The Elite Novice

By Erin Boxberger, a rower on the Craftsbury Green Racing Project. The GRP Rowing team encourages all of its athletes to incorporate skiing into their winter training. For some team members, this requires learning a brand new sport.

The feeling of trying a new athletic discipline, as an elite athlete, is a tricky one. I’ve reached a high level in my own sport and by design I’ve become highly specialized. The Princeton national team training center circa 2016-2018 did not see “cross training” as a highly valuable pursuit. When I trained there, we embarked on a mission to do as much of the rowing motion as possible. This led to some repetitive use injuries, but also for a time to very strong rowers. 

When I came to Craftsbury in May 2020 I’d missed the ski season. The team was gone for an extended period early in the Olympic year, so it wasn’t until the end of 2021 that I had the opportunity to clip into the skis and wobble around for the first time. I have no qualms about looking like an idiot in the pursuit of learning something new, and a variety of motion is key for injury prevention - but it did hurt my athletic ego. 

Skiing’s learning curve is steep for a girl from one of the flattest states in the country. And I won’t blame my terrible balance on one short leg, a result of an old youth soccer injury, but it didn’t help. Not everything translates seamlessly between sports, but I think learning to ski has been a worthwhile pursuit. 

I learned a few things quickly - wax helps and tension will slowly kill you. Some harder fought lessons I’ve picked up have been learning to fall gracefully, putting ego on the back burner and figuring out what level of gloves are necessary to save the fingers. Slowly but surely, I moved in the forward direction, sort of. 

Part of what made skiing feel difficult at the beginning was the fear of injuring myself in a non-rowing discipline. Returning to the water injured isn’t an option. A knee that isn’t used to moving in a lateral motion can seem exceptionally vulnerable when skate skiing. 

But skiing actually has helped me strengthen auxiliary muscle groups and gave me access to a wider range of motion. Functional mobility is key for an athlete who will otherwise have her feet strapped onto a machine or into a boat. Our goal in the wintertime is volume and skiing gives us a chance to stand up and get outside.

It has been a tough journey for me, but I have slowly ventured outside of the warmup loop mostly by force of peer pressure. My teammates completed a 44k marathon, and if that isn’t peer pressure I don’t know what is. XC Skiing is physiologically taxing, but for a rower new to the sport it is also a mental exercise. I’m a novice again and I have to figure it out. It’s been a while since I’ve been so uncoordinated in public, but there are moments when I build up the confidence to look up and out through the trees and across entire fields I’ve never seen before. In those moments, the growing pains are worth it.

The weeks of wintertime for the rowers are dwindling. I've gained some base skills that will allow me to continue growing my skiing volume through winter seasons to come. I’m uninjured and we are firing on all cylinders preparing for a testing period on the ergometer. It’s easy to say that you’re up for anything once, but it’s another to commit to achieving a certain level of proficiency in a new sport. 

In my opinion XC skiing is a worthwhile commitment for anyone serious about gaining a solid aerobic base for any athletic endeavor. The rowers push forward, we’re eating up the ski meters and taking the fitness and strength we’ve gained on the snow to the water in a few short weeks.