This was my virginal Birkie experience. I will be back for
more.
I skied for a couple of years in high school, but then
promptly forgot about the sport. Despite being very enthusiastic about
acquiring x-c ski gear in the last two years, I probably only skied about nine
times between 2000 and February 23, 2013 (“B-Day”).
So with that solid block of experience behind me, in the
summer of 2012, I signed up to ski 50 kilometers in northern Wisconsin in
February. Through some backroom negotiations, I managed to talk my brother
Charlie, my cousin Sam, and my friend John Lamb into skiing with me. In July, I
received my confirmation: Skate wave 9 at the American Birkebeiner.
December rolled around, with its snow and cold weather, and
our thoughts turned to the Birkie. “Where are we going to stay?” It turns out
that was an excellent, but long overdue, question. My first few inquiries into
lodging availability were met with scoffs or outright laughs. In one of my
early calls, the hotel said they had a single queen room available due to a
last minute cancellation, but I said “no thanks, we’ve got four people.” Little
did I realize that any place to lay your head within 300 miles of Hayward
should never be taken for granted on Birkie weekend. After a few more calls, we
were looking at staying in Ashland or Duluth – hours in the wrong direction,
considering we had to get back to the Twin Cities to fly out. So I called back
up the hotel that had the last minute cancellation on the queen bedroom. I
called three different times. Each time I was told that the particular person
that handled Birkie weekend reservations (a special person?) was unavailable.
On my fourth call, I finally got through and practically begged for the room that
I had turned my nose up at days before. Success! Not only did we have a place
to sleep, it was in Hayward and within walking distance of the finish line.
Over the next few months, Sam, Charlie, John and I did some
training. For me, this consisted of three trips to Weston Ski Track, one trip
to Great Brook, and one trip to some place in Park City,
Utah. I put in 1.5 to 3 hours whenever I went and I was sure that I was ready
for the Birkie.
Sam, John and I flew to Minneapolis on Friday morning,
lucky to dodge a winter storm and got in around 2 PM. Charlie met us at the
airport, having insisted on flying United for the frequent flyer miles. Luckily
for us, he was able to check all of our skis for free (one of the perks of his
insistence on always flying United).
We set off together in our rental mobile for the plains of
northern Wisconsin. We commented on the flat terrain and comforted ourselves by
telling each other that Midwesterners didn’t know what hilly was -- the Birkie
was going to be flat! After a brief stop in St. Croix Falls to grab chips and
beer (30 pack of Hamm’s for $13!!), we set northeast again. Sam drove us quite
safely, but his lack of direction (or ability to read road signs) meant that
the other three of us were full-time navigators (we almost ended up in Duluth).
We stopped for a quick meal at “Bistro 63” south of Spooner.
We were initially eyeballed by the other Birkie competitors eating at the bar,
but when they saw us sit down and order a round of beer, they let their guard
down.
We finally arrived in Hayward at bib pickup around 8 PM,
just as all the exhibitors were pulling their booths down. Sam, John and
Charlie all got cool Birkie stickers in their swag-bags that showed the
distances they were skiing (50K for Charlie and John and 54K for Sam). I got a Korte sticker showing the 23K I was going to ski. WTF? I hoped I wouldn't ng to be racing against children the next day.
We checked in at the hotel and were pleasantly surprised to
find that we had a room with two queen beds! (Now we’re grandfathered into this
room and never giving it up!) After a quick goodnight Hamm’s, we were off to
bed.
We had agreed to get up at 5:25 AM in order to catch the 6
AM shuttle bus from the hotel to the start at the Telemark Center in Cable.
However, as game theory could have predicted, Sam set his alarm for 5 AM so he
could be the first one into the bathroom. So we all got up at 5….
We got on the school bus with our gear at 6 AM sharp, and
had a pleasant ride north to Cable.[1]
We arrived at the Telemark Center
and set out to find a place to rest for the 2 to 3 hours before our waves went
off. We found a back hallway on the third floor to lie in, but there were so
many racers running around, yelling for each other and slamming their doors,
that sleep was a dream. Sam was set to go off in the classic wave 9 at 9:35 AM,
so we ambled out around 9 and set off for the start. After a few minutes of
spectating, we saw how they were staging the waves. John, Charlie and I dropped
our bags, said our goodbyes to Sam, and got ready to enter the corrals.
At 9:50 AM, the flag dropped and we
were off in the skate wave 9. (Having never raced this before or qualified, we
were put in the last wave. It was a real mixed bag.) I went out with all the other
guys in the first couple of rows. That is to say, too fast for me. I was
wearing my GPS watch and heart rate monitor and saw that I was around 175 BPM.
Yeah, I could hold that for 60 minutes. I was not so sure about 180 to 240
minutes.
I came around the first substantial turn
and saw Powerline Hill. So they do have hills in northern Wisconsin. Why didn’t
we see things like this on our drive?! There were hundreds, if not thousands of
colorful skiers stretched across the hill and all the way to the top. I wish I
had taken a photo. Because we were in wave 9, there were wave 7 and wave 8
skaters just standing at the top of each little rise catching their breath (and
blocking traffic). I’ve done enough long distance racing to know the importance
of pacing and of not “burning your matches” with stupid sprints. But apparently
I don’t know enough to prevent myself from charging up Powerline Hill and
darting into any opening between the masses of terrible skiers in front of me.
By the time I was at the top, my heart rate was around 180, but there were
still lots of slow people in front of me.
I tried to settle into a rhythm, and
actually found an older guy who was a very good skier. I followed him up and
down the rises (the endless ups and downs) and through the traffic. I thought
of him as my fullback. He had a killer spandex suit with electric bolts on it.
(Note to self: get cool spandex suit for next year). Although he was quite
tactical, we were definitely slowed by the traffic. We would have decent
momentum coming down a small hillock, but we’d almost have to put the brakes on
at the slightest uphill because traffic came to a near stand-still. It was
frustrating. I knew Charlie and John were slightly behind me and hoped that we
could all ski together for at least a bit.
At about mile 4.2, I encountered my
first real downhill of the course. I guess that it was a 25 to 35 foot vertical
drop, but it was quite “skied off.” Thousands of skiers who had come before me
had snowplowed their way down. They’d left vertical alternating ribbons of ice
and fresh powder. The conditions left many people timid and pussyfooting their
way down the slope. I saw some people sprawled out at the bottom, recovering
from their falls, but I figured I’d ski around them. I was tired of being
behind all these slow people!
I pointed my skis downhill and went
for it. I was nearly at the bottom when my right ski tip got caught in one of
the powder ribbons. It immediately slowed dramatically. My beefy body did not
slow. I was unceremoniously flung down onto my face and chest, knocking the
wind out of me. The next thing I remember was telling myself to breathe. I had
needed air! My skis were all tangled and I couldn’t stand up as people
continued to barrel down the hill towards me. My first priority was standing
up. Then I checked myself and realized that I was okay. I put my sunglasses up
on my head (as they were full of snow) and headed out again. Ohhh-noooo…...
The first 12 to 18 inches of my
right ski was flopping around like a fish. It had snapped when it got caught in
the snow and my body (and the rest of the ski) was flung forward). I skied just
like that for 50 yards and then pulled over to pull the tip off the ski
entirely and fling it into the woods. Unfortunately (but eventually
fortunately), the tip was still attached via the top laminate, and I limped on
with it dangling. Every time I moved my right leg, I had to give a little toe
flick so the broken tip didn’t get caught under the remainder of the ski. Some
guy skied by and said, “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Then some guy came up and said that
I should tape and splint it at the next rest area. So I carried on and got to
rest area 2. There I went to the pole replacement station (a lot of people
suffer broken poles) and asked if he could tape my ski and if he had a splint.
He told me to put my foot up and proceeded to wrap duct tape around my ski,
creating a lump on the bottom, but preventing the tip from flapping around. I
asked him for a splint, but he said he didn’t have any and couldn’t give me
other people’s broken poles.
It was better not to have the tip
flopping around, but the tape was creating a terrible braking force on the ski.
On top of that, it made the right ski so unstable that I had better control
trying to balance on one leg rather than on two. That was interesting. I
thought about Jens Voight and how he always continued biking even after he’d
broken his face. He was my inspiration. I gave up my dreams of a 3:15 Birkie,
but was determined to finish. I knew that I needed to fix this shitty tape job,
so I pulled into rest area 3 and took off my ski.
At rest area 3, I did the taping
myself. I guess there wasn’t enough blood in my head because my tape job was
terrible. It wasn’t lumpy like the first one, but I started at the top of the
ski and taped down, creating a reverse fish-scale effect. I saw Charlie skiing
by, looking strong as I was coming out of “duct tape area 3,” and I skied with
him for a while. The drag was terrible and I was well under 1/3 of the way
done. Charlie and I skied together, but agreed that I should go ahead because
it would take a while for me to re-tape.
I pulled into rest area 4 and went
to the pole replacement center for more duct tape. This time I taped from the
bottom up. Even better, the guy manning the station offered me a 3/4 x 3/4
piece of wood to use as a splint. This guy didn’t know shit about skiing, but I
was so glad he had decided to volunteer and had noticed that someone else used
a similar splint (I saw two other people with broken skis. One was missing an
arm!). I also put my broken ski on my left leg because I was experiencing
problematic muscle imbalance since I was putting in more effort on the side
that wasn’t gliding well.
The splint improved matters, but I
still had terrible problems with the tape getting caught in the snow. At
station 5, I decided that the glide properties of the waxed ski were less important
than the need to avoid tape-drag issues. I finally taped the entire underside
of the ski from the break all the way to the tip. Now I’d be skiing on a lot of
duct tape, but at least the snow wouldn’t be working its way under the tape.
This worked brilliantly! After what I’d been skiing on, I felt as if I were
skiing on glass.
Soon I caught up to John Lamb, who
I’d never seen pass me. I proudly showed him my good-as-new ski and charged
ahead.
Ironically, there are two
significant downhills on the course at which snowmobilers (‘chiners) congregate
and cheer for wipeouts. I survived both of them without incident by
step-turning, even before I’d hit upon my eventual duct tape solution. I am
confident that I will make it next year with no more breaks.
I tried to settle in to a
comfortable rhythm, which was more than necessary given that I had more than
half of the course ahead of me. Eventually I spied Charlie on a hill ahead of
me. I caught up to him and we decided to ski together.
As you’ve surmised, I know next to
nothing about cross country skiing, but I thought the course was pretty chopped
up and slow. I’m sure that all the fresh snow had been groomed, but by the time
us wave 9’ers got there, we were skiing in mashed potatoes. Even so, by this
time, the course was trending downhill and my ski was acting pretty normally.
So naturally, my thoughts turned back to winning the race.
Every time I saw a new person ahead
of me, I thought: “there is no way this jabronie is starting ahead of me next
year.” By about mile 20, I was exhausted and very thirsty. I knew from Couer
d’Alene that you can radically change the way you feel if you radically change
what you’re eating and drinking (hopefully the change is for the better). I
threw down some Gu’s and “energy” drink[2]
and kept going.
Charlie and I crested the last hill
together and I started to really pick up the pace. It turned out it was too
early for that, because I was still roughly 3K from the finish, but I was
pushing it across the lake as hard as I could go. I passed a slew of people on
the lake and then finally got into town, where they had thrown snow down on the
roads for the skiers. This snow was really chopped up and difficult to ski in.
But with the finish line in sight, it was easy to plow ahead. I finished at 2
PM, about 4 hours and 10 minutes after I started.
According to my watch, I spent 45
minutes standing still (probably taping my skis), and I have additional time to
gain but not being stuck behind the slowpokes in waves 8 and 9. I think there’s
a lot of time to be gained by conserving momentum over the rises and dips. I’m
hoping for a 3:15 in 2014. This is all assuming I don’t break my ski again, of
course.
Charlie finished a minute behind me,
and after a quick hug (he was so salty), we went to change into warm clothes
and get some soup.
We should have stayed in town and
started drinking immediately. But being rookies, we walked back to the hotel
for showers. JL met us there soon afterwards and Sam joined us a bit later. By
the time we’d showered and walked back to town, the skiers were emptying out of
the bars and the townies were coming out. At the Moccasin Bar, Sam ended up in
a conversation with two guys about the relative merits of east coast vs. Midwest
hunting and bow vs. gun hunting. One of the guys told us to be on the lookout
for cops as he already had four DUIs.
We then went over to the Angler for
dinner. At that bar, after enjoying some $8 pitchers, a drunk patron spied our
medals (only first timers get medals, everyone else gets a pin to correspond
with their year). He got us up on chairs and announced our names to the bar and
that this was our first Birkie. As they say: there’s no time like your first
time.
We got back to the hotel around 8 or
9 and went down to the hot tub where we met some ski patrollers skipping their
team meeting. By 9 or 10, we were safely back in our room and watching Old
School (the movie). I managed to stay awake for at least 15 minutes before Sam,
Charlie and John started taking pictures of me asleep. They told me that I was
skiing in my sleep.
That’s a sure sign that I’ll be back
for Birkie 2014. When does registration open?
[1] One of
our neighbors on the bus told us about the Canadian Ski Marathon—a two day ski
affair in which you ski 120 miles and camp out overnight on a bale of hay with
whatever equipment you brought on your back. I need to do that.
[2] At the
rest areas, they were offering “water” or “energy.” The “energy” was HEED, a
sports drink, but with that type of marketing, how is water supposed to hold
its own?
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