EP 166 Winning the Arctic Man with Eric Heil

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In this one, Cody talks with Eric Heil. He’s an educator and a legendary Arctic Man competitor. Alongside his longtime snowmachine partner, Len Story, Eric won five times. He started competing in Arctic Man in 1990 at the age of 30, and from the beginning, he immersed himself in the event — not just as an athlete, but as part of the crew. He helped with course safety and setting up markers at First Aid, the critical release point where the skier detaches from the snowmachine at the top of the uphill tow. He was the first skier to break the five-minute barrier, clocking in at exactly four minutes — an Arctic Man record at the time. It would take 30 years before anyone broke four minutes, something he attributes to better snow conditions, evolving course design, improved equipment and a rising level of competition.

He was also one of the first racers to bring a technical mindset to the event, experimenting with waxes, analyzing the terrain, monitoring snow temperatures, tracking weather patterns, adjusting his line based on changing snowpack, and timing his transitions to maximize speed and efficiency throughout the course. After nearly three decades of running the course — his last race was in 2018 — Eric says he’s run it more than anyone else.

Eric's path to becoming a high-speed athlete started early. He learned to ski when he was just four years old, and by six he was skijoring. That early exposure to speed and unpredictability planted the seed for a lifelong pursuit of elite competition. In college, he raced for the University of Alaska Anchorage and set his sights on becoming a world champion downhiller. As a world-class athlete, he was comfortable reaching 90 miles per hour on his skis. That kind of speed requires more than just fearlessness — it demands focus, precision and the ability to see what isn’t always visible. Eric says downhill skiers rely heavily on visualization because when you're racing across long stretches of terrain at speeds so fast they blur your vision, you can’t always react in real time — you have to anticipate. That means memorizing every feature of the course ahead of time and trusting your muscle memory to guide you through. He says that even now, he can close his eyes and mentally replay the details of every downhill course he's ever raced.

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