Twin Cities XC ski commentary

Introducing BirkieGuide.com

2011-03-24T00:04:00.002-05:00

Wondering where this year's statistics are? Wonder no more. They've moved to www.birkieguide.com, the new portal for all things Birkie!

(I am a huge Birkie Fanboy)

Pole position in the Birkie

2011-02-28T01:54:00.009-06:00

***Do note: this site will be morphing in to more of a Birkie guide and Birkie blog from the #1 Birkie fanboy, yours truly, so go there now: Birkieguide.com

Ah, the Birkie. I love the Birkie, enough to write a whole guide to it and publicize it through Skinnyski and Fasterskier. Johnny Klister—who makes fun of everyone—called what I wrote about the Birkie "remarkably good." Do I get "the fever?" Yeah, just a little bit. I was excited as ever for Birkie. And this Birkie was shaping up to be different than past ones, and pretty awesome.

I flew out from Boston on Wednesday (to mitigate snowstorm-related issues, of course, there was no snow), got a car at the airport on Thursday (less than $100 for four days; the folks at Enterprise said a lot of people were renting cars to head up for the race), and made my way up to Birkieland via Finn Sisu. I got my bib at the expo in Hayward where, as usual, I saw several people I knew (in this case, Mimi Crandall and the Swains).

From there I went up to my sweet digs up at Telemark. Basically, I found out that someone was sick and not using a Telemark condo, and needed to try to recoup some income. I called up Jakob, and he found some other folks, and we had a sweet hookup. Where was the condo? The nearest one to Telemark, five minutes from the start by foot. Not bad. Not bad at all.

I went off to ski in the evening—once it was dark, although even after 6 there was some light in the sky—out on the Birkie Trail. There were a couple thin spots and it was kind of icy, but, gosh, the Birkie Trail is so nice. I had felt a bit sick and I swear my cold went away. I went swooping through the hills in the dark with just a headlamp illuminating the way to the Korte split and skied back to Telemark. So good. Dinner was bean burritos with cheese and assorted fixins, and I watched 30 Rock on the fuzzy teevee before taking a hot shower and retiring.

I awoke and took in the view from the deck of the start line of the Junior Birkie. Had I slept in much longer I would have been awoken by the announcers—the finish line (which is also the Korteloppet finish) was 100 feet from the condo's bedroom. Lucky Korte skiers.

Everyone else sharing the condo wasn't coming in early, so I set about going for a morning ski. A coating of snow had fallen and I headed out to the power lines to, uh, remember the power lines. The Double Birkie hadn't hit the power line hills, so I hadn't skied them since last year. I skied a bit on the World Cup trail, which hadn't been groomed (so sad to see those trails in this sort of disarray) but it was crust-with-powder so it was in great shape for skating. And then I was on the race course. I skied to the top of the power lines, looked down, and dropped a knee for some sweet turns to the bottom. When it's as wide as a downhill ski slope it's skiable, even with icy corduroy (it was cooler than Thursday, which climbed towards freezing) before I turned around and slowly skied up.

The power lines were not all that daunting and I skied a few more kilometers before I headed back, via the World Cup Trail and almost head on in to the high school relays, to the condo for lunch (more bean burritos, bread and cheese and whatever else). I then set off to Mosquito Brook to pick up my very own copy of A Day in February by the illustrious Scott Brown (no, not the junior senator from Massachusetts). I was very excited and got a full-on tour of Scott's house (very nice, view of the Birkie Trail) before deciding not to take a ski on the trail down there and heading back to Cable.

Jakob, Emily and Chris arrived and we decided to go for a short classic ski, backwards on the World Cup Trail, to warm up. At one point, people asked me for directions to Telemark, and I pointed right, left, ahead and backwards—all went to Telemark. It seemed like another dimension. We went down the Wall and back to the condo for a lovely dinner made by Emily and the arrival of guests numbers 5 and 6, Andrea and Dan, who arrived after dark. As Korte skiers, it was hard to point out how close they were to the finish.

We finished waxing—mix of HF blue and moly, then Start Green, then HF blue—and my skis looked fast, even without the appropriate fluoro cover. Chris and I went to Telemark via the tunnel to get staples for our goos, and I laid out my clothes. The temperature was dropping quite quickly and the forecasts were showing it going down well below zero for the race start. And everyone was talking about how slow the snow was going to be but I wasn't buying it—they'd till it all night and it would be firm but soft (does that make sense) and fast. We all got in to bed and lights were out by about 10:30, although I was up several times overnight to stay hydrated.

Yeah, it was that cold.

And we slept in! 6:30! Well, 6:20 for the all-important PRS. Everyone was slowly milling around, but there were no buses to catch, no traffic to sit in, no start times to fret about. Oatmeal was made, clothes were put on (so many layers), and temperatures were checked. -11 in Hayward at the airport. Maybe a tad warmer in Cable, but probably still double digits below 0. (The only colder Birkie was in 1974: 98 people skied the race.) I had four layers on my bottom and four on top, my Canada hat with flaps to cover my ears, and lobster gloves (it turns out that my circulation hasn't been getting worse in recent years, but my glove lining thinner; a trip to Finn Sisu corrected that).

I felt pretty good, and it was an unchaotic start, or as unchaotic as the Birkie start can be. A little running, a little skiing, in to the pens, skis marked, take a pee, um, on the side of the pen, jump in to skis, put on poles, say hi to a couple guys (the aforementioned Scott Brown right next to me in a bib two numbers lower, he beat me by seconds last year) and get ready to go. There were fewer butterflies this year, possibly because it wasn't my first year in the elite wave (all you see ahead of you are virgin tracks and corduroy) or possibly because the butterflies were frozen solid. I was comfortable, happy, and ready to race.

10, 9, 8 and so forth, and the gates went up (unevenly for the Birkie, but no one got caught) and we were off. The snow was nice and fast, and everyone was relaxed. I heard "50k, fellas, 50k" several times and no one was being aggressive or trying to make a break or pushing for position. My skis felt fast, I was in the middle of the pack, I felt good, and I was ready to hit the hills.

And then—and all good stories have to have an "and then"—someone on my left clipped my pole. I lost my balance and was unable to stay up. I fell on the light snow and got up, but not after several people had skied over my pole. I didn't lose much time, though, and it's a 50k race; I was just a little further back in the pack—perhaps I had gotten ahead of myself. So I went to ski off, and discovered my right pole was in two pieces.

I was on the verge of tears, but some colorful language turned sorrow to anger. I quickly found a replacement pole (thank you to Jay Wenner!) and, although it was short, it let me keep skiing, with #154 who'd had a similar mishap. I figured I was in good company—154 is a number close to mine, so maybe we could ski together and try to catch back up. My skis were fast, and on the long stretches of the starting flats I could see the skier train disappearing around the curves. I wasn't too far back.

But, who was I kidding? There was no way I'd be able to catch more than a few stragglers. Definitely not enough to fend off the charge of first wavers coming to relegate me from the elite wave, right? Being "old and slow" or "in coaching shape" (and, yes, I did coach high school this winter and was wearing my Newton North tights with pride) means that my singular goal, aside from having "fun" at Weston on Tuesdays, is to not get dropped from the elite wave. But skiing the whole way on my own? With a 172 and a 160 cm pole? This was not a good scenario.

So, I had a lot to think about from 1k to 2k—where all I should have been doing was an easy V2 to get ready to go up the hills with 200 of my closest friends. But I was alone. 154 was behind me, probably thinking similar things, and my mind crawled with thoughts like "well, I can always ski out of the first wave of the classic race" and "I really don't want to have to fight 700 guys to get on the front of the wave 1 start line next year." Not pleasant thoughts.

I turned the corner, and saw a pole station. Off with the 160 with the decent grip, on with the 170 with the old school single loop grip. Well, now I was back in high school. Poles don't matter that much, but they're noticeable. But the proper length was good—I've skied a race with a 170 and a 157 and it's not a lot of fun—so I made the trade and continued up the hill. As I started up the power lines, I saw the elite wave disappearing over the top. This was not good.

This is as good a time as any to give thanks to the volunteers. The pole exchanges are so helpful, and these people are standing in subzero temperatures just watching people be cold. The feeds this year were great—I got a feed at each one and never had to slow down—and the number of people who give their time to this event so crazy people like me can ski in it is staggering. Hats off to all of them (although, with the conditions this year, few hats were doffed).

I thought I might have someone to ski with, but 154 was not going to help. He got a new pole, too, and took off. It turns out he finished top-40 (!) and skis for Maine Winter Sports Center. Fred Bailey. I actually met him, I think, when I worked in Farmington in 2007—he went to Colby. And man did he recover well.

I, on the other hand, decided to ski, to have fun, and to see what happened. I started having positive thoughts. "Maybe I'll catch some guys." Maybe enough to make the elite wave. I wasn't so much skiing to finish, as skiing to see what happened. The first wave isn't so bad. Poles are part of the luck of skiing. It wasn't really my fault, or anyone's—no one was trying to move places or be aggressive. But bad luck. And it was my job to make the best of it. The night before I had said of my wax job: "My skis are fast. Now I have to make them fast." And a little broken pole shouldn't get in my way.

With this new outlook, I crested the power lines—feeling okay—and skied on them utterly alone. Every so often I'd catch a glimpse of Fred, or even the pack, ahead of me, but otherwise it could have been Tuesday morning out there. It did make the feed easier to navigate, and I turned in to the woods feeling not-too-bad. It wasn't too long before I picked off my first couple elite wave guys (Considering I'd made up a minute or two on them over just a couple kilometers, they must not have had much training over the summer) and around 7k heard the women coming up behind me.

Before the race, I'd thought that I could gauge my race based on where I was caught by the women. Last year I'd skied with the leaders from 18k to OO. Earlier that that, worse; later better. But I didn't expect them this quickly—until I broke my pole. As it was, I decided to try to ski with them. I gave them space and tried to take the outside of corners (not easy on the serpentine Birkie Trail), and made sure not to cut anyone off or mess up their race. There's a lot of money on the line for these girls. But I tried to draft them, and figured if I could stay with them for a while I'd actually have a really good race. And I did—my skis were fast and their pace wasn't absurd—until the downhill in to Timber Trail. My glasses were fogged/iced up and I couldn't see the snow well (following the 30-foot-wide Birkie Trail was fine, however, and I assumed it was in good shape) and caught an edge, going down hard. By the time I got up, the women, who I'd slipped right behind, were far off. At least I didn't tangle with any of them.

For about 30 seconds, I was pissed. No more broken equipment, but it didn't seem like my day. I grabbed a feed and skied off, not really to prove anything, but just, you know, to ski. (Does that make sense?) I would have liked to stay with the fast ladies a bit longer, but didn't get the chance. So, again, I was on my own.

Going down Bobblehead Hill on your own is not a bad thing, actually. No one to worry about falling except yourself. I said hello to the sledders and worked the uphill on the other side, and got in to Firetower Hill. Oh, the climb to High Point. No, 250m of vertical climb at the Balsams it's not. Nor is it the Hall Trail at Jackson. No, it's not even the Open Slope at Windblown. But after 13k of mostly uphill, it does look daunting.

But it didn't feel bad. I felt, actually, pretty good. I could see the back of the elite wave at the top, so I wasn't too, too far back, and skied up nice and easy, cresting it and taking the ride in to the feed. My skis were fast, my pole strap wasn't too bad (but taking feeds would get it wound up and I'd have to take a second to untangle it before I could pole again—there's a reason we spend money on pole grips) and I was getting more and more into a happy place. I'd picked off a couple more guys, and was thinking I had a shot—a very outside shot—at not getting relegated.

It was somewhere in this vicinity—and I can't actually remember if it was before or after High Point—that the chase pack of women caught me (there had been about a dozen in the lead pack). There were six of them, and I recognized a couple: Jan Guenther of Gear West fame, and Jojo Winters who, apparently, I'd attacked a keg of Furious with after the Trail Loppet a couple years ago (and another Minneapolitan woman). Both are fast women, but both are about my speed. This pack looked like one I could ski with.

So I tucked in. Usually it kind of feels silly to be skiing with people who already have put two minutes on you, but with my pole machinations, I felt absolved of invading their train. Plus which they are all good skiers, and I fancy myself a slightly better technical skier than some of the rest of the elite wave (like the Guy Who Doesn't V2, who we passed pretty early), and my skis were running fast, so I stayed in their pack. I started thinking: if I can finish with the top 15 women, I have a shot.

Coming in to the Boedecker Road feed (and, on the good side, this is about where I lost track counting the people I'd passed) Jan got excited. "Hey guys, it's my feed. Yeah Gear West!" It took me a second until I realized there was a Gear West banner hung across the feed. Feeds in the elite wave are split-second affairs: two fingers in the cup, one motion—grab, drink, throw. In later waves they back up, people get cookies and bananas, and having a big sign is probably worth it for advertisers. But as we flew through, Jan kept yelling "Yeah Gear West." It's nice to know these women aren't taking themselves too seriously. And because everyone knows Jan, she got a lot of cheers, too.

Oh, one thing about Jan. Jan is in the 50-54 age category. Yes, she's twice my age. The next woman back in her age class was 20 minutes behind her. This is extremely impressive. If I can be in nearly the shape I am in now when I am in my 50s, I'll be very glad. Jan is an example for all of us young kids having a good time. And she's beat me before, and she'll beat me again.

So after Jan's feed we skied on, and started seeing more and more elite wave skiers. Where before we'd pass one guy at a time, coming up in to OO we saw groups of two and three. I was ensconced with the ladies (how rarely I get to say that) and none of the guys seemed to want a ride. Their loss. We crested the hill through the feed, I grabbed a cup of drink, and crossed the road.

On the other side, I was skiing with Jan right in front of me and looked behind to make sure I wasn't impeding forward progress for any of the other women. And no one was there. Maybe they'd lost some time taking feeds, but Jan had put a good 10 meters on everyone. I said "hey, Jan, you have a gap" and she pushed the pace a little bit and we opened the gap quite a bit. By the time we got to the picnic table downhill and the classic trail came back in, we'd gapped the other women quite well. I was surprised that none of them—there are some strong skiers—tried to attack. But they didn't.

My skis were matching skis with Jan's on the downhills—and this is impressive because Jan owns Gear West and probably gets whatever wax, grind and flex ski she needs—and she said to me "want to take turns?" I was more than happy to oblige, and we both were happy to have someone to ski with. If you don't and you've made up time on people, it gets quite difficult to pace yourself. I'm sure I would have fallen in with mens packs, even though I had made up a lot of time (since I spent so much time getting a pole) and Jan would have been all alone. So we skied. I'd pull a k, she'd pull a k; sometimes we'd take a bit side-by-side, but we were always passing people. This was good.

We chatted a bit. The last time I'd raced with Jan was the 2009 Trail Loppet on this same stretch of trail; she'd beat me at the end but I ran several enjoyable miles with her and Bill Dossett. The pace was good, the other women were out of sight and we were picking off more and more elite wave men. The surprising thing was that not a single guy jumped on to us for more than a minute or two. No one had a little extra energy and tried to get a ride. A lot of people said hi to Jan and let us ski off. While a little help would have been nice, I was happy not to have to be skiing in a big pack of overly-aggressive elite men.

Our little pack, generally of two, was quite nice. I generally took the flats, and Jan generally took the hills. At 29k I went for my water bottle, which was properly frozen (despite a generous amount of whiskey in with the gatorade). Oh, well, it was so cold I wasn't sweating anything out. I saw Scott Brown—sans camera this year—around 29k, and he looked pretty good for having a nine-week-old at home. We skied on. The snow was quite fast considering it wasn't warming up appreciably—it was overcast—but our skis seemed faster than most. Or maybe we were faster than most.

We crossed Mosquito Brook Road and I was feeling good going in to the hills, despite having taken no goos. I said to Jan with a bit of a smirk, "now the fun starts." From 22k to 38k there is one real climb. From 38k to 45k there are three. She led on to the climb—the first section is not-too-steep but long—and gave a clinic in tempo. I matched her V1 and while it didn't seem fast—it was quite relaxed—we passed several men. Technique and glide, that's how to make the climb. It's fun to ski with people who know how to ski.

Bitch Hill was as steep as ever, but it's nice to know it's short and has a nice downhill afterwards. There was no one out cheering section; it was 5 degrees and just starting to snow. We pounded up it—I think I may have led but I can't remember—and I felt a bit pre-bonk on the top but it didn't hit hard. I didn't go for a goo on the ensuing (and fast) downhill, not wanting to disturb my balance, and we came in to the field before Highway 77 looking good and feeling fine. Well, at least feeling fine.

I'd also seen my first wave 1 skiers—Jan tried to jump on to them but they had eight minutes on us and she wasn't about to ski as fast as Caitlin Compton (no offense, Jan!). Nor was I. Every year there are some good, fast guys who wind up in wave 1 and make the top 100, because they don't have to pass too many folks and can ski fast and easy. This was about when I'd seen wave 1ers last year, and I had passed a lot of guys, and put my chances of making the elite wave at about 50-50. Had you told me that at the power lines I'd have thought you crazy. But, despite my mishaps, I was having a good race. I wasn't too cold (Were my ears and nose frostnipped? Probably.) and I wasn't bonking. It was time to dial it in to the finish.

I stayed with Jan up the hill after 77 and at the top caught a glimpse of another woman for her. I felt she'd been helping me a lot, so I powered along and we passed this lady, and I felt good so I kept going. I led a pack of men—elite and wave 1 mixed—on to the lake and ducked in right behind a wave 1 guy who was setting a pretty good pace across the lake. There wasn't much wind and I wasn't bonking and I think I put a few seconds on Jan, although I wasn't looking back. The meters slid away, and before long I was up on to Main Street. I felt pretty good and outsprinted everyone and caught a view of the time when I crossed: 2:27. Considering the pole, the fall, and the fact that 2010 was a record speed year, four minutes slower wasn't too bad.

But, would it be good enough?

I wouldn't know for a while. Frankly, at that point, I didn't care. I'd had a lot of fun, and I was freezing cold. I had a cup of soup and was warm enough to go change, and did in the tent. Wearing four insulating layers—t-shirt, fleece, down jacket, fleece—on top (my top race clothes were wet) and slipping jeans over my bottom layers (which stayed dry all race) I went on to the lake to cheer with Lindsay Bourgoine, whose boyfriend Peter was skiing his first Birkie. It was cold, and my hands were numb for a while—much too numb to take many pictures (I had my camera) or drink any beer (which would have frozen solid anyway; my feed bottle was an ice cube), but the company was good, and Jakob and Chris came and joined me later. It was snowing but not windy, and we stayed out for quite some time to see Emily cross the line, her first Birkie, classic, and something for which she maybe wasn't in shape.

We migrated towards the (heated) Birkie office before cheering her up Main Street, and then split up—I had to go get my broken pole. They had it in the lost and found amongst dozens of others, and I carried it out as a badge of honor. Anyone who asked how my race was got me waving my broken pole at them, and they immediately were consoling. I took their pity in stride, but told them that I got a replacement, felt good and had fun, so what more could I ask for? Lindsay and Peter were leaving the Angry Minnow to go south, and I missed them mostly (too bad), so I walked down Main Street. I hadn't seen results and wasn't really looking for them—I was happy with feeling good—when I stumbled on the results board. I figured I might as well have a look.

So I did. And I couldn't find myself. I scanned from 150 to 250 and I wasn't there. I kept going down. Surely I wasn't below 250. I figured if I finished just outside the top 200 (like, say, 204) I might be able to tell my pole sob story and get in. But this was worse: I wasn't anywhere. Did my chip not register? No, I'd had it on. Was Jan on there? I'd be two minutes slower, right? I looked for a while, and didn't see her. Finally I pulled back a flap of paper where another had been stapled over it. "Ari Ofsevit … 180 … 2:27:06."

I was ecstatic. Last year, I'd been subdued after almost missing the elite wave. But this year, having overcome adversity, having gone hard and felt good, I was happy. I had a bunch of excuses and I didn't have to use them. I'd gone from DFL in the elite wave to qualifying. I was still in the club. I'd survived to ski another Birkie.

Changing rankings would put me to 190th, the same place as last year. But, very conservatively, I lost 1 minute with my poles—1 minute faster and I would have been in 180th, equaling my best-ever finish. More likely, I lost 2-3 minutes getting a new pole, skiing a lot on my own, and having a poor excuse for a strap, sapping some energy each time I pole planted. 2-3 minutes would have put me in 160th to 170th place. That was about where I'd expected to finish, or maybe a bit better. Looking at the results, there was a big pack which came in between 2:22 and 2:23. I'd like to think I could have skied with those folks had I not broken a pole, finishing in the 130-150th slot. I did lose to Colin Reuter (result) by 10 seconds, the fifth time in a row I've lost to him in a close race (2007 GG2BW, Sugarloaf April Fools 2007, and two Weston Races) but at least I have an excuse. And I'm Facebook friends with the top two Wave 2 skiers (him and Scott Kyser), random.

Looking at the splits, I did quite well. At Timber Trail, I was in 310th place (of course, I was still pretty much DFL in the elite wave at that point). By OO, I had skied up to 258th place. My Mosquito Brook, I was up to 213rd. I probably only "made" my way in to the top 200 around Highway 77, and finished at 190th. I made up 120 places over 40k. At that rate, I would have won the race if it was 114 km long (we all would have died, of course). Taking women in to account, I made up 134 places (340 to 206). I passed 39 elite men and 1 elite woman from the bottom of the power lines on, which accounts for nearly 1/4 of the the elite wave. Again, all things considered, I was happy with it all. I would have liked to see how well I could have skied, but that, apparently, was not in the cards.

Anyhow, I was kind of bubbly (when asked how my race went my answer was now to wave the broken pole and yell "still made the elite wave!") and got on a warm bus to Cable where I sat next to Anna McLoon's dad (a Boston-based cyclist who shows up on Tuesdays every so often) and Steve Clark who works in the same building that I worked in in Saint Paul. Again, the Birkie rule of two people you'll know everywhere. We alighted in Cable and I took the short walk to the condo for some R and R. The hot water was maxed out, sigh, so showers were short, but after a while we decamped for the Rivers eatery in Cable which has very good pizza, and we happily ate.

Then I decided to take a quick ski, which, with the new snow, was slow. My eyes hurt from the cold and light didn't help, so I went to ski in the dark to let them rest. I wanted to see the Birkie Trail trashed after 8000 skiers, but it was so cold it had stayed pretty solid, and I didn't want to ski all the way to Bobblehead Hill to see the luge tracks there (let me rephrase that: there was no way in hell I was skiing all the way to Bobblehead Hill to see the luge tracks there). I came back, showered (not freezing, but still not warm), and we left for Seeley.

I've heard a lot about the party at Seeley Birkie night, but I've never been. So it goes coaching a collegiate team. But this year we all piled in to Jakob's car (with a DD, hooray) and made our way in. After some iciness in the parking lot, we went in to the madness that is Seeley. Basically, anyone who is anyone—and this means the entire elite wave, all the dev teams, all the gear reps, everyone—goes to Seeley for the party. The beer flows (everyone is a Wisconsinite for the night with New Glarus on tap, indeed) and there's music and carousing and an all-around good time.

Okay, for Chris and Andrea, who probably knew a total of zero people there, it might not have been as fun. But I grabbed a couple of beverages and went to see who I knew. Apparently getting on Fasterskier when you're standing in a room with a good portion of Fasterskier's readership is an icebreaker. That, or "Johnny Klister called me 'Remarkably Good.'" John Swain talked about some of his illustrious Johnny Klister postings. I got to thank Jan for giving me a ride and she thanked me and I think we both were just happy to have someone to pace and ski with.

And I saw Caitlin Compton and gave her a hearty congratulations since, oh, she won the race. Caitlin is pretty awesome and super-nice and lives in Minneapolis and trains at Wirth and is all around super (and she went to the olympics, too). Oh, and she said she'd read my piece on Fasterskier and, having not skied the Birkie in several years, said she was able to really visualize the course. Oh, how I felt so special. (Uh, do I have a crush on Caitlin? A little bit. Is she engaged? Yeah. Apparently the men's winner was there, too, but a) I don't know him and b) he doesn't speak English, so, yeah; also I don't necessarily have man crushes on second-tier Norwegians even if they are wicked fast.)

I was a few beers in (maybe 4, but also kind of dehydrated from the race so they hit kind of hard) when the rest of the cohort tired of the scene and we left, which was probably for the better as I passed out when I got home. Not from the beer, really (although it helped) but from the 60k of skiing, the below-zero temperatures, the frostnipped eyes, and the tiring day of all things Birkie.

But I'd like to think I passed out with a smile on my face.

Ari's Birkie Guide v 2.011

2011-02-20T20:48:00.005-06:00

I first wrote this in 2010 before the big race. I may be on the East Coast, but here it is, updated for 2011. View all previous posts on this blog with tags of Birkebeiner or Birkie Trail (trail reports, mostly). I'll list them all a the bottom.

Update with trail closure info 2/21.

Let me first point out that I am in no way qualified to write a guide to the Birkie. I've only skied it five times (hundreds have 20 under their belts, er, special-colored bibs), I'm not from Northwest Wisconsin, heck, I don't even cheer for the Packers (but I do drink beer). Still, it seems no one has posted any type of Birkie guide that I know of. Since it's a race that a lot of out-of-towners come in for [including me, this year], it seems prudent to have one. So with apologies to people who know more than I do, here goes, in bullet-list form:

BEFORE SATURDAY

• Be early. This goes for pretty much every step of the race. The Birkie is incredibly well organized, a testament to its staff and the huge volunteer corps which itself is as large as the town of Hayward. Still, with 8000+ skiers involved, everything takes a bit longer than it might at a pick-up race in March. Or any other ski race in the western hemisphere. Be patient, and give yourself a bit of extra time every step of the way.

• Get there. There are many ways to get to Hayward. Whatever you choose, make sure you are on Highway 63. Unless you really know what you are doing, taking back roads is very unlikely to save you any time.

• Listen to WOJB. The official race station is 88.9 WOJB. It's a community station broadcasting off the local reservation. It has eclectic and quirky programming. Starting on Friday, they broadcast wax tips and Birkie-themed music (it's very corny). It will either get you in the mood for the race or drive you batty.

• Bib pick-up. Get your materials before the race, if possible. If you're in the tenth wave, you'll probably be okay navigating Telemark the morning of the race. If you're in the second wave, do you really want to deal with an extra half hour in the morning before your 8:45 start? If you pick up your bib on Friday, you can ski the trail (before 3:00, at least in 2010), get some freebies at the expo, and find all sorts of other skiers. Plus, if anything is amiss, there's a lot more time to fix it. Friday bib pickup is, this year, in Hayward at the middle school, as is the expo, so it's not right at the start. Saturday will be as normal at the recently (and temporarily) reopened Telemark.

• Grooming and skiing on Friday.

UPDATE 2/21: The schedule for trail closures is as follows:

Always (except race day): start to McNaught Road (private property)
9 a.m. Friday: Entire classic trail (N.B. this trail interconnects with a lot of Telemark and North End trails, so keep off anything that has 3-4 sets of tracks set on it)
3 p.m. Friday: Skate trail north of OO
5 p.m. Friday: Everything else (Korte Trail, trails from OO to Hayward)

Okay, so what does this mean? Well, it means that they probably are going to be running something on the order of five (5) Pisten Bullies again. That's right. Five. Last year they ran them through the night to "slow the course down" and it was still the fastest ever; unless it snows overnight (a possibility) I'll be the mixture of powder and ice will be rather slick. Once the trail is closed, please stay off of it. It is going down to near 0 on Friday night, which is great, so that once the trail is set it will freeze pretty solid. However, if you ski on it right behind the groomer, it will have ugly, frozen tracks in it. And from what I hear, Matt Liebsch does not like ugly, frozen tracks. (Oh, also, they'll get chopped up even earlier in the race.)

Here's the good part: that's two more hours you have to warm up than last year. If you get your bib in Hayward at 4:00 you can still head up to Fish Hatchery and ski for 45 minutes. They used to close the trail on the Wednesday before the race—meaning everyone had to go elsewhere for their skiing. The Birkie does a great job grooming, if you've never skied it before and could see the course the elites see, it's astonishing—30 feet of flat corduroy.

Expect a firm but pliable skate deck, which, as long as it is cold enough, should stay solid during the race. The race may be icier and more abrasive at the north end with more powdery conditions further south, depending on snowfall. Will some hills get mashed potato-ey (up) and icy (down) by the eighth wave? Probably. But where else do 8000 skiers ski a single trail in a day? The groomers know what they are doing. Tracks will be solid and set on downhills. There will be no groomer ridges. These guys groom the trail all season long. They're pros. (Exception: road crossings. We'll get to that.)

PRE-RACE

• Busing. On the last Saturday in February, the Birkie operates the second or third largest bus system in the state of Wisconsin. It's efficient and they have a lot of experience doing it. Still, things take a while. Normally, you can drive from Hayward to Telemark in under half an hour. On Birkie morning, leave an hour and a half, minimum. If you park at Como, remember: everything looks long, but everything moves. Buses comes in threes. The traffic in to the lot creeps along, but it creeps. Get your spot, get your skis and get on a bus. Unless you have an elite wave bib, people won't let you cut in line. If you do, well, people might let you cut in line. The best advice is to plan ahead and leave extra time. And if you are going out early, use the buses out of Hayward. It's very convenient to be able to walk to you car post-race. However: this doesn't mean you have to leave three hours. Unless you want to see people rushing around way before the start, there's no need to be on a bus at 6:30 if you are in wave 5. Calm down—it's cold at the start and warm in your bed.

Oh, and don't try to bend the rules. There are times when you can bend the rules (example: you're a top-level skier from another region who has never skied the Birkie and would like to be in wave 1 rather than wave 4, in this case you can ask/plead your case) but this is not one of them. Unless you have a pass, you will not get in to Telemark. Unless you are coming from the east on Highway M, you will not get in to the Telemark parking area. Go to Como with everyone else. It would be nice if they gave car-pooling elite wavers a pass to park at Telemark, but they don't. It would be nice if they chartered planes to fly elite wavers in to Telemark, but they don't. Park in designated parking. Take the bus with everyone else.

• Before the start. Telemark is a big place, but it's not really made to handle 10,000 people. So the start is somewhat chaotic. There's a big tent near the start, and all sorts of stuff in Telemark. Still, you don't want to do anything extra at Telemark. There are lines for things like bathrooms. (Gentlemen often relieve themselves on the far side of the start area.) Restrooms in the lodge also have lines (N.B. I'm not sure if all of the lodge's restrooms will be open), but some of the more far-flung ones aren't necessarily very long. If you want to warm up, go down the trail as far as you see fit. If you want to see the first big hill, well, it's about 2k down. If you want to ski it before the race, you're a masochist.

• Drop your bag. Make sure it's in the right truck. The Birkie is proud of never having lost a bag (they're much better than the airlines), but there are thousands. Leave a bit of time. And don't worry about a few minutes in the cold without a jacket—a thousand other people will help to break the wind. Apparently you can bring your own bag this year if you'd like; otherwise the Birkie folks give you a big plastic bag. Hint: you don't have to drop your bag, necessarily, before you hit the pens. But it might be a good idea. Oh, and put your shoes in your bag. The last thing you want to do is walk around Hayward in your wet, sweaty ski boots.

• Your wave. This advice depends a lot on your wave and a lot on how seriously you will be taking the race. Before specifics, here's how the pens work. There are three or four successive "pens", each of which is separated by a gate. (By gate, I mean a series of barriers which can be raised and lowered by a team of volunteers. Here's a picture; they use the same system for the start.) When a wave leaves, each pen gate opens, allowing the skiers to run up (generally running, not skiing) asfastastheycan to the next gate. With Elite men and elite women, and classic skiers, there is a lot of running involved if you're not in the Elite Wave. If you want to be in the front of your wave, you have to get in your pen early (and wait in the cold.) And since people take things way too seriously, it means that you have to beat out a lot of master blasters for a spot.

Let's go wave by wave:

- Elite Wave: I think the top bib numbers get seeded in the first row. Otherwise, it's pretty quiet—it's wide enough that no one gets too far back (you know, since the wave is 200 people, not 900). For women, there's pretty much just one row.
- First Wave: This is probably the most "competitive" of the waves, at least in the running up through the pens portion of the event. A lot (okay, all) of this wave thinks they belong in the elite wave. Maybe 30 guys will actually make the jump. Out of 900. Still, everyone wants to be on the front line. If you actually think you'll be skiing a 2:30, by all means get on the front line. This, however, entails lining up half an hour before the race, making a run for the successive pens each time a new wave goes out, and getting your skis down in front. And it will be crowded. If you think you're going to be skiing a 2:55 or 3:00, it's probably not worth the extra time. There's a 15 minute gap between the wave 2 classic skiers (8:10) and elite men (8:25), which should be ample time to leave your skis, take off your clothes, stuff them in your bag, and throw your bag at the correct truck, and get back to your skis. Especially if you are the front line and can duck under the gate. Be prepared for a few scoffs from other skiers—and don't do this if you don't plan to ski fast out of the start.
- Second Wave: Everyone thinks they belong in the first wave. There's a bit more crossover here, though. And more waves to have to "pen jump" before the start. Everyone in this wave has a similar seeding time, so unless you're better than everyone, you're probably not.
- Third-fifth waves: These waves are all quite big. "Birkie Wave Creep" means that everyone tries to qualify up as far as they can, and waves 1-5 are much larger than 6-10 (see charts). So, you get to start with several hundred of your best friends and/or potential pole breakers.
- Sixth-Ninth waves: Probably less competitive. Fewer skiers, especially skiing the full Birkie.
- Tenth wave: Since this is the new skier wave, there are all levels of athlete. Every year a couple guys go out and pass the whole race to make the elite wave. More power to them. (Although not in 2011, when the race course was considerably slower at 10 versus 8:25.) Again, I don't know what it's like, I got myself in to wave 2 my first Birkie.

• Cell phones. Bring em'. Put them in your bag. It makes finding people at the finish a lot easier, especially if some of the people you are going to try to find are skiing the race in more than 3:00. I think there's reception at Telemark, but if you battery is low, it might be a good idea to shut it off.

• Delays. Sometimes, the start is delayed. This happens, generally, if there is a problem with busing or weather makes driving difficult. It's usually 10 or maybe 20 minutes, if it happens. They'll announce it at the start and probably on WOJB. Yup, more time to stand in the cold.

THE RACE

This is probably where I'm most qualified to give advice. I've run and skied the Birkie Trail dozens of times (including the Double Birkie twice—yes, 85k in a day; I put a 100k day in on the Birkie Trail a few years back to boot), I've mapped the Birkie Trail (stupid Gmap-pedometer doesn't seem to like more than 1500 points or so), I've made elevation profiles of the Birkie Trail (and made a couple frenemies with the Birkie folks, although Ned himself liked them), I've thrown together a Google Map of Birkie landmarks, and I've talked up the Birkie on Skinnyski. It's the best.

Also, the whole trail has kilometer markers. Even on the lake (they are on posts which are put in to the ice). If you're not familiar with the course, they're a good way to figure out where you are. They are rather conspicuous, but I'm usually focused/tired enough that I only see every third or fourth one (plus I know the trail well enough that I can identify most of it by landmarks).

One other thing before we start: the feed volunteers generally do a very good job. I've found feeds to be warm-but-not-piping-hot and found volunteers to know what they are doing (to not yank back feeds when you come through at 12 mph, and to not walk in amongst skiers to give you a feed). They do a hell of a job giving out thousands of feeds over the course of several hours. I think they're experienced. You don't really need a drink belt if you don't want one, but it's not a bad idea.

So, here we go:

0k: The trail starts at the Cable Union Airport. It follows a grass runway for the start. It's flat. It's wide. It's fun. Don't get lulled in to complacency. There are a a couple of small, rolling hills, but most of the first 2k are flat. And, yes, it's that wide. It will be at least 30 feet wide until after the powerlines. And, no, the little wooden telephone poles you follow are not the power lines. Oh, and be nice. It's a 50k race. There's no need to break anyone's poles if you don't have to.

2k: Ha! The easy part is over. You'll take a left and see the first power line hill. It's hard, but it's probably amongst the three worst hills of the race. Still, the trail gains 400 feet in the next 10k. Don't blow up here.

3k:At the top of this hill the trail rolls along the power lines. The Birkie Trail generally follows topography, except when it goes in a straight line along the power lines. There is a lot of up and down; there are also some choices as to where to ski—the general advice is to follow the pack. The classic trail joins from the left at the right turn and leaves just after the feed. Mind the tracks. There's enough room to avoid them and folks will yell at you if you ski in to them. With the classic skiers going out earlier this year, even the elites should see some striders in the tracks.

4k: One last hill brings you to the first feed (4.5). In 2010 it was fast enough that you had to slow down to get this feed (the 9k one too) but 2010 was a record pace year. From there, the trail ducks in to the woods with a sweeping left turn. There are no big hills for the next three k, but there are no big downhills. No rest. Get ready to climb. This is also a good place to blow up. You don't want to. And, yes, the trail is still 30 feet wide. It is this wide the rest of the way. Seriously. Tracking rules are not in effect—if you want to pass, go around.

7k: You finally get some rest between 7k and 9k with a couple of downhills.

9k: After a feed (9), the Korte trail diverges to the left. Make sure you keep right (for the Birkie). It's well signed with volunteers yelling at you, but still, pay attention. Oh, and get ready to climb.

10k: Here lies the infamous Bobblehead Hill. The trail makes a sweeping left turn on a downhill, which is probably the trickiest hill of the course. To top it off, it's 100 yards from a snowmobile trail, and a couple dozen sledders have a bonfire going while they drink beer (yes, at 9:00 a.m.; they're snowmachiners after all) and cheer you on. Actually, they want to see falls. Stay up (unless you want a score) and try not to breathe in too much cigarette smoke. According to late-wavers, this hill might become three parallel luge courses by late waves. If you don't snowplow, it won't. STEP TURN! (Why "Bobblehead"? Because of the sledder's heads in their oversized helments bobbing up and down.) It was so fast in 2010 that even the elites were sliding this corner, so it will wash out or later waves. The recent WaPo article about the Birkie has quite a long segment about this hill.

11k: Now you start climbing. There are a couple of more-gradual climbs before you come down a short hill and lay eyes on Firetower Hill, the climb to the high point of the race. Yes, it looks long. Yes, it is long. Yes, it has a downhill on the other side. You really want to feel good here, because this is where the race begins. It's still 38k to Hayward, but it's down 600 feet. Don't blow up on the long hill, but it's definitely a good place to go hard if you feel like it.

12k: High point is marked. You then have more than two rolling kilometers downhill. A feed (13.7) is during this downhill. Recover a bit. The trail then rolls for a while.

17k: There's a tricky uphill before the Boedecker Road feed (18.5). Most of the Birkie Trail is very level (perpendicularly speaking, if that makes any sense), but this hill is quite off-camber. The trail widens out with some pines on the left, and as you climb you'll feel the trail leaning to the left. You sort of have to use a right-side V1 on this hill as you climb it if you want to stay efficient. After the trail turns, the hill continues but is not off-camber. Fun. After the feed, the trail is rolling but mostly downhill.

20k: After some fun, fast downhills there's a slog up to the road crossing at OO. You'll see quite a few people on this hill cheering for racers. The top of the hill is a good place to eat a gel if you want one before the feed (21.8).

21k: Cross OO, which will be narrow and thin. Surprisingly so, considering how well the rest of the trail is groomed. I think Birkie could have more snow on road crossings, and in the long term invest in three bridges or underpasses to bring them in to better shape. Anyway, double-poling the crossing is a good bet; it's really loose otherwise. They will shovel snow all day. And no cars will drive across.

22k: The trail climbs gradually away from OO. After about a k, there's a picnic table on the right. After that, you get a nice descent, and then the trail is rather gradual for the next several kilometers.

23k: The classic trail joins from the left. You now have a bit less room with two classic tracks. Mind the tracks and the striding skiers. (The skate lane is still 20 feet wide so there's no excuse for skiing in the classic track. In the peak of the race, it will often have two parallel trains of skaters, with striders on either side.)

29k: There's a significant hill at 29k. It's not particularly steep, but it's long, and climbs more than 100 feet, longer than any hill since OO (22k) and until Mosquito Brook (38k). The 29k marker is about halfway up the hill. Jesse says it's a good place to go hard and put a minute on the field. I agree. If you want to make a move, make it here. You get a nice rest after it (I always like that downhill for some reason), though, leading in to the next feed (31.8k) at Gravel Pit. Yes, it's 9k between feeds, but there is only that one major climb. After Gravel Pit, the trail rolls, with some nice downhills to Mosquito Brook. The one at about 33k has full southern exposure, so it might get sticky in the sun later in the race.

38k: You get a feed (38.1) at Mosquito Brook Road, after the crossing (similar strategy crossing the road as OO). You have about 500m of flat skiing across the stream before the trail begins to climb. 17k with one big hill may have lulled you in to complacency—but there are now three big climbs in the next 7k. This is the last really big climb of the trail, and it's split in to two parts. The first, Mosquito Brook Hill, isn't particularly steep, but it's pretty long, gaining nearly 150 feet with one small respite. The trail then levels out, before climbing again up "Bitch Hill." Yes, Bitch Hill. This one is half the elevation, but it's very steep, and at 40k, it's not a whole lot of fun. You'll know it when you see it. The ladies (bitches) will cheer you up it and hand out mardi gras beds. Take beads if you wish. This is a frequent place to bonk, though, so you might not be having too much fun.

41k: After Bitch Hill, two downhills lose the elevation you just gained. Don't worry, you won't climb that much again. You skirt the field to Fish Hatchery and go back in to the woods, before returning to the field's edge. There are a couple of hills there that I remember being really nasty little climbs, but the last two times I've been on them were at the end of the Double Birkie (after 83k of skiing) and at the end of a half marathon. So my judgment may be clouded. (They run a full marathon north from here to Telemark. Running.) You take a right and ski along Highway 77, through the final feed (44.3), and across the road.

44k: And guess what? You climb again. The climb after Highway 77 is the last climb of any consequence of the day. And it's a doozy, especially after 45k. Not as steep as the Bitch, and not as long as Mosquito Brook, but still a nice piece of uphill. The only consolation is that after you go up more than 100 feet, you have a long, sweeping downhill towards Lake Hayward. The view are great and you can see the town and water tower across the lake (if it's not snowing), pulling you towards the finish line.

46k: After crossing two small roads (generally okay snow cover) and a flat section where the race ends if there is open water on the lake, you ski on to the lake. It should be easy to ski across two flat kilometers. However a) you are 47k in to the race and b) there is usually a head wind. Find a pack and ski with them; if you do you can often pick off some skiers in front of you who blow up on the lake. If you feel good, pound it out. And it might be faster to ski off the side of the trail where they've plowed snow off the ice, but it might be really icy. And it might be illegal. Ski there at your own peril.

49k: The lake is generally lined with people, so there's impetus to go fast. There are k markers on the lake, and a 1000m to go near the end. You come up off the lake behind the Marketplace foods, and take a left around the grocery store. (Oh, and there are often interesting feeds on the lake.) The snow here is often a bit soft, which really does a number on your legs. You then make a right turn on to Main Street and can see the finish; there's a flower pot to go around (generally right) and you cross Highway 63, which is snowed in well but always quite soft (they don't put snow down until about 9:00). Your legs will be angry but then Main Street has had snow on it since Wednesday, so it's solid and fast. Pick your lane, soak in the cheers as you fly up the street and power home. It's slightly uphill, and a V2 is often the technique of choice for the sprint. SPRINT IT OUT, DUDE!

50k: Finish! If you win, do whatever it is when you win. Otherwise, get your bag, and put your skis somewhere conspicuous where you can remember them. If you finish early, the town will seem totally overbuilt with a tent city and infrastructure for thousands. It feels like a ghost town. It fills up. If you've recovered, go and cheer people on as they finish. If you are interviewed at the finish on WOJB, be ready to answer "what's your name? where ya from?" and "how was the race/trail." Using a broad Midwest accent and giving short answers like "yah, good" is the norm. But if you are from out of town, anything goes. Except, since it's live, keep it clean.

AFTER THE RACE

• Get a feed. The feed tent has soup, bread, bananas, cookies, and all sorts of things you may want.

• Get a feed. The celebration tent has food for sale, like brats. You are in Wisconsin, so you really should have a brat. Plus, you just burned 2000-4000 calories, so you really should have a brat.

• Get a beer. You're in a small town in Northern Wisconsin. There are probably ten bars to choose from. Skiers are welcome at any of them. For packaged liquor, find a liquor store/gas station. The Marketplace has a good selection. It's Wisconsin, after all. If you are under 21 and have a Birkie bib, well, you can probably take your chances. If you are under 21 and are with a parent or guardian, drink up! It's legal in Wisconsin.

• Get on a bus. Buses to parking lots at Telemark and Como leave often about a block up past the finish line.

• Get ready to wait. Since Main Street is closed, Hayward devolves in to gridlock. Expect it to take 20 minutes to get through town after the race. It might be worth driving across on Highway 77 to miss the congestion.

• Cheer on everyone else. People will finish all day long. Ski or walk out across the lake and let people know they are doing awesome (even if they look differently). Main Street fills up with more and more skiers as the day progresses, both finishing and cheering. It's a good time. We accomplished this with alacrity last year, getting a couple of six packs and making our way out on to Lake Hayward. It was amazing, especially since we weren't driving for a few hours.

• Go to the Sawmill Saloon. In Seeley. 10 miles north of Hayward. A big party. With New Glarus on tap.

• A quick addendum (2/24/11, at Telemark!): I don't always agree with Johnny Klister, but they did call this blog post "remarkably good" and in that same linked post describe more about what to do after the race. It's a bit raunchy, but it's Johnny Klister, what do you expect. This is my first year not coaching at the race, and I intend to partake. Oh, and I'll be out on the lake after the race having a beverage or three if you want to come join. Unless the weather just blows.

AND MOST OF ALL, HAVE FUN!

Previous posts / more info:

The Birkie Movie
The Birkie, by the numbers (finishing stats by wave)
The Birkie on Google Maps (various Birkie-related information)
Birkie race report, 2010
Birkie elevation profile, more here
Birkie race report, 2009

If you think I'm not jealous …

2010-12-10T21:22:00.000-06:00

… you'd be wrong. Plan for tomorrow is to head to Eldora (I'm in Boulder for the weekend) for some fresh snow. But if the 00Z NAM model verifies and 28" of snow hits the Twin Cities, I will be missing out on the street skiing festival of a lifetime. If I were there I believe the plan would consist of several cans of Surly, my rock skis and every non-limited access road I could find (Imagine skiing down the High Bridge—I'm imagining it). Have fun. I figured after three good snow years in a row, there was little chance of a fourth (haven't been four good snow years in a row since the early '80s). Well, I'll eat my words now.

Out east

2010-12-02T10:11:00.001-06:00

Yes, I know there's been skiing in Duluth. And the UP. I'm in Boston this winter, waiting for snow.

It's snowing in Duluth

2010-05-07T11:46:00.000-05:00

That's the report from Jakob and the airport. If it continues, the top of the hill should see 5-6 inches by later this evening. If it can firm up or crust up at all tonight, it could be some darn good (for May) skiing tomorrow morning. I'll take pictures.

Weather speculation: snow in May?

2010-05-06T16:02:00.000-05:00

There are only two months I've not skied in (I think I skied in July in Australia; I can't really remember): May and September. I knocked off October last year. And, perhaps, May will soon be in the books.

Why? Because it might snow in May. Yes. May! Not a few flakes in May (that's happened before) but real, actual accumulating snow falling south of Duluth. The weather models have been hinting at this for a few days now, but I wasn't getting excited. Now? I'm getting excited.

There are quite a few variables which need to come together for May skiing. First, you need enough snow. With the ground quite warm, you need several inches to freeze up as a slushy layer on the ground and provide a base. Second, you really would like someone to roll or groom it. It counts if it's not, but it's less fun. If you can't find grooming, you would very much like the temperatures to fall below freezing for an evening and freeze up the crust, as crust skiing on untrod trails can be fantastic. You'd prefer the snow to fall at night when the solar radiation of the sun doesn't warm the ground so it won't stick. Finally, you need just the right combination and timing so that the snow doesn't disappear before you have a chance to ski.

With all that said, what can be expected? Well, first we have to pinpoint the jackpot for the snow. The latest models from Earl Barker's great page have pretty disparate maxima. According to the GFS, there will be two bullseyes with enough (~6") snow to make skiing feasible:

with the highest totals around 6" just north of Brainerd and another swath of decent snow over near Rhinelander. Unless it goes significantly further west, only some of the near-Brainerd trails (Northland, Grand View) would be in the running. And maybe something way east in Wisconsin.

The NAM, however, paints a prettier picture:

Not only does this bring the snow further south—with the Cities getting in on the action and more than three inches falling just north, but it gives a real dump—more than six inches!—across a nice swath of Wisconsin. In this scenario, the best skiing would be between Wausau, Eau Clare and Hayward, so various trails in Northwest Wisconsin would be in the running, although there's not really anything in the 8"+ section.

However, if we speculate that both models are off and the solution lies in between, it might put the most snow somewhere in the heart of Birkieland. Would I scoff at 8" of snow on Saturday on the Birkie Trail? No. No I would not.

It's coming

2010-04-16T22:40:00.000-05:00

We have flurries to hand out, a winter to recap, and some other sundries. This weekend is planned as a weekend to catch up on the Tubes. So stay tuned.

One last day: Tahoe XC

2010-04-06T16:39:00.000-05:00

What is likely the last ski of the season for me was a lovely, 1:45 skate at Tahoe XC. The snow had frozen up from the sun the day before (sadly, there was no crust skiing to be had this week in Tahoe; too much new snow, so not that sad) and good for skating, with a bit of new snow overlaying the harder-pack. No pictures; it was snowing lightly the whole time.

I hit mostly trails I hadn't skied the day before, including the Lakeview trail (only one side was groomed, a long uphill and then a nice downhill on the way back). Then it was off to ski around the hills at the end of the loop, and apparently in the wrong direction. I went up Nose Dive and most of the rest of the hills were steep up and then gradual down. So I spiked my heart rate a few times and didn't get any thrilling downhills to show for it. Oh well. I definitely want to come back for the Great Ski Race next March.

It was snowing again by the time we left—they got 12-24 inches of powder overnight—and it took us 7 1/2 hours to get to SFO for the redeye to MSP. For 35 miles were were in "chain control" which meant we averaged 17 mph for close to three hours, and it was just a brutal drive. We may not have a 120 inch base in the Twin Cities, but it's real nice to have trails in our backyard.

Tahoe XC

2010-04-04T00:48:00.000-05:00

The weather took a break today and we actually saw the sun. My dad and I decamped for Tahoe XC and got there (after some hideous traffic on CA-89) to find midwinter, picture-perfect conditions. (We had a foot of snow last night and tomorrow promises another foot or two.) There's little better than throwing on some generic blue wax and kicking all morning. The trails at Tahoe XC are tamer than at Tahoe-Donner—there are no 1000 foot climbs to windblown peaks but it is definitely better for training. This is not to say there aren't hills; there certainly are. There are certainly portions which are hillier, but it's not built in to the side of a mountain. There are also fantastic views of Lake Tahoe (which we could see!) which only sweetens the deal. It was just a lovely day for a ski, and on April 3, no less.

By the time we came in from 20+ k in the morning, the sun made an appearance, which instantly softened the trails and rendered my kick wax useless. No matter, a bit of skating got me in to a well-deserved lunch, and I grabbed the proper skate skis for some slow skating on the now-wet powder in the afternoon. By the time we were leaving the temperature had dropped and a snow shower was passing through; tomorrow promises to be a snowy adventure, especially for the drive over the pass to San Francisco.

I made a bit of a deal with Tahoe XC's proprietor/groomer/whateverer that I'd do the Great Ski Race (won by Duluth's own Adam Swank this year) and he'd come and ski the Birkie. Seems fair.

Oh, and pictures (click them to make them big, more to come later):

Street Skiing

2010-04-03T01:07:00.000-05:00

Finally! After several false starts, I got in some good street skiing.

After a day of gravity skiing (yes, dearest sister, a few thousand hours on skinny skis will make me more than a total beginner) I announced that I "needed some exercise" and the streets were, at least above about 6300 feet, packed snow over a solid icy/slushy base. I got six good kilometers in before I was picked up by an automobile to go off to dinner.

Tahoe Donner

2010-04-02T01:21:00.000-05:00

Today was supposed to be sunny, which means that instead of an all-out blizzard there were passing heavy snow showers which left us with three or four inches of snow by the end of the day. I headed out striding from Tahoe Donner XC (Tahoe Donner is this bizarre planned community, but has a very nice ski area on the edge) in the morning, skidding down to the Euer Valley (apparently great crust skiing when the sun has a chance to make crust skiing, map) and then up Crabtree Canyon to something that, in nicer weather, is apparently a lookout. Not today, although the sun peeked out at times. It was a long 800 foot climb up, but a nice ride down, and then another climb back for lunch. (All the pictures are from the morning; report from the afternoon continues below them.)

Here comes the sun …

… 20 minutes later: blizzard.

Yes, there is a lot of snow.

In the afternoon, I took out the skaters and went from the lodge up to Hawk's Peak at 7730 feet (a 1100 foot climb, although not completely all at once). I stopped at two huts, each of which has water, and crossed a ridge near the top in blowing snow, although I was lucky to get there in between two heavy snow showers, so I had a view down 1300 feet to the Euer Valley below. With a few inches of powder over a solid base, it was perfect for turns of the parallel and telemark variety. Then I crossed over and skied down the downhill slope to where we are staying. Not bad for April Fool's.

Squaw Valley

2010-03-31T21:53:00.024-05:00

I've been traveling a bit. Boulder, Boston for Passover and a flood, then Tahoe. Lots of airplanes. The trip to Reno as interesting—we flew from Boston to San Francisco (right over Hetch Hetchy, which I correctly identified, photographed, and compared to Google Maps on the ground) and then backtracked to Reno.

Once we were settled in, we had an hour to kill before dinner and trails groomed at Squaw Valley. It's not really a nordic center, but a few k of trails for people who don't want to go gravity skiing. We didn't know how to get on the trails, so wound up traipsing through the new snow to get to the groomed snow. My mother didn't love that.

It was a 30" powder day so there hadn't been much action on the trails (which were pretty well groomed) as most anyone who was there before 3 had hit the slopes—in fact at 6 p.m. we were the first skaters of the day. The snow had packed well, however, and the scenery was great, although the trails were less than perfect (but not bad, just a few punch-throughs).

Some pictures:

Boulder on the crust

2010-03-30T23:43:00.001-05:00

[Due to travel and family, this post was delayed by a couple of days; the skiing took place on Sunday the 28th.]

Hitting the crust (sans poles)

This blog operates under the assumption that crust skiing is awesome. Some of my best skis have been on the crust, especially in April on Maine in 2007, when a thick snowpack led to crust skiing on the trails in Farmington. Since then, I've looked for crust skiing where I could find it, whether it was in June in Colorado or on a golf course in Saint Paul. After a week, and two feet of snow, in Boulder, I finally was able to enjoy the crust in town, too.

The early morning view from the Chautauqua Trail Head.

Boulder has quite a bit of open space, especially along the Flatirons and other hills which rise, strikingly, out of the plains. While the terrain pretty quickly gets very steep (the Flatirons are known for their rock climbing), there are sections which aren't too steep to ski and, with the recent snows and northern exposure, had built up enough of a base that after warmer weather Saturday they'd crusted up. That's what I was heading for.

The view to the north (downtown Boulder included)

I biked the 300 foot hill up to the trailhead (a good warm-up) and hit the trails just as the sun was rising over the prairie—the views were splendid in the early morning light. I headed up along one of the hiking trails (these had been stomped and melted clean). The hill started out gradually but didn't take long to get steeper, and I was mostly V1ing. There were a few rocks and some brush to avoid, but the crust was firm and the purchase was good. I do quite like crust skiing.

Another view of the Flatirons.

I skied about a mile up he trail and in to a wooded area (less snow, but still good crust). In some shaded areas, my poles punched through the crust in to a couple of feet of snow, but for the most part my skis and poles stayed on top. At turn around time I began to retrace my tracks and realized that there was a reason I was huffing and puffing—what I'd come up was quite steep! My rock skis' edges leave something to be desired, and I was barely able to make a turn; I was definitely not carving up the slopes. But with a few well-placed turns, and a lot of skidding across the hill, I made it down to the base without incident, loaded up my bike, and shot downhill (300 feet) in to town.

And another view of Boulder and the surrounding hills. This is less than two miles from both Downtown Boulder and CU.

I was up later in the day and a the snow had melted back a good 200 yards; it might crust overnight; if not, it might be the end of crust skiing in Boulder (and I may have hit the sweet spot). I went on a trail run later in the day which was pretty mushy and then, after I'd gotten in to a narrow drainage with northern exposure, quite slippery. I ran up, but slowly walked and skidded my way down. It was in the 60s in town, but still winter up in the hills.

My tracks in the snow.

On the road again

2010-03-24T00:20:00.000-05:00

Instead of biking back in feet of slush this evening, I strapped on my skis. Conditions weren't great, but I was able to skate in places, especially on the Boulder Creek Multi-use path, which was pretty good for V1 except for a couple of places. I'll probably hit the local trails tomorrow.

Eldora

2010-03-23T00:06:00.003-05:00

I drove up to Eldora this afternoon to ski—after hours—on their nordic trails. The drive is narrow and twisty and gains >4000 feet, but that meant there was snow on the ground (it was 60 in Boulder but 30 up at 9k feet). The snow was transformed in places and deep, deep powder in others; it seems to depend almost solely on the exposure. In any case, kick was variable, but I skated, and it was very good. The trails are hilly and fun, and I was reminded of the altitude every time I hit a headwall.

We parked outside the gate (I had been assured it wouldn't be closed but didn't want to take any chances) and we skied until around dark. There were snowmobiles buzzing around the trails, but they didn't seem too concerned with us skiing around after hours—none stopped to let us pay our trail fee. We had to jump across a bit of a stream on the way out—I dropped my skis in to it but no harm done. I'll be back later this week; in the mean time there's another foot of snow forecast for tomorrow!

Eldora is great in that it's 35 minutes from Boulder, although it would be even better if it had night skiing and bus service after 4:00. Oh, yes, hourly (or so) bus service from Boulder to the ski trail.

Oh some "make my friends jealous" pictures:

Before the sun went down.

Views through the woods.

Tracks and clouds.

Danny practices his double poling (not bad for a first-timer).

Danny then pulled my skis out of the stream I had thrown (well, slid; I threw them across the stream and they slid back in) them in to.

North Boulder Park

2010-03-20T21:24:00.000-05:00

Conditions at North Boulder Park were deteriorating, but not horrid. As a novelty I jumped on my friend's town bike to head up to the in-town trails in Boulder this evening. The sun and temperatures in the 30s had melted a lot of the snow, but the trails were still skiable (they were probably fantastic this morning, as they were groomed last night and it was 10 overnight). Still, coverage was continuous and except for a couple thin spots across sidewalks and a frozen, rutted puddle, it was fine for skating. And the scenery (see pictures) is very hard to beat. It's only a k and pretty fast, but also only a mile from Boulder.

Tomorrow calls for a trip up to Eldora (after hours—the guy at Eldora said "well, all I can say is 'they don't lock the gate, if you check my drift'" and the folks at Boulder Nordic Sport said "oh, yeah, people go up there after work all the time") so I'll have a report from there tomorrow, hopefully.

Here are the sweet pictures from the day today:

The Flatirons on my morning run to WFR class. It was gorgeous, but the icy roads were not meant for bicycling. Tomorrow, though, I get to ride Boulder's sweet bike trails (they are mostly concrete, so would not be great for rollerskiing. I think that's what the roads up the canyons are for—one can be skied up and you can then take a bus—the same bus that goes to Eldora—down.

And few were attempting to do so.

The trails were just okay, but the views were amazing.

The Flatirons, again.

Yeah, there was a lot of snow, but it was melting fast. This tree, however, had a lot of snow on its northern flank.

Street skiing was not meant to be

2010-03-19T13:56:00.000-05:00

It's absolutely dumping in Boulder, but since it was in the 60s up until yesterday afternoon, the streets are staying very slushy. Being at the equinox doesn't help as some solar radiation gets through, too. If it were colder, it would probably be primo street skiing conditions, as it were I only skied a few blocks down to Boulder Nordic Sport and then a bit further to check if the bike path was plowed (it was). Oh, well, I've also found out that Eldora doesn't really mind people skiing their trails after hours. And it's light until 8! Plus, they groom a k in town that's a mile from where I'm staying, so bike-skiing will take place this week.

Boulder: part 1

2010-03-19T09:43:00.000-05:00

Travels have taken me to Boulder, Colorado. When I arrived last night, it was in the 50s, with clouds building over the mountains. It's been near 70 this week. Here's the view out my friend's window this morning. We're in store for somewhere between 10 and 20 inches of snow; it's coming down. The roads are too warm for street skiing right now, but hopefully will freeze up as it is quite cold.

Nevertheless, they are grooming in town, and I've joined Boulder Nordic's facebook page to see if I can social network my way in to some skiing. We'll see if Eldora is cool enough to let me ski there during the evening, since it is light until 8. (Although, $19 for a trail pass, gosh!) And I am two blocks from Boulder Nordic Sport.

Yeah, I think my timing was pretty darned good. Reports will follow. Get your saliva glands ready.

A ski-centric weekend—without much skiing: Writing for the Loppet

2010-03-15T23:35:00.005-05:00

The last in a three-part series

As late as Wednesday, I was wondering what I was going to do all weekend. It turned out I had way too much on my plate (and never got around to my taxes). I got an email on Friday from John Munger at the City of Lakes suggesting that maybe I wanted to write a City of Lakes Loppet race report, and perhaps focus on some interesting people there. Yeah, that might be fun. Then I got a call from him saying that I had been volunteered to do so.

Okay then.

I got the contact information for all the winners (classic and skate, male and female) as well as some other assorted dignitaries. And to their credit, everyone responded to me. Props to Andy, Audrey, Matt, Kristina and Caitlin for that. I sent out an email asking them to email or call me please on Saturday after I got back from Wirth. By the time I woke up Sunday I got an email from Andy Liebner, the classic winner. Then I got a call from Audrey Weber, who also won the classic race. I had about 500 words—what John wanted at a minimum, and figured that if none of the other skiing superstars called back, well, I'd have something.

I had an email from Caitlin, too. But that one seemed like a long shot. She was in Norway for a World Cup race and would be back later in the afternoon, could we Skype then? We could try. So instead of enjoying the sunshine, I was booting up Skype. It took us a while to get it to run correctly (I had to disable my video from trying to load, it seems) but once it did, she talked to me for more than an hour, which was beyond awesome. We each thought the other had a dog barking because of the feedback, but I got, well, way more than I needed from Caitlin. About the City of Lakes, which she won in 2008 (coming 10th overall—she said she knows she is ready for the World Cup when she is skiing with the top men in the US). About being a poor athlete in the Twin Cities. About the Olympics. Oh, yeah, did I mention that she was in Vancouver? Garrott (Vancouver) on Friday, Carolyn (Torino, biathlon) on Saturday, Caitlin today.

Anyway, Caitlin is awesome—she offered to show me a week of Olympic training this summer. Maybe I'll write that up for a local publication; I think it would be interesting. If not, it will get me in to shape. She offered to do a strength session with the Mac ski team, too. Collin says "very tight."

She finally had to go to bed in Norway, and Matt Liebsch called. He had "five or ten minutes" while he shuttled his kids around. Half an hour later I had pages of notes from talking to him too. Matt won the Birkie last year, the Mora two years running, and the City of Lakes this year. Oh, and he has two young kids. Yeah. Wow.

Finally, I called Kristina Owen, who won the women's skate race. I got some copy from her and set to writing. By the evening, I had condensed it all down to 2100 words—less than three times what John wanted, although I think the word count might be malleable—and some great stories. I'll post them here soon.

So while I had skis on for a total of about an hour, it was a very ski-heavy weekend. It was 64 on Sunday, the snow is gone (but might return later this week) and I'm off to Colorado next weekend. And it's probably the most I've thought about skiing—without actually skiing much—ever.

A ski-centric weekend—without much skiing: Wirth kids race

2010-03-15T23:00:00.002-05:00

The second in a three-part series

Last week on Facebook, I saw a video of the ski-ter–totter they'd set up over at Wirth:

I said, in a sense, "I want to go to there." I asked how I could and they said "come volunteer at noon on Saturday." That I can do. I am usually racing in races, so I can't volunteer for them; this is a chance to give back. And little kids skiing around are cute.

On Friday, I got an email. They were starting a bit earlier. Could I be there at 10:15? Sure! It's not like I went to Hayward the night before. So I set my alarm, woke up in the morning, and hopped on my bike for the ride over to Wirth. The ride went well with two glitches. First, when I tried to navigate the ramp from West River Parkway to 1st Street and 5th Avenue S (southeast corner), I found out that my skis were rather wider than the ramp. I got stuck, stopped, backed out, and walked my bike up the stairs.

The ride through Downtown Minneapolis (yes, down Hennepin with my skis) was fine for a while; I was not too wide for the Bassett Creek Trail spiral bridge (although it was close, and I took it very easy) and zoomed off towards the park. The one problem was that someone decided to groom the bike trail for skiing, and where it had been groomed it had not melted (everything else was dry). The Googles bike directions say it was a third of a mile, and I walked/hike-a-biked most of it. (Here's my whole route on Google bike directions; I did not follow what it suggested—hence all the waypoints—and took the Greenway home.)

Once I got to the race site, I was put to work. As the races finished up, John Swain and I set the course for the SkiX-c course. This entailed carrying V-board (well, C-board, well, painted PVC pipes) around, putting in a ton of flags, and making sure the slalom course was not too easy or too hard. Jojo Winters helped out as well. The kids had fun, no one went in to a utility poles, and the biggest mishap of the day was when I lost a ski while carrying the snow auger downhill (to put in the slalom gates). I wound up sitting on the ground with a 18" long drill bit and Ed Swain (John's dad) laughing at me as I chased my ski downhill. One of the bindings on my rock skis had broken; I spent the race trying to figure out how to put it together and finally used one of the tools in my bike bag to do so. The plastic is still cracked, but it works.

I skied the course a couple of times—it was about the right difficulty, and took a few trips over the ski-ter–totter. Then we played ski soccer (like the game, but a bit less tackley, and with the stipulation that you kick the ball through the goal, which I didn't really like) which was fun. It was adults vs. kids and John and I were on the kids team (apparently the age cutoff was about 26, as Carolyn Bramante, an olympic biathlete and former City of Lakes champion, and the one performing the sweet tele landing off the ski-ter–totter, was on the adult team). Everyone won. Everyone was soaked. Okay, especially me; I tackled the adults.

Then it was time to clean up, switch in to the slightly-drier bike shoes, and bike home. Slowly.

But the ski weekend without much skiing (today was the only day I actually donned ski boots) was not over yet!

A ski-centric weekend—without much skiing: Birkie Movie

2010-03-15T22:24:00.005-05:00

The first in a three-part series

Conditions have deteriorated dramatically in the last week (Wirth is skiable on the snowmaking but it's wet and slushy; I might go over for one last ski in the sun this afternoon). As I type the mercury is pushing 60 with bright sunshine. However, this does not mean that skiing is not the center of my life right now. Far from it.

Last week, I found out, by email, about a Birkie video which was being put together by Scott Brown called "A Day in February." Scott's a guy I match up against pretty well, it seems, and who skis with a camera on his head. It turns out that in addition to taking video of some races, he's also filmed training, talked to the Birkie Folks, filmed waxing, filmed stonegrinding, filmed his buddies skiing across a plowed Mosquito Brook Road and such. And after a two weeks of editing, he compiled it all in to a feature-length film. It was to be shown for one night only at the theater in Hayward. Friday night. 7:30.

I told him I'd love to come but didn't really want to drive that far and asked if he knew anyone else going up for just the movie. He did. Problem solved. So I skipped out of work, headed up Dale and 35E and met Eric around WBL to carpool up to Hayward. Traffic was free until just after Highway 8, when it ground to a halt. We rolled towards the next exit at about 10 mph, and discussed what to do. I reached back and grabbed the Minnesota DeLorme Atlas and Gazetteer which was rattling around the back seat, and saw that if we got off at the next exit we could cut diagonally across to Highway 8 and get away from the traffic. "If this works," I announced, "we'll be there by 7:20." Always trust a geographer.

And it did. We rolled in to the theater in Hayward and were in the door at 7:26. There was little rush. The lobby was filled with assorted dignitaries, none of whom I recognized in street clothes. I had to ask who Scott Brown, the star of the show, was, as I'm used to seeing him with a camera atop his head. We finally found our seats by around 7:45 and the show was on.

The picture was great. For a guy who just bought a video camera, Scott put on quite a show. It had a feeling of a kind-of hokey documentary, but in a good way. It'd serve as a good introduction for those of us who take skiing a little too seriously to show to our friends and family. "See! This is what stonegrinding is! And this is how you wax." (Because of the music, Scott can't distribute the film. Too bad.)

But the best parts were on snow. Early-season on a barely-snowed-in Birkie. (I've done that.) Training at 5 a.m. at Elm Creek—below 0. (I've done that, well, not at Elm Creek.) The Loppet. The Pre-Birkie. And then the main show. Standing at the line—I felt like I was right back in Cable—was almost eerie; my heart started pounding and my stomach felt just like it did on race day, even though it was 45˚ outside and the snow was all but gone.

And the footage of the race was great. I saw myself several times (my form looks off—I should get the raw footage of the race from Scott to analyze) and confirmed that I only lost to Scott because my skis had slowed down by the end of the race, as he passed me on the last downhill. While I didn't see myself up Main Street, I did see myself go to get my finisher pin at the end.

Then the film shifted to Scott interviewing skiers at Mosquito Brook. Folks who'd finish in five or six hours (the winner was under two). The guy who said if he fell one more time he was sitting down right there. He finished. For anyone who thinks that most people ski like us guys near the front—these folks were the true Birkie skiers. I was done with my lake-on cheering by the time they came through.

After the flick, we went to the Angry Minnow for dinner and a beer. I was driving, so a beer. (Oh, also, you can by beer at the theater. I love Wisconsin.) It was a nice gathering, I got to meet the director of the Birkie, Ned Zuelsdorff, who's a real nice guy. I complimented him for his race, trail and grooming, he seemed to like my numbers. Although he said that my elevation profile had caused some uproar in their office. Well, they should publish better ones if they have 'em. Now I'm tentatively scheduled to bike the course this spring with a GPS.

After an hour or so, and a chat with Olympian Garrott Kuzzy (yup, that's who hangs out in Hayward; he was drinking 7-Up), Eric and I piled in the car for the traffic- (and deer-) free drive back to the Cities. I was in bed by the early hour of 2. Nothing to do tomorrow. Oh, wait …

The intercollegiate game

2010-03-09T22:56:00.000-06:00

I can't really give a trail report, but Wirth sort of looked groomed. We met the U of M to play The Game out on the bottom of the sliding hill and it was pretty damn sweet. Their rules—same as ours but score by knocking over a water bottle with the ball, are interesting. The only issue is that defense of the bottle can become a bit of a cluster. But it does make the game more playable without hard tackling. We played until it was too dark to play and had an all-around good time.

Wirth (snowmaking)

2010-03-08T22:11:00.000-06:00

Wirth is skiable—moreso than yesterday. The big puddle drained so there's not as much waterskiing, and while the snow around the manmade loop is VERY dirty, it's snow. My (luckily) rock skis had a lot of visible dirt in the bases by the end of a couple of laps teaching; they'll need a hot scrape at some point. It's pretty soft but, with cooler temperatures and not a lot of sun, skiable. However, unless you have something to train for, it's not that great. The rest of the loop looked marginally skiable for hardcores only.

Wirth (snowmaking)

2010-03-07T19:03:00.000-06:00

Still alive and kicking (in slush).

What may be my last ski of the year (unless we play more of The Game) at Wirth today was mostly teaching a couple folks who'd skied a combined once in their lives. Getting up the hill to the start was interesting (we probably should have walked up) but at least it was warm out. The trail is getting pretty good and slushy, but is skiable. The base on the non-snowmaking trail looked quite wet and slushy/icy where it's thin, but the base on the snowmaking course is generally thick (although they'll have to make more snow next year to assure good skiing for JOs).

There was one burnout section right before the downhill before the sliding hill, and a lake at the bottom of the first big downhill out of the stadium. It made for great waterskiing (I was soaked from my thighs down) but was pretty much across the trail, and rather deep. Before snow is made next year, a pipe should be laid down in order to channel the runoff under the trail, which right now acts as a dam (we saw this happen last February).

But, it's March 7, so I can't complain. Oh, here's a picture of biking with skis. This is very excellent. I just put the boots in the bindings and inserted the boots in to my extra large Timbuk2 bag. Thus, the boots keep the skis from going anywhere. Then, cinch up the straps over the skis. It works great with poles, too; just put the straps over the high side (tips or tails) although they don't slide around anyway. And give cars some extra clearance, especially on the right. On the left, the skis extend up above the cars you pass at lights.

The race

2010-03-06T18:53:00.000-06:00

We went up to Elk River today to host a small Macalester fundraiser race. We had a pretty good turnout and everyone had fun (I think) so that was good. It was much sunnier than forecast so the trail got petty soft, but had full coverage. That won't last long, though; there are already holes forming in several spots—be especially careful on the paved paths on the prairie loop near the start. If it freezes up it should be good, if not, it will be pretty soft. The end is near.

The Game

2010-03-04T18:47:00.000-06:00

So today, we played The Game. The Game is an old Macalester tradition that, to my knowledge, has not been played in at least half a decade. However, after contacting some authorities to make sure I had the rules down, I recruited five skiers (minimum to play is six) and we played at Como (trails were, at least near the parking lot, still in okay shape.

The Game is basically a combination of football, soccer and ultimate frisbee, played on skis. With tackling. The "field" is a rectangular stretch of snow with two end lines demarcated by cones (or ski boots, or whatever) placed about 10 yards apart. There are not necessarily any special boundaries to the field, except for these end lines, although if a team member intentionally kicks or throws the ball far out of bounds, the other team can call for a turnover.

Two teams, on rock skis (no poles) line up at opposite ends of the pitch. One team throws off to the other. The team with the ball (a soccer ball) can then advance the ball by throwing it, soccer-style dribbling it (with their skis/boots) or gliding with the ball. However, you may not skate with the ball. A point/goal is scored when you cross the end line while gliding in control of the ball, or throw the ball to a teammate across the end line (you may not dribble the ball across the line to score a goal). If the ball is advanced beyond the end line—either outside of the markers or not in control (being caught or glided) it is still live, but must cross the end line in the direction of play to count as a goal. The ball is live at all times, except when it is thrown off, when it first must be touched by a member of the opposing team.

Strategies include passing patterns, dribbling the ball and then picking it up and gliding, and long throws to a gliding teammate. Mostly, it devolves in to carnage, but it is a fun way to work on balance, and definitely gets a workout in—everyone was shedding clothing after a few minutes today. With younger (< college-age) kids you might want to eliminate the tackling aspect, but on snow the main thing you are going to break is equipment, not people. Still, it's a good thing to do after the racing season is mostly over. (A version with only passing can be played earlier in the season and is similar to team handball and is less likely to break equipment or result in injuries.)

Game skis are generally short and old, as equipment breakage is a frequent side-effect of The Game. However, it is totally worth it.

Woodlands Trails

2010-03-04T11:19:00.000-06:00

I headed up to Elk River to do course recon for the Macalester Spring Fling race there this weekend (Saturday at noon, tell your friends).The course should be in fine shape for the ski race on Saturday. There is good, continuous coverage around the 10k outer loop, and the snow is firm and solid. Conditions vary based on exposure, areas which have seen the sun are icy, those in the shade are still well-packed powder. The trails will be groomed Friday night or Saturday morning based on the weather (with cloudy weather, the course should stay rather firm). There are two icy spots—one on the Prairie Loop and one on Peeper Hollow, which will be shoveled or cut out of the course as necessary, but for now we plan to run a full 10k lap. Conditions should be good for the biathlon event on Sunday as well.

I took lots of pictures which will come on Skinnyski soon, here's one for fun going down the Gravity Box.

Como

2010-03-03T19:26:00.002-06:00

Como today was pretty okay. Right around freeze-up, it was not horrible. There are some wet/icy sections but for skating it seems to be okay. Not so great for classic, but it's not the end of the world, and the folks I was teaching seemed to pick it up okay. And klister hands! Let's see how my keyboard holds up.

Snow mountain biking

2010-03-02T23:05:00.000-06:00

I had a bit of an interesting afternoon today. According to the trail conditions, the bike trail at Wirth, which I've seen criss-crossing the ski trails all winter, would close to snow riding this evening. So I decided that something had to be done about that, now that Birkie was over and an encounter with a tree wouldn't preempt my ski season. (Moca still has conditions as being good, though.)

It was almost not to be, however. I biked from work to the ski room. There was no van key. The person earlier had not returned it. After several calls and no answer, I reluctantly made my way across campus towards home. But one last call yielded a van key, so five minutes later my bike was in the back of the van and we (me and Hans, he was skiing) were on our way.

And traffic was horrendous. We should have taken the river but with waning daylight I was willing to risk it. Bad move. We sat on 94 through Minneapolis (four lanes wide, but with horrid merges on the two outer lanes, it's really a two lane highway, so no wonder it backs up) and the sun was sinking fast as we got through the tunnel and on to the Olson. I made the first light but stopped for the second. As we sat at the now-red light, the van shook and a Caddy, having clipped the back of the van, came by, scraping his mirror down the side of the van, and then sped through the red light. I was almost flabbergasted, but saw the guy stuck at the light ahead of us (a longer light) and, when our light changed, used all eight cylinders of the van's engine to rev ahead of other traffic and cut in behind him.

We got the plate, and I leaned on the horn. Any normal person would stop and exchange information, but apparently this guy wanted a hit-and-run. I was on the phone with the Minneapolis police, who said that I could follow him, but that it wasn't advised. I agreed to meet the cops at the Chalet (better than the side of the Olson) to give them a report.

Now, of course, my hopes of riding were being dashed as the sky darkened. But the cops came rather quickly, I told them what happened, and they took a report. Hopefully they catch this guy and throw the book at him. I was more pissed off about the lack of skiing—well, biking—than the superficial damage to the van. But when we were done there was still some light, and I had a head lamp, so, snow mountain biking it was.

Snow mountain biking is a lot of fun. The trail was in good shape—packed, somewhat transformed snow—except for a few sections of ice or frozen dirt. That's not to say I had the right equipment or training to ride it. My tires spun out a lot, I did quite a bit of hike-a-bike, and never got going more than about 8 mph. Oh, and I fell in to the snow a couple times, put my foot in to a foot of snow several times, and grabbed my fair share of trees. It was dark by the end, but at such low speeds my headlamp did a fine job of illuminating the snow. Since it was still around 30, it wasn't too brisk, and it was a blast.

Oh, and the ski trails looked good, too. Aha! Trail report.

Birkie, by the numbers

2010-03-01T11:48:00.003-06:00

Without a ton of commentary, here are some statistics about the Birkebeiner. All numbers are based on 2010 finishers, including both men and women, for the freestyle Birkie.

First, wave size. There are obviously more people in early waves than later ones, but how many more? Well, a lot. Waves 1-4, which filled this year, each had between 520 and 560 Birkie finishers, and more Korteloppet skiers, so they were even more crowded during the first 9k. By wave 8, there were only 78 Birkie skiers—surely more in the Korte, but it's still a lot smaller, especially beyond Timber Trail. Wave 10—with new skiers—was larger this year, and perhaps smaller than usual with the early cutoff for registration.

Elite Men	196
Elite Women	70
Wave 1	554
Wave 2	543
Wave 3	530
Wave 4	522
Wave 5	436
Wave 6	223
Wave 7	146
Wave 8	78
Wave 9	142
Wave 10	201

And what of Birkie regionality?

State	Avg. Time	# skiers	State	Avg. Time	# skiers
S.D.	2:31:01	1	N.M.	3:33:08	5
Alaska	2:50:35	22	Wash.	3:37:14	29
Ore.	2:51:51	11	Ind.	3:37:58	3
Ver.	2:58:48	13	Wis.	3:39:02	1591
Idaho	3:01:20	19	N.D.	3:43:59	6
Mich.	3:02:11	99	Ark.	3:46:44	1
Maine	3:05:40	9	Penna.	3:46:46	8
Wyo.	3:10:12	7	Ill.	3:47:58	154
Int'l	3:16:44	52	Nev.	3:59:20	1
Mary.	3:17:32	3	Ariz.	4:00:46	6
Colo.	3:17:56	102	Calif.	4:01:05	30
Utah	3:17:59	22	Mo.	4:08:10	3
Conn.	3:18:49	2	Ken.	4:14:07	2
Ohio	3:19:37	10	Ga.	4:30:33	1
Mass.	3:19:49	22	Kan.	4:34:30	3
Mont.	3:19:52	25	Fla.	4:37:44	4
Minn.	3:22:01	1254	Texas	5:08:34	4
N.H.	3:23:35	11	Va.	5:16:07	6
Iowa	3:30:04	42	Neb.	5:50:44	2

Well, obviously the most finishers come from Wisconsin and Minnesota, which account for about 75% of the skiers. Beyond that, big states include Illinois, Colorado and Michigan, with sizable contingents from most other states with some decent snow. But who has the best times? Where do the fast skiers come from? Well, the one skier in South Dakota was a first wave qualifier, finishing in 2:30, but he didn't have anyone to drag him down. Alaska, Oregon, and Vermont—all states with development teams (APU, XC Oregon, Craftsbury ) come next, with international skiers following. Of the larger states, Michigan beats out Colorado (and Illinois) and International skaters do well.

However, the most important statistic is who does best between Minnesota and Wisconsin, and while there are more Wisconsinites in the race, the Minnesotans are faster. Apparently, the Gophers beat the Badgers. It would be fantastic if there were a competition between the two states in the next Birkie. Team competition to the max! (Although, to be fair, Chris Cook came 3d, the first Wisconsinite across the line, while Minnesota's first, Matt Liebsch, was 8th.)

Now for some charts! In all the charts, the red dashed line is the elite qualification time (for men). A few things to note: wave 3 is spread out at the top more than wave 2 or 4, as senior citizens (over 65) are allowed to start in wave 3 regardless of their time.

Here are all Birkie skate finishers, sorted by bib number (and thus, by wave). Note how much bigger waves 1-5 are than the rest, as well as the spread of the waves. It looks like they've done a relatively good job seeding skiers.

You can also view this chart by time. Note a couple of things. First, how spread out wave 3 is. Second, how there are contingents in waves 1-7, which are most pronounced in the latter of these waves, which are seeded with lower numbers but slower overall. These are Birchleggings skiers, which get bibs under 200 (i.e. below 1200 or 4200) and generally, since they're older, have lower times. Especially in the smaller, later waves, there is a big gap between the Birchleggings folks and the rest of the skiers, who start at bib 200.

And here is a chart of all the skate finishers in the race, sorted in to five minute categories. A bell curve with a long tail, it seems.

Now, we come to some more fun. Here is the chart above, but sorted by starting wave.A few things to note. First, that, since the elite wave is based on a number (top 200) and not a time, its tail has a different shape, as it drops off much more quickly. The first and second waves look like rather normal curves, although the third wave, owing to the older skiers in it, has a second peak. Beyond that, the fourth and fifth waves, while still rather normal, are much more spread out, since they have the same number of skiers finishing in longer times (with the fast snow, the modal finish time was 3:10 this year). And the color doesn't show up well in the legent, but the light yellow of wave 10 has a very flat curve.

This can also be shown by charting time versus place in wave—to look at the times for each wave. The large waves, 1-4, are not surprisingly quite flat—only a few minutes separates the first and last finishers, although there are, of course folks at the back whose times skew up. A few things to notice are the old folks in wave three posting long times, the fact that almost everyone in wave 1 finished in under 3:30, and almost everyone in wave 2 was under 4:00, and that the front of wave 4 was actually a tad faster than the front of wave 3 (the line is slightly lower on the chart). A couple more interesting tidbits: wave 9 is faster than waves 7 and 8, and even than the start of wave 6. The fast pieces of waves 3, 4 and 5 are all about the same speed (perhaps because everyone got stuck in the same traffic jam on the hills).

These data can also be shown by comparing the place in the wave to the overall place. The trends are similar: elite wavers avoid relegation as long as they stay near the second point of inflection, the early part of the fourth wave beats the early third, which is comparable to the early part of the fifth, and the 7th through 9th waves don't really line up as expected. There's more variability in later waves, too. Most first wavers finish within the first 850 or so and will be right back in the first wave. Second wavers mainly finish between 750 and 1500. But there are quite a few wave 5 skiers who will qualify in to the top two waves, even as most of their co-wavers ski wave 5 times.

Finally, we can plot all of the finishers. I'm not sure what the inflection point here, but the curve is very flat from about 2:40 to 3:50—where most of the skiers finish.

It's pretty minor, but there seem to be points of inflection around 100th place, and then a very minor change in the slop right around the elite qualification mark. I have no idea what that means. Probably nothing. Then there's avery constant slope from about 400th place to 2400th place, before the stragglers come in.

These charts are fun and don't tell us much, but they definitely confirm Birkie wave creep (everyone tries to, and often does, qualify in to the top waves), but this is also due to the fact there is not much of a difference in time between a wave 1 skier and a wave 2 skier (see all the overlap in the "bell curve by wave" chart). So, yeah, unless you're in the elite wave, or wave 6 or higher, you'll have a lot of company on the trail.

Wirth

2010-02-28T20:41:00.000-06:00

After an exciting afternoon of Minnesota-themed Olympic television—the 50k (exciting) and the gold medal hockey game (exciting)—I decided I'd had too much sitting. Plus, I wanted to see what the mountain bike trail was looking like at Wirth. So I went and did the snowmaking side trails. Once. Slowly.

The trails are in very good shape with a few notable deficiencies. There were several large ice chunks just past the equipment shed which, after sticking my tip in to one of them, I kicked/pushed off the trail. The main other issue is that going over or around the mound is becoming an issue. Over is thinning out on both the uphill and downhill. Going around to the south is suffering as the slope melts from the high sunshine and undermines the trail. (Of course, last year this happened early in February, not on the last day.) They've groomed around the ice/water, but it's thinning quickly. It might soon be time to groom to the north side of the mound. Otherwise, everything is good and generally powdery, although hills with southern exposure are getting icy. And the bike trail looks superb. I might try that out tomorrow.

The Birkie

2010-02-28T15:35:00.010-06:00

[I'm writing this watching the 50k olympics race. This is one heck of a way to blog. We'll see if their time—yeah, it's classic—beats mine.]

I like racing. I may not be that great at it, but if you read my race reports, I generally have a good time and come away with a positive experience. Races are generally well-run and, this year, have been in good shape. There's been little to complain about.

And yet, the Birkie blows every other race away.

The grooming is better. The trail is better. The volunteers aren't better, but considering the task they have to undertake, it's very impressive. The finish is unparalleled. And then there the traditions and aura which surround the race. The governor at the start (this year). Thousands of skiers at Telemark. Some of the best skiers in the world at the front of the pack. Special bibs for twenty and thirty year Birkie skiers—although not that special since there are so many of them.

Wave after wave of skiers climbing up the power lines and in to the woods. The sledders cheering and scoring falls. The, uh, ladies, music and beads on Bitch Hill. The lake, the sun, the wind. The cheering crowds across Highway 63, and then two blocks where you are propelled by thousands up Main Street to the finish.

Is there anything better?

This was my fifth Birkebeiner, and, except for 2007, each has been great. My results, maybe, were not what I would have liked (especially in 2008) but everything else—superb. And this year was the best yet.

I took a half day at work on Friday, put in 30 minutes at Como with Collin and drove north. Macalester had 12 skiers (8 Birkie, 4 Korte) and the plan had been to stay at one of our skier's houses in Spooner and then drive up on race morning. Actually, the plan was to go pick up bibs on Friday, drive back to Spooner for a feed, and then drive up early Saturday. Leaving around 5:30.

Everything was planned out and ready to go until I got an email from Collin that a friend of his dad's lived in Cable. He asked me if I'd be interested. The guy lives near the intersection of Telemark Road and County Road M. "Is that close to the start?" he asked. Uh, yes. Quite. "Would we be interested in staying there?" Uh, yes. Definitely.

So we changed plans. The rest of the team was starting in late waves and could pick their bibs up in the morning. Collin and I were starting at 8:25—and were more than happy to get our bibs the day before. So Collin and I hit Como and then headed north. I was pretty spacey all weekend, especially about myself. I think because I had to try to herd a dozen cats—er, college kids—around, in two separate races (the Birkie and the Korte) and three cars. Not that easy.

So, I forgot to put back on the gas cap on the car (and, more egregiously, forgot to write down the mileage), and that was sort of the start of me leaving things places and forgetting little things all week. Nothing major—and everyone else got where they were going too. I was just a little spazzy.

Anyway, after several pit stops (hyrdation!), including a few where Collin almost exploded, we got to Telemark. The house we were staying in was all of, oh, 500m from the parking lot where we'd have to park. But not the regular lot (Como), the lot for people coming from the east. It's two miles from the start by road, but because you can cut across the Cable airport approach, it's less than half a mile by foot. And since the road gridlocks in the morning, it's worth it to walk if the weather is tolerable.

We parked at Telemark and I saw a mostly e-quaintance, Colin Reuter, who is going to be running a camera in his drink belt during the race. He's done it before for some races, and lots of bike races, and I wanted to see if I could be on his video of the race (and Scott Brown's). I was at least excited to see it. The last time I saw him was the last 10k of the Great Glen to Bretton Woods death march in 2007; I realized I'd skied against him last year and emailed some, following his well-written blog. I realized he was walking by and said "you're Colin. I read your blog." Once I introduced myself, it was slightly less awkward. I saw Bill Dossett, of Bike Share fame, who rode up with Piotr Bednarski, of ski coaching fame. Bill said riding up with Piotr was fun, as he spent the whole time on the phone talking about wax (Collin: "You didn't find out what he waxed?" Me: "We have no iron or wax. Would it matter?") and then trying to get one of his athletes, Laura Spector, from Vancouver to Estonia via Newark and a blizzard. (Supposedly she made it.) That sounds entertaining.

We got bibs. Collin was bib 61, I was bib 180 (based on last year's finish times). Collin's skied in the elite wave before, but had never picked up his bib. I'd never skied in the elite wave. So we marched in to the bib pickup room and over to the elite table. There's never a line, since it's so much smaller. And you just feel—pretty awesome. Yeah, my goal for the race was to not be relegated from the elite wave.

The guy we were staying with worked at another local resort a few miles down County M, and we went to eat there, after picking up the keys from our host (who then went our for "a few barley pops"). It took forever. First, there was a 20 minute wait for the dining room. Which was half-empty. Then it took forever to get our food. More than half an hour. For pasta. So instead of eating at 7:00, we ate at 8:00. No, we were not happy about this. But we kept drinking water.

Ten minutes after the food came (at least it was free) we were done. I stopped by the bar for half a shot of their cheapest whiskey—to keep my water bottle from freezing in the zero-degree weather in the morning. They'd only sell me a full shot—so I left half on the bar. Oh, well, it was still pretty baller. We drove back to our adopted home—it kind of smelled, okay, reeked, of cigarette smoke, but was a price to pay for a later wake up. Collin watched a movie and I read. I'd told him he probably shouldn't watch anything much longer than an hour and a half. About 45 minutes in to "A Knight's Tale" I picked it up and said "you do know that this is more than two hours long, right?" He said it was an hour and a half. "Nope. That's 132 minutes." I laid out my clothes and went to bed. I'm rarely this relaxed before a race (no internet).

I was in bed by 10:30—eight hours before wake-up call—and slept in fits, drinking and peeing all night. Oh, yes, you did need to know that. We were up around 6:00 as the lights of the cars turning on to Telemark Road started shining through the window—there's a lot more traffic than 6:00 a.m. on a normal Saturday. We had a relatively easy morning and I was dressed and ready to go a bit after 7:00. We'd have had to leave Spooner at 5:30 had we stayed there. This was very relaxed. I had my drink belt—I've never raced with one but, no harm, no foul—and was otherwise well dressed for temperatures around 0 which were to rise to 20 during the race.

With traffic on the road and no buses to flag down, we walked to the start. A few hundred meters walking on the road, and then the cut through to the start. Luckily, we were both wearing shoes; those with ski boots were slipping and sliding around a bit. And we had time to hang out at the start. I ran a bit, changed boots, and skied the warm-up circle—about a 800m loop because no one could cross the timing wire 300m from the start. I watched the classic start, and then went to pack my bag for the truck.

We had 15 minute to get in the start pen—enter from the sides, not waiting in the back like other waves—and I got in the mob of people. One of the great things about the elite wave is that, yes, it's an elite wave, but you get to go out exactly the same as the other top skiers. I stood next to the women's winner, and the top men didn't get any special treatment. Everyone stood there with their skis, poles, drink belts and—little else. There was no pushing or shoving—the top 30 get to the start line, everyone else is ready to go behind them.

Skis were marked, and we lined up. I lined up at the back of the pack—no need to kill myself out of the front. My game plan was to ski the 12k nice and easy to high point. I knew the trail, and I knew I didn't want to blow up on the early hills. Take feeds early, have energy gel between high point and OO (or both) and then ski harder on the big hills late in the race.

We lined up, the start gates went up as the gun went off (better than at Mora, the gates went up without issue) and we were off. And my skis were fast. Everyone seemed to be chugging along well, but I was passing people on the downhills, which I rarely do (less weight on longer skis than most). I thought about changing my race plan—going hard early with my speed—but it seemed riskier. I didn't have the training to pull it off on the hills (I need more strength training) and I didn't want to ski differently than I planned.

But, boy, were my skis fast. The whole course was extremely slick. I'd thought, with some snow midweek, it might be slower, but they'd groomed the new snow and the very-slightly transformed snow just enough to make it firm but speedy. Still, I was catching people on downhills. A few people had faster skis than I, but I had faster skis than most. It was fun. I thought about pushing hard—the front didn't seem to be going too hard at first—but didn't want to blow up on the first hill. I've done that before. It's not fun.

This, and the fact that I was probably sitting in 150th place and it was still crowded. I passed a few people but didn't make up much ground before the hill. Yes, the hill. There are a lot of hills on the Birkie, but the power lines don't even have named hills. They're just basically a long set of hills and you don't get eased in to it. Again, the plan was not to die, so I went in to an easy V1—easier when you have fast skis—through the hills.

I started to realize it was fast at the first feed. I came over the top of power lines—by the beating drums—and went to take the first cup of feed. I was going so fast that I didn't even try to take the near cup, but glided through the whole feed and was still bombing along when I grabbed the last cup. (I've gotten really good at taking feeds at speed. I wish there was a race of just taking feeds. I'd kick ass. Apparently in late waves the feeds back up as people stop. In the elite wave, no one stops.)

The hills rose and fell. I was going so fast through Timber Trail at 9k that I didn't even try for the feed—usually I've lost most of my speed by the feed but not this time. My mind wasn't really thinking "oh, boy, it's really fast, we're going to have a fast time" but more "oh, I am going fast at these certain specific times in the race." I didn't realize that everyone was flying. Another of these moments was when we came around Bobblehead/bubblehead Hill. It's the trickiest on the trail, but usually step-turned by all the elites. Not today. I took one step but had so much speed going in to the hill that I—and everyone else—skidded. Collin, nearer the top of the race, said he step turned and almost took a digger.

My skis were still fast, but not as fast (for the record, Start green no fluoro, LF Start green, Rex stuff Ahvo told us to use, Fast Wax green, FC7, on medium flex RCS with a Finn Sisu fine grind). I settled in with a group of about four guys and we picked up the hills and laid them down. There were more rolls than I remembered until we skied up to High Point. Again, I wanted to feel good at the top. I actually skied faster than most of the folks I was around, but with 38k to go I didn't want to attack.

And we skied on. Down the hills, and just before Boedecker Road Hill the first ladies came by. I jumped behind them—no need to waste a ride, and stayed with the all the way in to the climb to OO. They set a good, but not brutal, pace and I was happy to stick with them. One of these years I'll be ahead of them further, but this wasn't too bad—they made up two minutes in 22k, meaning they'd be five minutes ahead of me overall. This boded rather well for my elite wave hopes.

I took a goo at OO, well, right before. I took it well, but as usual it was kind of gross. I had some water at the feed and was happy, with the top women just ahead. I planned to take it relatively easy through the next, flatter part of the race, and feel out the competition on the 29k hill. I went in to the hill feeling okay, but was ready for some water up top. My skis were slower now, still fast, but not bomber. I skied with a pack, including a fellow who had a birchleggings bib—he'd skied 20+ Birkies—and no technique. He had a short, ab-driven V1 and almost never went to a V2, or even a long V1. He must have been in great shape, as he was working twice as hard as I was on the flats.

In any case, I crested the hill and reached for my water bottle. It was a store-bought bottle—I'd brought my drink belt in to the store and tried several, and was easy to get in and out of the holster. And it came out, easily. It was too easy. I went to take a drink, but realized I was slowing down as the hill wasn't as steep as I'd thought. I went to pole. And the water bottle, which hadn't seen my lips, slipped out if my hands and in to the track.

I cursed. Yes, I did. Oh, well, it was 2k to the next feed and I felt okay. I just had to not miss the feeds. Still, it would have been nice to rehydrate with some nice, real Gatorade feed (not the HEED crap they have) and a little whiskey melted in. Shucks. No one picked it up and I was over it. Everything was just so fast.

I felt fine through Gravel Pit and along the rolling hills in towards Mosquito Brook. Boy, were those hills screaming fast. I took the feed at Mosquito Brook (as with the trail run this fall, the feeders there seemed to be afraid of speed feeding) and got ready for the climb up after OO. Right before the hill, I saw Scott Brown, with his head-camera on. Rolling? I don't know.

But it was impetus to stay ahead of him. When you're not winning the race, you might as well mug for the camera. I turned and smiled, and then showed him how it was done. I was in front of the camera for most of Mosquito Brook Hill—he was slightly faster than me on the downhills. Still, I stayed in front of him (I'm hoping for a role in the upcoming picture) before leading up the steep-but-short Bitch.

Now, in later waves, Bitch Hill is almost a celebration. Beads, music, the bitches running all over handing out beads. There's music and cheering for us faster folks, but not much else. Which is for the better. After the hill are some nice downhills before the sneaky hills near 77 we ran down to the last road crossing. The snow was a bit slower in the warm sun, but I was surprisingly not overheated and happy. And we had 5.5k to go, with 44.5 down. It seemed to me we'd just started.

We were skiing with a couple more women now, but hadn't seen too many. I'd seen a couple fast Wave 1 guys, but, again, figured I was somewhere between 150 and 175th. I didn't want to take any risks and die on the lake, so I took it pretty easy up Duffy's Hill and then had decent skis, although other folks had faster skis, down the hill. I think it was the grind in the warmer snow, and had no real complaints.

The lake was, well, the lake. Sadly, I was just behind camera guy so I didn't get on video across. I was right behind Kristina Owen, who'd won Mora, and had a nice pack to get some help across the lake, meaning that I had something left for the sprint. We dropped a couple folks off the lake and I got ready for the sprint; a gander behind me showed no one catching up. Okay. This is it.

The snow around the Marketplace was rather soft as usual, as was 63, and I readied to sprint Main Street. As always, the crowds were great, and a strong V2 got me by a couple skiers, but, again, just behind Scott Brown, so no video. Too bad. I skied across the finish and tried to find the clock, finally seeing the time of 2:23.

Wait. 2:23? Really? Last year I skied the race in 2:38. The winner wasn't much below 2:23. So I was rather pleased with my result, and probably could have gone faster. I never really got that close to bonking. I found Jakob and Collin and saw some other folks I know (Alex Jospe representing Newton—16th—very well) and we sat in the food tent and ate some soup and I changed. Jakob had been yelled at for changing in the food tent and told me I'd get yelled at. I told them I'd channel my inner Boston and not care/cuss them out. Oh, yeah, do you think I was amped up from the race?

And then we executed our post-race plan. It was warm and sunny outside. Should we sit inside and eat/drink in the feed tent? Or walk to the grocery store, get some fine beverages and Girl Scout Cookies and go out on the lake to cheer people on. It was an easy decision. On the way to the lake, I watched the leader board for results. They started around 60th. Then 70th. Then 80th. Okay, I won't be on here for a while. Then 140th. 150th. A lot of close times. 170th and they were still in the 2:21s. Would I be relegated? When did I come in again? Then 180th. And there I was: 189th. One more guy would qualify out of the second wave. 10 spots below last year. But still in the elite wave. Had I known how close it'd be, however, I'd have gone harder.

Other Macalester skiers did well, including a few sub-3:00 finishes from the 10th wave (not as impressive this year as most, but still fast) and a 32d from Collin. That's impressive, and his 2:04:57 time would not only win the Birkie most years, but was faster than the winning time at the olympics this morning. Considering there were several "ringers" from Norway and Italy, Collin was about the 25th American in the race. Considering he didn't do much of anything ski specific before January, and most of the guys above him are on development teams, it's a very impressive result. Good on you, Collin!

And then we went out on the lake. I've never watched the race much before, but it was a blast. I ran along with Mac skiers as they came in, cheering and taking pictures. I tried to get on Colin Reuter's camera (apparently it was out of "film" and I was drunk) in addition to Scott Brown's. Every time I ran after a skier was an all-out sprint, with a couple beverages in me and 50k, too. It hurt a lot, but it was a blast. Collin and I ate Thin Mints, drank beer, and cheered for everyone. I put on my skis and skied up and down the lake beside the trail (it had been plowed and had an inch on top and was maybe faster than the trail. I cheered all the Mac skiers, skiing (easier than running, and it would only be illegal if I were "pacing" elite wavers who were in an FIS race) with them as they came in. And there was a couple sitting in lawn chairs along the course with a Jim Beam shot. It's probably good that it was an hour back to the car and we weren't going anywhere for a while.

Finally all the Mac skiers came in, and we had some food and got on the buses. A few hops, skips and jumps later we were at the house of one of our skiers—a Swede whose parents live here now—for Swedish meatballs and assorted food. A lovely, long day ended with me parsing finishing data and then going to sleep.

It's the Birkie. Breathe it. Live it. And next year, still in the elite wave. With impetus to go faster.

Como

2010-02-28T09:58:00.002-06:00

Como had just been groomed when we hit the trails pre-Birkie. The snow was a little pebble-y, so not perfect, but definitely good for a slow, easy skate.

City of Lakes

2010-02-25T12:24:00.001-06:00

I skied the Bog and Butler (twice) this morning. It warmed up some as I skied but was still pretty hard packed and skied in. I think local trails are getting a lot of use this week (I wonder why—aren't you supposed to get your distance in early in the season and taper now?!) so, with the sun and without frequent grooms they are getting rather packed down. In any case, it's definitely skiable but just pretty hard. The only icy section was on the downhill between the big, curving-to-the-left climb and the little lake behind the school, which, with full southern exposure, has gotten icy. Just ride it through. Still, in the early sun everything was lovely, and it might loosen up if it gets in to the 20s later on.

Como

2010-02-24T20:54:00.002-06:00

This afternoon was better than this morning. It's not great, but what's there now is better. It's not perfect, no, but not as hard packed as it was this morning when it was almost difficult to keep on top of your skis. The issue is probably that it had gone long enough without a groom that the tiller just chopped up the hard pack—it might need a couple grooms to get in better shape.

Ari's unofficial guide to the Birkie

2010-02-24T14:41:00.029-06:00

Let me first point out that I am in no way qualified to write a guide to the Birkie. I've only skied it four times (hundreds have 20 under their belts, er, special-colored bibs), I'm not from Northwest Wisconsin, heck, I don't even cheer for the Packers (but I do drink beer). Still, it seems no one has posted any type of Birkie guide. Since it's a race that a lot of out-of-towners come in for, it seems prudent to have one. So with apologies to people who know more than I do, here goes, in bullet-list form:

BEFORE SATURDAY

• Be early. This goes for pretty much every step of the race. The Birkie is incredibly well organized, a testament to its staff and the huge volunteer corps which itself is as large as the town of Hayward. Still, with 8000+ skiers involved, everything takes a bit longer than it might at a pick-up race in March. Or any other ski race in the western hemisphere. Be patient, and give yourself a bit of extra time every step of the way.

• Get there. There are many ways to get to Hayward. Whatever you choose, make sure you are on Highway 63. Unless you really know what you are doing, taking back roads is very unlikely to save you any time.

• Listen to WOJB. The official race station is 88.9 WOJB. It's a community station broadcasting off the local reservation. It has eclectic and quirky programming. Starting on Friday, they broadcast wax tips and Birkie-themed music (it's very corny). It will either get you in the mood for the race or drive you batty.

• Bib pick-up. Get your materials before the race, if possible. If you're in the tenth wave, you'll probably be okay navigating Telemark the morning of the race. If you're in the second wave, do you really want to deal with an extra half hour in the morning before your 8:45 start? If you pick up your bib on Friday, you can ski the trail (before 3:00), get some freebies at the expo, and find all sorts of other skiers. Plus, if anything is amiss, there's a lot more time to fix it.

• Grooming and skiing on Friday. This year, grooming will take place the night before, using five (5) Pisten Bullies. That's right. Five. Usually the course is closed for several days pre-race, but with the base they have this year I'm assuming it's solid enough not to worry about it. However, at 3:00 on Friday, the courses, and that means the Birkie Trail, the classic trail and the Korte trail, close. If you need to ski after that point, the North End Trail, Seeley Trails and Telemark Trails are your best bet, but stay off the Birkie Trail. Drummond Trails, Rock Lake and Mukwanago are a bit further afield. See Skinnyski for more info.

As for the grooming, well, it will be awesome. It always is. Expect a firm but pliable skate deck, which, as long as it is cold enough, should stay solid during the race. Will some hills get mashed potato-ey (up) and icy (down) by the eighth wave? Probably. But where else do 8000 skiers ski a single trail in a day? The groomers know what they are doing. Tracks will be solid and set on downhills. There will be no groomer ridges. These guys groom the trail all season long. They're pros. (Exception: road crossings. We'll get to that.)

PRE-RACE

• Busing. On the last Saturday in February, the Birkie operates the second or third largest bus system in the state of Wisconsin. It's efficient and they have a lot of experience doing it. Still, things take a while. Normally, you can drive from Hayward to Telemark in under half an hour. On Birkie morning, leave an hour and a half, minimum. If you park at Como, remember: everything looks long, but everything moves. Buses comes in threes. The traffic in to the lot creeps along, but it creeps. Get your spot, get your skis and get on a bus. Unless you have an elite wave bib, people won't let you cut in line. If you do, well, people might let you cut in line. The best advice is to plan ahead and leave extra time. And if you are going out early, use the buses out of Hayward. It's very convenient to be able to walk to you car post-race. However: this doesn't mean you have to leave three hours. Unless you want to see people rushing around way before the start, there's no need to be on a bus at 6:30 if you are in wave 5. Take it easy—it's cold at the start and warm in your bed.

Oh, and don't try to bend the rules. There are times when you can bend the rules (example: you're a top-level skier from another region who has never skied the Birkie and would like to be in wave 1 rather than wave 4, in this case you can ask/plead your case) but this is not one of them. Unless you have a pass, you will not get in to Telemark. Unless you are coming from the west on Highway M, you will not get in to the Telemark parking area. Go to Como with everyone else. It would be nice if they gave car-pooling elite wavers a pass to park at Telemark, but they don't. It would be nice if they chartered planes to fly elite wavers in to Telemark, but they don't. Park in designated parking. Take the bus with everyone else.

• Before the start. Telemark is a big place, but it's not really made to handle 10,000 people. So the start is somewhat chaotic. There's a big tent near the start, and all sorts of stuff in Telemark. Still, you don't want to do anything extra at Telemark. There are lines for things like bathrooms. (Gentlemen often relieve themselves on the far side of the start area.) Restrooms in the lodge also have lines, but some of the more far-flung ones aren't necessarily very long. If you want to warm up, go down the trail as far as you see fit. If you want to see the first big hill, well, it's about 2k down. If you want to ski it before the race, you're a masochist.

• Drop your bag. Make sure it's in the right truck. The Birkie is proud of never having lost a bag (they're much better than the airlines), but there are thousands. Leave a bit of time. And don't worry about a few minutes in the cold without a jacket—a thousand other people will help to break the wind. Hint: you don't have to drop your bag, necessarily, before you hit the pens. But it might be a good idea. Oh, and put your shoes in your bag. The last thing you want to do is walk around Hayward in your ski boots.

• Your wave. This advice depends a lot on your wave and a lot on how seriously you will be taking the race. Before specifics, here's how the pens work. There are three or four successive "pens", each of which is separated by a gate. When a wave leaves, each pen gate opens, allowing the skiers to run up asfastastheycan to the next gate. With Elite men and elite women, and classic skiers, there is a lot of running involved if you're not in the Elite Wave. If you want to be in the front of your wave, you have to get in your pen early. And since people take things way too seriously, it means that you have to beat out a lot of master blasters for a spot.

Let's go wave by wave:

- Elite Wave: I think the top bib numbers get seeded in the first row. Otherwise, it's pretty quiet—it's wide enough that no one gets too far back (you know, since the wave is 200 people, not 900). For women, there's pretty much just one row.
- First Wave: This is probably the most "competitive" of the waves. A lot (okay, all) of this wave thinks they belong in the elite wave. Maybe 30 guys will actually make the jump. Out of 900. Still, everyone wants to be on the front line. If you actually think you'll be skiing a 2:30, by all means get on the front line. This, however, entails lining up half an hour before the race, making a run for the successive pens each time a new wave goes out, and getting your skis down in front. And it will be crowded. If you think you're going to be skiing a 2:55 or 3:00, it's probably not worth the extra time.
- Second Wave: Everyone thinks they belong in the first wave. There's a bit more crossover here, though. And more waves to have to "pen jump" before the start. Everyone in this wave has a similar seeding time, so unless you're better than everyone, you're probably not.
- Third-fifth waves: These waves are all quite big. "Birkie Wave Creep" means that everyone tries to qualify up as far as they can, and waves 1-5 are much larger than 6-10. So, you get to start with several hundred of your best friends and/or potential pole breakers.
- Sixth-Ninth waves: Probably less competitive. But I don't really know.
- Tenth wave: Since this is the new skier wave, there are all levels of athlete. Every year a couple guys go out and pass the whole race to make the elite wave. More power to them. Again, I don't know what it's like, I got myself in to wave 2 my first Birkie.

One more thing: if you are unhappy with your wave assignment, tell Birkie as early as possible. They have 8000 people to assign, and make mistakes. In addition to your's truly, who was put in the wrong wave but got that corrected, some guy called Matt Liebsch (who only won the race last year) wound up in the 6th wave. Before the first of the year is a good idea. Email them, call them, they're real nice if you explain yourself and give them a lot of time. They may say no to your request, but it's worth a try. Just don't expect a lot of sympathy the day before the race.

• Cell phones. Bring em'. Put them in your bag. It makes finding people at the finish a lot easier, especially if some of the people you are going to try to find are skiing the race in more than 3:00. I think there's reception at Telemark, but if you battery is low, it might be a good idea to shut it off.

• Delays. Sometimes, the start is delayed. This happens, generally, if there is a problem with busing or weather makes driving difficult. It's usually 10 or maybe 20 minutes, if it happens. They'll announce it at the start and probably on WOJB.

THE RACE

This is probably where I'm most qualified to give advice. I've run and skied the Birkie Trail dozens of times (including the Double Birkie—yes, 85k in a day; I put a 100k day in on the Birkie Trail a few years back to boot), I've mapped the Birkie Trail (stupid Gmap-pedometer doesn't seem to like more than 1500 points or so), I've made elevation profiles of the Birkie Trail, I've thrown together a Google Map of Birkie landmarks, and I've talked up the Birkie on Skinnyski. It's the best.

Also, the whole trail has kilometer markers. Even on the lake (they are on posts which are put in to the ice). If you're not familiar with the course, they're a good way to figure out where you are. They are rather conspicuous, but I'm usually focused/tired enough that I only see every third or fourth one (plus I know the trail well enough that I can identify most of it by landmarks).

One other thing before we start: the feed volunteers generally do a very good job. I've found feeds to be warm-but-not-piping-hot and found volunteers to know what they are doing (to not yank back feeds when you come through at 12 mph, and to not walk in amongst skiers to give you a feed). They do a hell of a job giving out thousands of feeds over the course of several hours. I think they're experienced. You don't really need a drink belt if you don't want one, but it's not a bad idea.

So, here we go:

0k: The trail starts at the Cable Union Airport. It follows a grass runway for the start. It's flat. It's wide. It's fun. Don't get lulled in to complacency. There are a a couple of small, rolling hills, but most of the first 2k are flat. And, yes, it's that wide. It will be at least 30 feet wide until after the powerlines. And, no, the little wooden telephone poles you follow are not the power lines.
2k: Ha! The easy part is over. You'll take a left and see the first power line hill. It's hard, but it's probably amongst the three worst hills of the race. Still, the trail gains 400 feet in the next 10k. Don't blow up here.
3k:At the top of this hill the trail rolls along the power lines. The Birkie Trail generally follows topography, except when it goes in a straight line along the power lines. There is a lot of up and down; there are also some choices as to where to ski—the general advice is to follow the pack. The classic trail joins from the left at the right turn and leaves just after the feed. Mind the tracks. There's enough room to avoid them and folks will yell at you if you ski in to them. With the classic skiers going out earlier this year, even the elites should see some striders in the tracks.
4k: One last hill brings you to the first feed (4.5). From there, the trail ducks in to the woods with a sweeping left turn. There are no big hills for the next three k, but there are no big downhills. No rest. Get ready to climb. This is also a good place to blow up. You don't want to. And, yes, the trail is still 30 feet wide. It is this wide the rest of the way. Seriously. Tracking rules are not in effect—if you want to pass, go around.
7k: You finally get some rest between 7k and 9k with a couple of downhills.
9k: After a feed (9), the Korte trail diverges to the left. Make sure you keep right (for the Birkie). It's well signed with volunteers yelling at you, but still, pay attention.
10k: Here lies the infamous Bobblehead Hill. The trail makes a sweeping left turn on a downhill, which is probably the trickiest hill of the course. To top it off, it's 100 yards from a snowmobile trail, and a couple dozen sledders have a bonfire going while they drink beer (yes, at 9:00 a.m.; they're snowmachiners after all) and cheer you on. Actually, they want to see falls. Stay up (unless you want a score) and try not to breathe in too much cigarette smoke. According to late-wavers, this hill might become three parallel luge courses by late waves. If you don't snowplow, it won't. STEP TURN! (Why "Bobblehead"? Because of the sledder's heads in their oversized helments bobbing up and down.)
11k: Now you start climbing. There are a couple of more-gradual climbs before you come down a short hill and lay eyes on Firetower Hill, the climb to the high point of the race. Yes, it looks long. Yes, it is long. Yes, it has a downhill on the other side. You really want to feel good here, because this is where the race begins. It's still 38k to Hayward, but it's down 600 feet. Don't blow up on the long hill, but it's definitely a good place to go hard if you feel like it.
12k: High point is marked. You then have more than two rolling kilometers downhill. A feed (13.7) is during this downhill. Recover a bit. The trail then rolls for a while.
17k: There's a tricky uphill before the Boedecker Road feed (18.5). Most of the Birkie Trail is very level (perpendicularly speaking, if that makes any sense), but this hill is quite off-camber. The trail widens out with some pines on the left, and as you climb you'll feel the trail leaning to the left. You sort of have to use a right-side V1 on this hill as you climb it if you want to stay efficient. After the trail turns, the hill continues but is not off-camber. Fun. After the feed, the trail is rolling but mostly downhill.
20k: After some fun, fast downhills there's a slog up to the road crossing at OO. You'll see quite a few people on this hill cheering for racers. The top of the hill is a good place to eat a gel if you want one before the feed (21.8).
21k: Cross OO, which will be narrow and thin. Surprisingly so, considering how well the rest of the trail is groomed. I think Birkie could have more snow on road crossings, and in the long term invest in three bridges or underpasses to bring them in to better shape. Anyway, double-poling the crossing is a good bet; it's really loose otherwise.
22k: The trail climbs gradually away from OO. After about a k, there's a picnic table on the right. After that, you get a nice descent, and then the trail is rather gradual for the next several kilometers.
23k: The classic trail joins from the left. You now have a bit less room with two classic tracks. Mind the tracks and the striding skiers. (The skate lane is still 20 feet wide so there's no excuse for skiing in the classic track. In the peak of the race, it will often have two parallel trains of skiers, with striders on either side.)
29k: There's a significant hill at 29k. It's not particularly steep, but it's long, and climbs more than 100 feet. The 29k marker is about halfway up the hill. Jesse says it's a good place to go hard and put a minute on the field. I agree. If you want to make a move, make it here. You get a nice rest after it (I always like that downhill for some reason), though, leading in to the next feed (31.8k) at Gravel Pit. Yes, it's 9k between feeds, but there is only that one major climb. After Gravel Pit, the trail rolls, with some nice downhills to Mosquito Brook. The one at about 33k has full southern exposure, so it might get sticky in the sun later in the race.
38k: You get a feed (38.1) at Mosquito Brook Road, after the crossing (similar strategy crossing the road as OO). You have about 500m of flat skiing across the stream before the trail begins to climb. This is the last really big climb of the trail, and it's split in to two parts. The first, Mosquito Brook Hill, isn't particularly steep, but it's pretty long, gaining nearly 150 feet with one small respite. The trail then levels out, before climbing again up "Bitch Hill." Yes, Bitch Hill. This one is half the elevation, but it's very steep, and at 40k, it's not a whole lot of fun. You'll know it when you see it. The ladies (bitches) will cheer you up it and hand out mardi gras beds. Take beads if you wish. This is a frequent place to bonk, though, so you might not be having too much fun.
41k: After Bitch Hill, two downhills lose the elevation you just gained. Don't worry, you won't climb that much again. You skirt the field to Fish Hatchery and go back in to the woods, before returning to the field's edge. There are a couple of hills there that I remember being really nasty little climbs, but the last two times I've been on them were at the end of the Double Birkie (after 83k of skiing) and at the end of a half marathon. So my judgment may be clouded. (Oh, and, they're running a full marathon to this point next fall. Running.) You take a right and ski along Highway 77, through the final feed (44.3), and across the road.
44k: And guess what? You climb again. The climb after Highway 77 is the last significant climb of the day. And it's a doozy, especially after 45k. The only consolation is that after you go up more than 100 feet, you have a long, sweeping downhill towards Lake Hayward. The view are great and you can see the town and water tower across the lake (if it's not snowing), pulling you towards the finish line.
46k: After crossing two small roads (generally okay snow cover) and a flat section where the race ends if there is open water on the lake, you ski on to the lake. It should be easy to ski across two flat kilometers. However a) you are 47k in to the race and b) there is usually a head wind. Find a pack and ski with them; if you do you can often pick off some skiers in front of you who blow up on the lake.
49k: The lake is generally lined with people, so there's impetus to go fast. There are k markers on the lake, and a 1000m to go near the end. You come up off the lake behind the Marketplace foods, and take a left around the grocery store. The snow here is often a bit soft, which really does a number on your legs. You then make a right turn on to Main Street and can see the finish; there's a flower pot to go around (generally right) and you cross Highway 63, which is snowed in well but always quite soft (they don't put snow down until about 9:00). Your legs will be angry but then Main Street has had snow on it since Wednesday, so it's solid and fast. Pick your lane, soak in the cheers as you fly up the street and power home. It's slightly uphill, and a V2 is often the technique of choice for the sprint.
50k: Finish! If you win, do whatever it is when you win. Otherwise, get your bag, and put your skis somewhere conspicuous where you can remember them. If you finish early, the town will seem totally overbuilt with a tent city and infrastructure for thousands. It feels like a ghost town. It fills up. If you've recovered, go and cheer people on as they finish. If you are interviewed at the finish on WOJB, be ready to answer "what's your name? where ya from?" and "how was the race/trail." Using a broad Midwest accent and giving short answers like "yah, good" is the norm. But if you are from out of town, anything goes. Except, since it's live, keep it clean.

AFTER THE RACE

• Get a feed. The feed tent has soup, bread, bananas, cookies, and all sorts of things you may want.

• Get a feed. The celebration tent has food for sale, like brats. You are in Wisconsin, so you really should have a brat. Plus, you just burned 2000-4000 calories, so you really should have a brat.

• Get a beer. You're in a small town in Northern Wisconsin. There are probably ten bars to choose from. Skiers are welcome at any of them. For packaged liquor, find a liquor store/gas station. The Marketplace has a good selection. It's Wisconsin, after all. If you are under 21 and have a Birkie bib, well, you can probably take your chances. If you are under 21 and are with a parent or guardian, drink up! It's legal in Wisconsin.

• Get on a bus. Buses to parking lots at Telemark and Como leave often about a block up past the finish line.

• Get ready to wait. Since Main Street is closed, Hayward devolves in to gridlock. Expect it to take 20 minutes to get through town after the race. It might be worth driving across on Highway 77 to miss the congestion.

• Cheer on everyone else. People will finish all day long. Ski or walk out across the lake and let people know they are doing awesome (even if they look differently). Main Street fills up with more and more skiers as the day progresses, both finishing and cheering. It's a good time.

• Go to the Sawmill Saloon. In Seeley. 10 miles north of Hayward. A big party. With New Glarus on tap.

AND MOST OF ALL, HAVE FUN!

Birkie (fever) on Google Maps

2010-02-24T12:44:00.001-06:00

I have too much time on my hands. (But really, I don't.) If you zoom in you can follow the trail pretty well.

View Birkie in a larger map

Legend:

Red: road closures, detours
Yellow: random landmarks
Green: parking
Purple: maybe parking but don't count on it
Blue: Start and Finish
Skier: Trail landmarks
Food: Feeds

The hills should match up with annotation on the Birkie elevation profile.

Como

2010-02-24T10:13:00.002-06:00

Como is very hard-packed and definitely in need of a groom. The skate lane is either barely-edgable or rutted, and appears not to have seen a machine in some time. I talked to a couple other skiers at the start and they agreed. The trail is perfectly skiable—if you don't mind your ski sliding out every few strokes—but just not a lot of fun. The chilly breeze didn't help, although the sun was bright and beginning to get warm.

Battle Creek

2010-02-23T22:37:00.001-06:00

Battle Creek is still in good shape, but could use some scratching up. There's definitely decent purchase, but it is, in some places, pretty well hard-packed, almost as if it hasn't snowed in two weeks (because, uh, it hasn't snowed in two weeks). Nothing against the groomers, they've done fine work, and it's perfectly skiable, but could just use a bit more texture. There are a couple of totally avoidable thin spots (especially under the pine trees on the back hills) although nothing is icy. I'm being nitpicky here, it's really perfectly fine.

Wirth

2010-02-22T20:25:00.001-06:00

Skiing is excellent. It's a broken record over at Wirth. Great skate lanes, good-looking solid tracks, and surprisingly untransformed snow. The only issue was where the groomer had dropped some fluid a week or so ago in the woods back by Twin Lakes—that section is kind of slow and sticky on the center-left side of the trail.

Erik Judeen at Korkki

2010-02-21T20:01:00.001-06:00

After yesterday's activities, we didn't get back to Duluth until around midnight. In the morning, we ate breakfast and piled in to the car to head up to the Korkki trails for the Erik Judeen Classic race. Korkki is an old-school, classic trail system, and the race is an old-school classic race. It's great. First of all, the trail is just fantastic. You, a four foot wide trail, the woods, the sun and the snow. Simple. Elegant. Like skiing should be. It's not terribly hilly, but definitely rolls, and has some rather fun climbs and descents. We didn't go over the big hill at the end, but in a race, you don't really want to go on trails which are likely to spew skiers in to the woods, which are dense and generally no more than six to twelve inches from you at any time.

It was also a beautiful day. We got there early, because Emily was volunteering for the race, and, well, why not. There were maybe half a dozen folks there, but the sun was out and warm, and we threw on some wax (waxing wasn't that hard) and I hit the trail. I skied the 4k loop and came back, and there was quite a bit of time before the start, and we hung out at the start. The race has a fantastic, small-town feel. No one is trying too hard—it's not like you can pass too easily, although tracking is in effect—and everyone is out to have fun. The best part is the legal release, which is modeled off the ski club release:

Folks of good character have been enjoying the trails at Korkki for over fifty years, and no one has ever sued anyone over anything. I understand that if I ski or hike or hang out at these trails, I might get hurt but probably won't, and won't sue; if I do, because I willfully agreed to participate in these activities. (And if I do sue, I will pay for my own attorney and Korkki Nordic's.) I agree to the above as a right to be part of the Korkki Nordic Ski Center.

Oh, yeah, these trails have history. They were first cut in 1953—making them some of the oldest continuously skied trails in the state. In the early 1980s they were mostly abandoned for the wide skating lanes—the Erik Judeen was moved to skating trails for a decade—but by the early 1990s, people realized that there was something to having narrow, classic-only trails, and they've been well-kept ever since.

It was a very low-key affair: the starter gave us a countdown and we went. We first looped around a field, which should have been easy but, uh, wasn't. There were two tracks in to the field, and everyone was happy to just double-pole around, even if they were in the slightly-longer outside one (mathematics would dictate that a circle with a radius one meter wider than another would have a length of 2π meters—or about six feet—longer than the inside circle. In a 10k race, that doesn't really matter.

Except, it did matter to a guy in a CXC suit (someone jokingly said, before the start, "hey, look at Garrott Kuzzy") that someone had bought him. If you're not on CXC, uh, don't wear their uniform. Oh, and he was in high school. Anyway, he stormed out of the start but found himself in the outside track that was six feet longer than the other track. And he was not going to ski a 10.002k race when he could ski a 10k race. So he jumped in to the other track and right in to a guy, who he tripped up. The tripped-up guy stumbled and pushed his ski in to the snow and—Kapow!—snapped his ski. Right in front of me. I gave CXC-dude a lot of room in front of me on a narrow course.

As I double-poled around the track, my sunglasses kept falling off my nose. I'd thrown off my hat before the race and my sunglasses, apparently, don't have much in the way of springiness left. I need to get a strap before the Birkie. But they fell off on this loop, and I kicked them to the side, and despite the sun, skied off without them. It's only a 10 (or a 10.002) k.

The rest of the race went off without many issues. I skied with a couple other folks until about 8k, which was good, because I'd never seen most of the trail. Thus, I was rather timid on most of the downhills, not wanting to push the envelope since I had no idea if the trail would turn and sling-shot me in to some thick pines. It turned out that at the only point where that was the case there was someone, on the hill before us, yelling "sharp left over the next hill." Which, indeed, was the case. I navigated the turn—barely—and shot down the next hill. The rest of the race, well, one guy passed me and I held off another. I think I was ninth, got an age-class medal, and had fun. And didn't break any skis.

CXC-dude gave us a few more moments at the end. First he bothered Adam Swank, asking him about his training schedule (Adam had won, three seconds off three-time Olympian John Bauer's course record.) First of all, why do high school kids think talking to a good skier is magically going to make them a good skier? When Thomas Alsgaard was in town a couple years ago some kid went up to him and said, instead of just asking for an autograph, "so what should my training plan be? I am training 425 hours a year and …" and you could just see his eyes roll. Anyway, Adam humored him "yeah, 300 to 400 hours a year. An hour a day." That's deep, Adam. A few minutes later, CXC-dude said, in response to a conversation about the Olympics, "Kris Freeman needs to stop having diabetes."

Anyway, that gave us some fodder for the drive back to Duluth, and after a stop at Ski Hut and then at Amazing Grace (hippies and bread pudding) I drove home, my eyes burning from the sun. I made some stops up top the hill, though, as it was a beautiful day. And, I have to get those sun glasses fixed.

After Hours and the Book

2010-02-21T00:12:00.003-06:00

I headed up to Duluth for the weekend for the Book Across the Bay. I met Jakob and Emily in Duluth for the ride across Wisconsin and we decided to stop at the After Hours Trail for a ski beforehand. Conditions were excellent—there's a lot of snow in the woods—but, maybe because it was pretty slow, the trails just seem so flat. (Best moment: when a group of skiers asked us how to get to the start (we had no clue) and we found a map maybe ten yards up the trail—in the direction they'd come from! We skied longer than, perhaps, we should have, and headed up to Bayfield to catch the bus to Ashland for the race.

We parked, grabbed our gear and got to the line for the bus, which was, conservatively, 300 people long. Doing some quick math, we decided that it might be faster to ski across to the start, and, if nothing else, more fun than standing in line for half an hour. So we did—we changed clothes and hit the lake. Conditions were very good on the lake, with some variability in smoothness as would be expected, and we made decent time towards Ashland. Callie was grabbing our bibs and it looked like our timing would work out, but there was a minor communication error when Callie couldn't go and find Roscoe—and Jakob and Emily—on the start line (she didn't, it seems, run out in front of the line where she would have had a good view). So she dropped their bags and grabbed their chips; oh well. I guess we should have left more time; we seemed to underestimate an event with several thousand participants.

I, on the other hand, had to pack up the truck bag and then get my skis on. I had just put them on and began frantically double poling through 2000 people when the gun went off. Whoops! I double poled a lot to just get to the start, throwing down a couple turns to find open areas, as my skis and legs are both significantly faster than old folks on fish scales. Once I hit the start I realized that skating was not going to happen for a while, and found that the classic track nearest the luminaries had almost no traffic—and began to double pole furiously.

I passed a lot of people. A whole lot. After about two kilometers of double poling I was able to skate, but it was still crowded—it took me another two k until I was able to just go around people without having to double pole between people. However, having warmed up quite a bit and having some perverse motivation from passing everyone, I was going pretty fast. It probably also helped that I knew it was a 10k and that I knew that there were no uphills—it's on a lake, after all.

I must have lost a lot of time at the start because I was picking skiers off all the way to the finish. It was, however, a perfect training session: all week I'd wanted to do a 20+ minute level three race pace ski, but with hills it's hard to keep your heart rate in check (uphills spike it, downhills have recovery) and I couldn't find the discipline to do so. Today was perfect. I was tasting some race in my mouth by 8k and still passing people, looking for Roscoe each time. I started sprinting with about a k to go—I really did feel good and would have liked to have started on the line, but such is life—and caught and dropped a fellow before the finish. I finished harder than anyone around me and looked up to see Roscoe, two places and 15 seconds in front of me. Of course, he'd been on the front line.

So I didn't place well but I skied well and that's what counts, right? I felt really good—I think I like long warm-ups, so too bad the Birkie is at 8:25 in the morning—hopefully that will carry in to tomorrow. We ate lots of chili after the race, and had some beer, and then drove Emily's brother back to Ashland. We also found out that, had we taken the bus, we would have likely missed the start anyway. We should have just driven to Ashland to the start and then skied, or bummed a ride, back. A quick pit stop (oil and gas for my car, food for us) and we were back to Duluth to ski the Korkki tomorrow morning.

As for the Book—it's a great, unique event. How often do you get to ski across the largest lake in the world? One thing we all agreed is that it might be better in the other direction—ending in Ashland, which would have more to do than just hang out in the huge tent there. It could still benefit the Washburn library, just finish at the other end.
The other thing that everyone agreed on was that there was way too much hay on the floor of the tent. Apparently I have an allergy to hay. Everyone was wheezing and sneezing. And the next morning we all had black stuff (mold, Roscoe says) in our boogers. Ick! If sliding is an issue, sand, or wood chips, would suffice. Hay is bad. I can't imagine what anyone with real allergies did, but I'd assume it involved going straight home. More reason to have it in Ashland: you could pitch the tent on a (plowed) parking lot.

The Birkie fever/geekout continues

2010-02-20T09:22:00.001-06:00

Recently, we posted a Birkie elevation profile (large file linked here):

Next, we have the total climb and descent (in feet) of the Birkie, kilometer per kilometer. The black line is a five-k moving average. (click to enlarge)

Hills!

Birkie Weather Speculation: Week 2

2010-02-19T23:27:00.008-06:00

For the last week, we've been following along as the models converge on a solution for the Birkie next weekend. It's been looking like a cool, dry race for several model runs (good run-to-run continuity) which means it will be probably be snowing or 80 next week. In any case, the last post was getting a bit long-winded, so we'll start the final countdown here.

Feb 20 00Z: Seasonable, dry. 2-4" of snow Wednesday and Thursday.
Feb 20 06Z: Seasonable (10-15), dry. 2-4" snow Wednesday and Thursday.
Feb 20 12Z: Seasonable, dry.
Feb 20 18Z: Seasonable, dry.
Feb 21 00Z: Seasonable, dry. 1-2" snow Tuesday-Wednesday.
Feb 21 06Z: Seasonable (teens), dry. Inch of snow midweek.
Feb 21 12Z: Seasonable (teens), slight possibility of light snow/flurries during race.
Feb 21 18Z: Seasonable (5-15), 1-3" snow midweek.
Feb 22 00Z: Seasonably cool, 1-3" snow midweek.
Feb 22 06Z: Seasonably coo, 1-3" snow midweek. Light northerly wind.
Feb 22 12Z-18Z: It's coming down to 1-2 inches of snow tomorrow (most likely more as you go north on the trail) and temperatures around 5 for the race start (8:30), rising to 20 during the race for fast folks, 30 for later wavers. No more updates unless there are any major changes.
Feb 23 00Z-06Z: Same as before, but with the slight possibility of light snow during the race.

Como

2010-02-19T20:39:00.001-06:00

Como was quite firm but in very nice shape. The trails were much faster this afternoon than at Wirth this morning, and it made for a great ski as the sun set behind the clouds streaking across the horizon.

Wirth

2010-02-19T11:48:00.000-06:00

I was across the river this morning and dropped by Wirth to take a loop—I would have done more but tweaked my quad a bit, and I had to get to work—and the trails are in great shape. The snowmaking course has been tilled up and is nearly the epitome of perfection. The rest of the course has seen snowmobile grooming and is pretty hard, especially for rock skis with no edges left. My well-structured skis were very, very slow, too, on the snow which got rather cold overnight, although the sun was making its presence known in a hurry. There were a couple places where the sun has transformed the snow, but coverage is complete throughout. To think that last year at this time we had rivulets of water streaming through the barely-covered snowmaking section and the rest was grass! There were quite a few other folks out enjoying the skiing.

Birkie Elevation Profile

2010-02-18T22:15:00.009-06:00

[Updated 2/19 with high quality profile linked, 2/22: more hilly fun here.]

So, at times in the past, I've spent a bit of time looking in to the elevation profile of the Birkie Trail. The Birkie folks have one, but, well, it kind of stinks. So, I decided to do them one better. Google maps got good aerial photos posted on their site this past year, so it is easy to trace the trail from Cable to Hayward. I used gmap-pedometer to do so (it's having trouble loading the whole thing) and then used Gmap to GPX to convert it in to GPS data. That was exportable in to excel, and from there it was a hop, skip and a jump (and some google searching to figure out how to convert latitude and longitude in to distance) to having an excel file with 2300 points each with a distance and an elevation.

Thus, I was able to create a detailed chart of the Birkie trail elevation, kilometer by kilometer, for the whole race course. And, of course, post it here. Click it to enlarge, although the quality is less-than-stellar (thanks, blogger) but for a far better version click this clicky. That's on my personal website which is crash-prone but should work for now. But it is pretty damn sweet.

It's annotated with some major landmarks. And I'm not going to say it's perfect, but I think it shows all the major climbs. The .xls file is up to 2.3 mb, and has things like slope and such, which are poorly defined measurements (the more points you sample, the better they get, but you can never get a perfect measurement, see coastline paradox). In any case, this is enough for now.

A few stats: the race starts at 408m and drops to 366m. However, it has a total climb of more than one kilometer—1041 meters of climb. And in the 10k from McNaught Road to High Point, the trail ascends 400 feet. No wonder its a good, fun (hard) time. High point is 534m (1752 feet; the sign says 1730), and Lake Hayward, the low point, is 359m (1178 feet) amsl.

If you want to geek out a bit more … to calculate distance from changes in latitude and longitude, I get excel cells which look like

=(3958*3.1415926*SQRT((E1938)*(E1938) + COS(A1938/57.29578)*COS(A1937/57.29578)*(F1938)*(F1938))/180)

so that's fun. But it works; the distance comes in at 49.45 km which is within 1% of the advertised distance and not worth trying to adjust to 50k (i.e. multiplying distances by 1.01). Also, the Birkie has about 100 feet of climb per mile, or about a third the climb of the Hut Traverse in the White Mountains. Which probably means very little in these parts, but it's hiking 50 miles with ~15,000 feet of climb. In a day.

Como

2010-02-18T21:29:00.001-06:00

Como is in very good shape. Despite the warm weather and sun, the trail is still nearly all powdery (there are a couple portions of the track which are a bit transformed) and it is firm all around. In a couple sections it is a bit lumpy—it could use a groom to smooth things out—but conditions are excellent. They're probably better than Battle Creek although, of course, the terrain is a bit less exciting. The snowboard hill is pretty lumpy but not in bad shape for some hill repeats.

Battle Creek

2010-02-17T21:48:00.000-06:00

Battle Creek is still in very good shape, but not exactly perfect any more. There's nothing to complain about, of course, but there are a couple crunchy spots with the sun and warm temperatures, and a couple spots where the edge of the trail is getting a little burned out. The snow is getting a tad thin under the pines on the big back hill, and while the classic track is deep and solid, the places where it has transformed have gotten pretty slick. It's very good, but getting a bit springy—it will be nice to have cooler temperatures, and a tad of snow would perfect it once again.

Birkie Weather Speculation

2010-02-16T20:11:00.007-06:00

The long-range models are now reaching to Birkie week. So far it's only the GFS, but it starts to give us an idea of what might be happening two weeks down the road.

I'll make short remarks about each model run between now and then—but don't start waxing quite yet.

Feb 13 00Z: Major warm-up, then light rain, ending, temperatures in the 40s.
Feb 13 06Z: No warm-up, heavy snow (6-12") evening before Birkie.
Feb 13 12Z: Cold (0-10 above), clear.
Feb 13 18Z: Major warm-up, dry.
Feb 14 00Z: Seasonable, dry, no warm-up.
Feb 14 06Z: Seasonable, dry, no warm-up.
Feb 14 12Z: No real warm-up, heavy, wet snowstorm the day before race day.
Feb 14 18Z: Clear and cold (0-10 above).
Feb 15 00Z: Dry or maybe flurries, seasonable.
Feb 15 06Z: Lingering snow, cold (then very cold after race day).
Feb 15 12Z: Possible light snow, cold.
Feb 15 18Z: Clear and chilly.
Feb 16 00Z: Cool, possible flurries.
Feb 16 06Z: Cool, possible warmer storm after Birkie.
Feb 16 12Z: Seasonable, possible snow ending around race time, storm then warm after race.
Feb 16 18Z: Cool, dry, no warmup after race.
Feb 17 00Z: Seasonable, dry.
Feb 17 06Z: Seasonable, dry.
Feb 17 12Z: Cool, dry.
Feb 17 18Z: Cool, dry.
Feb 18 00Z: Seasonable, dry.
Feb 18 06Z: Cool, dry.
Feb 18 12Z: Seasonable, dry.
Feb 18 18Z: Cool, dry.
Feb 19 00Z: Cool, dry.
Feb 19 06Z: Seasonable, probably dry but possible flurries. Possibility of light snow next Wednesday or Thursday to soften conditions for the race.
Feb 19 12Z: Cool, dry. Still a bit of snow showing up between now and race day.

Comments Feb 17: It seems that the model runs are converging on a solution which is for a cool, dry Birkie, probably with a bit of new snow by then, but I bet it will be firm, fast and fun, if a bit nippy. Now, let's see the next model run—if it's anything like normal, it will be completely different than the last few.

I'll continue to update this, hopefully daily, as the race nears—and it will be interesting to see how the model(s) converge on a solution.

Battle Creek

2010-02-16T19:50:00.001-06:00

Battle Creek is in terrific shape. There were a couple sections which were slightly crispy from the warm sun today, and a couple points where the sides of the trail look to be thinning a little bit, but other than that it's in very fine shape. The skate lanes were not particularly fast and were firm, and the classic tracks looked to be very solid if somewhat glazed/frozen in places. The groomer was out and had headed across the street, so if you need a respite from hills that may be the place for you.

Vasaloppet Race Report

2010-02-14T18:04:00.001-06:00

I quite like the Mora.

It's sort of a little cousin to the Birkie, and a totally different race, but it feels, just, very Minnesotan. The race itself is unassuming—no big, named climbs, no world-class trail, no elite wave—just a lightly-rolling trail 58k (the longest major race in the country) from Salen, I mean, Warman to Mora. The country is beautiful, and, again, pure Minnesota. Mostly hardwood forest but several fields and prairies, some swamps—basically what you'd see if you drive across the central part of the state. And while the race doesn't seem hard, there are no real downhills—no rests—for thirty-five miles.

It's a lot of fun.

The trail itself is never really perfect, but was, this year, very good. The start was groomed not-that-great, as seems to generally be the case in this race, with a lot of ridges between the tracks. It was groomed quite well most of the way with a few minor issues: scattered dirt (rare and avoidable), a classic track, which wasn't really necessary for the skate race, and road crossings which could have used more snow. Otherwise, it was great. So goes the season.

We headed up 65 to Mora (no, Google Maps, it does not 1:51 and you should not take 35) and got to the gym, Collin cursing me because, apparently, he really did have to use the bathroom and there was nowhere along 65 to stop. We grabbed bibs and camped out in the high school for a while, and then jumped on a school bus up to the start. The Mora is about the only race I can think of where you ride from the finish to the start, and it's a rather long bus ride when you consider that the 35k skiers ski it in a straight line and the 58k is more than half again as long as the bus ride. (The same thing happened this fall when I ran a marathon and, on the bus to the start, thought "I have to race this?") But the start was warm and sunny and I skied out to the trail juncture (about 1k), stripped down, and waited for the national anthem (belting it out with Zach Handler) before the gun went off.

Actually, the gun went off, and then the gates went up. And several of us got tangled in the gates. It was not good. I caught a pole and finally got going, but by this point there were 100 skiers in front of me. Yes, many were doing the 35k, but many were not. I wended and double poled my way back towards the front pack, hoping to keep contact until Liebsch (no-poles skating—"That's not fair!" was my reaction) slowed it down.

Which happened. There was a bottleneck at the first little hill on the 58k, and I could see no one was pushing it. However, there was some concern—last year this pack had had about a dozen and a half skiers in it, this year it was easily triple that size. Race fields have been much deeper this year—which might not bode well for those of us at the bottom of the Birkie elite wave (however, my consolation/rationalization is that everyone who's anyone skis the Birkie). I should do a quick chart of the number of skiers within x% of the winner this year versus last—I'm sure it's significantly higher.

Now seems like a good time to talk about a few truths of Mora. If you are reading this and have skied it, or plan to ski it, please keep these in mind:

The race goes out slow. It's a 58k and it's flat. No one is going to win in the first three kilometers. This means a couple of things: a) keep contact with the lead pack as long as possible and b) you didn't need those fluoros—they'll be gone by the time you'd need them to go fast.
Once the pack thins, it thins fast. Someone at the front decides to put the hammer down, and it moves. So, try to get in to the pack where you think you'll be, but don't kill yourself. It's a 58k race. (With the bigger fields, yeah, you want to get where you think you should be. But try to do that before the trail narrows down.)
Do not do anything stupid—or that you'd do in a 5k—to gain two or three spots. It's a 58k race. If you need to pass, double pole in the tracks, but not on hills. Hills will bottleneck. There are six of them on the whole course. Wait your turn. Don't try to pass on the hill, you are much more likely to fall down than you are to gain any meaningful time. I have a little remorse for the guy whose pole got stepped on and broken, because that sucks. I have no remorse for the guy who tried to pass me on a hill and fell down.
If someone is letting gaps form, let them know about it. Don't passive-aggressively try to go around them. But don't let gaps form. Four hard V2s and you'll catch the folks in front of you. If someone tells you to close the gap, especially if they are the third woman in the race, close the gap.
Once the big pack breaks up, it's a pack race. You are screwed if you ski the whole way on your own, unless your name is Matt Liebsch. If it is, hi Matt. If not, take it easy. There's no need to attack a pack at 11k unless you do plan to catch the on in front of you.
If you want to try to break a group (and this doesn't really apply in the last 10k when the trail is wider), offer to take a pull. If you get in front, you'll be doing more work. If you want to push the tempo and see if you can break it, go for it. But if you can't see anyone ahead of you, you're not likely to get very far.
Speaking of which, do not draft the whole way and expect me to let you in or be nice to you. Skiers could learn from cyclists. Everyone takes a pull. It's not cool to sit behind someone the whole way. Pull for two or three k, and then let someone else. With a pack of seven following me at one point, after I'd pulled for three k, I asked someone to take a pull. More than one guy—the only other guy to do the work—should have volunteered. I like setting the pace, but not the whole race.
And finally, here's how to behave around the top women (I skied most of the race with women 1, 2 and 3). First of all, if they ask you to do something simple, like let them ski together, or not let gaps form, or let them pass on a flat (you can jump right behind them—and they like to take pulls), do it. They are the ones who are borderline olympians (Carolyn, 5th in this race, probably would be in Vancouver for biathlon—she went to Torino 2006—had her gun not malfunctioned). Not you. And—and take note number 299; yes I am calling you out here (the results don't have bib numbers; er, now they do, and I know who you are, and you are younger than me, and you have a lot to learn)—if I get to the side to double pole, I am doing so in order to let Anna and/or Jojo pass me. Not you. When the guy behind you has to say "hey he's letting the girls pass, not you" take a hint. Had you taken a single pull, I might let you by. You had not.

Anyway, there's a lot in there about my race. I fell in to a sort of chase pack and, with a guy in a UNH suit, led a lot of the way. The elite women caught us around 20k but skied in the pack—which me and UNH were leading—until the halfway point. Being in a pack was very important. While the winds were generally a tail wind, the course winds around a lot, and there were a lot of points where the headwind was rather strong. We hit one section on a frozen lake/river and had a perfect tail wind, I exclaimed "this is what I'm talking about" and had a smile from ear to ear. Then there was a hill. I broke it some, UNH did some, we let the girls hang out in back, and it would have been nice for others to take a pull. We did catch a few guys, and were moving at a good, but not brutal, pace.

At 29k—or maybe a bit later; it was right after a feed—the girls took off. A few of us jumped on their tails—we'd done work for them after all. Kristina Owen jumped out to a lead and the pack didn't really follow. I skied with JoJo Winters for a while, and Anna McLoon was nearby most of the time. Kristina was gone, and for a while it was a pack of four or five of us, me, UNH, JoJo and Anna. JoJo later jumped behind a relay skier (the lead one) who was going a slightly shorter distance (oh, say, 10k) and rode him, and the pack was down to me, UNH (okay, his name is Philip) and Anna. The boys did most of the work, but Anna helped out, so, thanks.

Last year, I bonked at 52k, but this year I had goos and ate one on a long, gradual downhill (and the flats afterwards) and it went down pretty well. I'd had very minor dehydration cramps near the start, but they worked out—I felt good most of the way. There was one nasty section after a road crossing which required some double poling and fancy footwork; but with a couple experienced skiers we all took it easy—no one tried to jump anything in there.

We had to dodge some 35k skiers. Most were fine—we were going considerably faster having skied 48k in the time it took them to ski 25 (twice as fast) but a few needed a few yells of "on your left. On Your Left. ON YOUR LEFT!" before they got it. We headed through the last feed and there was a woman standing in the middle of the trail—back to the trail—taking pictures of … something. I lost it. "Get off the trail you're standing in the middle of the race!" I yelled in a very not-Minnesotan way. I was skiing with someone who, presumably, spent some time at UNH, and a woman who's in a Ph.D. program at Harvard (she went there undergrad) and my New England popped out. Come to think of it, instead of saying down the trail "I'm not an arsehole, I just get amped up sometimes" I should have said "I'm from Boston—sometimes it pops out like that." Then we told stories about stupid spectators and people who won't get out of the way.

Anyway, we caught another fellow who kind of messed with the little group. He was going slower but jumped on (nothing wrong there) but a) didn't really take pulls and b) was a chronic pole stepper-on-er. Now, everyone steps on poles. It happens, and it's not the end of the world. You take a stronger step than someone, you get to close, you nick their pole, you apologize, or if you have had your pole nicked, you say "no worries." It happens, especially in pack skiing.

I have nothing against this guy, but he stepped on my poles a couple of times. At one point he got enough of it to actually rip it off my hand (but not break it, although I may need a new grip—this will be assessed soon). He apologized, and everyone waited for me, but, come on. Nicking a pole is one thing. That's inexcusable. And a k later it happened again. There was no wind—he was too close. And I'd tired out from circling back and sprinting back to the group, so both guys beat me in the sprint up the hill (we had to circumnavigate some 35kers coming off the lake, too). Anna was back a bit. I came down Main Street (or whatever street it is) with no one to catch, and no one catching me, and didn't have to kill myself.

I grabbed snacks and gabbed some, and then got my clothes and waited for Hans, who was grabbing the van (thanks, Hans). A guy walked by (not a skier) and said "oh, so did you do the 52k?" I looked up and said, "yeah, and then tacked on an extra 6k for good measure—and so I'd get to the finish line." In any case, it was a good time. Collin and I blasted down 65, grabbed lunch at Culvers, and, while it was sunny during the whole race (thank goodness for sunglasses) it was snowing in Saint Paul.

And how did I do? Last year, I finished in 2:38, 20 minutes off of Matt Liebsch. This year, I finished in 2:35, 19 minutes off of Liebsch. So, just about the same. I was eight places back of last year, but the fields are deeper. In any case, I felt good and had fun, so what more can I ask for?

Como

2010-02-13T20:14:00.001-06:00

Over to Como to do a bit of teaching and just enjoy time outside. General consensus was that the trail is in fine shape, but could use a groom, especially in the skate lane. It's firm but has some ridges from a lot of skiers and doesn't appear to have been groomed very recently.

Wirth

2010-02-13T16:24:00.000-06:00

Wirth is very excellent.

The Back 9 is in great shape: firm and fast, and the classic track looks like it is solid as well. Tele skiing in the powder is great, until you catch an edge under eight inches of powder and take a dive. Great coverage all around (one dirty spot up the mound) and great skiing. The only issue was that the groomer had some issues with what I can only imagine is some sort of hydraulic fluid and dumped a pink stripe along about a k of trail through the woods. It also meant that there was not full new grooming all around. Hopefully this isn't a major issue for the snow or skis—it does look interesting, though.

Battle Creek

2010-02-12T19:53:00.002-06:00

Battle Creek is stellar. It has firmed up and is in truly excellent shape all around. There are couple washboarded sections and a couple places where the track has washed out, but these are extremely minor and more than made up by the orange setting sun shining through the oaks. Gorgeous!

Oh, and is there anything more baller than doing pull-ups on the tree overhanging the trail in the field after the hill off the lighted loop? Hanging from a branch, with my skis dangling above the snow, I'd say, no, no there is not.

Como

2010-02-11T21:30:00.000-06:00

Perfect. Como was perfect. It was very well groomed—it's nice to have a machine to pack things down—and the tracks were solid. The skate lane was firm and relatively fast, and the tracks were mostly free of glaze and kicked well. I can't take Como day in and day out, but for a good ski close to home it's tough to beat.

That was the winter that was—mid-season report

2010-02-10T22:31:00.000-06:00

I'd say this is the TW3 report, but the tenses would be wrong, since we're really only about half way through. So, maybe I'll call it TITWTI (this is the winter that is), or something. In any case, it's about time to examine where we stand compared to recent winters, look at some condition reports, and prognosticate where we might wind up, as well as spill some fun weather data. And, yes, there's a darned good reason I did the season recaps after the snow had melted last March: time! So this may be rather short and periodically updated.

Now, we know that ski conditions are, uh, pretty awesome. It got a late start, but since then there has been continuous skiing, with only a couple days without at least good conditions. (Ski conditions were discussed at length last year here.)

So, where do we stand? Well, first of all, we're at, as of February 10, 65 days of skiing, of which 61 have been good or excellent. We have not had to contend with the "oh no will it melt" syndrome which has plagued some past ski seasons, and the base is now up to 15 inches, the highest in nine years, with no meltdowns in sight. The City of Lakes went off without a hitch, Mora will as well, and Birkie has two feet of base two weeks before the race. As long as we can make March 15, we'll have 100 days of skiing, and an "excellent" snow year.

What's interesting is that despite the great skiing since early December (even after a couple of minor meltdowns the trails have, for the most part, been resurrected) it has not been a particularly cold or snowy winter. December was about a degree below normal, January, despite a cold start, finished just a tenth below. Snowfall through the end of January was 26.8 inches, of which 20.9 fell in December (2.8 in October, 0 in November, just 3.1 in January). With 11.3 inches so far in February, we're up to around normal. So it's been a very normal winter.

Despite some variability and unusual storms, there have been no real extremes. We've had no brutal cold snaps (no day has stayed below 0) but also no major warm-ups. The latter is, I think, the reason that we've kept our base so well. If you look back at the past few years, every one has a pretty devastating warm-up. Last January 31 it skied to 45 degrees, a week later it was 47. January '08 hit 40 twice (December '07 had as well), 2007 was, well, let's not talk about it, and other years were similar. It got me to thinking: we haven't been above 40 for more than 70 days. What are the records days under x degrees? I delved in to the data to find out.

	Longest		Second longest		Third longest
Temperature	Days	Ending:	Days	Ending:	Days	Ending:
0	7	Jan 7 1912	6	Jan 28 1904	5	Four times
5	12	Jan 12 1912	10	Jan 27 1963	9	Jan 27 1936
10	21	Feb 7 1936	15	Jan 1912/1974	13	Feb 21 1936
15	36	Feb 21 1936	16	Jan 1912/1977	15	Jan 12 1974
20	39	Feb 22 1936	25	Feb 15 1905	24	Feb 12 1904
25	41	Feb 22 1936	32	Feb 8 1978	27	Three times
27	52	Feb 19 1979	47	Feb 9 1912	41	Feb 22 1936
29	52	Feb 19 1979	50	Feb 12 1912	47	Feb 22 1978
30	58	Feb 19 1979	52	Feb 12 1912	48	Feb 25 1939
31	66	Feb 22 1978	58	Feb 19 1979	52	Feb 13 1912
32	66	Feb 22 1978	58	Feb 19 1979	52	Feb 13 1912
33	67	Feb 23 1978	58	Feb 19 1979	53	Feb 13 1912
34	67	Feb 23 1978	60	Feb 21 1979	54	Feb 13 1912
35	71	Feb 21 1969	70	Feb 22 1936	69	Feb 15 1971
36	79	Mar 7 1940	77	Feb 22 1936	75	Mar 15 1975
37	106	Mar 6 1972	84	Feb 13 1943	81	March 9 1978
38	116	Mar 12 1979	106	Mar 4 1972	105	Mar 1904/1955
39	122	Mar 22 1904	116	Mar 12 1979	114	Mar 2 2001
40	122	Mar 22 1904	116	Mar 12 1979	114	Mar 2 2001
42	126	Mar 13 2001	125	Mar 24 2006	122	Three times
45	141	Apr 3 1979	140	Apr 12 1975	135	Mar 24 1956
50	152	Apr 11 1979	149	Three times	148	Several times

Some of these data are pretty amazing. 66 days at or below freezing in 1977-8 is probably the best known. But go a couple degrees warmer, and you get 106 days at or below 37 degrees in 1972, which is, perhaps, just as impressive: it was below 37 from November 21 to March 6! And our last big snow year—the last time Minneapolis banned parking outright on one side of the street. Right now, we have a good chance of overtaking third place for the 37 degree mark, as we are just ten days away (and two weeks out of second). But there have been some impressively long cold streaks in the past. This current streak is long, and cold, but not really historic. Yet.

2010-02-10T20:56:00.000-06:00

Firmer, better, wonderful-er.

Battle Creek was in top form today. Track set all around, and the skate lanes were slow and still pretty soft but firmer than yesterday. Just a pleasure to ski. If you go down the hill off the lighted loop (the start of the 5k and 7.5k) and see a divot in the snow off to the right side of the trail, my apologies. At least I had the manners to fall off the side of the trail and plow out a bunch of ungroomed snow.

Battle Creek

2010-02-09T23:26:00.000-06:00

Just fantastic.

The skaters said the skate lane was soft, which I believe. The classic track, however, was surprisingly firm. The new snow is setting up pretty well—it's rather dense—and I assume a couple cold nights (it's clear, now let it be calm and cold) and Battle Creek should be in tip-top shape. Okay, it pretty much already is the best I've ever seen it, but tip-top shape and firm. Coverage is perfect throughout, of course (except the usual spot on the Lighted Loop Back Down on to the Prairie, which is merely thin) and everything is groomed and tracked (except no track on the LLBDOTTP). Just a pleasure to ski—your worries just melt away! Which this snow won't be doing any time soon, we hope!

Loppet Report

2010-02-07T22:39:00.000-06:00

Not too much of a report (I think). The Loppet, as a trail and event, was fantastic. Great organization, a perfectly groomed trail (good snow to thank for that) and a deep field. The start was a bit chaotic, and I definitely didn't get a good position; I'd missed the timing on the first double pole and everyone was off.

And it didn't get much better. The first couple turns were all double poling, and we then headed down in front of the quarter pipe on the snowboard hill, which, on my warm-up, I'd realized was a jump. Not realizing it was a race I tried to catch air. And did so perfectly. I sailed about ten feet and then stuck the landing. Barely. Another skier said "good save" and I said, "that was stupid."

And then for about 10k I felt slow. I think part of it was not having had enough to drink. I really need to remember to drink more. Lots and lots. Three trips to the bathroom the night before. I was cramped up through the hills and flats and across Wirth Lake, and only salvaged some piece of decency by having a couple cups of water at the feeds.

I felt slightly better in the hills in Bryn Mawr, although not good enough to jump on when the first girls passed us. Before we got out of the Flower Gardens, however, the fourth and fifth women (Carolyn Bramante and Lindsey Dehlin—both olympians, which is some consolation for getting girled) passed two of us guys and we jumped on. At this point, Ben Pedersen had been catching up with me and was only a few seconds behind, and I wanted to be ahead of him. The girls set a good pace—not hurried, but solid—the pace I wish I could set for myself at the start of a race, and we steamed through the woods, catching Freddy Kueffer on the last hill and through the feed and on to the lakes. The girls didn't seem to mind leading; they knew they were far behind the top three and would hold off those behind him, and a couple of us guys didn't mind the help. Although on one hill, a guy cheering yelled "let's go ladies—" and added, as an afterthought, "and guys."

That was fine. I was feeling slightly better on the lakes. We went on to the Cedar Lake Trails and after the U-turn Carolyn caught an edge and ate some snow, but there was no reason to try to drop her. She jumped back in. We were headed for the canal when a second waver stormed past. Carolyn jumped on his tail (a draft!). I did too. Lindsey did not. This guy was moving, though, and I didn't quite keep the draft. So I went through the canal on my own, and then around Isles.

Isles was rather well groomed and was very wide, so we were able to cut a couple corners. A couple small groups came and went, and at the end we headed up the ramp and in to the sprint. I was neck-and-neck with a guy going in to the finishes but outsprinted him (always makes things better) and finished, feeling pretty okay.

I grabbed a cookie and talked with Jakob and Emily and John and others, and then went to cheer Macalester skiers on the lakes. Fun times. Then it was time to eat soup, get a brat (so good) and go home. No, it wasn't the Surly festival after the Trail Loppet (when they gave free beer—one per person—until they had more beer than people) but it was good. Then I went home and went to sleep.

My results? 92d place—the lowest I've ever scored in the race—and 120% of the winning time. This is a drop from last year, but it's actually a bad comparison. Matt Liebsch skied this year, and took the title by quite a bit. In last year's race, I finished 17% behind the top three guys. Compared to the third place guy, Andre Watt, who skis about the same pace, I was 16%. I'm rationalizing here, obviously.

Anyway, drink more before races and ski fast. Right? Right. Still best Loppet ever!

City of Lakes

2010-02-06T21:52:00.000-06:00

The lakes are good, but soft, and need a groom. I hit the lakes during the luminary this evening, and skied through the canal to Cedar. Isles is pretty well packed but definitely soft from four inches of snow this week, and probably got loosened up by the thousands of luminary skiers. The canal was soft and thin in a couple places and needs a groom, as was Cedar. The section on the trail on the west side of Cedar was loose and pockmarked by footsteps; I assume it is going to get a couple passes tonight. Hopefully temperatures will dip low enough for long enough (sitting at 20 right now) to allow it to set up. Otherwise, get to the front of the pack!

City of Lakes

2010-02-05T22:11:00.000-06:00

We skied from the Chalet south along the course through the trail up behind Hidden Beach. The trail is in excellent shape, including across the lakes (the new snow makes a big difference, especially since it was sticky and fell with little or no wind) so the coverage is full. Snow was being hauled to road crossings, too, and grooming with a sled was in progress; it was still very soft after the sled had passed but hopefully it will go down to 15 at least to set up some for Sunday, otherwise it will be a very soft race! The only minor problem spots, and I mean minor, were at either end of the I-394 bridge where water on the road was being kicked up by cars on to the snow, making or very slow, sloppy sections. A couple tubs of shoveled snow and it would be all better—the middle of the bridge is in good shape.

It should be a fun race Sunday.

Wirth

2010-02-04T21:28:00.000-06:00

Practice today entailed shifts of shoveling snow interspersed with thresholds round the back loop in the woods off the Par 3. I was told by one of my skiers that I am not to call the Mound by its previous name, so it will now be "Collin's Mound," but that's where we shoveled. The trail over the Mound was pretty much white, but quite thin, and we shoveled a mixture of powder and ice on to the treadway. It probably didn't need too much shoveling but we were happy to oblige. Shoveling, it turns out, is a fine workout. Especially when you take a shovel like a canoe paddle and "paddle" a stroke of snow off the crust and on to the trail.

It's now thicker but very soft, but with new snow and some good grooming it should be good for race day, as long as it gets colder out. The rest of the trail back there is in fine shape, and was getting somewhat soft with the new snow, but perfect for no-poles intervals. The snowmaking area is a bit firmer, but groomed up well so the hills are no longer icy at all. And now on radar there's a heavy band of snow—bring it on. Full trail report coming tomorrow.

Why are these races all filling up?

2010-02-04T08:46:00.001-06:00

It's got to be the snow. For the first time in nearly two decades, the Twin Cities are experiencing their third "good" snow year in a row. Assuming we don't have a total melt-down in the next couple of weeks (a rather fair assumption, given the snow depth and upcoming models) we should hit 70 days with good snow (3+") on the ground. That happened nine out of ten years in the 1970s, but only five times in the '80s and four times in each the '90s and '00s. The last time there were three such winters in a row was 1991-1993. Since then, 1995, 1996, 2001, 2004 and the last three winters.

So, since the early 1990s, people would have a good winter of skiing, get in to it, register for a couple races the next season, and be all pumped up and ready to go for a third when—it would be brown for months on end. For the serious skiers amongst us, we'll rollerski and run in December and January. Or drive to downhill areas. For many others—they'd sit inside and sulk. Like we probably wanted to (Trollhaugen is just not that fun day in and day out).

But the last three years, there's been good snow from early January through the first part of February. But take a look at recent winters:

The yellow-red lines are the generally mediocre winters from 2004-2007. The blue lines are the three most recent. Notice how, especially in January, especially, the recent winters far outperform the past ones. And notice how our current winter has pretty much outperformed the last five in snow depth; especially recently, when, even in good winters, the snow amounts have crashed. And when lines disappear off the bottom—no snow. We'll see if we get a nice March snowstorm this year, but in 2005-6 and 2006-7, most of the snow came from big storms in March. Which don't do too much good for skiing before then.

So it's good. Might it get a lot better?

Please, sir, may I have another?

2010-02-04T08:18:00.000-06:00

In January, we received 3.1 inches of snow. And had decent skiing most of the month.

In the first two days of February, we received 3.1 inches of snow.

In the next few? Here's the latest "meteogram" generated from the NAM and GFS models (through the fantastic Bufkit Warehouse, which is run by a grad student down at Iowa State who wants to work for the NWS and better get a job).

Last night, I got very excited when the 00Z GFS printed out nearly four inches of snow tonight and tomorrow and another seven from Sunday through early next week. That's 11" of snow! So this morning I woke up, checked the site, and saw that the next model run was lower (the chart shown here) or so I though, until I looked at the scale at the left and realized that last night's line was the low blue line. (In addition the newer NAM was printing out a bit more snow.) The latest GFS had us getting more than ten inches next Sunday to Tuesday. Well, uh, holy smokes. That would be amazing.

So, for now, we'll speculate. The models are still not in full agreement for next week. But they're coming together. And, boy, would another foot of snow be nice.

Wirth

2010-02-03T21:41:00.000-06:00

The trails at Wirth are still in very good shape. With the warm(er), moister weather, I grabbed some Rode Super Extra -1 to -5 which kicked real well. The snowmaking area is good, the rest of the golf course is good, and the tracks over to Wirth beach are in fine shape, although under the bridge is a bit wet with debris from the road above. Still, it's pretty great. The tracks across Wirth lake are deep but down to ice in places, so it might strip off kick wax (which, later in the race with more lakes ahead, isn't the end of the world). The plowed-in skate lanes on the lake were in fine shape. Bring on more snow! Bring on the Loppet!

Wirth

2010-02-02T23:13:00.000-06:00

On a scale of one to awesome, definitely closer to awesome.

We set out to ski a bunch of 30-second intervals and were just going to go around and ski each hill, until I jumped out of the stadium and carved a couple of beautiful tele turns down the hill. This gave me an idea: we'd go to the big hill on the Judy trail (just before returning to Hap and the lights) and ski up and down and up and down. And we did.

With the clear sky it was pretty dark but the trail was in excellent shape. It was rolled but not yet groomed but had been skated in to a fine, if soft, surface. We marked a 30-second-or-so interval and then turned in to the three-inches-of-new-snow-over-a-firm-crust. If you've been following along you know what happens next. We dropped our knees for a nice ride down. And repeated at least a dozen times. A few other folks jumped off the grooming and whooped and hollered their way down. If you fell—well, I should say, when you fell—it was a soft skid which usually entailed a pile of powder.

I pushed my heart rate up pretty well and by the end we'd get to the top of our hill and slump over our poles catching our breath, before taking to the off-trail to slide down to the bottom. Telemark skiing, apparently, does not let you recover, I was starting intervals a bit too high. Oh well.

I bid the Macalester skiers adieu and went to cool down on the Par 3 and in to the woods. It's funny, when we were doing the intervals I could have sworn that I could have charged up that hill forever, but once I slowed down and dressed up I just wanted to tool along nice and slow. Which was probably good. It had also gotten a bit colder with the clear skies and fresh snow, so I was content. The trail is in very excellent shape all around, and even without new snow should hold for great Loppet conditions. On the way out, the lakes looked good, and supposedly had several inches of snow plowed in to a nice base. Wirth is a gem, and it's as good as ever.

Como

2010-02-01T22:22:00.002-06:00

Como is generally very good. There are a couple icy sections, most notably at the bottom of the second downhill on the east side, but the new snow is generally binding well to the existing base. The snowboard hill was in decent shape for some tele turns, but would have been better with a bit more powdah. After 100k this weekend, 45 minutes was plenty.

Wirth night ski

2010-01-31T23:15:00.000-06:00

Needing to unwind, I went and strided around Wirth for an hour this evening. I took some night pictures (but haven't downloaded them yet). The classic track was solid and I was able to kick on some mid-temperature wax, although had I gone more than four kilometers it would have scratched right off. Still, with the full moon rising over the skyline on the Front 9, it was a gorgeous night.

An inch of snow

2010-01-31T17:01:00.001-06:00

I'm slowly working on the mid-winter "That was the winter that was" ("This is the winter that is"?) and, while we had an almost snow-free January (3.1 inches all month, so the snow is really surprisingly good) all the US models (GFS, NAM, NMM, ARW) have us getting at least an inch tomorrow—with some trending towards two or three. That would help considerably with the City of Lakes, negating, perhaps, some need for shoveling. As long as the lower levels of the atmosphere don't evaporate it all before it makes it down.

Hooray—I hope.

William O'Brien Race Report

2010-01-31T16:06:00.000-06:00

If you've been following along you may have noticed that I went skiing—lots—in the last couple of days. This is a good time of year to do volume, and with 2:00 on Friday and 2:40 on Sunday I am working up towards the long races which are upcoming in the next month. On Friday evening, I skied the whole City of Lakes course through the Bog, and then returned, which is, oh, about 29k, and yesterday I skied that much, and added on two extra loops of the first 8k—so about 45. Can anyone see where this is going?

Well, a couple good things. The course was gorgeous. I'd never skied William O'Brien before and was impressed. It is rather far away from the Cities, which is a shame—further than Woodland which is about as far as I drive just to go skiing for an hour or two—but it is just a splendid course. Lots of hills, up and down, great views across the Saint Croix to Wisconsin, a sweet bridge under the railroad, beautiful hardwood stands and prairie and the like. And the snow was in very good shape considering the weather recently—it was easily to edge and pretty fast, with maybe two uphill icy spots by the second lap and a couple squirrely downhills (especially as they got scraped off) but overall very good skiing.

Also, I totally hit the wax, kick and glide. Glide was pretty easy: moly and Fast Wax LF teal (no need for uber-flouros on cold, icy snow, although it wasn't that icy). And one of my skiers (Collin) came within a sprint (1 second) of winning). Kick was more of a guessing game. Since I didn't see the striders skis until the morning of the race (and then only after cajoling some keys to get in to the athletic facility), it was a race time decision. With the striders going out first. I told everyone to grab their bibs and got to waxing. On went the blow torch, and out came the klister.

I'd remembered reading something about Toko green base klister, and saw a tube. Huzzah! Then I grabbed some temperature-appropriate Swix and spread it on top. This was covered with a thin layer of something cold (some Toko blue, I think) and the skis were handed off with moments to spare. "If you don't like your kick, uh, put something else on" I said. He came fifth. (I could have won the 12.5k classic race. Damn.)

Me? Well, I went in thinking something like "if I feel good, I'll go hard. If not, 25k training day!" I started next to Katie Splan—a Mac professor—earlier one of the skiers had said "I think that's my biochem professor." She asked how I was feeling. I gave a non-commital answer. Results aren't out, but she may have beaten me. The field was huge—probably over 200—which many people said was the largest field in the 39 year history of the race. There were long lines to pick up numbers, but everyone who was paying attention (i.e. six out of the seven Macalester students there) made the start with ease. I was lined up in the third row—waxing had given me a late start—and with a narrow course, it would be a crazy start.

The gun went off, oh, four feet from me, and we started double poling. It would be a while before I skated. I fell in right behind a pack which formed ahead of me, but, well, didn't feel like going and catching it. I didn't want to kill myself early and bonk later in the race. Up and down a couple of the hills, a guy passed me and said "let's go get 'em!" I jumped behind—the big pack was still visible—and started gaining for the better part of a minute. And then, maybe four k in to the race, I had a bonk.

It wasn't a hard bonk—I didn't have that much gas in the tank to begin with. (The fact that Adam Swank won the Seeley Classic and won the 30k Boulder race the next week, well, is impressive. Of course, he is a beast.) But I stopped making up time. And within the next few kilometers, the folks I'd been skiing with and skied away from passed me. Whoops—I think I may have skied too much.

The other issue was the wind. In addition to 75k or skiing in the last 40 hours, there was a brisk northerly breeze blowing down the course, which I had not properly prepared for. Now, how do I say this? I was, uh, lacking mid-section protection. Let's see … boxers, long johns, shorts, spandex—not enough. But it wasn't brutal, which means I started to, uh, thaw out on every uphill, meaning that I got light-headed and nauseous (the body is well engineered to punish you for doing bad things like mis-dressing) and then refroze going down the next hill.

While most of the climbing was at the start of the race, the north-facing sections were near the end. I was skiing with a group—drafting a bit—and one skied off. The guy behind me said "do you want to go catch him?" Nope—I happily let him around. Yes, it was a 25k training race.

After diving through the wind at the lap—straight in to the wind—this became a common occurrence. Someone would get behind me, I'd let them pass (my skis were slow, I think they do need a stone grind). Going down a hill with about 6k left, I caught an edge (the hills were getting gnarly) and fell to the side of the trail. Once I was going down—knowing there were a couple folks behind me (I'd passed a couple of striders) I had a controlled skid off the trail. Having stopped, out of the wind, I was warm and happy. 6k to go, in to the wind.

I didn't get passed by many more folks during the rest of my ski. (It had ceased to be a race.) With about 3k left, I picked up the pace a bit—not that there was anyone nearby—and with an open kilometer in to the wind near the end, bit down on my tongue. The last hill was icy, but I made it down, and then, to prove I was still alive, put my head down and sprinted the last 300m—that's how I should have been skiing the rest of the time. Or maybe I just wanted to get the hell out of the wind.

We finished, I became happier, drank water, and decided that it was the least fun I'd had in a race in a while. The combination of the cold and the tired compounds, with interest, as the race goes on. Still, it was a lovely, sunny day in a beautiful park, and I can't complain too much. Results aren't up, but other than me, all the Macalester kids did well (and I don't really count) so that's sort of successful. Hopefully this will be my "bad race" for the year, and it'll only get better.

And, no, I won't be skiing 75k the two days before the City of Lakes next week.

Wirth, City of Lakes

2010-01-30T18:09:00.001-06:00

After last night's lovely trip around Minneapolis, I went back today for more. I rated the trails last night—by moonlight—"very good" and today saw that this was an underestimation. There are a couple icy spots and a couple dirty spots and, otherwise, 20+ kilometers of immaculately groomed ski trail. The lakes are icy (although Brownie is fine). If the Loppet were tomorrow, it would be a great race—although the lakes would be interesting. Let's hope for a couple inches of non-windblown snow.

I also brought along my camera—taking some longer exposures down some of the hills. Here are some fun pictures!

Wirth, City of Lakes

2010-01-29T20:41:00.000-06:00

I started at dusk in the stadium and skied, well, most of the COLL trail. The snowmaking section is outstanding—a jewel in our community, and groomed to perfection. The rest of that side of the Parkway is in good shape, with a couple icy and dirty sections, but it has survived the rain remarkably well. They've done some work, too, at one point plowing snow over what was at one point an icy section, and they were blowing snow on a portion, I assume to patch up the course.

The link down to the bridge isn't very snow yet (but it sure is icy as I walked down) but it should be fun to shoot down it and across the Parkway next week. The Front 9 is in good shape and has a solid classic track, a feature of the Back 9 as well. The machine was making its rounds when I skied through. The Connector is also in good shape, even under 55.

It was chilly by the time I hit Butler, but it's very good as well, even on some of the problem hills. Quaking Bog is a bit icier, but coverage is quite good. Feeling the chill, I didn't hit the lakes but headed back to the start, with the moon and city lighting my way. At one point I felt compelled to stop and soak it all in—the full moon rising over the skyline looming over the ski trail—what a glorious evening! Tomorrow, I bring a camera.

And next full moon is Birkie!

Battle Creek

2010-01-28T21:06:00.002-06:00

We probably should have gone to Wirth. The conditions at BC are decent, but deteriorating. It is showing that a) the base is thin and b) there is no pisten bully able to churn up the ice. The snow is clean, but rather icy. It could definitely use some snow.

After hearing that Wirth was very good, we went to Battle Creek mainly because the traffic through Mpls was rumored to be bad. It sounds like Wirth was better, but BC is still in skiable shape. The lighted loop is definitely showing wear and tear—there are a few more icy patches showing up, but with skis with a decent edge you can get a nice skate in. The classic track looks rather okay as well. It's by no means perfect, but it's pretty good for what we have. Two inches of snow and it would be superb. Still, it's definitely skiable.

Battle Creek

2010-01-27T20:39:00.001-06:00

It's pretty good, and they were regrooming.

A high school meet had skied the snow in to the trail and it was pretty hard; in a few sections it was demonstrably icier than yesterday. Still, the course was in very good shape and the groomer was out scratching it back up so it'll probably be better tomorrow.

Como on Monday, Battle Creek Tuesday

2010-01-26T19:33:00.000-06:00

Como on Monday was pretty atrocious. There wasn't much to deal with on the ground, with windblown snow across the ice. I wrote:

Had there been no wind, most of Como would have been in fine shape. As it was, there were sections with new snow and sections which were quite icy (especially the U-turns at the bottoms of the first couple of hills). In any case, it is marginally skiable, but not a whole lot of fun.

It really wasn't pleasant.

Tuesday, today, we went to Battle Creek, hoping that at least, according to earlier trail reports, the woods would be nice. But while we were there, the groomer was continuing to make rounds, and the skiing was surprisingly good. There were a couple icy spots, but on the whole trail I could count them on one hand, and none was on a downhill or somewhere else it would have been especially problematic. There were some powdery areas, too, especially in the woods, and the track which was being set was shallow but looked pretty solid. I skied the whole course on rock skis with no edges, but there are no thin spots so you could use better skis—with better edges—for best results. Still, there is good purchase nearly everywhere, and even the big hills out back are in fine shape if you are comfortable on them.

The only area which was not groomed was the flat section on the lighted loop back down on to the prairie (the LLBDOTP). The hill down was groomed, and the hill up had good coverage of new snow which was skied in. The bottom was in pretty rough shape—with a couple of brown spots—but the icy/windblown sections were a testament to the grooming. Great work grooming!

Where have I seen this before?

2010-01-23T14:54:00.000-06:00

December, 2007.

Yes, back then. Rain, warm (a day with a low of 31 and a high of 36) and a storm which surprised us by redeveloping coming back and, as someone said at the time, "hip-checking" Minnesota. Yes, it melted some and turned the base to mush, and then—four inches of new snow. December 21: mist and mid-30s (think yesterday). December 22: rain to snow, temperatures dropping, but no real accumulation (very icy roads, though). December 23: cold and getting colder, three inches of snow. Updraft discussed it back then (but only before, not during) and it occurred during a split pattern, like now. Parts of Wisconsin (Birkieland) got significantly more.

The current storm seems to be having similar ideas. The latest NAM is pushing it further west, which means that while we're all rain now, the line of heavier snow is just in to Wisconsin. But it's trending west. Fifty miles and we'll see six, not three, inches of snow.

We'll see.

Well, the rain could be worse: Theodore Wirth race report

2010-01-23T13:42:00.003-06:00

I took the Macalester team over to Wirth to ski the race this morning. 10k (I think it might be a bit short, but maybe not), lots of hills (18 of them in a 10k), none sustained, but a lot of climbing. The weather was, well, left some to be desired, but the rain was light during the race. I got bibs, warmed up a bit on the course, making sure to ski the new steep hill up to the top of the snowboard hill and then pretty much waited.

We watched the women's race with an umbrella and then got ready for the men's race, for which the rain was holding off pretty well. I was sort of warmed up and had sort of had enough to drink and, it's only a 10k, right? Just with a lot of hills. Yes, a lot of hills. Depending on how you count, six to ten per lap. I found a race map and started describing the course for some of the Mac racers: "Okay, so you go down flat, then down a hill, up a hill, down a big hill, up a steep hill, and then down a curving hill. There's a short flat section, then there's the long, gradual replacement for the widowmaker, and then a long downhill. Then you go up a hill, down a new hill [which it turns out was very soft since it hadn't been groomed when it was cold], up a hill, down a little hill and up a little hill and down a curving hill and up a little hill and then down a long hill. Then you go up a big, long hill, across a somewhat flat section, down the sledding hill and then up to the finish."

Got that?

It's a hilly course.

So I went out and felt okay, with Collin half a minute behind me and Anders Osthus, who I'd told Collin to stay with, fifteen seconds behind him. I powered up the steep hill and passed a couple guys on their second lap, went down, and got passed by Collin and Anders (yeah, he's fast; when I saw the Ski Hut suit I realized he probably skis with the rest of the Duluth crew), stayed with Collin for a while and let him go. One of my strengths—one of few—was that I knew the course well, so I knew to take the inside of the 180-downhill after what used to be the start of the Loppet. I took the inside and made it easily. He took the outside and took a dive. Whoops. And then it was down, up, down, up and start the second lap.

Ugh.

So I finished in about 31 minutes (Liebsch won in, oh, 22-something, which is why, with the slow snow, I think the course might be short) and had a cookie. It started raining harder right as I was getting in and decided I really didn't want to cool down and get soaked. Ugh. A bit more cheering and a poor excuse for cooling down, warm clothes inside and home. And whether we'll ski tomorrow, classic 15k in slush, is definitely up in the air.

But the course is pretty fun. It would have been nice to have nice snow, but we have what we have—and it was surprisingly good. There are no long hills; it's definitely a midwest course (if that makes any sense) but they've definitely thrown enough climbing in. The longest climbs are about 25m, which is okay, but they just keep coming. And it stayed pretty firm even after all the women had skied, so with good conditions … well, I guess this is a good warm-up for JOQs next year.

I ran the Gmap-Pedometer for this and computed the elevation—it's definitely not perfect, but it gives a decent approximation of the hills in the course. Someone's got to homologate it.

Como

2010-01-21T22:07:00.000-06:00

Como has good coverage and, while I heard that it was icy earlier, where it had been regroomed it was in pretty good shape. Even with my rock skis (which I didn't need—there were only a couple of dirty spots). So there's good coverage—which will hopefully last through the weekend.

What's less fun than rain?

2010-01-21T15:54:00.002-06:00

Rain and waxing. And that's what's in store for this weekend. Hooray?

Battle Creek

2010-01-20T20:28:00.008-06:00

Battle Creek is still in fine shape. I went no-poles tonight and had no issue with edging. Some of the way-back hills are getting pretty icy, but if I can make it down in the dark without poles, they're probably fine. Otherwise, it was a splendid, warm evening to ski. Many thanks to the groomers for their continued work.

Battle Creek

2010-01-19T22:20:00.000-06:00

Excellent. Collin and I did hill repeats on the prairie hill and, except for one burnout spot on the hill back down on to the prairie (for lack of a better name) the trail was in terrific shape. We didn't venture on to the back hills but everything else was superb.

Wirth

2010-01-18T20:13:00.000-06:00

Good—and better now that we threw snow on a bunch of portions.

I went to shovel at 3:00 this afternoon as the trails at Wirth, per my last report, could use some TLC. We hit the trails and shoveled the top of the hill by the houses, the bottom of that hill in the woods, and then headed over to the new little loop back by the maintenance shed. We threw a lot of snow on the lead-in to that section, which is now not dirty, but the outlet was in such bad shape that we left it to a Pisten Bully and/or a snow machine, hopefully. We then headed off the race course to patch up a dirty hill with a southern exposure in the woods which was particularly mulchy/dirty. Still, there is 8-10 inches of pretty dense snow on the golf course and in the woods, which makes shoveling much easier than it has been in years past when we patched up the course with two inches of slush.

When the sun went down, I made a loop of the trails to check them out and they were generally in fine skis (most of the earlier movement was done in one of the bins which we used to carry snow behind the sled, which nearly led to a couple of tree encounters). The "newly fallen" snow will need to be groomed out some, and for now is very soft, but hopefully it will set up well tonight. There are some scattered thin spots and it is quite firm, but fast and with an edge. I also skied the new loop up by the snowboard hill and it is Mount Itasca-steep—the climb and ensuing downhill will add a degree of difficulty to the race this weekend.

I wish I'd brought my camera as it was a gorgeous afternoon to spend outside.

Seeley Classic race report

2010-01-16T21:43:00.003-06:00

I've only skied it twice, but the Seeley Classic race, run entirely on the Birkie Trail system, is fast becoming one of my favorite races. The trail is great—almost perfect for striding—and the grooming is, of course, superb. The race always seems low-key—there's no busing and everyone hangs out at OO before and after the race—which belies that it is neck-and-neck with the Craftsbury Marathon as the largest classic-only race in the nation. And while Craftsbury is one of the largest events in the Northeast, the Seeley is just another weekend race in the Midwest. But for someone who rather likes the finesse of classic skiing, including plotzing about wax, it's a great time.

Transport up to Hayward was interesting. I have no issue with my car (despite what you may have heard on Cartalk) but, working for a car sharing organization I felt bad about my carbon footprint driving up a single occupancy vehicle. So I shot an email over to John Swain, who lives one neighborhood over, about carpooling. He was driving up with his folks, so I couldn't subject one of my free-housing folks near Birkieland to four people, but rather in a hotel. After some quick math I realized that the cost of a hotel room would be somewhere on the order of 25¢ per mile, so I wouldn't recoup the full cost in saved gas, but with maintenance I'd be close, and I wouldn't have to do all the driving myself, which is always a plus. Also, it would be more environmentally friendly.

I headed up to their house Friday afternoon and after a couple of false starts headed off to Seeley for bib pick-up. One of the perks of the Seeley is that you get a sweet hat with your entry ($55 for a race, a hat and a feed is not a bad deal, or as John's dad, Ed, pointed out, it shows what the mark-up on $30 retail hats is) so we wanted to make sure to pick it up before they ran out. Then it was off to the motel for some sleep, and while I didn't sleep particularly well I definitely caught enough zeds. Had I known about the hot tub I probably would have found some time in there.

As for waxing … I had glide wax on and was waiting on the kick along with everyone else. No one knew. They were setting the tracks and it was in the mid-20s, but temperatures were slated to rise from about 23 to 34 during the race. So we planned to go to bed early and go up early to wax test in order to try to hit it.

Breakfast at the hotel was decent (waffle, better than continental) and we made for the course. The parking lot was much larger and we got a space easily—they've expanded the lot considerably. Last year we got there with minutes to spare and had to park down OO and run to the course (our warm up). Of course, last year, in new snow, the waxing was super easy. This year was more difficult. We set up a wax bench, I scraped my glide, and we put on klister binder. A little Swix red/VR50 was tested. It was good, but slipped a little on the hill north of OO, and with warmer temperatures coming, we decided to put on a layer of VR55. We didn't hit it perfectly—I'm not sure anyone had perfect wax this year as many did last year—but we did pretty well.

With some time to spare, I was able to enjoy the scenery. The warmer air had mixed out the clouds rather well and the sky was bright blue. The clouds, however, had frosted the tops of all the trees with a rather thick layer of rime (which would later fall on us like snow) and they stood out, stunningly, against the sky. I wished that I had brought my camera. Perhaps I enjoyed the scenery too much because, as usual, I went running around before the race. I stapled two goos to the "belt" of my pants and went to take a pee, but one of the staples hadn't taken. With no time to grab the stapler (three minutes to start) I went and dug a divot next to the trail at 22k where it looped through the start and put the goo there, hoping to grab it later. There was a chance.

I jumped on my skis and we were off. The Birkie originally alternated direction every year until 1992, so the trail was designed to be skied in either direction, and skis well in either direction. The classic trail skis fine in either direction, but seems to have been designed with the current southward journey in mind, and it skis best going south. We were going north. And with a decent amount of elevation to lose (before the climbs to High Point) there were some fun corners—something you don't get on the Birkie Trail. None was too challenging, but there were definitely some times I used the whole trail. I stayed with the lead pack until it broke up (pretty quickly) and then jumped on the back of the second pack. There were about ten guys in it, but I couldn't quite muster the energy to stick with it, and by about 4k in I was skiing mostly on my own. Every so often I'd see someone (usually passing me—apparently I went out fast) and skied with people for a kilometer or two at times, but packs didn't form.

Here's the thing: skiers don't understand drafting. At all. A few of them seem to—when I saw the lead pack going north as I was going south (much later in the race) the top four guys were one behind the next—but most definitely do not. This means that if I got behind someone and drafted them, I'd not be expected to jump in front later on and take my turn. But this is ludicrous! Drafting is a really great way to conserve energy and, working together, you can go considerably faster. I took some nice rests behind people who were rather furiously double poling. And if I took a pull in front they'd either drop off or step in to the track next to me! Seriously, guys, drafting is really important.

A couple years ago at the Bear Chase I was with a couple guys who seemed to get this. They'd pull for a while and I'd sit in back and rest. When we saw someone ahead, I'd be rested and jump out in front to go catch that person. We probably caught three or four people in this fashion. Yet most skiers really seem averse to it. So if anyone reads this (does anyone) please draft more. Yes, someone may step on the back of your skis once in a while. But you'll go faster. There's a reason cyclists do it.

Anyway, I was feeling half decent and not wanting to kill myself on the climbs to Boedecker or OO. I saw my first woman when Jojo Winters passed me. I stayed with her (as did a couple other guys) for a while but, good gravy, technique and training showed when she schooled us up a striding hill. (She finished four minutes ahead of me, although she was the only woman to do so, so I got girled, but not girlsed, if that makes sense.)

I felt half-decent going in to OO after the hills, and remembered I had a good there. So I jumped in the right track and started looking for it in the snow. At 10 mph, it's kind of hard to see a three-inch-high packet sticking up. Nothing. Double pole. Nothing. Double pole. Nothing. Doub—OH THERE IT IS I'M ALMOST PAST IT. Brain make arm reach down and grab. Hand, grab. Eyes, look at hand. Is there a goo in it? No? "Damnit." Apparently I said that loud enough that John's mom heard me and retrieved the goo, which I'd look for later in the snow only to find it on the wax bench.

So I took the feed and planned my eating of the remaining goo: around the 31k marker, which I knew to be about 0.8 mostly-downhill kilometers before the Gravel Pit feed stop. That's enough time to get it out, get it open, eat it and then have some water/energy to wash it down. We rolled on to OO with me a trading places with a few folks—again, no one wanted to draft (ugh)—but at least I could see people so I had motivation to go fast. I took my goo and saw the leaders right around Gravel Pit, and then headed up that hill and down to the turnaround.

I forgot to take the Jaeger shot there (oh, yes, you read that right) and pretty quickly passed a guy in a gray suit I hadn't seen in a while. He seemed to be bonking. My next order of business involved two guys I could see in front of me: a guy in a New Moon suit called Paul and a guy in a Madnorski suit. Paul had passed me before OO but hadn't pulled away, and Madnorski had passed me more recently. I felt rather ducky and figured I had a chance to take both of them.

While Madnorski was closer to me, I actually caught Paul first. He seemed to be hitting the wall and I hadn't had a proper bonk (yay for lots of energy drink at feeds and a goo) and I strode by him and quickly lost him. So, now it was down to me and Madnorski. The tracks were still pretty good. For the first half—when I was in tracks that had only been skied in by a couple dozen skiers—the tracks were fast and firm, and I had bomber kick. In the southern 22k, the tracks were, well, less good. That's what happens when you let a few hundred skiers—not all of whom know "never herringbone on tracks unless the hill is seriously so steep no one could" so the hills were kind of trashed when they got at all steep. In addition, the sun and air were warmer, so they fell apart more easily. But my kick was still surprisingly good.

I also knew I hadn't bonked because I was able to turn up the dial without dying. I slowly chipped away at Madnorski's lead until I was about five seconds behind him. We descended down the 29k hill (as I know it) and my skis seemed slightly faster than his, so in an all-out sprint in to OO, which is downhill, I'd probably have a slight advantage. On a moderate uphill, I put the striding hammer down and got right up behind him. It was fast enough in the shade that I was catching him on any sort of down grade so I jumped in to the track next to him and for about two kilometers we were neck-and-neck.

There were two hills to go up before the finish, and the race—as it was between me and Madnorski—would hinge on these. Before the first one, I had jumped in to a slight lead by striding pretty well, and I went in to a fast-walk type of herringbone (a run herringbone is surprisingly hard) and glanced behind me at the top—Madnorski was gone. I got up to the next hill—the one up to the picnic table—and pushed pretty hard up that because, why not. Madnorski was nowhere to be seen. I felt pretty good—apparently I hadn't gone hard enough—and came in to the finish, where I immediately ate a few cookies and doughnut holes.

As for the results … I finished in 34th place in 2:29, which is okay (the winners finished in 2:03) as I was 20% back. Again, I probably could have gone faster. I was skiing with mostly elite wavers, but this finish would have probably put me near the cutoff in the Birkie again. I have to get faster. As for my age group, well, wow. The 25-29s ruled the top of this race. Apparently, if you are going to ski Seeley and are in your late 20s (yes, this is depressing to write this), you better be good. Of the top 16 finishers, 10 were 25-29. Of the top 36, 19—more than half!—were in the age group. After this, there were three more finishers. There were almost no 20-24s (five, if you include Scott Kyser who wasn't really racing) for a variety of reasons, such as collegiate racing and JOQs nearby.

But here's the thing: this does not mesh with other race results. For example, in the Birkie I was 29th in my age class (18-24), out of 218. Had I been a year older, my time would have been 43d out of 223. In the City of Lakes I was 6th out of about 45, and in the 25-29s I would have been 16th out of about 70. Based on the size of Seeley, I'd expect to be in the top 10 out of 25 or 30. But I was 18th out of 22.

So this seems rather bizarre. Why should this race have such a stacked field of 25-29s? I actually have a hypothesis: it's a classic race. Sadly, in my opinion, a lot of skiers have not skied enough classic in recent years. A lot of people go out and skate, but the ones of us who stride are all a bit more serious about racing do both. Now, anyone significantly older than us would have started racing in, potentially, the 1980s, and would have learned to race classic. And while most high school leagues still have classic skiing, a lot of recreational skiers turn mostly towards skating. So recreational racers would likely not show up to a marathon-length classic race. Serious racers, however, almost all ski classic. A lot of us like it. If you look at the top finishers in this race, there are a whole slew of people who I skied with (read: lost to) in college. Collegiate skiing makes for good classic racers. However, beyond about my level of racing—which is about the elite wave in the Birkie—no one skis classic anymore.

There's no way to know what the future will bring, but I'd guess that it will result in somewhat fewer classic skiers, but not much less competition. It also means that I'm not going to get an age class prize for a good long time.

Anyway, after the race John played on skis for a while (I had no problem standing out in the warm, sunny weather, and took a short cool down) and we headed down to Seeley around 2:00, ate lunch, I grabbed a beer and gabbed with Jim Crandall and Morrey (college coach's dad, college coach) and after John got his plate for being in young (24.something) we headed back to the cities. I explained how we were doing well by driving together (I explained that my carbon footprint was reduced from 1*car to 0.25*van and each of their personal carbon footprints was reduced from 0.33*van to 0.25*van. In gallons of gas, I went from 7.5 to 3.75, and they each went from 5 to 3.75. I ate well and now will sleep well. And live to race again. Skating. So I can beat some younger folks.

Theodore Wirth

2010-01-15T10:02:00.000-06:00

Wirth is in very good shape, although a couple sections are dirty and could use some TLC. As I arrived the snowmaking loop (all excellent except the new hill back towards the start, which is dirty) was being regroomed so there was no track set there, so I skied around towards the Par 3 and the woods and found a generally good track with a couple of dirty sections. The skate lane looked pretty solid, too. There were a couple dirty sections, but nothing major. 35 minutes was enough before Seeley tomorrow.

Battle Creek

2010-01-14T21:34:00.001-06:00

The trails at Battle Creek are still in fine shape. The skate lane is pretty well skated in, but rather soft with the warmer temperatures, and the classic track has been reset and looks very good. The back hills were pretty light with the clouds, although they are getting a little icy on the corners; I bit it trying to go to the outside of the last one when I skied—blindly—through some of the snow plowed up on the outside, but the landing was soft. It's great skiing and will hopefully hold up for some time to come.

As I was skiing up the prairie hill I saw someone skating up the steep downhill along the trees. I'm usually not one to question the practices of others, but it was pretty fast and that hill is rather blind, so this could be construed as dangerous. I caught up with him at the top of the hill and started to give him a lecture when he turned to me and said "you know me." "Oh, hi Steve!" He'd apparently never skied Battle Creek before so I gave him a pass, and we shot down the hill, threading through a group of skiers congregated on the level section of the middle of the hill—which was also fast.

The inversion

2010-01-14T10:37:00.000-06:00

The NWS points out that yesterday's evening temperature reading at 850mb (about 5000 feet) was 58 degrees (!) which was not only one of the highest readings ever during winter months but the highest of any balloon in the country. With our inversion, abundant snow cover in the direction of the surface winds and snow to reflect the sun's energy we topped out at all of 28 yesterday. And it doesn't look like the upper air will get that warm any time soon, so the chances of a major meltdown seem to be at bay.

Como and snow melting

2010-01-13T22:57:00.000-06:00

I hit up Como again for some intervals (double pole then V2 uphill) and all around skiing. The conditions are very good, but it could use a groom. Coverage is full. The issues are that pole plants are soft in places, that the skate lane is getting pretty well packed (although better with warmer weather) and that someone ran a truck across a couple portions of the Glacier, which really needs a regroom. Hopefully they can take the machine across it before the weather turns too warm. Tonight would seem to be a good night for it, hint, hint.

As far as the snow melt goes, I'm actually less concerned now than I was yesterday for two reasons. First, the models are happier. They've backed up the huge, tropical rain storm idea and now just have us hovering in the mid-30s for daytime highs with very little moisture for a week, and then cooling back down. It's not ideal, but it should only take a couple inches off of our base if it comes to pass. As I mentioned earlier, we've dodged a bullet by having had an inversion lock in cold temperatures at the surface; it's still +10˚C at 3000 feet but 20 at the surface, and it never got near freezing today despite some sunshine. It looks like that pattern should continue, with a bit of warm-up but nothing worse than a few hours at 34˚. With January sun, we can handle that.

Second, I went in to the archives and looked at times that 8 or more inches of snow has been on the ground in January (about 40% of the time). I could find no cases where more than 10" of snow had melted in December or January, and only a couple times when 8" had. Here are some interesting analogs to make me less scared that the snow will disappear (although when February comes around, with its stronger sun and warmer temperatures, anything is possible). I can't think of a good way to graphically show this so:

2008: 8" on Jan 3, subsequent days 30/14, 37/19, 41/32, 37/27, 34/22, 31/13, 35/29, no rain or snow, melted to 4"
2005: 7" on Jan 22 melted to 0, but that took until Feb 6 and required highs of 35, 44, 33, and then later 33/28, 25/29, 26/31, 42/27, 50/31, 51/35. That was the City of Lakes Meltdown. We have four more inches of snow and those were extraordinarily high temperatures in February. In addition, there was far less snowcover that year to our south and west.
1993: 9" on the 30th melted to 5 on February 3, but only after 39/12, 45/34, 42/24, 38/22, 38/20 with no other moisture.
1992: 8" of snow on the 1st, aided by 0.8 inches but also hit with about 1/3" of rain, stuck around despite a week with highs around 34 and lows only around 31 (yes, for the first five days of the year the high was 37 and the low was 31). The snow barely melted despite a couple more days in the upper 30s. This seems like a worser-case scenario for our current situation.
1991: 8" on the 31st melted to 0 with temperatures of 43/8, 48/15, 42/35, 46/32; we are not expecting these types of temperatures and the sun was two weeks higher in the sky.
1989: 8" melted to 0 over two-plus weeks (the 8th to the 25th) with highs of 35, 37, 33, 37 (this took it from 6 to 2; it had settled from 8 to 6 already … our snow pack is rather dense so there won't be much settling) and then meted with highs of 39, 40, 40 and 35.
1986 may be the best analog: 12" on the 9th melted to 8" by the 20th, with temperatures of 42/28, 34/27, 44/24, 40/14, 22/6, 25/14, 34/11, 38/21, 39/29, 35/27, 33/28, 34/31 with no rain or snow. This would not be a bad outcome for us.
1976 went from 9 to 7 with a day at 41 and the next at 35.
1974 is another good analog. After a cold start to the month, 8" of snow on the 14th melted to 6 wth days at 39/16, 38/12, 41/24, 33/24, 34/12.
1973 melted 8" to 4" with 38/9, 46/24, 44/24, 36/25.
1952 melted 10" on the 30th to 5" with 42/30, 38/24, 37/21.

The one issue is that moisture would be a major wild card. There are only a couple of instances of a lot of rain falling on a lot of snow in January, and, while they are both a very long time ago, neither actually killed the snow pack. In 1946 melted 10" on the 4th to 4" on the sixth with temperatures of 38/25, 36/33 and 33/25, with 0.6 inches of rain on the middle day. Back in 1902, a December storm brought 0.75" of rain (and 3" of snow) but only depleted the snow pack from 10" to 4" despite 35/17, 34/15, 36/34 (with the rain and wet snow) and 36/28.

So the gist of what I'm saying is that to melt more than 10 inches of snow would require weather so extreme that we've never seen it before. A run-of-the-mill January thaw may eat away at half our base, but to lose more than 8" of snow in January is historically unheard of. Now that the three-inches-of-rain-with-embedded-thunder storm has worked its way off the models, it looks like we'll have a week in the 30s. That we can deal with.

The latest model run has significantly cooler weather in the next week—if it verifies I'd be surprised if we hit freezing more than two days, and then two warmer storms—with some rain or perhaps a lot of wet snow—the week after. So, who knows. If I had to predict, I'd say we have 6" of snow on the ground at the end of the month, with good skiing at most Metro locations and great skiing in Elk River (they are starting with more and they keep snow so damn well).

Ski on.

I can only get to two trails at most, on a good day! Check out all the trail reports at skinnyski.com

What does it take to melt a foot of snow?

2010-01-13T11:59:00.002-06:00

This is a very pertinent question, given the current status of the weather. First of all, we are dodging a bullet for now, given the snow to our southwest and the massive inversion which kept temperatures yesterday in the teens and might keep us well below freezing most of today, even as temperatures aloft are well over 50 degrees! The chart below shows this; blue diagonal lines are temperatures gradients (in C) and the thick red line is the temperature at different levels of the atmosphere. Notice how it starts well below 0 but climbs, quickly, to above 10 (50F). (click the image to enlarge)

If it were going to be 50 for the next two weeks, well, bye bye snow. But it's not. According to the latest model run, the warmest air is in place right now through this afternoon—it's close to 60 (yes, 60 above) higher in the atmosphere, and it's probably 50-50 that it gets to freezing here at the surface today (the sky is still cloudy at 11:00 here in Saint Paul). And while it will remain rather warm for the next few weeks, this is by far the warmest day above, and by not mixing down those warm temperatures, we are really escaping the worst of it.

What happens beyond is a crapshoot. More sun would definitely aid in the depletion of the snow, as would more moisture. However, the models are being rather finicky on how much moisture is going to ride up in to the warm air. Last night, they were showing more than three inches of mostly-melted precipitation in the next two weeks. Now they are showing considerably less. And the most recent runs are showing a split flow with rather consistent temperatures topping our in the 30s for several days, but not skying towards 50 at any point (today would have been the day, but the inversion is helping us). And the temperatures, at least in the short term, should follow a nice diurnal pattern, so that lows will be around 18 around dawn, peak around freezing in the afternoon, and then fall off quickly. This is not a recipe for snow depth disaster.

In any case, back in December I ran the data to look at snow depth during the past 100 years in the Twin Cities. With the current situation, I am going to delve back in to that data and look at what it takes to melt snow in January. I'll look back to find Januaries with snow depths of at least 8 inches, and see what the weather was following. In other words, I want to know what it would take, weather-wise, to melt our base.

(Why just January? In January the sun is within a few degrees of the solstice, i.e. not very high. Come February and especially March, as the sun gets higher in the atmosphere its effect on snow melt increases dramatically, even if it is not reflected in the temperatures. Day lengths matter as well. Do data from past Februaries and Marches, when you can melt a foot of snow with two sunny, 50 degree days, is not particularly pertinent.)

23 megabytes of data have to be good for something, right?

Battle Creek

2010-01-12T22:33:00.000-06:00

Day one of the meltdown, thanks to a wicked inversion, wasn't too bad. Battle Creek was powdery with a good classic track, and would have been perfect save three very minor defects:

a) the corner at the bottom of the first hill off the lighted loop has some dirt. Stay left to avoid it.
2) the pole plants on the outside of the classic track are soft and break through in places.
d) the classic track is obliterated in a couple sections, most notably up the big hill off the prairie.

Other than asking skaters to please stay in the skate lanes, Battle Creek is great. Hopefully it will survive the melt.

As for the meltdown—the latest model runs give a slight bit of hope on a few fronts. First, the sun is still rather low in the sky, so even temperatures of 35—especially if they don't hit until 3 in the afternoon or so—won't do too much damage to the snow. Second, next weeks temperatures don't look to get much above freezing, so there could be a lot of 35˚ afternoons with 20˚ nights. Also, the storm which may be headed our way next week is all over the map, so it could wind up throwing down some snow. So there's something to do the snow dance for, anyway.

Como

2010-01-11T20:18:00.000-06:00

The trail was mostly unchanged from yesterday, although it hadn't been regroomed. It's firm and pretty fast but still has a good edge, and probably will continue as long as it gets warmer. Hopefully, it won't get too warm.

As for weather speculation … I'm not optimistic. We should survive the first warm-up fine. It's the second and third about which I am worried. It's all more than week out, so of course things can change. And I sincerely hope they do.

Como

2010-01-10T21:10:00.000-06:00

As good as it gets … Como was quite good today for some easy skating around as I (hopefully) reach the end of illness. The skate lane was firm and had a good edge, and the classic track looked mostly powdery and fast. There were a couple dirty sections and the usual off-camber stretches were off-camber, but except for some leaked fluid from the groomer, Como was as good as I've seen it.

Now I'm concerned

2010-01-09T23:19:00.002-06:00

The long-range GFS model that came out shows way too much warm air for my liking. Pretty please have it be wrong.

Murphy Hanrahan

2010-01-09T20:14:00.000-06:00

After a week of illness (it seems like more—but I haven't skied since Monday) I hit Murphy for some afternoon, above-zero fun. The trails are in very good shape—nothing thin to speak of, and the only complaints would be that it is groomed in a bit of a U-shape in places, and the classic track is skated out on some of the narrow hills (as might be expected). The hills were mostly powdery and fun, although as usual you'll want to know how to make high speed turns before trying them out.

On my way out, the Man was out citing those without trail passes.

Why I am not too, too concerned about the thaw next week

2010-01-08T19:01:00.000-06:00

That's a map of snow cover this morning. The gradients are 0-2 (brown), 2-4, 4-8, 8-16, 16-24 and 24+ (light purple). Look at the snow cover to our southwest. There's at least 16 inches from northwest Missouri to northwest South Dakota. There's at least 8 inches from northwest Arkansas to northwest Nebraska. So any warm air, coming from the southwest, will have to cross hundreds of miles of cold, deep snow pack, moderating it dramatically (melting is endothermic, too, which can cool the air just above the snow). In addition, moisture released form melting snow may build a deck of stratus clouds, muting the ability of the sun to heat the air. This is why, despite 1000-500 mb thicknesses of 552, the air temperatures are not forecast to rise much past freezing. And although we don't have the snowpack in the Twin Cities that they have over the Buffalo Ridge in Southwest Minnesota, the snow down there should help to protect us, to some degree, from a total meltdown.

I hope.

More locally, check out the latest snow depth maps from the U.

That's more than 30" of snow over some of Southwest Minnesota (and, yes, not even a foot here in the Twin Cities), where the warm will come from. That's way more than normal—in the 99th percentile. In recent years, we've often seen a lot of snow over Northeast Minnesota (and, more interestingly, the north has often fallen in to high percentiles, with the south in lower ones), with little down south—a steep gradient which is often exacerbated by warm air which blows over the snow-free areas and eats in to the first snow it finds. This year, the southwest has more snow than up north, which should be good for snow for everyone.

I hope.

In any case, we are entering a dreaded split-flow situation, which brings warm, dry air to the area. We can only hope it is short-lived and does not do much to our base, and good, cold, moist weather returns soon.

Sick

2010-01-07T17:37:00.000-06:00

Thank goodness I have a rollerboard in my basement. I have a nasty head cold and don't want to spend any time outside. Yes, I know there is fresh snow and great skiing. Hopefully I'll be able to enjoy it this weekend. And hopefully the snowcover (down to Missouri) will temper any warmer weather coming up next week.

Lebanon Hills

2010-01-04T21:47:00.001-06:00

After getting bumped, I hit Lebanon around sunset. The tracks are good and solid where they exist, but someone seems to have decided not to set tracks up the hills (?!) which is really frustrating when you are trying to stride up boilerplate. Coverage is quite good with some leaves in the tracks in places. It would be nice if the trails were straightened out a bit; some of the curves are really too tight to be conducive to skiing.

Waterville

2010-01-03T21:08:00.000-06:00

With snow falling in Boston, we headed north to ski on real hills. There were several options, although the best (reports of more than a foot in Vermont) was too far for a feasible day trip. We chose to head up to Waterville Valley in New Hampshire because there are big, long hills for striding (okay, that was the draw for me, my folks were interested in the nice trails and scenery).

The snow clearance in Massachusetts was impressive, especially for a Sunday morning. Five inches of snow, and phalanxes of half a dozen plows clearing the whole road shoulder to shoulder. It was good for snow clearing (better than Minnesota) but to pass the plows you had to hold your breath and thread the needle between two plows; staying behind them meant crawling along at 20 mph. The snow let up at the border and we hit the trails before noon.

I first skied up the Livermore Road—a ski trail in the winter—which is a 400 foot striding climb. With the new snow, the track was iffy, but the kick was decent. I came down that trail and, nearing the bottom, turned up the never-groomed but skied-in backcountry trail up to Greeley Ponds, which was surprisingly good. I was able to stride or double pole in the skied in tracks most of the 5k up to the ponds, although up top there was more snow and some big drifts where the wind blew the snow off the frozen ponds—fun to ski through 6 foot drifts (and there were only about 18 inches on the ground). I then turned around and zipped down to the parking lot, executing a couple tele turns at speed and not hitting anyone coming up.

After a well-deserved lunch, I hit up Tripoli Road, also a ski trail in winter, and a favorite haunt of Kris Freeman, who supposedly double poles up most of it. I was more in to striding, which would have been splendid but more new snow was shearing in the tracks. I did some repeats up the 700 vertical climb and then glided down in the snow content. And … it was 25˚ above zero.

Weston ski track

2010-01-02T22:16:00.000-06:00

Back in Boston for the New Year (after a trip to Chicago—running along the lakeshore is nice but a. they need a snow gun out along the lake and b) they need some hills) I ventured out to the ever-reliable Weston Ski Track. I did some technique with my dad and then some double poling in about four inches of new snow on top of the manmade base in some areas and the golf course in others. If there was a week to be out of the Cities, the weekend of -20 might be it (although the race at Battle Creek looked like fun times).

I went in and talked to the owners after skiing (I worked for them in high school) and found out that they've been making snow for 25 years, in very marginal conditions (although being on the Charles River gives them a good water supply, temperatures are quite warm). They can get their guns up and running quite fast, even for short windows of time, and can blow in a k of snow with only a couple of days of cold weather. Hopefully in two decades the Twin Cities snowmaking venues will be as good. (Of course, their Pisten Bully is broken right now and until they get a new one next week the piles of manmade snow are rather uneven.)

Tomorrow, off to Waterville Valley for all sorts of fun, especially a 500 vertical foot striding hill.