The Birkie!

We woke up at 5:30 am to the thermometer reading -8. All week they were saying that it was supposed to be around on Saturday which it got to but it started about 20 degrees colder than they had said. For these big World Loppet type races when you have literally thousands of people showing up to relatively small areas within at about the same time it pays to get there early and also be affiliated with someone who in the industry so you can have a parking pass. While we drove in the last mile or so before the parking lot the road was lined with racers walking from the satellite lots in the sub zero weather. Glad I wasn't one of them. We got there about an hour before the start and tested skis as usual picked the fast ones and finished warming up before getting in the start pen. The pen is divided into waves and the Elite wave of 200 skiers lines up behind the start banner that gets lifted when the start gun goes off. The next waves banner gets lifted 2 minutes later, and so on. So we were all in the pen with our warm ups off 10 minutes to start and the announcer says the start is delayed 10 minutes due to a big traffic jam of everyone trying to get there at the same time. So now there were 200 guys running back and forth in ski gear trying to stay warm for 10 more minutes. It wasn't that bad though.

Once the race got going it was pretty mellow of the start. About 1k of flat/rolling skiing before we head up about 1-2 k of climbing along a powerline before we head into the woods. At about 2k I was up near the front when a guy stepped on my pole and broke it. (Turns out he broke another guys pole a few minutes later and his coach came up to me that night and appologized. Apparently he is just real bad at skiing around other people.) A mild sense of panic took over but calm eventually came back when I heard there was a pole station about 1k up the trail. When I got to it there were a bunch of poles in a pile and the guy at the station picked up a short pair of turquoise ones which weren't going to work so I got to stop and go back and grabbed one that was a bit longer. Turned out it was about 6 inches taller than I ski on... but at least I had one and I was back in the race and skied my way back up to the front over the next few k's.

So the race was on. But no one really wanted to push the pace. This was a mixed blessing for me since I was skiing with one pole that was way way to long until about 25k, also I wasn't able to get my second drink bottle at 15k like I had hoped/planned and from about 25k to 38k, when I got my last bottle, I was pretty close to running out of energy. In that way the slower pace was a godsend, but big pack sprints are not my specialty. That meant that with 5k to go I made a move to try and separate things a little bit. Lars caught up and so did Babikov with the rest of the field. Then Babikov went and I tried to go with him since that was my best hope by far if I could just hang on to the top of the climb. He was just too strong and a pack of about 20 ended up forming coming across the 3k flat leading to the finish and I just didn't have enough to do much in the sprint. Looking back I am a little disappointed with the place (12th, I think) but I went where I though my chance was best to try and get away and maybe win the thing but it wasn't to be.

So now I am home for three weeks! The skiing is great in town and the Tour of Anchorage is coming up this weekend. Looks like it should be a battle between the top 3 from the Sven Johansen last weekend and two Norwegians, one from UAA who had to sit out the NCAA season for some eligibility reasons and one who was 6th, I think, at the Birkie. Should be fun!