One question I love asking my podcast guests is, “What is your ski story?”

The answer always mysteriously sets the tone for the rest of the conversation. I think I know why …

It’s fascinating to discover how people found their trailhead, what hills they climbed and valleys they navigated. Each narrative is a different loop. In talking to everyone from sports scientists, high school coaches, master blasters, former Olympians and ski shop owners, I’ve seen a trend emerge: our unique experiences not only inform our perspective on the sport but often dictate to a degree our role in the ski community.

I remember the first time I got strapped into skis. My older brother — who was probably 5 or 6 at the time — went into our backyard on his new-for-him fishscales. Naturally, I wanted to follow his tracks to the frigid and flat cornfield behind our Moorhead, Minnesota home. My mom, bless her heart (and she’ll probably be the only person to like this post, so double blessing for that) locked me into some slippery alpine skis because that’s all we had left. For an hour, the two of us did our best Torjus and Mikkjel Hemmestveit impression.

My more formative memories in the sport matched the heritage of Minnesota’s Scandinavian forefathers, too. Every Thanksgiving and Christmas, we brought our skis to Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Bagley, Minnesota. My brothers and our cousins spent entire days breaking trail through the woods, across marshy fields and down rocky banks. We named various regions across the expansive wilderness and built shelters at important groves, warming up by small fires before trekking back out into the fading light. At night, we gathered around a rowdy table and shared war stories over Grandma’s home-cooked meal as our gloves dried out by the basement’s wood-burning furnace.

There were no workouts, no grooming, no carbon fiber. Just a pure spirit of adventure.

Even though I learned some basic classic technique from my mom at a young age and tested out skate skiing on the Red River snowmobile tracks in her old Peltonen Olympics (classic skis with a silver, classic boot, mind you) I never competed in cross-country skiing until I was 27. Working by day as an elementary music teacher in Alamosa, Colorado, I spent my evenings enamored by the addictive quadrupedal engagement and training lifestyle embedded into Nordic skiing. Inspired, I set out to apply my halfway-completed sports science M.S. degree as a collegiate ski coach in Maine just a few months after a midpack finish at the 2018 Alley Loop. I got the job and my wife and I moved across the country, where I became the final NCAA coach at the University of Maine Presque Isle.

I’ve outlined the highs and lows of that experience in other blogs and columns, but the short version of the story is that I found myself back in Leadville as a band director the next year. The Maine chapter felt like a total fail at first, but it turned out to be one of the turning points — just what I needed — in my ski story. From there, a series of other job changes and big life changes — i.e. having a few kids — brought me to where I am today.

There’s been a bevy of loppet victories… and complete, total failures. There have been lonely headlamp lit workouts on car-groomed gravel roads and also some frozen toes. I’ve crossed finish lines in jubilation and agony. Some award ceremonies have begun and concluded with me still on course and others had me step to the top of a podium. We’ve dealt with a few broken poles (actually, only two. In both races, however, my dad was in attendance — a noteworthy point which has radically skewed his view of my participation in this endeavor), embarrassing crashes and the occasional dominant victories.

Outside of — but intertwined with — competing, I got my foot in the door as a World Cup broadcaster in 2021 and was fortunate to be on the call in Minneapolis three years later. I started receiving some support from various fans and brands and am currently an ambassador for EnjoyWinter (and the founder of ‘GripWax Nation!!!!’). Today, I write about the sport at all levels in my full-time job as a Vail Daily sports reporter. I also provide occasional freelance work and post ski content on my blog and pod.

If you’ve endured to this paragraph, you know the heartbeat of my ski story comes out in my contributions (if you could call them that) to the ski community, namely, my lengthy skieologian sermons and esoteric, philosophical rants. And yeah, I tend to insert myself and my workouts into other peoples’ stories every once in awhile, too.

During a recent training session, I was listening to a roundtable where parents and grandparents discussed impressing the ‘story’ concept onto young children. After sharing hilarious anecdotes about various bedtime story antics, one of the guests said something that really resonated.

“(Be) steeped enough in the stories you tell and read to see that you’re in one.”

It’s probably not healthy to view yourself as the ‘hero of your own story.’ At the same time, all of us have a story. All of us are in a story. All of us are skiing in a ski story …and if you’re like me, you’re probably convinced everyone else did a better job waxing. Alas, in the epic symphony of the cosmos’ Grand Story, our unique part — creatively composed to fit in with the rest of the orchestra — is important.

Even if you don’t believe it.

And even if you think you’ve screwed yours up.

There will be times where you feel like you missed an entrance, flubbed a solo or held onto a fermata just a little too long. There might even be seasons where you feel like your 2nd Viola part really isn’t being heard by anyone in the audience.

Maybe you’re like me and you moved across the country to take a new job and the gig didn’t go well (or at least it seemed that way … more on that in a moment). Maybe you’re in a relationship space you never intended to be in and the loneliness is unbearable. Maybe you’ve poorly positioned your athletic pursuits or made a series of regrettable decisions you wish you could have back. Or maybe you find yourself in the trenches of toddlerhood as a single mom and the thought of going out for even a rushed 45-minute ski right now seems cruelly comical.

When things have been hard for me — athletically and personally — I’ve found great comfort and contentment in this passage from Romans 8.

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[i] have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son

While I know all my readers don’t share my religion, I’d ask for your grace in allowing me to explain the meaning of this peace-providing promise. For Christians, God is working all things for good. And he defines good like this: that which results in “those he foreknew” being “conformed to the image of His Son.” In other words, the consistent thread woven through a Christian’s ski story is sanctification. Every single thing (yes, even that one skate race where you wound up essentially classic skiing through powder at Snow Mountain Ranch for 4.5 hours) you’ve been through has been a ‘good’ because it’s made you more like Christ.

Take that for what you’d like. Either way, I think it’s safe to say our journeys inherently get mapped out by decisions, passions and people. Often, those three things are inextricably linked. My modus operandi for maneuvering through the potential plot twists of my story has been this:

Pray for wisdom. Believe it’s been received. Then, lean into God’s promises, trust your gut and hold fast to the faith. Finally, savor the script.

And if you’re still convinced you’ve had one too many bad things happen to be in a really, really good ski story, remember this: The best story, the one every human instinctively craves, is the redemption story.

God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are…

I Corinthians 1:27-28

I hope my ski story has a few more competitive chapters in it. Recently, my brother texted me a picture of what AI collected on the ‘Sederquist’ name. Apparently, Google finds it synonymous with ‘athletic achievement.’ Citations regarding accomplishments by my brother and father were noted. Also, an algorithm afterthought, Ryan Sederquist, was mentioned as being a ‘former athlete.’

“WHAT?!” I texted back.“I’m just entering my prime!”

Whether your ski story is only beginning in 2026 or entering its seventh decade — whether it’s been amazing or positioned for redemption — here’s to believing your next big breakthrough is right around the bend.

But even if you fall on the tricky turn…. or the ensuing high-speed descent …. here’s to getting right back up.

Keep on striving. Keep on skiing.