The Classic Birkie, by the Numbers

With the biggest race of the midwest ski season approaching, I thought it would be a good time to take an analytical look at the classic version of the event. This blog post is ultimately about a stats project I’ve been working on that quantifies and visualizes past men’s classic Birkie results. However, I feel like I first need to give some context by telling my Birkie story and what led me to starting this project. 

The classic Birkie instantly became my favorite race after skiing it for the first time in 2014 as a freshman in college, finishing in 308th place. The following year, instead of making goals focused on getting good results in college races, I was dreaming of finishing in the top 100 of the classic Birkie. This dream came true as I surprised myself with a 19th place finish that year. However, with NCAA regionals being held on the same weekend as the Birkie my junior year and the Birkie being canceled my senior year (2017), 19th place was the high point of my Birkie performances in college. 

On course during my second Birkie in 2015

After college, I struggled to find motivation and consistency in my training. I skipped the 2018 Birkie, then finished 102nd in 2019 and 447th in 2020. I then skipped the race for two years in a row while doing very little skiing in general. I had lost motivation and any thought of improving on my previous best of 19th was long gone. However, in 2022 I started pharmacy school and moved to Duluth. The new environment gave me an unexpected new motivation to start training and racing again. As I approached that year’s Birkie I was hopeful, but unsure of how this new motivation would impact my finish. Starting in wave 2, I skied most of the race by myself and felt the best I had on skis in a long time. After finishing I quickly found out I beat my previous best from 8 years prior, finishing in 9th place. This inspired me to train even harder the following year and I went into the 2024 Birkie looking to improve again. However, due to a strong men's field and a short, looped course, the competition was difficult and I ultimately came in 9th place again.

Finish line of the 2024 looped course Birkie

That brings me to the reason for this post. As I was nearing my thirties with two of my best ever ski race results in the books it was obvious to me that I wouldn’t keep improving forever. Being honest with myself I knew that if I didn't have a goal to chase that made me feel like I was building towards something new I might find it difficult to motivate myself and stay active in the sport.
So what could I do to make sure I had something to motivate me in the next few decades while I inevitably slow down? I thought I could set a goal to be the most consistent Birkie skier I could be over multiple years. But how would I measure consistency? I ended up looking to another area of cross country skiing that uses a points system to score and rank athletes over a series of races: the World Cup Overall Crystal Globe. In short, athletes on the World Cup get 100 points for winning a race and 1 point for finishing in 50th place. Here’s a full breakdown: 

World Cup Scoring Points by Position 

I realized that if this same scoring system was applied to each edition of the Birkie we would get a pretty good sense of which skiers were performing the best year after year. I recorded the results and corresponding points for the top 50 skiers from each classic Birkie since 2008, when separate skate and classic races were first held. After tallying up the points I ended up with graphs showing who the most consistent skiers have been and how their results have trended over the years. With this data I could both appreciate great Birkie performances in a new light as well as motivate myself to reach for longterm goals in the future. For the following graph I selected the 10 male skiers who have had the most cumulative points based on my scoring system, and plotted how they earned those points over each edition of the classic Birkie.

With Murray Carter ranking in first, different skiers in the top 10 show various career trajectories

As you can see, some skiers have been putting in consistent performances since 2008, racking up points every year. Others have had long gaps between performances and others still had stopped scoring altogether at a certain point. Of note, when we see a skier stop earning points it's impossible to tell from the graph alone whether they're simply not finishing in the top 50, have decided to race the skate Birkie instead, or have given up skiing entirely.

Next, I thought it would be interesting to see if there was an age where top skiers tend to become less competitive. I used age data from Birkie results to look at how the best skiers have performed over various ages. The following graph shows the same top scoring skiers as the previous graph, but plots them by the age they were as they accumulated points over their careers.

Skiers showing that it's possible to be competitive across a large age range

This shows there are some skiers finishing consistently in the top 50 well into their 50s, as well as one or two stand out skiers who started having top results right away as teenagers and continued into their twenties. As impressive as it is to see someone get good results into their 50s, I realized I was missing some equally stand out performances from older skiers who might not be racking up top 50 performances. Because of that, I went back and looked at the best performance for every age, up to 86 years old, which is the oldest male finisher I found in all editions since 2008. 

Best performance by finishing position for every age

For instances where multiple people of the same age had equal results in different editions of the race, I listed the result from the earlier edition. To get a better visual of how best-ever-performances change across ages I converted the table above into the following graphs:

We see there are quite competitive results from skiers in their 70s still finishing in the top 250 skiers at times, with some more variability in best-ever performances for skiers in their late 70s and 80s. 

After looking at all of these different ways of measuring and visualizing consistency, I’ve personally found greater motivation to keep competing while having something to aspire to. If you’ve stuck with me through this post I hope you’ve found a small piece of inspiration too. 

If you want to see my full google sheet including a few additional graphs and tables feel free to take a look here: 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1lbQpML62-7OW1xqAYoPgbj_BnQBKOAc0FQstrgcAXPw/edit?usp=sharing

If you have any feedback, questions, ideas, or anything else you want to let me know related to the classic Birkie or skiing in general feel free to reach me by email at leif.a.hanson@gmail.com

2026 Mora Vasaloppet

 The Mora Vasaloppet Part 1: Saturday Skate Races

The Mora Vasaloppet is a favorite amongst the Vakava skiers, likely because it is a relatively short drive away and because team member Paul is one of the snow farmers. Saturdays skate races didn't draw as many Vakava skiers as usual though, because the Tour de Finn points race was the classic marathon on Sunday.

Andy Schakel led the charge in 8th in the 51 km skate with McEwan in 17th, and Abe 36th while Steph Lewis pulled off a big 2nd place in the women's field!!! For the men in the 34 km skate, Paul Olsen was 5th, followed closely behind by Nate Porath in 6th, Haakon Sigurslid in 8th, Artie Huber 15th, Hans Harlane 27th, Chris Jopp 28th, and Mark Ahlers 35th. And for the women Elena Cattaneo finished 6th and Mary Beth Tuttle 10th. 

Steph racing to 2nd place.

This photo features Haakon with Nate just in front and Paul behind.

 The Mora Vasaloppet Part 2: Sunday Classic Races

I assumed Sunday's races would be quite competitive owing to the Tour de Finn points in the long classic. Given the more competitive field, I lined up in the fourth row. I'd scouted the hill onto the lake and decided I wanted to be on the left side, outside the tracks, as there was a notable pinch point over on the right when some tracks ended. This mostly served me well although my sprint double pole isn't very strong. Erik started just ahead of me and I couldn't keep up to him on Main Street.

As we made our way down to the lake, on one of the longest glide out hills on course, I noted that my skis were running well. I wasn't too far behind Laura (not in the tracks) or Gabby (in the tracks) on the lake. I tried to pole hard on the lake, also outside the tracks, but couldn't quite keep up. As we came off the lake, there was compression in the tracks and suddenly Erik was right in front of me. My kick wasn't great. I had gone too conservative and finally added a couple layers of SWIX 55 which was OK in testing but I was hoping for a bit more so added a tad of START Purple Oslo which didn't give me anything but at least wasn't catching. I stayed right behind Erik in the tracks up the hill leading off the lake but Laura gained on us along with teammate Ben. 

I kept telling Erik to "go, go, go" hoping to catch the pack ahead of us. We got boxed in for a bit after leaving the Nordic Center and then they were just too far ahead. At the first aid station I pulled in front of Erik and was leading through a few twists and turns. My skis were faster than Erik's. But then as we neared the bump north of the Nordic Center for the first time, Erik pulled ahead along with another guy and two women - one in the short race and one in the long race. I tried to ski on their pack but they got a gap on me that I couldn't make up. 

We hit some dirtier snow on the far northeast part of the course and then were onto the hills in the northwest part of the course. Unfortunately my kick was pretty bad. Unlike previous years, I was glad to not have the drops down to the lake with tight corners. There were still a couple downhill corners though where I would have preferred that the tracks were pulled up. I seemed to be gaining on Erik but when we started heading south again, he was stronger in the double pole. Here Margie passed me and I just couldn't keep up with her as she slowly built a lead on me. She had good kick, too.   

I pressed on, trying to ski hard and keep Erik in sight. I suspect the southwest area of the course hadn't been groomed much because parts of it were like skiing in sand. The course was starting to feel a little janky - perhaps too many turns for classic skiing and not enough pulling up tracks to really turn smoothly around them with the marathon skate technique. Before long though we were back around by the Nordic Center and then out on Mora Lake for a loop around the northwest bay before repeating the course for a second time. 

As we came off the lake, I was making good time on the woman who had passed me when Erik did. I recognized her as the 2nd place finisher in the Alley Loop from two years previous. I soon passed her as we went by the Nordic Center. As we looped around, I saw my former teammate Sarah Widder was not far behind me. I don't really like head-to-head racing so kept trying to move fast so she wouldn't catch me but she was close.

A few more kilometers went by, back through the dirty area (told myself it was dirty for everyone), and then back through the hilly northwest section. Snow-plowed on two downhills a tad, the second because there was a crash ahead of me. I appeared to be gaining on Erik but as we turned south on the flats, he surged ahead. And that's where Sarah passed me, in exactly the same place as Margie had a lap prior. I really didn't know how many women were ahead of me but Sarah is my age, so hence, that's a horsee.

Anyway, I haven't been feeling very mentally sharp in my racing this year (certainly not terrible but lacking that extra fight) and Sarah easily got away from me. After a couple more kilometers, my arms were getting tired. I made a comment about the sand as I lapped a woman and got a laugh - I think that was my highlight from the race. There were some gradual uphills that I tried to stride to give my arms a break and reset but my kick was bad so I really had to stand upright and couldn't glide them out so it was back to the double pole. As we skied back across the lake, up Bell Tower Hill, and down Main Street, I really lacked a top gear. 

In the end, Erik bested me by 1 minute and 5 seconds and Sarah by 47 seconds. I always want more, yet should be happy with 5th place and 2nd in my age class (we went 4th, 5th, and 6th in the 35-44 age class). 

Vakava finish-line photo; although in the endless "not good enough" narrative, I finished a minute too slow to make the cut. There were obviously some others (slower and faster) missing as well.

 

Overall, it was an impressive classic showing for Vakava and a good dual between the Juniorits and Seniorits, although us Seniorits got schooled again. Gabby won the women's race with Laura close behind in 2nd for the Juniorit women while Sam Shaheen, Josh Albrecht, and Leif Hanson went 10th-12th for the Juniorit men. I was 5th, Eva Reinicke 11th, and Maria Schilling 17th for the Seniorit women with Craig Cardinal 14th, Brock Lundberg 17th, and Artie Huber 28th to round out the scoring for the Seniorit men. Ian Wright finished 15th but his score didn't count for the Juniorits as only the top 3 from each team count. Similarly, Ben Mullin finished 39th and Erik Pieh 41st for the Seniorits but were also not team scored. For the Vakava skiers neither on the Juniorits or Seniorits, Zach Pannkuk finished 30th and Dave Folland 49th. 

Photo re-do with a bunch of horsees.

Alas, following Mora, Vakava Juniorits pulled ahead of the TCSC Icy Insurgents with a narrow margin of 74.38 points while the Seniorits keep a firm hold on third. 

 

 

2026 Mount Ashwabay Summit Race (and other Tour de Finn races/notes)

Not that I was planning on doing the Noque, but when I saw the predicted temps, I sure was glad I wasn't. Ben provided a nice recap of the race so I won't belabor, only to say that Brock told me he had good kick without any sticky wax and Laura said she raced in her warm-ups and every underlayer she had brought. There was a good showing from the Juniorit Team at the Noque with only Brock and Ben representing us Seniorits; hence, those whippersnappers took some revenge on us geezers after the Riverview Loppet to surpass us by 4 points when the updated standings came out. 

 Mount Ashwabay Summit Ski Race 30 km Classic

This was my first time skiing and racing at Mount Ashwabay. It's always a treat to ski somewhere new, especially in the midwest. A bunch of Vakars had done the race last year and the guys said it was "surprinsingly double-poleable." Great, I love double poling, but coming from double pole specialists, I suspected I'd be doing more striding. The course was two 15 km laps with each lap cresting to the summit and back down again. 

The Mount Ashwabay race course. 2 loops for 30 km.

After having the best kick of my life at our Wednesday night Vakava Battle Creek practice, I showed up to Mount Ashwabay with Swix 40 on my skis and thought that would be good but my kick sucked. I added a layer of 45 but it still wasn't very good. I was hesitant to add more since I'd heard this was a double pole race. It also was kind of warm. My Garmin said it was 14 ℉. Not exactly balmy but after the recent arctic blast, I had to keep shedding layers.

There was a sizeable field to line up at a relatively narrow start, likely because this was THE Tour de Finn race at Mount Ashwabay. I tried to ski narrow and not get my poles broken. Fortunately after a couple hundred meters the congestion died away to a couple skiers wide. I was going hard, hard, hard, but couldn't quite catch a big pack of women ahead of me. Then my teammates Adrienne and Bonnie passed me. I kept yo-yoing with Bonnie but once we began climbing after the lowest point on the course, Bonnie was mostly ahead of me.  

After a flatter section, we climbed in earnest. My kick wasn't good enough to stay in the tracks so I got out and ran/shuffled. Bonnie left me in the dust and by the top of the climb, my lungs and quads burned. I could never remember so much discomfort in my quads classic skiing previously. And I dreaded doing this climb again. The course briefly flattened before making a second, slightly shorter, push to the top. 

This Mount Ashwabay course profile doesn't look terribly impressive, but it did make for about 1,000 feet of climbing over the 30 km race. I think the 200 feet of climbing from the course low point to where it flattened out from about 2 to 5 km in the first lap and 17 to 20 km in the second lap, really wore me down. Perhaps had my kick been a bit better I could have rallied over that 3 km stretch.

 

Then the course really did flatten out but there was still some false flats and overall the snow was slow. I was passing a bunch of racers who had started before me in different races. Soon we were at the final summit and then going back downhill. The trail was gradual enough that the descent wasn't at all scary but the initial hill was quite long in the tuck position. There was another flatter section that I tried to push and then one final downhill. Here Allie and then Molly skied by me. I made myself ski with those two as we started out on the second lap.  

We reeled back in Bonnie, but then Allie got away. She had some good kick on her skis. Molly was more in my boat with the kick and I was able to ski with her as we exchanged leads a couple times. I wasn't looking forward to the big uphill, although I think the slightly flatter but steady climbing was worse for me. I just tucked in behind Molly for some shuffling up the big hill until I was losing too much energy staying in the tracks and then got out and ran. I pulled ahead of Molly here, and on the second steeper uphill section and then we were on to mostly double poling.

Molly passed me as we descended from the summit. I was skiing right behind her but as we came to the flatter section between the two downhill segments, Molly surged with her double pole and I had no response. From here it was just a few minutes down to the finish. 

I have to admit that I had some higher hopes for this race, it being a classic race afterall. It was quite competitive though. Molly is a good skier and if I was able to ski with her for the second lap until she gradually pulled away from me to beat me by 25 seconds, that's not too bad. I think there were a couple things that made this race hard for me: the gradual 200 foot climb from 2 to 5 km, not having very good kick, and I was punching through a lot with my pole baskets and I'm starting to think I need to get some slightly bigger baskets on my poles.  

 Here's to hoping Mora goes a bit better.... 

Vakava crew at the 2026 Mount Ashwabay race. Lots of pie servers (age class and 2nd and 3rd overall prizes) and one pie (for the win).

 And in terms of the Vakava Seniorits, Craig finished 7th and Erik 17th for the men while Adrienne led the charge for the women with a 3rd place finish. I was 9th and Eva 19th. BUT those Juniorits fielded an almost full team led by Laura winning the women's race, Elena in 6th and Bonnie in 11th. For the Juniorit men, Josh crushed in 3rd followed by Ian in 11th. And for the Vakava skiers who didn't score any team points on the day: Haakon finished 10th and Dave 26th in the 30 km classic, and Mary Beth 2nd and Mark 18th in the 30 km skate.

The City of Lakes Loppet Marathon

With age comes wisdom and so many of us Seniorits either took the weekend off or, myself included, stayed near Mount Ashwabay to ski there another day. But the young guns returned to the city and man-made snow to race some loops and whoop up on us old farts. Gabby took 4th place, Steph 6th, and Laura 9th so Elena's 13th place wasn't even scored in the team competition. For the Juniorit men, Sam was 15th, McEwan 42nd, and Ian 44th to collect some nice points. Brock was the lone Seniorit representative, finishing 108th.

 

 

 So, while the Juniorits led us Seniorits by 4 points coming into this weekend, they now have a staggering 572.18 point gap on us. Perhaps those youngins will run out of steam as the series continues. For now, we'll take solace in a margin over Yamageddon. Meanwhile, the TCSC Icy Insurgents continue their commanding lead. Stay tuned to see if Vakava can melt the ice before the 2026 Tour de Finn wraps up in early March. 

Noquemanon 2026

 Time to pull some of my weight around the Vakava blog.  Elspeth has been holding down the fort almost solo for quite a while.  My last post was after my 10th Birkie back in 2023.  Yikes.

We will dive in for a classic Ben style race report.

Brief Update

So while we probably don't need to get into everything that has happened since the 2023 Birkie, a little context will help set the stage for the race report itself.

Training Update

My year has really been built around skiing.  Usually I have a rolling list of stupid events I sign up for that keep me training for something.  This past year, as I was thinking about possible summer or fall events nothing was really scratching any itch.  DaMN?  Nah.  Marji?  Nah.  Some running event?  Nah.

So instead I've had a fairly singular focus on the 2025/2026 ski season.  I signed up for some coaching above and beyond Vakava, and have been training long and hard all summer and fall.  In the ten months since April I have more hours than I have had for any 12 month April-Mar stretch in my training records.  More roller skiing, more strength, more long workouts, more intervals.  Pretty much just more.

So when I say I'm a bit nervous about the race season its because I have almost 500 hours invested in this season and I hope it pays off.

Season Plan

The other new thing for the year is a focus on classic skiing.  I spent a number of years of wanting to like classic skiing but always feeling like I kinda sucked.  I was always hunting for kick thinking it was just my technique.  It couldn't possibly be the skis right?  Well last year I finally sprung for some sweet new Atomic C9's from Finn Sisu.  Turns out I don't suck.  Well, it isn't just me anyhow.  Those new skis have given me a new love of classic skiing.

So this year for my 13th Birkie I'm jumping into the classic race!  In fact, I'm only doing a whopping 20km of skate racing all year and everything else is classic, culminating in the Ski North Ultra 100k.

Noque Specific Preamble

Did anyone notice it was cold recently?  I did the Noque in 2019 when it was also -15F at the start.  So I was fairly confident that they were going to hold the race even though the temps were pretty consistently looking frigid.  They cancelled the Junior and Adaptive races on Friday, and pushed the 50km start back an hour on Saturday, but otherwise it was all systems go.

But let me tell you, I was glad to be doing classic this time instead of skating.  Those skis in 2019 felt like they had kick so I might as well be able to use that.

Race Report

Alright, if I want to get this out we need to tighten this up a bit.  More bullet points, less rambling prose.

Pre-Start to Deer Lake

• Stayed in the elementary school until about 10 minutes to the start
• Dashed outside, chucked the bag in the truck, put the skis on the snow, went 100m up the trail, said "yup, got kick", rolled up to the start line
• Started about 3rd or 4th row
• Flailed like mad as folks swept past me on the first downhill
• Grunted up the first big climb with my hr well into L4
• Tried to tag onto the end of a group hoping things would settle down
• Lost contact and stepped out to let Laura go catch the group
• Left Al Quaal out into the wilderness quickly finding myself basically alone
• Desperately trying to bring my HR back into a zone I thought I could sustain for 3.5+ hours
• Take my first drink from my bottle that had near boiling water in it about 15 minutes before the start and almost burn my mouth
• Crossing Deer Lake I could still see people ahead so I wasn't COMPLETELY alone

Deer Lake to Dead River Basin

• That headwall off of Deer Lake 😲
• Finally feeling like I am settling into something and people might be coming back to me a little bit
• Catch up to Brock on a steep climb after some power lines.  He is doing some striding on his double pole skis with no kick wax... ouch
• Catch up to Mike and Ketzel
• Ketzel pulls three 40+ Vakava dudes for a couple of km
• Sun is shining and snow everywhere so it is beautiful
• Grooming suddenly changes and I'm no longer fighting for every cm of trail, skis actually seem fast relative to others now.  Dramatic and very noticeable change.
• Ketzel gives me a turn on the front and I feel good but notice I'm probably going harder than I should
• The thought of the climb off Dead River up to the high point and the massive implosion I had there the last time I raced is looming in my mind
• Aid station, supplement my bottle with a drink of something
• Lose Mike who forgot his bottle in the car in Marquette and he takes on more fuel
• Quickly find myself crossing Dead River and ready to hit the big climb

Dead River Basin to Forestville

• Tom Woody and Ketzel climb like goats and disappear up the hill
• Share the whole climb with Brock
• Absolutely loving the views.  Blue skies, DEEP snow next to the trail, nice grooming, beautiful trees...
• Think I'm almost to the top starting about half way up the climb
• Finally make the top, not feeeling completely blown, a little crampy twinge in a quad though
• Long glide down to 510, through the start of the 24km, and into the Mead Hills area
• Rip past Tom on that downhill, he wants to trade skis
• Tom passes me back on the climb up Mead Hills
• Rip past him again on the way down
• Catch back up to Ketzel
• Start passing some of the 24km skiers, passing is HARD, the tracks are faster than the skate deck
• Some 24km skier won't stop skiing on my tails
• About 15km to go Brock decided it was time to race and absolutely rockets off the front and disappears
• Ketzel climbs better than I do, but I can usually catch up on the downhills or flat sections
• Starting to get other cramp twinges.  First the right lat.  Then the left tricep.  Only one sharp twinge.
• Go through FV trailhead... only 9km to go... not dead yet... bottle is empty though and I definitely should have been taking some gels

Forestville to Marquette

• Definitely getting a little bonky, but in my haze don't do anything to fix it
• Mitchell from the 50k skate passes looking like a boss... only skater to pass me
• Ketzel breaks the elastic and slowly gets out of sight
• Just... need... to... make... it... to... Marquette
• Get through River Park
• Just the last 1-2km of flat straight run into the dome
• All alone so not much to keep the pace going
• Finish and go lay on the floor in the dome hoping I don't have full body cramps for someone to video and send to Artie

Strava Flyby comparison on my race with Ketzel

Conclusion

I'm mostly pleased with how things went.  Think I need to evaluate my ski selection/grind for COLD races.  I think I gave away both some time and energy in that first 45 minutes.  Definitely need to fuel more.  So that is actually a positive and negative.  Seems like all of my training has made me a little more durable for going HARD and fighting through the bonk, but definitely not happy with the execution as that is just a mental lapse.

In the end I walked away with a age group win and a solid marathon race under my belt.

Vakava overall had a solid day with a bunch of age group hardware and Laura was 3rd female.