It was during a particularly wet and cold training session on the streets of Excelsior in the early 1970s that cross-county skier Ed Pauls wondered whether he could build an indoor exerciser that would duplicate the skiing motion. The key to such a device was to imitate the unique properties of ski vs. snow, a subtle resistance that Pauls was able to capture through the use of a patented flywheel and one-way clutch mechanism.
In his basement, he invented NordicTrack, initially popular with skiers but quickly a hit with exercise enthusiasts on a much wider scale. By 1984, the family-run company became a major competitor in a growing fitness craze.
Pauls, 80, who skied until early last year, died Oct. 9 from complications of Alzheimer's disease at his home in Montrose, Colo.
His daughter, Terri Pauls of Anchorage, Alaska, recalled an early NordicTrack model that had real wooden skis and a living room sofa cushion for hip padding.
"Early on, when we would sell one, my father would gather the family in a circle in the dining room to sing and dance in celebration," she said.
Pauls grew up on a dairy farm near Wausau, Wis., and graduated from the University of Wisconsin at Madison as a mechanical engineer. He married his wife, Florence, in 1959 and they moved to Excelsior. They spent a year in Europe, and Florence taught school at a U.S. Air Force base in Germany. While visiting her relatives in Norway, they were given cross-country skis.
This sparked Pauls' passion for skiing, and he trained for local races. As an engineer, he would get home about 5 or 5:30 p.m.; during fall and winter, it was dark. He trained by running around the dark, icy streets of the neighborhood but thought there had to be a better way, his daughter said.
NordicTrack was about to be born, and Pauls received a patent in 1976. Taking the advice of a family friend to sell the NordicTrack to others, Pauls began to manufacture the machines in his garage, investing $10,000 of his own savings. As news of the device spread by word of mouth in the cross-country skiing community, the business was moved to Jonathan Industrial Park in Chaska.