FARMINGTON — She’s not that far from home to begin with, but Shelby Aseltine has no problem competing in a major Nordic ski race within five minutes of her childhood home, at Titcomb Mountain.

“I got on skis, I was like, two years old,” Aseltine said. “And that was right here. I was an alpine racer until I was in third grade, too. Not that I haven’t gone down the slopes on my cross country skis … but it’s fun. It’s a lot of fun to be able to come back for a race like this.”

The race to which Aseltine — a three-year standout at Mt. Blue before a senior season at Gould Academy — is referring is the second leg of the TD Bank Eastern Cup, the only Maine stop on the four-event tour.

Now a freshman at Bowdon College, Aseltine jumped at the chance to race in an event where she spends plenty of her free time, as well.

“I train here all summer,” Aseltine said. “The trails are mowed, so I come up here to run all the time. It’s nice to see it covered in snow finally.”

It wasn’t covered in snow just two weeks ago, though.

“I came home over winter break and I said, ‘Oh, I’m going to go over and ski at Titcomb,'” Aseltine said. “And then it was, ‘Oh, there’s really no snow, I’m going to have to go run over at Titcomb.'”

As freshmen years go, Aseltine said, hers has gone well, thanks in large part to her time at Gould.

“The boarding school atmosphere helped me to work on my skiing a lot, while also helping me get a really good academic background,” Aseltine said. “Striking a balance early was really important.

“We had a lot of fun traveling as a team at Gould. We were only five or six of us traveling,” she added. “And it’s very similar at Bowdoin. It’s a lot of fun.”

One thing that isn’t necessarily fun, though, is being a freshman — again.

“I’m a freshman again, and no one really wants to be the freshman again,” Aseltine said with a laugh, “but you have to start somewhere. That’s just how it is.

“It’s different coming in, where you’re like, on the edge of being one of the better skiers on the team, but you really have to gun for it. It’s a really good atmosphere.”

Going forward, with still three-plus years remaining in her college career, Aseltine hasn’t stopped setting goals.

“There’s definitely improvement I can make,” Aseltine said. “You build so much on each year, then you crest off a little bit, then you have the spring to kind of mull things over and think about what you can do next year.”

“That’s one of the harder things for me, though,” she added. “I want to be good now. I really want that result now, but I’ve definitely learned that it comes with years, it doesn’t come in two days.”