Soccer Birkie! Training

This week my Birkie! training focused on soccer. Initially, you may wonder what soccer has to do with the Birkie!, but there are several key connections that make soccer a central component of my training.

First, we lost the championship game yesterday. This single loss helps prepare me for the 3,000 simultaneous losses that I will suffer during the Birkie! Last year I lost to 3,009 people and in 2008 I lost to 2,987 people – many of them several decades older than me. This would cause insurmountable emotional pain to a skier that is not well versed in the art of losing.

Also, as you develop good control over the soccer ball, you want the ball to feel like an extension of your foot, which is essentially what skis are. Unfortunately, attaching the skis to my feet is one of my strongest skills as a skier while the actual skiing part is one of my weaker points. This aspect of soccer Birkie! training is less useful to me because of my relative skills but will perhaps help one of the masses reading this blog.

Next, soccer is a game of passing and moving into space. In the Birkie!, I will move into 51 kilometers, or several soccer games worth, of space. If I were a talented skier, passing people would be an important part of my race and an excellent way to measure how many people I was beating. I hope that my soccer passing can translate into skier passing in February.

Finally, soccer is fun and the Birkie! is also fun. Although I am already very good at having fun, it is always important to practice and provide comparisons that help Will understand how much fun the Birkie! is. And remember, Will was Born to Birkie!