In two years, how did Annie Hart go from 80th place (2007) to 1st (2009) at the Minnesota State High School Girls Nordic Meet?
By Renee Schaefer with Kevin Brochman
Annie’s Story
2009 Minnesota State Champion and St. Paul Academy Junior Annie Hart has been excelling in cross country and track since she began competing in 6th grade. She had limited nordic experience as a young child and as a 6th grader on the SPA team, but her freshman year (2006-2007) was her first real year of nordic skiing. Her running experience, combined with natural ability and coaching, helped her qualify for the State Meet in 2007, where she finished 80th. Qualifying for the State Meet certainly isn’t easy, especially as a first year skier, but an 80th place finish won’t get anyone a headline on Skinny Ski or in the newspaper.
So how did Annie go from a talented runner who skis to state champion in just two years? What makes Annie different from all the other accomplished runners who ski with top Minnesota high school programs? Annie will be the first to say she wouldn’t have achieved such great success without Kevin Brochman and the Minneapolis Ski Club.
Annie:
One of my high school coaches, Dave Dow, introduced me to Kevin at the State meet in 2007. Kevin said he was impressed how far I had come my first year of skiing, and that he hoped I would consider joining his summer program with the Minneapolis Ski Club. As Kevin is a former Olympian, I was flattered. But when I finished 80th that year, I was worried Kevin wouldn’t want me anymore. My mom said I was being silly – she said Kevin knew this was my first year, and was not inviting me based on the State meet results but because he saw good potential and that he could make me better.
Annie started with Kevin’s summer program in June 2007. She trained with the East Side group, roller skiing 3 nights a week along roads in Lake Elmo and Afton, and along the Gateway Trail.
First time, I fell hard and broke a pole; I was much slower than most of the kids; I wasn’t sure if I was cut out for it. But I kept going, and after a few weeks I wasn’t so far behind.
The emphasis of Annie’s training that first summer was on learning to roller ski and feeling comfortable on both classic and skate roller skis.
Near the end of the summer, Kevin discussed the Junior Olympic program with Annie. He felt JOs would be a good competitive experience, especially because she would go in as a 2nd-year J2 skier.
During fall 2007, Annie focused on cross country running and did no ski training until her season was complete. She had a successful running season, finising 1st at the Roy Griak Invitational Maroon race and 8th at the Minnesota State High School Girls Class A Cross Country Meet.
Once Nordic began, Annie immediately saw pay-off from her summer training, despite the fall hiatus. At the December 2006 Peter Westra sprints, Annie was eliminated in the first knock-out heat. In 2007, however, she continued into the “A” final and took 3rd place overall. The 2007-2008 season continued to be successful for Annie, easily winning her conference championship, taking 3rd at sections and qualifying for the J2 Midwest JO team.
At the Minnesota State Nordic Meet in Feb. 2008, Annie found herself in 12th place after the morning skate race. In the afternoon classic pursuit, Annie had the 5th fastest classic time, making up 44 seconds and moving up to 9th place. A few weeks later at JOs in Anchorage, AK, Annie fell sick with the flu, yet still managed to finish 12th in the 5K skate and 21st in the 5K classic race.
Annie stepped up her training during the summer of 2008. She continued training with the MSC East Side program three nights a week and added the MSC East Side morning program three days a week. To fill in the gaps, Annie also biked at least two mornings per week approximately 20-25 miles near her home around Stillwater and Marine-on-St. Croix. She also stepped up her running, doing road races on some weekends and working on form with her running coach weekly. By then, Annie was extremely comfortable on her roller skis and technique was the primary focus of her 2008 summer Nordic training.
Annie continued to ski during the 2008 cross country season, meeting with an MSC group on Sundays. Unfortunately, Annie found herself in the middle of a growth spurt that fall and Annie’s running season wasn’t as successful as 2007, as highlighted by her 23rd place finish at the State meet.
Despite the growth spurt, Annie’s summer 2008 Nordic time trial results suggested that she could, in fact, contend for the 2009 State title. Annie’s early season classic results in 2008 were on track – she beat top Minnesota girls at the 10K classic distance in West Yellowstone and again at a December JO race in Michigan. Skating was another matter. She had disappointing finishes in JO skate competition at Michigan and later at Rainbow Resort, but Annie put those races behind her. In mid-January, she placed 4th in the skate at the Giant’s Ridge Invitational, North America’s largest high school Nordic ski meet.
As State approached, Annie gained ground on the top Minnesota high school skaters while remaining unbeaten in distance classic races at both J1 Midwest and Minnesota high school competition. Annie won her conference and section championship meets and went into the State meet ranked 2nd. Top ranked skier Jessie Diggins missed qualifying for the State meet because she was competing at World Juniors in France. With Jessie out, there was certainly an opening at the top, but the girls ranked on either side of Annie, Lynn Duijndam, Libby Ellis and Sharmila Ahmed, are outstanding skiers and extremely tough competition.
It was no surprise that Annie had the top classic time on the difficult Silver course at Giant’s Ridge, given her success throughout the season. Somewhat unexpected, however, was her relatively narrow 15-second lead over 2nd place Sharmila Ahmed. Annie was 45 seconds ahead of Sharmila in classic at the Section 3 meet. The big question going into the afternoon pursuit championship race was “Could Annie hold off Sharmila, Libby and Lynn, who are all very strong skaters?”.
Annie:
I didn’t know that I could do it; on the other hand, I didn’t know that I couldn’t. I just went as fast as possible, right from the start. I was pretty sure I had it at the top of the final hill when I saw nobody behind me. I told myself, ‘Just tuck and go.’
Not only did Annie win, but she extend her overall lead to 19 seconds.
The hardest thing about winning a State meet is returning to defend your title and you can be sure Annie will be working hard with Kevin and MSC this summer. But training with MSC isn’t all work and no play. Annie:
I have met great people with the Minneapolis Ski Club. Some are world-class skiers like Joe Dubay; and then the rest of us, from new comers on up. We work really hard – Kevin included, and then we sit around afterward, tell bad jokes and laugh.
Annie’s Story In Coach Brochman’s Words
At the 2007 MN State Meet Dave Dow of St. Paul Academy/Summit School told me “I have an athlete I want to be in your summer program.” So, he took me over an introduced me to Annie Hart. Dave told her she should do the MSC summer program. Sometimes athletes listen to their coaches and sign up and sometimes they do not. A week later she was the first to sign up.
Annie placed 80th that day as a freshman, there were 27 girls grade 9 and 10, who she would have to pass up to win at this years meet. Summer training programs have been in existence in Minnesota since 1992 and while they do help talented people keep improving, it is very difficult for athletes to pass up so many people like Annie did. So, how did she improve so much? This article will try and describe some of the key points.
In the beginning, I felt Annie was going to be a very fast skier, she could run fast and every fast runner I have worked with for 2 years became a very fast skier. During the second week of summer practice in Afton we do hill intervals that test athlete’s fitness levels in double pole, classic, single pole, hill running and no pole skate. Basically there are the main components, classic and skate and we break those down and add a hill run. Then we take the data and tell the athletes what they need to work on more to improve the most. Annie had pretty good times but they were far from the best and just a starting point.
Work on Weaknesses
In our Wednesday night session we try to finding areas each individual needs to work on. Some days for example, we would single pole for 10 minutes or do some single pole sprints. Athletes are tested on each for to see their strengths and weaknesses. Annie had running as her main strength, this is one reason she is a strong classical skier on hills. It also helped that during her first summer, we had data for other MSC state champions, some who went on to be in the Olympics, to compare too. We did the testing in June and then again during the summer Annie began to improve at a very fast pace. It was clear to me that she was improving at a fast rate. I mentioned this to her one day and she told me her goal was to be in the top 20 as a high school senior. I told her she would reach that goal soon than that. At last years state meet she took 9th so her top 20 came 2 years faster than her goal.
Get Opinions From Coaches
It was helpful that Annie had several coaches at her high school SPA. Each coach was able to offer information that would help her become a better skier. It was also helpful that she was very open minded in different ideas on technique and training. Some athletes are difficult to coach as they only want to work on their strengths, to be the at your best as a skier, you need to work on weaknesses. Your only as strong as the weakest link, any weakness will show up on race day. For an athlete, it may be any one of the 5 areas I have mentioned. One US Olympic Committee report stated that an athlete can get 20 different opinions from coaches and they will be able to figure out which information will best help him or her. I believe that to be a true statement.
Attention to Detail
For peak athletic performance, it is important to be in tune with you body. One way to monitor you training is to take your morning pulse. I am pretty sure Annie did this as she would sometimes do running races during the summer. We would cut back on certain workouts so she would be a bit fresher for the races. Keeping a training log is also important and I would ask her how many hours she had for the month. It was also important for her to monitor her training by taking daily morning heart rate to see if it was getting higher. If it was, then training had to be adjusted. Instead of a one size fits all, I try to have each individual in the group train a bit more on what they need to do. A group situation, with each person’s needs being met.
Train very hard
Perhaps the best thing about training Annie was that I had the freedom to train her hard. I needed to see how hard I could push Annie and how well she would respond to it. She was able to train hard 4 days per week. Many athletes should only train hard 2-3 times per week. The fact thatshe could is one physical reason why she has ascended to the top. She could handle more intensity than the average skier. At the beginning of last summer she was noticeably more fit than the previous summer. I kept upping the intensity during the summer to see how much she could handle. It took me all summer to finally get her tired. We began with training hard every Wednesday and some Mondays, then on Thursday we started adding some no pole work on the flat terrain. We did a workout where we would line everyone up from slowest to fastest. Slower people were to start going fast, then another person would lead then we would go on down the line. So at the end the fastest skier would be pushing the pace and everyone would then try and draft off the person in front of them. We would do this without poles and go easy for 20 minutes on the way out, then come back going faster and faster. Each week we would go a little faster. At the beginning we did the 3 miles in 15:15 then at the end 13:50. On the last Thursday Annie had dropped everyone which consisted of some very fast males.
Down in Afton on Wednesdays, she had posted better times than many of our state champion girls and had the second best time. Several of the boys were making comments about how they felt she could win the state meet this winter. I was amazed at her improvement but I knew she would have to go through the dreaded 3 months of cc running that would be a step back. I had mentioned to her that I felt she was ahead of just about everyone and she needed to stay ahead by doing roller skiing in the fall. She said she would and I checked this out on a regular basis. One advantage I have had in training females is that they tend to reach puberty at an earlier age than males and can be trained harder. Many coach’s train females less than males and under train girls. Annie had actually gone through a big growth spurt this past year and it seemed the hard training helped her too.
Focus on the task at hand
Annie was able to work on weaknesses during the summer and fall. In the winter racing became the task at hand. Focusing on getting in enough training and getting school work done is a tough challenge. Sometimes there are more than one race in a day and it becomes important to keep your focus and relaxation for a longer period of time. For many people the new two race system is difficult as you need to get ready to race, then turn it off, then get ready to race. Annie chose to listen to music as a race distraction between races. This is far better than thinking about racing and who is in front of your or who is behind you. All that is required is each athlete is trying to ski from start to finish as fast as they can. However there is a lot of busy brain clutter going on at the state meet with people all over saying all kinds of things. It can be very distracting and not easy to relax at all. The other races, coaches, parents and teammates are all potential distractions. Athletes need to find ways to relax such as listening to music to get out of the “pumped up stream of adrenaline” and relax when its time to relax. I remember on skier would listen to classical music to wind down before a race. I also remember the great Bill Koch playing a violin 25 minutes before he was scheduled to start. Everyone was running around doing their pre race thing and he is playing the violin? He won the race by over a minute.
Sport Psychology
One of the hardest things for intense athletes to do is to relax and let it happen. Intense athletes often try to force things to happen and try to hard. I spent years trying to get the right mental attitude for racing. I had to read some books to learn to how to relax. One day in January I suggested to Annie that she might be starting first after the classic. Annie had skied faster than every Minnesota high school girl in every classic race this winter but several competitors had skied faster in skating. I mentioned 2 things that could happen, in one, she would get caught and have to try and stay with people and then sprint them. In the other, she would keep the lead and they would not catch her. I did not mention a third scenario and that was if she was not in the lead. I chose not to mention this as I felt it was a bit negative. A few years ago a skier that I coached in the summer won the classic and the next 3 skiers all expected him to fade in the skate and catch him. Many people thought that might happen again. The skier was Peter Tollefson who won in 1999. While the other 3 boys were trying to drop each other, Peter skied away to victory. Like Peter, Annie got the lead and never let anyone catch up, one closed the gap but Annie’s lead from classic was too much. I chose not to say anything to Annie between the classic and the skate, I felt she knew what she had to do and did not need any feedback from me. So on Friday February 13th, Annie became the 16th MSC summer program athlete since 1997 to win a state championship.
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