Norway Birkie

SixinSixty©

Determination, fortitude, courage, and consistency

(Two Cross Country and four running marathons at 60)

Hi Folks:

I completed the Norway Birkebeiner with personnel best for a classic technique in XCski with a time of 4:50:49 on a 54km course wearing a 3kg pack. The significance of the pack is that it symbolizes a baby as part of the legendary story of two warriors saving the prince during a civil war in Norway over 900 years ago.

The biggest challenge of this race was founding the right grip wax for the race. The days before was one of experimenting with different grip waxes and it was until the day of the race that we got close to the right formula. We settled on using klyster for the warm snow conditions.

Before race day we prepared our glide wax for the next day. On race day we completed our final touches on the grip wax.

This race had a field of 20,000 skiers. I was placed in wave 16. Each wave had a 1000 skiers. This is amazing when you consider that the Canadian Birkebeiner has a total of 3000 skiers. At the start line I was still concerned that my grip wax is a little sticky and this would slow me down during the race. During the first 3km the skis where dragging. As I progressed on the course the grip improved as I began to negotiate the next 20km of hills.

The mid part of the course was open with no trees insight and it was a nice sunny day. As I continued the next 10km was slight downhill and this then changed to a slight uphill for the next 5km to reach the summit of the course. The remaining part of the course was downhill.

The downhill became quite a challenge with reaching speeds of 50km/hr. The memorable of the race was skiing in large troughs that were made by the skiers in front of me that had to snowplow. In one spot I could not break hard enough as I came up on skiers and I had go over a 2 foot snow brim at speeds of 30km to avoid a collision. I was relieved in my accomplishment. Only to realize I had to do it again about 5 minutes later. After the race I realized that this had strained my left ankle.

The last 5km was flat and tracks were worn. In addition the snow was slushy and the temperature of the day was warm.

I crossed the finish line finishing number two in my journey with the thought I only have 6 weeks to train for the Boston Marathon.

Norway Birkebeiner