Does Birkie fever got you eager as a beaver? Listen here to get in the mood (feel free to put these on a continuous audio loop at work all week).
For most of us citizen skiers and master blasters, the season comes down to the Birkie. It is a crazy race that is unlike any other. It is big and important enough to get a story in the Washington Post - with one of the more perfect profiles of Ahvo that I have ever read :) It has an entire library of aforementioned Birkie songs (available on CD with your donation to the local public radio station).
Ari put a nice guide to the Birkie on his blog. He also has some good course profile info (in comparison to the Birkie office's profile).
The weather reports are starting to come out for race day. Sounds like the waxing should be pretty straight forward and conditions should be excellent! Birkie trail reports say that Hayward received 5-7" in this latest system. Don't know if it will be as fast as last year (which was course-record fast), but I am optimistic that it won't be a 50k grinder.
Anyone else still really confused as to why the official results go off of "chip time", which does not start until you cross the 300m mark from the start? So unless you think you will finish in the top 6, let that be one more reason why starting on the front line does not matter - and may even be a negative (since last year I out-sprinted people on main street, but they "beat" me in the official results). Makes for a weird race strategy. Not sure why they don't just put the timing wire at the start line. As I said, the Birkie is a race unlike any other!
FYI: Make sure you pick up your bib at the Middle School this year.
Oh, and Vakava Racing did wrap up our Minnesota Skinnyski Series Team Championship again this past weekend, even with Kathleen being our loan representative at the Finlandia - although she did win the race for good measure! (video evidence) Atta girl!
I have a theory on the chip line being at 300m. I wonder if the chip readers can read hundreds of chips at once. Maybe it's less likely to miss any if they read them once people have spread out a bit.
ReplyDeleteEver seen a major running marathon? The chip reader there has to deal with more people at once there. My theory is that the start line is too wide and 300m down the trail is narrower. Less to do with the number of people and more to do with the width of the reader. I still think they should just start the chips with the gun times for each wave.
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