Birkie Denied
Now that Evan is living in Madison, he had the idea that Lisa, he and I
should all do the Birkie. Great idea! Then the Burnhams decided it was time to do
the Birkie too, so last Thursday we started our long trip to Hayward,
but Lisa, who never gets sick, came down with a nasty stomach bug and really
suffered on the flight out and then felt so bad she couldn’t even go to dinner
with Evan and I in Madison.
My only, admittedly selfish thought was “This is not going to turn out well.”
On Friday we got up early, met Evan at his apartment and
started the long drive to Hayward
as snow started to fall. I enjoyed the
scenery of snowy, rolling Wisconsin farms by
the hundreds. What a difference from the
east! We met up with the Burnhams (Bob, Anne and Jim) at a grocery store in
Spooner to stock up on supplies and then a while later found the house that we
were staying in, about 10 miles from the finish of the race. We got out for a nice hour ski at Fish Hatchery Rd,
and got our first look at the Birkie course.
It was a highway through the forest!
With rolling hills and sweeping downhills, very nice. I tested a couple
kick waxes, as did Bob and after an hour of pretty pleasant skiing sans track,
time for dinner, waxing up Evan’s race skis and getting to bed early. With
light snow falling it looked promising for tomorrow. Lisa was feeling better too after getting
fresh air and a ski!
Now, the Birkie is a logistical nightmare. Do you drive to the start and then catch a
bus back after the race or do you drive to the finish and catch a bus to the
start? Lisa was doing the Korte (1/2
marathon), which starts and finishes at the Telemark Lodge while the rest of us
finish on Main St
in Hayward. Did she want to drive a car to Hayward after, or take a bus? What about parking? To catch the bus you need to get cracking at
0 dark 30. Will there be enough parking? What about dry clothes? Wax, since I was doing classic? Evan was
decidedly not excited about getting up before 5 am!
Finally, we opted to drive to the finish and bus to the
start and Lisa would take a bus down after her finish. I think all these mental gymnastics put me
over the edge and as I’d predicated, I started feeling really lousy and couldn’t
eat a whole lot and I had to drink gallons to get it down. I slept poorly and 4:45 came mighty early
(well, 4:45 IS early!). After 3 bites of
oatmeal I bolted out of the house, sure I was about to lose it, but fortunately
I guess, I didn’t. What to do?? I was now feeling pretty terrible and felt
like I had a bowling ball in my stomach.
However, time to soldier on, so we loaded up the cars and headed in to Hayward through the light
snow.
We caught the bus and the trip to the Telemark Lodge in
Cable went as smoothly as a school bus ride can go on bumpy roads with a queasy
stomach. Fortunately, I had no need for
facilities since school buses are not so equipped. These bus rides with loads of skiers and skis
are always somewhat interesting, listening in on the snippets of conversation
about waxing, training, how to pace, do you take GUs, this hill here, Bitch
hill there, Snowmobile Corner over there, how many Birkies people had raced,
etc. Lousy as I felt, I was enjoying the
instant connection to all these other nut cases who have gotten up well before
the crack of dawn to do what? Ski 50 or
more km across some far northern Wisconsin
glacial hills and eskers? In the
winter? In the cold? On snow? Beautiful! My kind of people, by the thousands!
Telemark Lodge, when we arrived, resembled a refugee camp
and was stuffed with skiers lying all over the place trying to relax before it
was time to make the ½ mile walk down to the start when it was time for their
wave. What a mass of humanity! But, all skiers, how cool is that! I finally decided that since I came all the
way to Wisconsin,
lousy as I felt I was going to start the race and go easy and just see what
would happen. It was time to experience
the Birkie! What is the worst that could
happen? I’d just get sicker I
suppose.
I made the long walk to the craziness at the start with
hundreds of skiers milling about, some in a huge tent trying to stay warm,
others cuing up for the start. I tested
my skis and kick wax on a large oval warm up track that had one track for
classic and I had to admit, my skis were feeling good! Fast and solid kick! Ok, now that right there made me feel
somewhat better and encouraged! Miraculously
I ran into Sue McNatt who was headed for the start pen. She was clearly hyped up and ready to roll to
Hayward! I also ran into
Finally, I shed my warm ups, handed off my bag of clothes to
the truck and slipped into the holding pen and carrying my skis and poles lined
up next to Bob and Jim for the race before the race. The wave on the line took off skating furiously
and moments later our wave ran with skis in hand to the starting line. Jim, Bob and I were on the front line and put
on our equipment for the start a few minutes later. When the banners lifted we were off and after
about 50 yds of hard double poling I looked up and it was Jim, Bob, me, some
Russian guy and a guy from Alaska
all alone off the front! Ok, I thought,
that was WAY easier than a Tuesday night race at Weston. So, with Wave 5 easily dispatched, off we
headed into the woods to hunt down Wave 4.
We passed a couple stragglers from Wave 4 who were doing the Korte and I
was getting pretty comfortable, although I had to let Bob and Jimmy and the
Russian go, there was no way I was going to try and keep up with them
today. I skied with the Alaskan guy
(John Wood, 4th place in 65-69) for a while and then we popped out
onto the powerline and there they were…..masses of humanity skating on the
right and classic on the left. Hundreds
of skiers from Wave 4 stacked up at the top of the rolling hills, herringboning
all the uphills. This was going to be
interesting! Mentally I was prepared for
this, and I come over the top of the
first hill, popped in the track, tucked and shot by about 10 people who were
herringboning, sliding right between them.
Then I got in line and trudged up the rest of the hill. On flatter sections I went from track to
track, passing slower skiers at will. My
skis were running so well and were so fast compared to everyone else that this
started to get fun. I forgot about the
bowling ball in my stomach for a while and worked to pass as many people as
possible on downhills or to shoot by them as they started herringboning up the
next hill. It is really fun to shoot
down a hill in a tuck, go up and over the next bump still in a tuck while
everyone around you is working so hard! I
was feeling rather smug, I must say. I
have no idea how many people I passed, but it was almost dizzying. On the nice kick and glide sections, of which
there were many, I tried to ski as smoothly and effortlessly as possible since
there was no way I could hammer this day.
I was having fun though! Ski
smooth, use the downhills and flats and trudge up the hills. Not a race winning plan, but not a bad one
for my situation. At the 9km cutoff I
was actually not so bad off, 38th in my age group and 325 overall in
the classic race.
On the bigger, faster downhills lots of people would
snowplow. But the downhills were not
difficult! The course is so wide and the
curves so nice and gradual that it just wasn’t difficult. I took great pleasure in popping into the
track, tucking and seeing how far I could go in a tuck. On some of the longer, faster downhills 3
troughs would form, one for each track as people snowplowed up a nice
berm. Parallel bobsled runs! Weird.
This all went on kilometer after kilometer as I worked through Wave 4,
then Wave 3 and I started catching Wave 2 skiers by about 20 km.
And then……the wheels started coming off, one by one. At 20km I started feeling really tired and I
could feel that bowling ball in my gut again.
While I’d been essentially walking the uphills, now I started
trudging. I started looking for the
kilometer markers 21….22…..23. Oh, man,
they are going by so slowly now. I was
now aiming for the feed station at Highway OO (what is with the county road
numbering system anyway??) . OO is the
half way point, 27km for the classic race.
People I’d just passed now started passing me on the uphills. I moved over so I wasn’t in the way. Where is km 24? 25?, 26?
1 km to go to OO. There goes
another wheel….really wobbling now. Finally there it was, another giant feed
station where classic and skate trails come together and there is a mass of
humanity flinging cups, and GUs and trying not to step on GUs because they
wreck your glide…..and I pulled over and reluctantly took off my skis and in a
daze wobbled over to the medical tent. I
had played my hand and had had to fold. (Know when to hold em, know when to fold em) I
was kind of in a daze and grabbed 2 blankets and lay down on a cot for about 20
min. My day was done.
I got up finally, feeling a little less trashed, and started
chatting with a young guy. Turns out he
was the McNatt’s cousin Lars. He said
he’d tried to keep up with Sue and her relently V1 (we both laughed about her
lack of V2 and V2 alt). Lars learned
that Sue may only have one technique, but she’s a darned fast practitioner of
it! Every little while another waylaid skier
would enter the tent and gather around the propane heater with the rest of us
trying to keep warm. A guy from New Mexico, a young
woman who’d gone to BU, a woman from Madison, another woman who had on the back
of her jacket “You’ve just been chicked”.
By the time a bus finally arrived to get us back to Hayward we had a cheerful little group.
We got back to Hayward
in time to see Evan ski up Main St,
which was pretty cool. He’d survived his
first Birkie on about 50km of ski training for the winter and riding his bike
indoors. Lisa had skied well in the
Korte, finishing 8th in her age group. As for the Burnhams, Bob had survived running
over a GU and stopping to rewax, while Jim had had an excellent race, finishing
118 overall! And Anne, skiing from Wave
9 finished 2nd in her age group.
Not a bad day for the group. We
headed off for a shower and an early dinner in a restaurant on Main St, complete
with people still wearing their numbers proudly, good Wisconsin
food and a very tasty beer. All things
considered, while personally disappointed, it was a really fun day! Next year?
A distinct possibility….I have unfinished business on the trail from
Cable to Hayward.
