Halloween

Halloween is a very important time of the year. Not only is it a once-per-year in a lifetime opportunity to dress up like something awesome, laugh, eat candy, and act like a kid, it’s also a necessary component of Birkie! training.

Although my costume last night – The Stimulus Package – had nothing to do with skiing, Halloween as a whole is important training. Halloween is about dressing up as something that you’re not and trying to get people to guess what or who you are. At the Birkie!, I must harness my Halloweenian powers to trick other skiers into believing that I’m a good skier. This will be difficult, since the Birkie! takes place outside of Halloween season (which itself requires extensive training) and because I am not a good skier by any stretch of the imagination.

Luckily, Halloween has taught me how to make people guess what I am. With Halloween, others are most likely to guess who you are if you either a) have a realistic costume, b) really play the part well, or c) tell people what you are. Thus, I have learned that, in order to make people guess that I’m a good skier, I must fulfill at least one of these criteria.

Looking like a fast skier requires significant bank accounts to purchase the tightest of the most high-tech synthetic, slowness wicking, air resistant, teleport friendly, materials. Without a major sponsorship deal, I will not look like a fast skier. Plus my bib will still say that I’m a slow wave. The third option, as you can tell by these blog entries, goes against my blunt realism about how bad I am. Thus, I must fulfill the second requirement and play the part well. This requires becoming a fast skier. That will be hard. I’d better keep training. So stay tuned for more blog entries!

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!

Essential Growth Training

Perhaps the most important aspect of the Birkie! - far more important than training, speed, wave placement, or number of finishes - is to have a thick Birkie! beard. This serves a number of purposes, including:

1. Provides valuable warmth for the often under-dressed face.
2. Catches small food crumbs and stores them as much needed energy between aid stations.
3. Looks stylish.
4. Enables the formation of sweet looking sweat/water ice cycles.

Some racers find it difficult to train for the Birkie! during the warmer summer months. Luckily for me, I understand that the Birkie! is not just about training, but embracing the all-consuming Birkie! lifestyle that helps me achieve such mediocrity in my races. With this knowledge, I am able to prepare for the Birkie! by growing my Birkie! beard in the summer.

Thus, I began with my silky smooth face:



and grew my facial hair non-stop from 9 to 5 at work today. Being a hulking beast of a Birkie! athlete that devotes almost all of my energy to Birkie! preparation, it is no surprise that, by the end of the day, I achieved the following tropical jungle of a beard:



All in all, it was a good day of training. Amazingly, this was accomplished during work with temperatures in the mid-70s...remarkably unBirkie!like yet adequate for my preparation. I later stuck my head in the freezer to test the warmth of my beard and was so warm that I thought that I was in the fridge instead.

Who was Born to Birkie!?

The American Birkebeiner is less of a race than a lifestyle. And as an absolutely amazing race, it must be an exhilarating 365 day-a-year lifestyle that requires extensive focus, energy, and blogging. Elite cross country skiers prepare year-round for the biggest race in the United States, and Danny and Dylan pretend to.

Our friend Will is Born to Birkie! As an elite distance runner and downhill ski racer extraordinaire, Will must combine these two skills to unleash his unique form of endurance speed upon the unsuspecting Birkie! The only problem is that he does not do cross country skiing and has not yet agreed to ski the Birkie! However, according to Will, if we blog, he may come...

This is the story of Danny and Dylan's Birkie! preparation and an overly formal way of convincing Will to join us.

Much like everyone in the world, Danny, Dylan, and Will were all Born to Birkie! This February, we hope to all achieve our Prince Haakon given abilities and ski the Birkie!