Congrats on great Birkies, everyone!

I see that our RSN and Team NSR skiers all did just jim-dandy in the
Birkie today. Congrats!

Man, the winning Italian came in a minute off the front. Wow. Ivan
only managed the tail end of the first pack.

I note that a couple top women were also Italian, with 1st lady in
2:15. Whoa...that's an overall winning time for LP Michigan marathons.
I recall noting maybe one LP Michigan name ahead of her.

Young Anikin is doing fine.

FrontRunner just nipped the first classic finisher, Mike "Baybee" Myers
, 2:26.

It was cool to see several women finish near each other at around the
200th level, at 2:31.

Now, Dell Todd keeps moving on up, it seems to me, 2:36, up above most
LP Michiganders.
Neat to see some old dog LPers still put in a good race---Chris
Weingartz seems to be midpacking often these days, but he had a fine
Birkie it looks like to me.
Jay T is hanging in there, beating all kinds of people who dared to
slack off on their training.

Telewhack seems to be moving up, but possibly he suffered.

Whoa, I see that 7th overall, Mike Lewis of St. Paul, had bib#2444. Uh,
isn't that Wave 2?

Well, that's a super result. But at some point isn't there a situation
going on of: if you move up enough and catch a very fast train, then
you finish 5 or 10 minutes up on that train? --Due to the time delay of
Wave 2. Is that how that would work?

A friend of mine mentioned that there might be a similar concern of
timing chips if they started when you crossed the start line. I gather
that chips should always be set to start at one time. Otherwise a guy
who starts at the back of the pack gets a free minute on whatever lead
train he can grab on to.

hoping for some race reports????
WENNER? good race...
snow slow at start?
warm up much during the race?
Lots of people waxed wrong is my guess.... (waxed too warm that is... Wed.
forecast said 32deg F !!)
let's hear ur stories birkie racers...
JK

On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 wrote:

Whoa, I see that 7th overall, Mike Lewis of St. Paul, had bib#2444. Uh,
isn't that Wave 2?

No longer. I assume that was a timing error. He's now at 510th place,
2:48. Not bad, and I'd guess he'll move up to first wave next year,
unless they really do make the first and second waves much smaller (as
they suggested they might).
-Ken


************************************************** *********
Kenneth Salzberg
Hamline University
School of Law (651) 523-2354
1536 Hewitt Ave.
Sisu Skier - 50K Club St. Paul, MN 55104
************************************************** ****************

Start time of the wave, finish time off the chip. No mat underneath the
start.

wrote:

Whoa, I see that 7th overall, Mike Lewis of St. Paul, had bib#2444. Uh,
isn't that Wave 2?

Well, that's a super result. But at some point isn't there a situation
going on of: if you move up enough and catch a very fast train, then
you finish 5 or 10 minutes up on that train? --Due to the time delay of
Wave 2. Is that how that would work?

A friend of mine mentioned that there might be a similar concern of
timing chips if they started when you crossed the start line. I gather
that chips should always be set to start at one time. Otherwise a guy
who starts at the back of the pack gets a free minute on whatever lead
train he can grab on to.

What a year to be a classic skier at the Birkie.
We woke up to -8F on the porchside thermometer a little north of Cable,
and I think everyone was more concerned about clothing than wax. No
panic wax jobs, just run with what we'd done the night before.
Earlier in the week, I'd asked Ahvo for his opinion as to using my new
RCS, or my older (and softer) Atomics. His verdict was to 'make sure I
had kick, don't worry about the glide'. So the Atomics it was, with
Fastwax Tan and flouro powder for glide and Swix VR40 for kick. I was
hoping to break 4:00 and maybe the top 100 classic skiers if I had a
good day.
After losing my skis 10 minutes before the start, finding them in a very
different place than I'd been standing [with them], and finally starting
at the very back of wave 4 (instead of wave 3), I found that a)my skis
were running better than most of the wave 4 skaters, and b)I was feeling
OK. I was climbing in-track on all the hills, and just flying by the
conga lines. The downhills were even more fun. I knew after the first
couple that the track was nearly perfect and I could trust my skis to
stay put. Man was the track fast! I punched my watch at 10K, stopped to
take the hot pads out of my gloves (something else I didn't get to
before I started), and dropped them in my fanny pack. TIP: I'm going to
do this from now on - I had warm GU the rest of the race. It's pretty
good heated up. I made it a point to grab 'energy' at every station,
and do a gel every 10K.
I kept sailing up thru the wave 3/4 skaters and pretty soon into a lot
of wave 2 folks. I kept expecting to slow down, but it seemed like my
splits were getting faster and I just kept flying. I passed OO and the
Bitch Hill before I was really aware that everything was working well.
Even so, I was one happy dude to see Rosie's Field. Birchlegger Scott
Laven (Duluth), with whom I'd skied with for most of the day finally
dropped me at the lake and I couldn't pull him back in, but even so I
knew I was home. Coming up the finish stretch was sortof a blur - one
minute I was turning the corner at the bottom,and then I was done with
the best ski race I've ever had.
Thanks to the groomers, the weather, Devin Arenz for his wax advice, and
Ahvo for his help.

Marsh Jones
New Brighton,MN

Wow great report !

(I posted my report on Jay's thread. Didn't see this one soon enough -
sorry)

Kinda curious about the start mat business though, as I am sure I saw
several 2000# bibs in the Wave 1 start group, and in the race I kept
seeing several of these bibs. Hmmm. A free 10 minutes to anyone who
doesn't get caught ? That's huge.

delltodd wrote:
Wow great report !

(I posted my report on Jay's thread. Didn't see this one soon enough -
sorry)

Kinda curious about the start mat business though, as I am sure I saw
several 2000# bibs in the Wave 1 start group, and in the race I kept
seeing several of these bibs. Hmmm. A free 10 minutes to anyone who
doesn't get caught ? That's huge.

Dell, you had another great race. Nice going.

I think they are going to have to add another mat at the base of drum
hill or something very early on. The #1 topic at the potluck I went to
Saturday night was the wave 2 skier who was provisionally 7th - and
nobody knew him. This was mostly a group of elite and wave 1 skiers
from the 'cities, so they were all quite surprised.

Marsh

So those *were* your skis, Marsh! Sorry, but that seemed the only way I
could beat you to the first split ;-) Did you wait for wave 4 to start
or was the timing coincidental? You certainly broke 4:00 by more than a
few!

Yep, bomb-proof tracks; not even the skaters could mess them up, at
least by wave 3. Like Jay T, I'd been detraining since early
December and am 8-10 lbs over my usual Birke weight, thus I switched to
the Korte classic and was just planing to tour. But that always turns
out to be a lie when the gun goes off. After my last Korte classic a
couple of years ago in ~1:55, I figured the next time 1:48, if not 1:45,
seemed like a realistic goal. This time I came in 1:43.

At 8k my legs were burning and I started to back off by doing dp and
kick-dp through the rolling terrain after the 9k turnoff. At the 16k
food stop I took a minute to stock up and drink a flask of diluted gel.
Yet, within a couple of minutes an outer thigh cramp set in and survival
mode became the order of the day. Around 19-20K a second wind kicked
in, but that was aerobic not muscular and so I remained cautious,
probably a too much so from the way I felt at the end. There was this
younger woman who had passed me at the long food stop that I kept coming
up near, without really trying, only to need to stop to rehydrate and
start the process again. She finished 8 seconds ahead.

My primary goal this year had been to solidify technique and thus I was
especially happy that it held up right to the end, even I had to switch
to running herringbones on some hills due to fatigue. What really made
my day was when the first person to greet me after the finish, a coach
in one of the local programs, commented how my technique had looked
"really excellent" when I passed him early on (he was skating and must
have got me back me at one of my extended food stops).

With snow temp at 9 and warming, kick wax was Toko white over blue, plus
their binder. Really solid all the way through (sorry Barry and
alexmal, but I wasn't ready to risk it with Rode). Someone who used
blue powergrip from wave 9 says that even with Hydrex and some Swix
extra blue it was icing up going from sun to shade. For glide, I went
with Dr. D's Wicked Wax wide range cold fluoro (no poweder), which I got
after hearing Marsh's experience at Mora (MN). It didn't feel as free
as the day before at Como, worked well enough. The tracks were colder
and not as well worn in once the Korte turn off into the woods.

There was one young tall thin blond girl from wave 4 that passed me at
about 17k, who I'm guessing was Tess Clancy of Marquette. Really good
technique. I was able to stay with her striding, but on the first
downhill (in the tracks) her Trabs just took off like jets. These high
school kids really have it great, training every day with a team, having
races every week. If I had that...

I did have one fall. On the long fast downhill that sweeps to the left
(7.5-8K?), just as I'm flying down in a tuck, a skater (bib 3039) who
had fallen at the bottom on the left got up and just stepped over into
the tracks without looking (or apparent reason). And I'm yelling for
him to get out, but he's like, "Oh, there's someone coming, gee." So to
be safe I jump out myself, but probably was concentrating more on him
than what I was doing and got a nice slide out of it. On the next
uphill, I mentioned to others nearby to watch this guy, who was grunting
and struggling just ahead. One skater responded that they knew all
about him, as he had already taken two of them out!

Look forward to hearing the other tales of the race(s). Hope Lars posts
upon his return.

Gene

Marsh Jones wrote:

After losing my skis 10 minutes before the start, finding them in a very
different place than I'd been standing [with them], and finally starting
at the very back of wave 4 (instead of wave 3), I found that a)my skis

Hey, what was FrontRunner's bib#? I don't even know his name - just
"FrontRunner". What suit was he wearing? I made it in ~2:26, too, so
we, possibly, skied together.