It took a collaborative effort to make Scott Bachmeier feel simultaneously like “death warmed over” and “a rock star.”
The 49-year-old skier from Madison relished that combination of exhaustion and exhilaration as he pushed himself toward the finish line of the 2010 American Birkebeiner in Hayward. The effort and the cheers wiped away remnants of the depression he felt after a series of neurological and spinal problems left him without use of his legs.
As he struggled through the emotional valley, the glimmer that he could ski again, and ski in the Birkebeiner with a sit-ski developed through the University of Wisconsin, provided valuable motivation.