XC Skiing with Mitch Mode
The Birkie challenge lies in the heart of each skier
The backroads leading to the Telemark Lodge were nearly abandoned 12 hours before the start of the 33rd American Birkebeiner on February 25. Snow fell unexpectedly during the afternoon, covering the roads. What traffic there was moved tentatively in the dark night and under heavy clouds.
The forecast, however, included clearing skies and falling temperatures. Daybreak would bring cold, near or below zero temperatures.
So, too, would come much activity. Near dawn the roads filled slowly and steadily with cars and trucks and buses, with skiers and workers and spectators, first a trickle, then a torrent.
Now, in the night the world is narrow and small. So too the width of the road, the length of the headlight beams, the height of the low-lying cloud. Then it is easy to ponder things from a cocoonlike perspective, ponder the irony of snow and cold and skiing, and to think of all that and of the
race, the famous and celebrated Birkebeiner.
Snow is the base on which our sport is built, the literal foundation for all we do. So we crave it, we worship it, we need it as we need life blood. Without snow there is no Birkebeiner. But when it falls on the eve of the big event, it is something else. Fresh snow leaves a slow and soft track. Skis sink in more and glide is reduced. Slower track demands more effort. Over 51 kilometers, the extra demands add up, draining reserves. It makes
for a longer day.
That's not good news to the skier, not on the eve of a race, any race, let alone the Birkie. When it comes, we are left worried and fretful, with furrowed brows and a sense of unease at the impending effort, now assuredly that much greater. Ironic, is it not, that after wishing for snow from November on, that when we get it on the eve of the event, we are thrown into worry?
Ironic also is the cold, for without cold snow will not hold and without the snow we
cannot ski. So we need the cold. Just not on race eve. Cold snow is dry and abrasive. It drags at bases and slows skis down. It's the same result as with fresh snow. Slower skis demand more effort to move forward. More effort burns more energy, takes more time. So the cold we wish for becomes, on the day of the race, something we fear.
So on that night with fresh snow on the ground and a forecast of colder weather coming in, you can forgive the Birkie skiers for being a bit fretful.
The race is long enough under perfect conditions. Add cold weather and fresh snow and it seems even longer.
So what does one do? You deal with it. You accept it as part of the game. You deal with it in the knowledge that conditions will not always be as you wish. You deal with by remembering the simple fact of distance races: It is all about the challenge.
The challenge of the Birkebeiner lies in the undeniable fact of distance and all that distance portends. Distance alone, 51
kilometers, brings challenge. But distance alone does not tell the whole story. Any event worth doing also has challenging terrain to cover at a given pace and with strategy and tactics. So when the morning dawns bright with new snow and cold temps, the challenge only increases.
At daybreak on Saturday, the snow squeaked underfoot. When you hear that sound, you know the snow is cold. If there was anyone at the starting line who had doubts that considerable effort lay ahead, they were
in the minority.
The start area was once again a hubbub of activity and movement, seemingly random to the uninitiated but familiar to those who've been there before. There was speechifying and declarations, music and song, an ongoing cacophony of noise, and the feel in the air of energy building. The only calm was within each skier as the time ran down to their start. But that calm was inside; outside all seemed in chaos.
Each start wave at the Birkie gathers like a building
storm, fragmented at first with skiers off the back warming up, then moving together toward that line, toward that start banner, gathering together, coalescing. Extra movement ceases as if the energy of the individual, drawn inward and held, becomes the collective energy of the group, stable but potent. In the seconds before the start there is very little movement, very little sound, only the group, gathered now as a storm gathers and holds.
Then comes the start and the wave breaks for
the open trail and everywhere there is movement and sound and rushing color and energy as the group strings out and fragments into countless individual races. In a minute the wave passes, stretched out as you watch, the more powerful skiers at the fore and the stragglers already beginning to drift back from the tight mass.
And so it began this year as it begins every year.
The fast skiers moved immediately to the front of each wave, driving hard and efficiently. Packs formed and
order, in the form of race hierarchy, was restored after the burst of energy at the start. The fast skiers see the race in front of them, in the track and the trail, with skiers ahead to be overtaken, with strategy and tactics based on all they can see; it is all in front. Those skiers, the elite and those that would give their all to join their ranks, ski a different race than the rank and file that follow.
For the weaker skiers, the race is behind them. A skier that looks back over
their shoulder is a skier in trouble for they are looking for what they fear another skier or more overtaking them. When you see a skier look behind, that skier is telegraphing their fear; they know their position is in peril. In the latter waves you see that a lot.
As much as the Birkebeiner is unique, it is also the same as every race held each weekend across the region. All are just permutations of the spirit of the race. For if you cut deeper, if you delve far at all into the heart
and soul of a ski racer, you find a common truth: The race is within.
Race results are a mere accounting in a ledgerlike series of columns recording time and distance and place overall. Racing is easily dismissed as mere time over distance, a function of digital timing and computerized chips, of effort now measured on a wrist-mounted device and downloaded to the computer at home.
All this merely blurs the true spirit of the race because fast or slow or in between, everyone who
steps to the line is skiing that day from the heart within. Everyone has their own standards, their own goals, unique to their references and special to their beliefs.
To pretend that the story of the race is written only in the results is to obscure the true intent. A heart rate monitor tells one story; the true heart is another matter. The Birkie provides the opportunity each year for the skier to find their own truth.
It was a beautiful day to ski. There is no denying that.
The snow was fresh and cold and slow. But it was a wonderful day to ski. It was a day that classic skiers may have held a slight advantage. In the cold weather, the difference in glide between skate and stride is reduced and stride skiing seems to hold a skier's heat better than skating. The skate lane, especially early in the race, was soft and slow and striding skiers covered ground more easily than most years.
It was not an easy day to ski distance, however. One unfailingly
accurate barometer of skier effort is in the amount of talking between skiers as the race wears on. On a day when the snow is fast and the skis run easy there is a lot of ongoing banter even as the race hits the later stages. Not so this year. This year it was quiet for most of the race. All energy was transferred to the skis, all focus was on the trail, nothing was left for casual chitchat as in some years. This Birkie, for all the beauty the day held, was not an easy event to ski.
But the Birkie is not about doing things the easy way. There are easier ways to cover 51K. Nobody said it would be easy. The Birkebeiner is and always has been about challenge and how we rise to that challenge.
The fast skiers won the day that Saturday. But the true results for each skier were personal and not prone to display. That is the true reward of the Birkebeiner. That is what every skier, fast or slow, takes from their day on the long trail from Telemark to Hayward.
Mitch Mode started cross-country skiing with "proper" gear (wood skis, leather 3-pin boots) probably 35 years ago. He has skied every Birkie since 1978 but no longer races. He is the co-owner of Mel's Trading Post, a sporting goods store in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, named after his late father who started the business in 1946.
|
