The American Birkebeiner (Feb. 21, 2009)

Last winter it came to my attention that there was a renowned nordic ski race held in Wisconsin every year called the American Birkebeiner (a.k.a. "The Birkie").  It is a 50km point-to-point race, and the largest nordic ski race in North America with over 9,000 participants.  At the time I was puzzled by the simple fact that I had not even been aware of this race, much less participated in it.  It then passed from my mind and for the next few months I didn't give the Birkie another thought, but then one day last fall I was sitting in my office at the University of Utah, looking out the window at the mountains and thinking that in a few short months snow would be falling, and we could start skiing.  I then started to fell my temples throbbing, and my body temperature began rising.  As the sweat beaded on my forehead, I suddenly realized what was going on: I had Birkie Fever!  The only remedy for this rare affliction that seems to primarily manifest itself in individuals who love to suffer on the misery sticks, is to immediately sign yourself and all of your willing and able friends up for the Birkie and start training.  So I picked up the red phone and contacted Emily and Ben (fellow nordic enthusiasts), and before you could say "I gotta have more cowbell!", the four of us had made plans to ski the Birkie.  The fourth member of our nordic hit squad was Roanne, I didn't have to contact her before hatching the plans because by this point she just takes it for granted that she will get dragged into a few adventures of this nature each year.  The race starts in Cable, Wisconsin and finishes in Hayward, Wisconsin, so the first thing I did was go online and book a hotel in Hayward for the nights before and after the race.  At the time I was thinking of how clever I was for doing it so early, since when 9,000 ski racers descend on a small town of 2,000 inhabitants in northern Wisconsin, accommodations can be a bit hard to come by.

Fast forward to this February, three weeks before the race I was checking over the travel plans, and I noticed that the hotel I had reserved was in Hayward, California, instead of Hayward, Wisconsin.  Stinker!  At least I noticed before we got there and started asking for directions to the Super 8 Motel, which does not exist in Hayward, Wisconsin.  About 10 phone calls later everything was in order again, and we had another hotel booked in the right Hayward.  I had been getting a lot of skiing in, so I was pretty excited for the race.  In particular, I needed to get some long skis in, so I had pioneered the "Soldier Hollow Super Loop".  Soldier Hollow was the nordic venue during the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, and is the best place to ski near Salt Lake City.  I planned out a loop that was 16.1 km long, and linked up almost all of their trails (they claim to have 33km of trails, in reality they have about half of that).  The GPS track of the Super Loop is shown below, followed by the elevation profile.  On my long ski days I would go to Soldier Hollow and ski 3 laps of this loop, for a total distance of 48.3 km and 5,700 feet of climbing.  The Birkie is 50 km with 3900 feet of climbing, so this was pretty good prep work.

Roanne also got out for a few ski outings, but most of the times that she would join me, about 15 minutes into the ski she would ask me if I wanted to leave and go to the movies.  I got the impression that she wasn't taking the Birkie as seriously as she could have been.  Roanne had signed up for the 23 km distance which is called the Kortelopet, which is just as well since her training seemed to consist primarily of eating cheese and crackers (if truth be told, she had just accepted a promotion at work and was really busy, but if you wanted simple facts then you probably wouldn't be reading this so for the rest of this account I won't bother with such niceties).

So, after lots of skiing preparations, the week of the race finally arrived.  The night before my departure I spent a couple of hours waxing my and Roanne's skis.  Waxing for nordic ski racing is a pretty complex (and expensive) affair if you really get into it.  It makes sense, as how well your skis glide can make a huge difference in your energy expenditure to go a given speed.  One of the wax manufacturers (Toko) has a part of their website where they provide waxing recommendations for ski races based on weather forecasts and snow conditions.  Many factors need to be considered, such as how fresh the snow is, the temperature, the humidity, how dirty the snow is, etc.  Anyways, I checked the Toko wax recommendations for the Birkie the week before the race, and this is what I read:

"Apply LF Moly/LF Blue mixed 1:1, scrape and brush, then apply HF Blue, scrape and brush with copper and then horsehair brushes. Finish by rotocorking JetStream Blue, brush with a dedicated nylon polishing brush and polish with a thermopad.  For structure, A fine linear structure or one pass with the finelinear wheel of a TOKO structurite tool (before JetStream application) will best suit these conditions."

Huh?  My first impulse was to put it into babelfish and translate it into English, but then I realized that it already was English, and there was a lot more to waxing than just slapping on a coat of hydrocarbon wax in the colour that coincides with  your best guess at the day's temperature.  I decided to up the ante for this race and get some Low Fluoro wax (one step up from hydrocarbon), which is what Toko recommended for the first wax coat.  I used two coats, as they suggested, but just used Low Fluoro wax for both, as the High Fluoro (Flouro is short for Fluorocarbon) wax that they recommended for the second coat costs $75 for a small block.  Another thing about waxing is that the higher performance and more expensive the waxes get, the more toxic fumes they emit during the waxing process.  Below is a photo of me in the 1337 Harrison waxing room, with my respirator on and the windows wide open.  Hopefully the positive effects of the exercise that skiing provides you with balance out all the carcinogens that you ingest while you are waxing your skis.

Anyways, after a few hours of waxing, scraping, waxing, scraping, brushing, and polishing, it was time to hit the hay.  The next morning I found myself on a plane, Birkie bound!!!

I landed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and rendezvoused with Roanne, Emily, and Ben at the baggage claim.  After picking up our rental cars, we started the 3 hour drive north to Cable, Wisconsin where we needed to pick up our race packets.  It was pretty cold, but there wasn't that much snow in the countryside.  There were a lot of lakes, and apparently people in Minnesota love ice fishing as there were many fishing huts out on the lakes.  People in Minnesota are also apparently quite lazy, as from the looks of it most of them had driven their cars out on the ice to get to their ice huts.  We all arrived at the Telemark Lodge in Cable, Wisconsin without incident, and picked up our race bibs and packets.  Ben had lucky bib number 10000, which was both a sign of good luck, and sign that there were going to be a stinkin' lot of people in the race the next day.  We then grabbed some pizza for dinner and headed back to our respective hotel rooms to get some rest before the big day.

Roanne and I had ended up with a room in the lovely Aspen Inn Hotel, at the south end of Hayward.  The name seemed a bit redundant (Inn Hotel), but we still had high hopes for our accommodations despite the last minute booking.  We checked in with no problems, and upon turning the room key we were greeted with lovely 70's wood panel decor.  Here is Roanne relaxing on the bed, giving me a look that says "I only tolerate your company because we are married".  We unpacked our race packages, and got our bibs and clothing ready for the next day.  The inn hotel owners must have learned over the years about what skiers tend to do in their inn hotel rooms, and as seen on the right they had installed signs telling us that there was "No!!! Waxing in the room!".  Fair enough then, I guess we won't!!! do our waxing in the room!

We turned the lights out at 10:30pm and were just drifting off to sleep when we were awoken by what sounded like a steel cage match taking place in the neighbouring inn hotel room.  It seems that there were about 8 adolescent skiers staying in the hotel room beside us, and they had decided to complete their pre-race preparations by yelling at each other and jumping up and down on the hollow floors.  This made it quite difficult to fall asleep, and one of the things that I ruminated on as I listened to my young friends' loud conversations was that in the race packet there had been a flyer encouraging people to make donations to send high school skiers to the Birkie.  I don't think I would do this, but I would be more than willing to donate to send young high school skiers to a race on the other side of the country held on the same weekend as the Birkie, getting them as far away from me as possible so that I could get some sleep the night before the race.  The drums and vocals finally subsided around 12:30am, and we drifted off into much-needed sleep in preparation for the next days exertions.

Our alarm had been set for 7:00am the next day, but our young friends beat us to the punch and resumed their acoustic performance promptly at 6:00am.  I was always under the impression that teenagers need more sleep than adults, this does not seem to be the case.  We climbed out of bed, and got ready for breakfast.  I had brought some cereal, with my proprietary mix of 1:3:3 vanilla almond granola, cinnamon toast crunch, and raisin bran crunch, and Roanne had purchased some instant oatmeal at a grocery store the night before.  At this point we realized that we had forgotten both bowls and spoons, putting a kink in our breakfast plans.  Undeterred, and being the innovators that we are, we proceeded with breakfast with me eating my cereal out of the plastic ice container, using a coffee lid for a spoon, and Roanne eating her oatmeal out of a plastic cup, using a pen for a spoon.  Here are some action shots from our breakfast feast:

Emily and Ben arrived at our inn hotel promptly at 7:30am, and we loaded all the skis into our car to drive together to the start in Cable.  The race started at 8:20am, but since there were over 9,000 racers among all the categories, the start had been divided into 10 waves for skate technique, and 10 waves for classic technique.  Waves started every 5 minutes, and skiers were seeded into waves based on their finishing times from previous years.  Since we had never done the race before, we were automatically placed in the final skate wave, wave 10, which didn't start until 10:00am.  We arrived at one of the off-site parking lots in good time, and boarded the shuttle bus for the 5 minute ride to the Telemark Lodge where the race started, despite the admonitions of a grizzled old Birke veteran (this was his 32nd Birkie!) that we should walk instead.  Maybe he was trying to harden us up in preparation for the travails of the race, but we felt that the 50km of skiing would be enough exercise for the day.  Here is a shot of Roanne, Emily, and Ben walking towards the Lodge after disembarking from the shuttle bus:

Below is a photo of all four of us posed in front of the Telemark Lodge.  It was a pretty cool atmosphere, I have never seen so many nordic skiers in once place.  The outside of the lodge looked awesome, as it was totally lined with skinny skis.  It resembled the way it looks when you go in for lunch at a lodge when downhill skiing at a resort, except in this case you knew that each set of skis belonged to a card carrying Birkie hardman/hardwoman, rather that a bunch of namby-pamby overweight lift-riding softies.

We had about an hour to go before we needed to be at the start, so we relaxed in the lodge, did some stretching, and lined up for the bathrooms.  Here is a photo of Roanne and myself wearing our race bibs and getting psyched up!

Finally the time came to head to the start, so we joined the throng of skiers and walked the 1/4 mile to the start.

The start was held in a wide open field, with skiers spread all the way across (the start line was a few hundred feet wide).  The field then funneled everyone into the trail, which was initially quite wide.  Here is a shot of one of the earlier waves going off, to give you an idea of the number of skiers in each wave and the ensuing pandemonium after the gun goes off.  Hup hup hup!

After a few minutes they called our wave up to starting line, and we took our places in the second row (the front row seemed too presumptuous).  Here are some shots of Ben and Emily, and Roanne and myself waiting for the gun to go off:

We had discussed race tactics the night before, and the general consensus was that we would go out easy and try to ski together, since 50 km was a long way and we were not sure how we would feel at the end.  However, it turns out that when yours truly is at a starting line hears a gun go off, I have great difficulty moderating my efforts.  So, when the gun fired, I instantly forgot everything about going easy and went like gangbusters trying to thread my way through the teeming mass of skiers.  The start wasn't actually as chaotic as I had envisioned, since the field was so wide and the trail was very wide initially (at least 10 skiers across).  After a few km I came to my senses, and reminded myself not to go too crazy as there was still a long way to ski.  After 6 km I arrived at the first feed station, where I grabbed a cup of energy drink from one of the volunteers.  I didn't realize that they had warmed the drinks to make them less painful on our cold throats, and this coupled with the fact that my throat was pretty numb from adrenaline and heavy breathing in the cold air meant that as I tipped back the cup to take a drink, I didn't feel the liquid coursing down my pharynx (that means throat).  So I tipped it back further, and before I knew it I was choking on energy drink.  Sacre bleu!  I then coughed up and spit out energy drink all over my gloves and poles, drank what little liquid was left, grabbed a banana, and rejoined the fray. 

There was a lot of traffic to work through, since the finishing times for the ninth wave that started in front of us were in the 6-7 hour range, about double the time that we expected to finish in.  This problem came to a head on the hills, were you need to spread your skis wider to maintain glide, and we often found ourselves making S-shaped trajectories up the hill as we threaded back and forth to link up the gaps that opened up between the slower skiers.  I had hoped that it would thin out at some point, but his never really happened as we just started catching earlier and earlier waves, by the end working through people from the third wave that had started over an  hour in front of us.  It was good fun nonetheless, with really fast conditions and predictable snow, except for on the steep up hills where the snow was really churned up from the thousands of skiers that had preceded us, and on the technical down hills where the track was scraped down to an icy surface with a snow berm from all of the people snow plowing.  Local yokel snowmobilers would congregate at all of the technical down hills to yell at and make fun of all the skiers who crashed.  I was pretty careful on the down hills and managed to avoid crashing, partly because I saw a number of others go down.

The race went smoothly and I felt I was able to maintain a good tempo despite the large number of skiers on the course.  One sticky situation that I did encounter however, as a result of my energy drink choking episode at the first feed station was that my gloves and poles were covered in sticky energy drink residue, and when it would start to dry my gloves would begin adhering to the grips on my poles.  Non-skiers reading this might think that this would be a bonus, as it would save you the trouble of  having to hold onto your poles.  This is not the case.  Proper poling motion involves flinging the poles back behind you before whipping them back up for the next pole plant (the leash on the poles returns them to your grip before the pole plant), and the sticky gloves interfered with this motion, making for awkward poling.  To remedy this, on any downhill where I went into a tuck with my hands shielding my face, I would take that opportunity to frantically lick the palms of my gloves in an effort to remove as much energy drink as possible.  This solved the problem for about 10-15 minutes until the gloves got sticky again and I would have to repeat the licking process.  This garnered me some strange looks from my fellow skiers, but I didn't let that get to me.  Below are some action photos of us captured by the event photographer (I couldn't find any for Ben and Roanne so it is just myself and Emily):

The last couple km of the race crossed Lake Hayward (thankfully it was frozen), it was pretty awesome sight coming onto the lake initially and seeing the long line of skiers stretching out in front of you.  The town of Hayward is on the shore of this lake, and upon reaching the opposite shore the race went into Hayward (where they had trucked snow onto the streets) and finished through a corridor of noisy spectators on main street.  Here is a shot of the finishing straight (no, I didn't stop enroute to take this photo, I took it afterwards):

Here are photos from the event photographer taken at the finish line, of us wearing our finisher medals (again, unfortunately there didn't seem to be a photo of Ben).  Roanne did the shorter 23km race that looped back to finish at Telemark Lodge in Cable, so after her race she drove down to the Birkie finish in Hayward to meet us.  Notice that the ever-fashion-conscious Roanne is wearing her finishers medal backwards, gangster style.

We all ended up having good races; Roanne finished her 23km Kortelopet in 1:48:46.2, I finished the 50km Birkebeiner in 3:03:36.7, Emily finished the Birkebeiner in 3:30:29.9, and Ben finished the Birkebeiner in 3:35:14.9.  The winner did it in 2:11:47.9, so we have some training to do for next year!  I think we would have all gone even faster had we been in an earlier wave and not had to pass so much traffic; based on this years seeding from past years races, my finishing time would just squeak me into the first wave (in 2006 the winner did it in 2:11:50, and the cutoff time for the first wave was 3:05:52, so I would have just made the cutoff by about 2 minutes).  Also, Ben had just flown in from Germany the day before the race and was dealing with the time change as well as a cold that he had picked up over there, so I'm sure he is excited to come back next year and prove that Australia is a hotbed of talent for nordic skiing (not just cycling, swimming, cricket, etc.).  After the race we all rendezvoused in the giant warming tent (Roanne and Emily pictured below) where we drank hot chocolate, ate chicken noodle soup, and shared war stories.  One other neat thing about the race was that Bjorn Dahle (famous Norwegian nordic skier) was there participating in the race for the first time to raise money for charity, although we didn't see him.

The next day Roanne and I went for a short ski in the morning (I mean really short, because after about 15 minutes Rosie decided that she was skied out and would rather be at the movies) before stopping briefly in Hayward to check out a ski store on the way back to Minneapolis.  Upon entering the store, we were disappointed to find that we had missed Bjorn Dahle making an appearance to sign autographs by about 15 minutes, merde!  However, the store was really cool and they had a lot of stuff on sale, so to console myself I picked out a black Craft skin suit with really cool looking graphite accents on the arms and legs.  Fast!  I decided that I had gutted it out in the baggy outfit long enough, and I had passed enough skin suit-clad racers that weekend to merit entry into their ranks.  The skin suit got it's first test run one week later in the Wasatch Citizen Series Final on Feb. 28 in Park City, where I skied the 21km course in 1:01.46, good enough for 3rd place in my age group.  My average pace was 2:56 per km, whereas in the Birkie it was 3:39 per km, and I attribute those performance gains solely to the skin suit.  All told we had a great time at the Birkie, and will definitely be back next year.  Hup hup hup!