Back in the days of Norse warriors who wore birch bark armour there was a coup that overthrew the royal family. All in the family were slaughtered, except for the infant prince, who was whisked away to safety by 2 of the aforementioned norse warriors, across a mountain range to safety, 55km's away. They did this on skis, and so a legend was born - the Birch Legs, or Birkebeiners. Much as we now know of marathons as a distance foot race, the Birkebeiner has become a distance ski race, of the classic style.
On Saturday, February 13th, I participated in a version of the Canadian Birkebeiner. It being the first ski race I've ever entered in my life, and my first time going for real distance on cross country skis, I chose to enter the 31km version of this festival.
And so, early on Saturday morning, I found myself heading East out of Edmonton, through Elk Island National Park (where 3 bison watched me go past) on the Trans Canada Highway, which was half-covered by drifting snow, with a relatively strong wind coming out of the North.
It was still fairly brisk (about -12 celsius or so before windchill) when I arrived at the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village and began to get all prepped for the coming race. I got my boots on, stripped down to a thermal shirt, light vest and wind shell, and eventually made my way to the mass start area.
The mass start was self seeding, meaning that we were supposed to place ourselves behind the skiers who would finish before us, and about the same spot as skiers of our same skill and speed level. Expecting to finish in somewhere around 4 to 5 hours, I placed myself about middle of the pack on one of the lanes. To be honest, it was really just where the pack had grown to by a few minutes before the actual start, and had nothing to do with any real calculations, but there were still a lot of people behind me.
Well, eventually the race started and we got under way. the start was very slow, as the wind whipped at us across the exposed lake area, and the lanes began to disappear, eventually getting down to 2 lanes only, so you can imagine that there was quite a bit of bottlenecking going on.
While this was happening, I noticed that I tended to be moving up the pack ever so slightly, passing a few people as they started to fall back or continue at a slower pace.
A few km's in we entered Elk Island and people began to get into their pace and either pass or be passed. It was still really crowded at this point, as everyone was still pretty clumped. In the semi-downhill sections I had to do some hard braking at times to avoid bowling over the person in front of me, sometimes by simply braking with a ski on the trail, and sometimes doing a hard pole brake by planting my pole. At one point, though, something bad did happen. Myself and a girl had both pulled into the passing lane to pass some slower people in front of us, and she had gone in front of me. However, my skis were getting much better glide than she was, and I was getting much closer than I wanted to, so I tried to do a ski brake with my right ski, to avoid running her down. Well, it almost worked, but she was still poling to try to get more speed, and the tip of her pole got caught under the edge of my ski. I'm guessing they were expensive carbon fibre poles, because the bottom 5 inches of the pole completely sheered off with a clean brake. I managed to stop enough to pick it up for her and hand it to her. I apologised profusely as we both cleared the lanes and I asked her if she would be alright, feeling horrible because I was pretty sure I had just ruined her race. I asked her if she would be able to continue. I just felt terrible for what I'd just done.
She said not to worry about it, that she would be fine, and to keep going.
I still felt bad, but I did just that, rejoining the race and continuing on.
As the race went on I continued to pass people, easily regaining and then going past the position I had been in when that accident happened. I also started to warm up even more, first opening up the sleeves on my jacket, then taking off my hat, then opening up my jacket entirely. By the time I had reached the 11km checkpoint, where we were able to refuel with warm gatorade and cut up fruit, I took my jacket off and tied it around my waist, where it remained for the rest of the way.
I kept feeling confident in how things were going, having some fun in some of the turns by sinking down into a telemark stance to ride through them and use what little edges my touring skis had to float through them. with the relatively firm and well set tracks this worked really well to maintain control and keep the skis in the tracks, and I found that I was continuing to pass people, especially on sections with a touch of downhill, where I seemed to be getting better glide than anyone else around me.
But I knew that the hardest was still ahead. The previous sunday I had done a long ski training day and been concerned by the results. I had been on relatively flat terrain in pretty ideal weather conditions, and found that my arms were completely worn out by the time I hit 24km's. I had done some arm strength training in the week after this, but I was worried that the same thing would happen today, so I was going easy on them and being conscious to rest my arms when I could, only poling a little bit on the downhills, and for the most part just sinking into a tuck for them.
I knew I was making good time, checking in on this only once at a rest station and thinking to myself "hrm, I seem to be making pretty good time", but it turns out I didn't know the full extent of it.
When I finally saw that I had reached the 25km mark, I knew I had the energy and then some to complete this race. My arms felt good, nothing was sore (aside from a bit of rubbing on the big toe on my left foot), and I felt like I had energy to spare, so I upped the pace a little bit, pushing just a little harder in the downhill sections and on the flats, and doing a loping herringbone shuffle on the uphills that must have looked absolutely ridiculous to anyone who happened to see it.
With 1km to go I thought about sprinting it, but by then we were starting to get passed by some of the early finished in the 55km version, and I delayed on passing a couple of times so that they'd have a clear run through on the passing lanes. However, when the finish line came in sight I went for it, bursting past the person in front of me with a kick double-pole sprint that really probably only gained me a few seconds, but felt really good.
I crossed the finish line like that, a burst of energy, and knew that I still had a lot of energy to spare and probably could have gone for at least a few more km's.
As my timing chip was being taken off, I asked one of the officials what time it was, and was told that it was 12:38pm. "Holy crap" was my response. I had skied much, much faster than I had thought I was going to, and faster than I had figured I was going while I was on the course.
When I checked the official results on Monday I got the full picture. I had finished in 3 hours, 38 minutes, and 44 seconds, placing me 168th overall out of 460 people in the 31km event. Each km had taken me 6 minutes and 6 seconds on average to complete.
I was completely stoked by the results, and have now started thinking that I might enter one of the 55km events next year, preferably after another ski upgrade to ones that are even better suited to racing. Although the skis I'm on now will likely work very well in future years, they don't have good edges and I would likely be faster on narrower skis. We'll see if that actually happens, though. For now, I'm just proud of having done well and finished the 31km ski.
For more information about the Birkebeiner and other official results, check the website, at http://www.canadianbirkie.com/
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