American Birkebeiner 2010

March 8, 2010

This year the Birkie events took place with abundant snow and an ideal weather. On the morning of the race the temperature was about -6°C and during the day it warmed up above the freezing point, but the snow remained hard enough. The sun made the scenery attractive. To talk about scenery is maybe a little bit exaggerated. Birkie takes place through forests with practically no views on the surroundings, before the final 5 km or so from where you see the Hayward water tower at a distance.
The Birkie course is a succession of bumps, sometimes longer climbs that you have to herringbone up (unless you are a fast skier able to glide on every step), often short bumps where you can push hard before the notch and try to maintain your speed up the next bump. For some years the FT and CT races are separated on the first 20km. The FT race is 51 km and the CT race 54 km; that allows classic skiers to benefit from 3 more kilometers for the same price! Again this year some classic skiers commented that this race is not what they are accustomed to, i.e. diagonal steps or double poling for endless kilometers. Well, this is Birkie. At least nobody complained that it was monotonous. The Kortelopet 23 km races return to Cable, the start place, whereas FT and CT Birkie events finish in Hayward Main Street. It is always amusing to see the jubilant skiers finishing their day between the rows of spectators in Main Street.
The tracks were obviously well prepared with a hard base. The glide was quite good and classic skiers had generally no problems with the grip wax. As usual, in some descents there were spectators laughing at skiers who fell. Maybe they had made a bet on the total number of falls. Two classic tracks were set on the right side of the course after the junction of the CT and FT races. They remained in good state during the race because of the large width of the skating track.
As usual, a breakfast for Worldloppet Passport holders took place on Friday morning in Hayward. The price was 12 USD. Nobody complained that it was not free for Masters like in many other Worldloppet events. This is a nice meeting, open to family members and it allows you to meet skiers from all over the world in a pleasant atmosphere. Having the skiers pay 12 USD is highly preferable to not having any event for Worldloppet skiers, as happens in a few places.
A peculiarity of Birkie is that just after the finish you have to take the lane corresponding to the number of Birkies you have done, including this one (it is marked on the front of your bib), to receive the medal or pin that you are entitled to. By the way, the bibs are equipped with an elastic ring around the waist. This avoids struggling with strips that have to be attached and often open during the race. Maybe the bibs are designed for relatively lean persons. We have seen that some skiers must cut the elastic strips and sew an extension on them in order to accommodate their stomach inside.
Hereafter we give a few results of IAWLS members. They are limited to one skier per country. One of the problems that the IAWLS committee reporters encounter is that it is impossible to use an automated procedure to find out the total list of IAWLS members, because the results on Birkie’s website are not in an exploitable format (excel). We recommend to the race organizers to make this improvement for next year. This year it was not even possible to find the list of results per country, because only the USA states are listed in a separate column, not the countries. On this account Birkie is still an Americano-american event, not an international event.

American Birkebeiner, 51 km skate, Winner’s time 1.56.58, 3646 finishers:

American Birkebeiner 54 km CT, Winner’s time 2.28.39, 1433 finishers:

Kortelopet 23 km skate, Winner’s time 57.18, 1252 finishers:

Kortelopet 23 km CT, Winner’s time 1.05.10, 987 finishers:

This page was last revised on May 9, 2010