3:28 a.m.: My alarm goes off and I bounce up off my bed, a pad on the floor of the Ogema house where I’m crashing for the Birkie Eve. I’m relieved my short night of tossing and turning is over. By 4:10 a.m., we are on the road to Hayward, where at 6 a.m. a bus will take us to the starting line of the American Birkebeiner in Cable..
“Look at all these crazy people!” my friend and training partner, Elizabeth, exclaims as we pull into the parking lot in pre-dawn darkness.
“We are these crazy people,” I think, still too out of it to articulate the words.
On the 30-minute bus ride I eavesdrop on the two men behind me, as they discuss their past Birkie experiences and today’s conditions.
They predict that the downhills are likely to get icy and carved out in the single-digit temperatures. I can’t help but wonder what I’ve gotten myself into.
Up until this point, I’ve been appropriately nervous about the 54-kilometer race, but three hours before my start time the reality of what I am about to undertake begins to set in.
Elizabeth and I had signed up for the Birkie almost on a whim. On our borrowed and used skis, we learned the hard way (and halfway through our training) that you have to apply kick wax to waxable skis and glide wax even to waxless skis. We fell down hills and struggled up them. We put in our share of time on the trails, but still we were, relative to most Birkie skiers, complete novices.
After struggling with faulty equipment most of the season, Elizabeth dropped down to the Kortelopet three weeks before the race. I faced the Birkie alone.
I have been an occasional cross-country skier all my life. Growing up, my dad made sure we got out on skis whenever the opportunity presented itself, which wasn’t too often in the Chicago suburbs. A passionate outdoorsman, he skied the Birkebeiner in 1987, a year so warm the race would have been canceled if the route hadn’t been shortened and artificial snow added.
Twenty four years later, I was going to take my place on the start line on one of the coldest race days in history.
When we stepped off the bus in Cable, the negative 10 degrees on the thermometer matched the numbness I felt. I tried to harden myself for the challenge to come.
While Elizabeth and our adoring fans, her boyfriend and my husband, staked out a spot on the floor of the Telemark Resort, I wandered, admiring the fact that the line for the women’s restroom was shorter than the men’s.
As we walked to the start line, I had no idea if I was ready, but that was irrelevant. Suddenly I was skiing the Birkie.
I lost my balance and fell in the first kilometer, when the race felt "like Chicago traffic."
Elizabeth and I stuck together the best we could during the first nine kilometers, before the Korte and the Birkie trails split. As we approached the fork, my emotions swelled. I thought of the journey ahead.
"Don’t leave me!" I joked to Elizabeth.
Then I was on my own.
The trail was peaceful, and a light snow turned my eyelashes white and icy. Once I found my groove the time seemed to fly by.
I skied past a plaid-clad member of the "Birchleggings Club," who was out for his 31st Birkie. At the next aid station, he passed me. Eventually I caught up and passed him again. The routine repeated itself at least five times and brought a strange sense of comfort.
My only goal, besides finishing, was to enjoy the day, and I embraced the mostly silent but occasionally chatty camaraderie with fellow skiers.
My clearest struggle was in aid station efficiency. Opening my fuel belt and eating gels and chews required a complete stop and mitten removal. And unlike the many men on the trail who answered nature’s call, um, in nature, I had to wait in a 10-minute line for a portable outhouse.
After the prolonged stops at each aid station, it took a good 20 minutes before I was warmed up enough to feel my fingers.
My little fan club greeted me just when I was starting to need them, at mile 26. Their hugs and encouragement sent me flying on my way to the inevitable encounter with "Bitch Hill."
I had heard stories of this legendary slope, but couldn’t quite remember where in the course it was located. I figured I’d know it when I saw it, and indeed, there was no mistaking this hill.
If training at Lapham Peak had taught me one thing, it was how to attack wall-like hills. I practically ran up this one, passing at least four skiers in the process. From there, I knew I was going to finish the Birkebeiner.
Still, the last 5K was the toughest both mentally and physically. Visions of the finish on Main Street danced through my mind, as I shuffled across Lake Hayward.
I tried my best to grin at the few spectators left on the course, immeasurably grateful for their support in these frigid conditions. With one kilometer to go, a man ran alongside a skier ahead of me waving a plastic cup of beer in his face. "You’ll get this at the end!" he taunted. I silently cursed that cruel, cruel man. The lake seemed to go on forever.
I began to choke up once the finish line was clear on the horizon. I had to breathe, though, so I couldn’t cry.
Instead, I sprinted. A voice announced the name of a Birkie founder who crossed the finish line right beside me. I mumbled a congrats to her but she didn’t seem to hear. I stopped skiing and discovered how sore my legs were.
It didn’t matter. I had finished. I spent 6 hours and 52 minutes skiing 54K in single-digit temperatures, and I actually enjoyed it.
Being a crazy person never felt so good.
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