Marte Elden is a member of both the Norwegian junior national team in cross country skiing and in track and field. She captured a silver medal at Junior Nationals last winter and almost made the semifinal at the Junior World’s track and field championship in the 800 meter running event last week.
Elden was one of only four Norwegians who qualified for the Junior World’s track and field championship in Groseto, Italy Â
Coming into Junior Worlds, Marte’s best time this season was 2.07.97 and her PR is 2.06. She ran her best of the year (2.07.55) in the qualification heat and ended up in 4th, only 16 hundreds of a second from advancing to the final. She ran the first 400 meters in 63.5 Her time would have won one of the other semi-final heats.                 Â
Elden wants to continue to train for both skiing and track, but realizes that this might be impossible in the long run.
She captured a silver medal at junior nationals in skiing last winter and has been involved with the track and field team since she was 15-years old. She is at this point equally focused on the two sports.
“It has been possible to combine until now. I’m dividing the year in two and I’m training cross country skiing from September until the end of the ski season, after that it’s track until September.”
Because of running, she is missing the cross country team’s on-snow camp at Sognefjellet.
Are both federations accepting that you are doing two sports?
“Yes, I feel that they both show understanding for my situation. They both also want me to choose their sport.”
“It has worked well combining the two sports until now, but I feel that I’m getting closer to having to prioritize one ahead of the other one. Rollerskiing and running in a bog is probably not the best training for track, and running on the track is not necessarily the best training for skiing.”Â
