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.