It’s been a tough year for marathons. A virtual event just doesn’t have the same appeal as getting together with thousands of random strangers for a day of collective suffering. But one bright spot has emerged in the overall darkness of the pandemic in that I was able to ski a Birkie with my mom.
The Birkebeiner is the largest cross-country ski race in the United States. It takes place in late February and draws thousands of people from all over the world to the tiny town of Hayward, WI. I grew up in Spooner, WI, a short thirty minute ride down Highway 63.
Northern Wisconsin is a land of dirt roads, cornfields, and cows. Growing up, I might not have recognized that the world had more to offer were it not for the vast spectacle of that glorious ski race. I did my first Birkie at 19, and for the most part I haven’t looked back.
My mom started before I did. In a normal year, the Birkie would pass right by her childhood home, and she used to watch the pageantry of the skiers along with her dad. When she started practicing the sport, her dad took to waiting for her arrival outdoors.
One of her fondest memories was that of her dad approaching at the finish, giving her a big hug and gently saying, “I’m proud of you.”
Now it’s 30 years later, and my mom has done the event as many times and more. The Birkie was the inspiration for my first running marathon, and my mom has a dedicated circuit of 5k races she does throughout the year to stay in shape.
For those of us who have made a lifestyle around this event, signing up is not an option. The Birkie is the date around which the whole year pivots. You finish a race, hang up your skis, and wait for registration to open for next year. You gotta keep skiing.
The Birkie wasn’t foremost in our minds as the pandemic raged around us, but it was one of the things we thought about with sadness. It’s been a year of keeping your kids home from school and avoiding gatherings of any kind. We have to be mindful of people who are at a high risk. My mom falls into that category, but I was sure hopeful she’d be able to ski yet another Birkie.
The Birkie office is very forward thinking. In order to ensure the safety of their participants, they broke the race up into 5 days. The idea was to create smaller crowds and provide a safer event. Later, they launched the option of a virtual race. Skiers could ski anywhere they wanted and submit the results.
Much of the Birkie is the trail. It’s a glorious up and down pathway that winds through the great north woods. You’d be surprised at how rugged it is. The hills of the Birkie are unmatched on any other local ski system. It’s a magical place, like a little piece of Norway hidden in the Wisconsin wilderness, complete with magic and legend.
You can’t help but remember the people you’ve spent time with on the Birkie trail. Every hill and ever corner contains a memory. I’ve done the race 18 years, and the course is replete with ghosts now. I revisit my whole past as I travel from the start to the finish.
But this year the race wouldn’t be timed. We only had to ski 43 kilometers, less than the usual 50, and submit a record of our day. So, I elected to cover the distance with my mom.
She came down to visit me in Chippewa Falls, WI, and we drove out to the Tower Ridge Recreation area outside of Eau Claire. It was a cold Saturday morning with an overnight low of -15, but the forecast said we could expect a high of 24. The mercury was still hovering around 5 as we pulled into the parking lot and we were satisfied to see there were only three other cars.
I had brought with two Garmin watches and I gave one to my mom so that she could track her progress. I also showed her how to download Strava, and had it going on my phone as well. Finally, I had an android fitness watch. Triple redundancy is good, quintuple redundancy is better. At the end of the day, we would collect viable data from 3 of the 5 potential sources.
Image courtesy of Walter Rhein
Mom doesn’t know Tower Ridge like I do, so she was content to follow me. It’s one of those courses that has an intersection every couple of kilometers, and if you don’t know where you’re going, it’s easy to get turned around. I took her on the outer loop, and then dropped us down to the low point for a couple laps.
I’d get ahead and then ski back to see how she was doing. Mom’s tough. there’s not a lot of people who are 70+ who are willing to brave single digit temperatures for a marathon length ski.
We weren’t in any hurry and were content to proceed in stops and starts. As the sun rose, it got warmer just as we were starting to feel the fatigue of the effort. At 30 kilometers, I led us back to the parking lot and mom stopped a moment for something to eat. I did a few short laps to stay loose, and was up to 36 kilometers by the time she was ready to go again.
I was halfway concerned that my watch battery would die, so I wanted to make sure I got the requisite distance in before that happened. I’d had a bit of a health scare the week before, and the doctor had prescribed a stress test to make sure my heart wasn’t clogged. It was hard to believe that less than 7 days later, I’d be skiing a Birkie.
My mom too was feeling less potent than normal. She’d had her second COVID vaccine and it had leveled her. She said she felt it in her teeth, and that night she’d been struck with severe vomiting.
We had to remember that we were the lucky ones. We’d suffered only minor inconveniences from a virus that had devastated friends and family throughout the world. These are the things you reflect on as push yourself to exhaustion.
One of mom’s Birkie traditions is to make pumpkin cookies. As she was getting ready to go, she handed me a Tupperware container filled to overflowing. “Have some!”
My lifelong belief is that dieting goes out the window when you’re in the middle of a marathon. Those cookies were good.
I’d gotten my mom a battery powered heated vest, and she wore this now for the final 10 kilometers. Our pace slowed, and though she was wearing skate skis, she often switched to classical technique. She was tired as we pushed out the final kilometers.
I hit the required 43 kilometers at a random intersection and we celebrated. Mom still had another 8 to go. “You can go wait in the car,” she said.
“Naw, I’ll see you to the end.”
A few kilometers later, her hands were cold and she stopped to put some pocket warmers into her gloves. “My hands just aren’t getting warm,” she said. “Circulation isn’t what it used to be.”
Cold hands are no fun, but the pocket warmers did the trick.
I calculated the distance and brought us back on a loop towards the parking lot.
“What are you at?”
“42.”
“Okay, we’ll go half a click up this trail.”
The trick was to come close, but not go over. We did our loop and came back. She was at 42.9 so we skied in circles until she had her distance. She ended up with 43.07, I was at 51.
“I’ve always wanted to ski a Birkie with you,” she said.
“Well, now you’ve done it,” I replied, “and I’m proud of you.”
It’s been a long year of worry for the people we care about and doing our best to make things seem normal even though it’s all so radically different. My mom’s been doing the American Birkebeiner for as long as I can remember. Not too many people can finish that event in their 70s, but I don’t think she’s ready to hang ’em up yet.
2021 is a race I’ll remember. We were absent from the people and the trail, but I skied it with my mom, and that made it feel like a Birkie.
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This post was previously published on A Parent Is Born.
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Photo credit: Walter Rhein
