The race itself! The very one Team Birkie is named after, and the very race that convinced me to join said team for another year of professional skiing. I spent the two weeks before in Minnesota doing Minnesota things: eating cheese, going up North, saunaing, and playing in the snow.
We had more snow in Northern Minnesota than I've seen in years! It was very cold (-20ish), but beautiful. It was hard to see that much snow with such a lack of topography to really take advantage of it on big skis, but the Central Gunflint Nordic trails were all time.
Poof
When I got to Wisconsin, the energy around Cable/Hayward was amazing! Everyone was clearly so pumped to have this event back in full force, and covid cases dropped just in time to allow us to enjoy everything with less crowd anxiety.
After my last year's performance in this race, I had high hopes, but not high expectations. My goal going into this year was to be the first American finisher in the Birkie. Given my season's trajectory, this was looking unlikely, but the same could have been said for last year when I finished in 6th, only 30 seconds from 1st.
Pre-race at Natalie's cabin with this year's skiers. Rachel and I skied the skate Birkie, and my dad skied his first Korteloppet classic. Dad crushed it, and somehow after watching my experience, he walked away convinced that he needs to ski the full race next year.
The crowd craziness of race day was way more than I was prepared to deal with. I arrived too late, barely got my skis into the mandatory inspection in time, and barely put them on before the gun went off. I found it really hard to hang onto the lead pack, and in my effort to do so, I completely neglected to drink from my water pack, which freezes up after about 5 minutes without use. As I worried about melting the problematic mouthpiece, I lost focus and contact with the group. I clearly lacked any advance hydration that day, and only had the occasional feed station to mitigate this. I started cramping with 30k to go. The cramps got progressively worse all the way to the finish, and I got slower and slower. I crossed the finish line on main street unable to move my locked my legs, which were locked in cramps. Immediately the physical pain and disappointment with the race it didn't matter. I was at the coolest event in the world, and it became a celebration of skiing in general, beyond everyone's successes and struggles. The rest of the weekend became about enjoying the great gathering and mentally preparing myself for three more weeks of travel and racing in Europe.
I have few pictures from the race, given that I wasn't in a spotlight position. This isn't one you love to see either. I'm side by side with the my Madshus rep. Typically you want to beat the guy that's giving you your gear. Oops.
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