Payback Time
Breaking poles and other antics in the Birkie elite wave
by Jay Wenner  A week before the Birkie, things were looking mighty fine. A month of snow up north
and cold temps meant great trail conditions, and the weather forecast was pointing toward race temps in the upper 20s. We've had enough bad luck with recent Birkies and now it looked like payback time with a screaming fast, absolutely perfect course.
As race day drew closer, it was clear that the rocket-fast conditions were going to be slowed with some new snow and soft conditions, but who cares, it was still good news.
The fly in the ointment for me was lung crud. A virulent head and chest cold had spread through my workplace and infected half my co-workers. You'd think a bunch of biologists would be smart enough to use sick time to prevent the spread of infection, but you guessed it, I picked up the crud after Mora and spent a solid week napping and drinking Robitussin.
There are two problems with getting sick. The obvious one is screwing
up the year's Birkie. Even if you kick the bug, your hopes for a great race are gone. The other is getting kicked out of the elite wave. If you're too sick to race, the folks in the top 200 really dread getting relegated back to Wave 1. The Wave 1 start is the most insane thing about the Birkie, because getting a front-line spot is like playing rugby. Fortunately by Friday, I had most of my energy back and my congestion was down to a dull roar.
On Friday, I skied the new Centrix boots for an hour and the Swix HF8 wax job felt really greasy. I ended up waxing one pair of race skis with Swix HF7 and Cera F 040. The second, softer pair was waxed for slightly warmer conditions ending with a mix of Cera F200 and 040.
On race morning, I figured this second pair was perfect in terms of flex, structure and waxing, but I ripped a yellow binding tab as I removed the skis after a glide test. (I guess you need to replace these tabs more than
once every eight years.) After about 15 minutes trying to swap binding tabs, I finally gave up, grabbed the other pair of skis and headed for the start.
On the hike to the start, I ran into Grant Nelson. "Hey, Jay. What'd ya think the wax is today?" he asked. Looking down, I saw his classic skis and we started joking about Swix Blue Extra. At this year's Seeley Hills race, I had barely enough kick with Blue Extra while Grant had good
kick with the softer Toko Red. The snow and weather forecast for the Birkie were very similar to the Seeley Hills race, and Grant smiled and said he was going to try three layers of Toko Red over a layer of Yellow.
Chaotic start
After putting on my skis for a warm up, the snow police said I couldn't ski in front of the start and had to hike to the back of the start to warm up. Meanwhile, my wave was loading into the start corral. I thought about running to the back, skiing and loading, but that just seemed like a stress test that didn't need to happen. Instead, I loaded into the corral and wondered how it would be to ski the Birkie without any warmup.
I lined up between Matt Liebsch and Tim Triebold. Matt is one of those young guys who came out of nowhere and suddenly skied fast. Tim had a big grin on his face when he told me he was going to take it easy and use this race as training for the Norwegian Birkie.
In contrast to last year's clean start, this year's start was chaotic. It seemed like the soft conditions prevented the hot shots from rocketing off the front like normal. Only 100 meters in, one guy went down in front
of me and nearly rolled to his feet. At about 300 meters, I was squeezed from the left and I ended up breaking Dave Dow's pole with my right ski. (Damn, I was sorry.) About 2K out, I heard, "On your left" and Nathan Schultz of the Factory Team came cruising by after breaking and replacing a pole. He made holes in the crowd where there were none and skillfully skied over skis, blasting through people without breaking poles or taking anyone down. Is that something you can practice?
Normally I ski hard to the woods and then hang on for 40K. My plan this year was to go out easy and wait until I felt good before picking up the pace. It seems like that was everyone else's plan, too, because the pace for the first few kilometers was sluggish. As a result, I got off to a good start, but on the Power Line hills my pace was slow and I still felt bad. This is when Peter Hanson and John Munger pulled up and Peter
said, "How's it going, Jay?" I replied, "I'm hurtin'" before they slipped away.
A good 12K in or so, Tom Krenz went by, prompting me to say, "Tommy, what are you doing back here?" He replied, "My skis aren't running that well." Over the next few kilometers a pack of guys started to form just in front of me. I kept them in sight until the women leaders came by, and then male pride kicked in and they were gone.
Run for your life
For the first 35K, I was pretty much a spectator, skiing along as packfiller. About then I started to feel a little better and pushed the pace just a little. In fact, as I crossed Mosquito Brook Road, I held up my
arms in a "come on people, would you cheer" motion, and the crowd went crazy. Thanks, folks. You really do make this race fun.
But while climbing Bitch Hill, I took a quick look back and saw a pretty large army equipped with spears, crossbows and battle axes. Out of a sense of fear, I picked up the pace on top of the climb and our small group picked up and dropped a couple of skiers until Duncan McLean came charging through on the last climb. Usually, when a horse this
strong shows up late in the race, there's some reason, such as missing the start or breaking a pole. What happened this time? Duncan apparently stopped to take a leak and was now making up the lost time. It was clear he was the horse to follow into the headwind on the lake, but man, it was hard hitching up the wagon. He pulled two of us across most of the lake before we gave him a break in the last couple of kilometers. I was the last of our threesome in the barn before the cavalry
showed up 20 seconds later.
After finishing, my wife, Julie Joy, walked up and said she left my warmups at the start. She also told me that she left her backpack with the camera and purse at the OO Fischer feed, and locked the keys in the car. OK, she didn't lock the keys in the car, but she dumped me at the finishing tent while she and our local host Patti started backtracking looking for gear.
Stories in the tent
Grant Nelson and Mike Myers had a great classic race that ended with a photo finish. It took a little prying, but I got Grant to admit that he was certain he had his boot over the finish line before Mike. Unfortunately, it was the other boot that had the timing chip. He wasn't certain yet if he
had won the timing contest (which he did). Mike is the classic king, but Grant had a breakthrough year.
Dave Dow was telling a friend about the start and how someone came over and just stomped on his pole. Dave ended up with a piece-of-trash pole that was not fit for staking tomatoes.
I walked up and said, "Dave. I'm really sorry about breaking your pole." In shock, he responded, "Was that you?" I started explaining about
gliding on my left ski and that I caught a glimpse of his pole at the last second. I tried to slow the ski and figured that as I swung my right ski forward, my ski tip would just slide up on top of his angled pole. At that point, I'd just have to glide on my left ski until he pulled that pole forward. The weird thing was that his pole offered almost no resistance. I asked if that was a brand-X pole (I don't want to badmouth any
brands here), because it snapped like a toothpick. Well, yeah, Dave admitted, "but I've had no problem skiing with those poles for years."
Meanwhile, Dave's friend, who had heard both sides of the story, was smiling like he was watching a Woody Allen film. OK, Birkie registration folks: I screwed up Dave's race. Please let Dave back in the elite wave next year.
One of the best stories I heard was from John Munger who forgot his
water bottle for the race. Instead of stopping at the normal food stops, he ended up picking up discarded bottles after the team feeds and used these as his source of liquid for the race. For his complete story, check out www.skinnyski.com.
Bar hopping Julie and Patti had no luck finding any of the lost gear, so our first stop was the lost and found, where I located my Fischer jacket and pants. The next stop was the Angler bar, where we found three fellow members of the local Fischer ski team but not the factory representatives
who were running the feed just after OO. "They're over at the Moccasin," we were told.
Inside the Moccasin Bar was quite a sight. Seeing three Fischer reps and a number of Factory Team members with big smiles and beers in their hands made me smile and nod slowly. Dave, one of the reps, said to Julie, "Oh, yeah. I have your backpack" and Julie was nearly in tears.
"Do you know what was in that backpack? This calls for a celebratory
beer," she said. Meanwhile the Factory Team skiers were singing along with the jukebox.
A competitive year
After a string of dismal snow years, this year's Birkie showed that cross-country skiing and the Birkie organization are healthy and strong.
The course was groomed well, the results were quick, and I didn't hear about any problems with the race. This was also the most competitive year I've ever seen at the Birkie. You might say the elite wave was stacked. As a result, a number of elite wave veterans didn't make the elusive top 200 cutoff. Part of this may have been the new snow, which seems to toss a cherry bomb in the results list. New snow makes ski, structure and waxing much more tricky, and slow skis can sometimes
put a skier's attitude in the outhouse.
Maybe it was my role as spectator or the good conditions this year, but I'm already pumped for next year's Birkie and at this writing I still have 51 weeks to go.
One thing I'll change for next year is that I'll put 20 bucks in my clothing bag to spend on beer after the race.
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