a bacterial infection caused by a tick bite. When Bender called back for more information, they told her she also had mononucleosis, a viral infection commonly known as mono. She cried at first, but the second diagnosis made her laugh out loud.

“Like … seriously? You’re just messin … ” Bender recalled in a blog entry.

Left with one option, she chose to rest.

“I have never had either before,” Bender wrote in an email to FasterSkier. “So I had to stop cold turkey for a solid month [starting July 21], which needless to say was not easy. My legs felt like Jello and I had a lot of practice sitting.”

While absorbing all this during her three-hour drive back to Minneapolis, Bender had a bit of a scare. About 2 ½ hours in, she started singing to herself. That wasn’t the scary part.

“Suddenly I realized my speech was slow, and I couldn’t formulate my words very well,” she wrote on her blog. “My upper lip was also curling up in an abnormal way as I spoke (to myself), and I was trying to figure out if this was in my head, or actually happening. It lasted about 5-8 minutes, then slowly started to change back. This was followed by brief leg and forearm/hand tingling.”

Jennie Bender working out during a CXC training camp earlier this summer at Telemark Resort in Cable, Wis. (CXC photo)

She called several friends, which were doctors, and they advised that she go to the emergency room. She did so at 5 p.m. on a Saturday, and seven hours later, left the ER with little information.

“They concluded I didn’t have a tumor, or MS, or a slew of other worst case scenarios,” Bender wrote. “I keep thinking, what if they DID find something like that? My first reaction was that I would have had a better excuse than Mono for not doing the strength test during camp. Then, I would have freaked the heck out. Probably run around the hospital naked looking for that sheet cake to ape throw at bystanders.”

Since then, Bender has run through a roller coaster of emotions this offseason. She’s hated Facebook at times for photos of people training and been frustrated with herself for working out too soon. After making the podium at both U.S. and Canadian nationals last season, she’s had to reconsider her goals this year and be her biggest advocate in achieving them.

“This whole process has been a learning experience of how to trust myself,” she wrote. “After numerous blood tests, the Dr (correction many Drs) couldn’t tell me when to train or when not to, and neither could a coach. I was the only one who knew how I felt. I had to cancel many camps, convince people I shouldn’t do races or events, change my diet, disregard my yearly training plan, and change my mindset.

“I have no doubt in my mind. I will come back just as strong,” she added. “And I will be ready to slay. Just a speed bump.”

***

Here is the rest of FasterSkier’s interview with Bender, who is picking up the intensity in Canmore, Alberta:

Bender scrambling up the East End of Rundle (also known as EEOR) with former teammate Sara Hewitt (not shown) in Canmore, Alberta. (Courtesy photo / jenniebender.com)

FasterSkier: How’s Canmore?

Jennie Bender: I arrived in Canmore [Oct.] 11th to hang out with [former CXC teammate] Sara Hewitt before the team arrived on the 13th. We started skiing the 14th around the rolled out loop, and the snow has been holding on thus far. We had a warm spell with rain and I thought it was a goner, but it’s doing OK.

The team started out the week getting used to the altitude, so we have been doing mostly distance, but [Wednesday] the men started intensity, which will be the theme of the rest of the camp. The mens team up here consists of Eric Wolcott, Karl Nygren, Adam Martin, and Doug Debold, and they are looking really strong. Last year our woman’s team was a force, and now this year I have a feeling the men are going to shine.

FS: How’s your recovery and transition back to training been?

JB: I have been working on technique a lot this summer, and it really feel like I have made some improvements. I just need to transfer them to on snow. [New CXC head coach] Igor [Badamshin], along with some other positive influences, have opened my eyes to some big changes.

Technique wise, I am working on relaxing into the motions more. I muscle a lot of skiing, and I would like to take advantage of natural movement more so than in the past. … When I am healthy, I will do intensity. That should be soon.

FS: How long were you on medications?

JB: The doctors told me to take two weeks of antibiotics, but I heard so many horror stories from fellow friends and athletes who have had Lyme before, that I requested three weeks. I think I caught it early, but I don’t know if I picked it up in June or July. I don’t remember finding a tick on me, it was sort of ironic because I was the most paranoid athlete at camp towards tick prevention. Warning to others, Deet does not ward off ticks, only Permethrin, which can’t be sprayed on skin.

Note: Bender was unable to compete in the hyped Telemark Forest Mountain Bike Race (part of the CXC Triple) on July 14.

“I actually was just going to slow ride the race because I felt bad about skipping it,” Bender wrote on her blog. “Then I finally put together that I probably shouldn’t. Yes, it was actually a decision that was stressing me out, and not an obvious ‘No F-ing way’ for the normal, logical brain. You would be surprised how many hopeful ‘Are you going to race still?’ that I received.”

FS: How did you spend the rest of the summer?

JB: I had to miss the CXC altitude camp in Colorado, so I went to Vermont to visit home in late August and early September. There, I had a few setbacks, trained, then had to rest again. I would think I was easing into it, then realized just how little reserve to recover I had in me.

When I came back to Minnesota end of September, I finally started to get in some consistent training. Now I am here in Canmore, which feels really good. I still haven’t done much intensity, and of course picked up a slight cold right when I was going to lay it on, but I have been rolling with the punches thus far … so I just have to deal.

FS: What’s your outlook for the season ahead?

JB: My goals are still the same. I just have plan A, B, and bah humbug C. I want to race in the Canmore and Quebec World Cups, I want to race well at Nationals in Soldier Hollow, and I want to race spring in Europe. We’ll see how far my stubbornness and new technique gets me.

Through all of this, I have learned and reiterated three important things. 1) It’s important to know how to make yourself happy and laugh on your own. That being said, those who reach out to you when you start to fall off the map really mean a lot. 2) This summer, I have had the least amount of structure given to me since high school. Igor has urged us to know how to lead our own way, and at first I fought it, but now I understand its importance. You are your best coach, and confidence is key. 3) Every great athlete needs to have a setback story, so I am hoping this is mine, and now I can move on and ski fast.

October 19, 2012
After Nationals, Davis Discovers Dormant Mono

Skyler Davis of the U.S. Ski Team and Stratton Mountain School competes in the classic freestyle sprint at the 2012 U.S. Cross Country Championships at Black Mountain in Rumford, Maine, on Jan. 8. He placed fifth for his best result of the weeklong event. Photo: Flying Point Road/All Flying Point Road photo proceeds donated to the National Nordic Foundation.

Since coming down with a whopper of a sinus infection nearly five months ago, Skyler Davis hadn’t felt like himself. In his first year on the U.S. Ski Team’s development squad, the 20-year-old tried to shake it.

He tried at the U.S. Ski Team’s dryland camp in Lake Placid, N.Y, but he had to leave early to recover at home in Jericho, Vt. Afterward, Davis rallied and put forth the effort needed to earn his first World Cup starts in Düsseldorf, Germany, in early December. But even there, Davis wasn’t feeling 100 percent.

Soon after, he raced in a World Cup freestyle sprint in Davos, Switzerland, where he was 77^th in the qualifier. It wasn’t the result he was looking for, and by the end of December, Davis was back in Vermont training for the 2012 U.S. Cross Country Championships staged Jan. 2-8.

Torin Koos (BSF/Rossignol), Skyler Davis (SMS/USST) and Reese Hanneman (APU) skiing up the first hill in the semifinals. Photo: Flying Point Road.

At Black Mountain in Rumford, Maine, he hoped he’d have better luck. He got his wish on the last day of U.S. Nationals, placing fifth in the classic sprint final.

While it marked his best result of the week (he was 14^th in the freestyle sprint), it didn’t match his podium from last year, when he was third in the classic sprint at nationals.

He was missing the fitness, especially in the final, he said. But he felt better and his energy was slowly coming back.

A few days after nationals, Davis went to his doctor to have his blood tested. He had similar tests in July, when physicians found nothing unusual about his health. A month later, Davis came down with a sinus infection. Most likely starting in October, he had mononucleosis as well.

Davis learned of the latter diagnosis upon most recently visiting his doctor, who said the virus had been dormant inside him since about December.

That meant Davis trained with mono for about three months and raced with the energy-sapping condition while in Europe.

Now that it was no longer bothering him, the finding came as somewhat of a relief. Throughout the fall, Davis worked with a counselor at the Stratton Mountain School, his alma mater. He considered Dwaine Tait his sports psychologist, and said they both tried to figure out what was going on with Davis.

Davis at the top of a hill during a distance rollerski in South Londonderry, Vt., on Oct. 5, which was likely just before he contracted mono after dealing with a lingering sinus infection.

“He had the same response as me, like, ‘You had mono? That kind of is good news,’ ” Davis said in a phone conversation from Jericho.

“If anything, getting [those medical] results makes me feel good about how I did so far,” he added. “It’s like, if I had mono and I could do that, I should be able to do even better next year.”

While he was excited to race in Europe, especially in a team sprint with USST veteran Andy Newell, he was disappointed with his results. As a team, the two failed to advance in the Düsseldorf freestyle sprint and placed 26^th overall.

In the future, Davis wants another shot at the team sprint, an event he feels matches his strengths. In early December, it caught him at a low point.

“I thought I was getting better because mentally, I wanted to be better for the World Cups,” Davis said. “But my energy was pretty low.”

In hindsight, his daily headaches and lack of energy pointed to mono. At the time, Davis reasoned he was feeling the after-effects of a bad sinus infection. His glands weren’t particularly swollen, which is usually a dead giveaway for the virus.

Even if his doctor had discovered it in the fall, there wasn’t much Davis could have done except rest and lowered his expectations, he said. That could have kept him from being so hard on himself when it came to racing results.

He credited his friends and family for helping him through his saddened and sometimes-moody state while he dealt with the prolonged sickness. Using a prescribed nose steroid to strengthen his sinuses, Davis said he was feeling his best yet since becoming ill in August.

“It’s hard to tell how low I was feeling until I started feeling kind of normal again,” Davis said. “Then it’s like, ‘Whoa, where did this come from?’ ”

As for the rest of the season, Davis said he’s focused on racing more and traveling less, with the SuperTour finals as his highlight. He will likely race in Eastern Cups and carnivals, he said, and possibly make the trip to the Madison SuperTour sprints in Wisconsin. If needed, he could tone his schedule down to race per weekend.

After spending some time with his friends on break from the University of Vermont, playing hockey and clearing his head, Davis was optimistic about the rest of the year. On Tuesday, he planned to start his first online class – personal health – through UVM.

He laughed at the irony of the course. Hopefully he’d pass with flying colors.

January 16, 2012