The Doctor Skis

The Sovereign2SilverStar race is on my want list, so when I looked at the results this year and saw that new KSC member Emily Stitt finished the skate race on Saturday as the first American female and sixth female overall, behind a handful of Canadian national team women (after spending the prior week backcountry skiing and camping, a whole new approach to tapering for a race), and then the classic race on Sunday as the eleventh female, right behind Laura McCabe, I determined to ask her for a race report for the blog. 

photo: Vanessa Garrison

But several people said, yeah, no, that’s not a good idea; she is totally buried in her day job as an intern and now a resident in anesthesia at the UW, and would not exactly welcome that request. Then I saw that she was the first female finisher in the Nordic ski leg at last month’s Ski to Sea, seventh overall, and I knew I had to find a way to hear her story.

Emily's photo of her fun team

So we met last week for an after-work gelato and an interview, where all she had to do was talk and I would do the writing, and here is her story:

Born and raised in Vermont, Emily was not one of those four-year-old child prodigies toddling along on her tiny little Nordic skis. She alpine skied with her family as a youngster, then started playing soccer in high school. She dabbled in Nordic skiing and realized that (a) it was fun and (b) she was pretty good at it, so she ditched the soccer and focused on skiing for her high school team. College (and an undergrad degree in biology) was at Middlebury, where she also skied for the Nordic ski team. After college she was off to Norway for medical school and some serious Nordic-heaven-style skiing, competing in the Norwegian Birkebeiner and Holmenkollen ski marathons. Then it was back to the US and more medical school at Dartmouth, skiing with the Mansfield Nordic Club, and finally here to Seattle for her residency. In between the studying, she found time to pull off a third-female-overall podium in the 2024 American Birkie.

photo: Skinnyskipics

For a while, she considered putting aside school for the time being and focusing her efforts on making the US national team, but some small obstacles, like a year off training to heal from hip surgery and another two years off to recover from a massive concussion after being hit by a car while she was on her bike, plus that damned pandemic, convinced her to stick with the medical school plan and continue to race on the side for fun and podiums.

She’s found the balance between top-level skiing and challenging work/study, so I had to ask: how does one balance the heavy intellectual burden of medical school with the heavy physical burden of being an elite-level Nordic ski racer? I had to like her approach: there are any number of very serious, very focused capital-letter Training Plans out there, but for her, where she is right now (and with her strong and accomplished background), she’s just really enjoying Exercising instead of Training. No pressure, just the mental and physical renewal that comes from stepping away from the books and moving her body in the fresh air. She might run or bike to work, or run around Green Lake after work, or roller ski with the Momentum team, where her partner Tom is the head coach. She’s also come to realize the value of focused strength training, especially for women, and she’s making good use of the ski Erg in her gym.

And next year? Her race plans depend on balancing her and her co-workers’ work schedules with a potential race schedule and Tom’s Momentum race schedule, but she’d like to Ski to the Sun in the Methow, push for a top five finish in the classic American Birkie, maybe tackle the Sovereign2Silver Star again, and of course, jump into one or more of the Cabin Creek races. Give her a wave as she flies by you on the trails!