The View From The Back

The View from the Back (Hooked on the Outdoors 2005 Dec (Vol. 7, No. 7))

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Archives and Online Features : My Backyard: Outdoor Lifestyle The View from the Back

By Aaron Teasdale, Illustration by Darcy Muenchrath 2005 Dec (Vol. 7, No. 7)

A cannon thunders through the Wisconsin Northwoods and a cascade of the world’s fastest nordic skiers explodes across the start line of the 2005 American Birkebeiner ski race. For 51 kilometers, the seething rainbow mass will push the limits of human endurance and skill by rocketing at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour along a challenging course of steep hills and tight turns while aerodynamically Illustration by Darcy Muenchrath shrinkwrapped in neon-bright skinsuits.

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An hour and a half later, the cannon fires a 10th time—and the final wave of the race shuffles across the starting line with significantly less competitive fury. Back here, you’re more likely to see Levi’s 501s than Lycra sausage-casings, and the veritable UN panel of languages has been reduced to Fargo-style Midwestern English. The 10th wavers are the first timers, the Birkie virgins.

A good five minutes after the 10th-wave cannon sounds, I run, awkwardly cradling borrowed racing skis in my arms, to the now-desolate start area. When the first wave set out, it was four degrees below zero, so I’d retreated to the warm, comfortable couches in the nearby Telemark Lodge. Now, I have inadvertently missed the start of the last wave— my wave. My punishment? I’m the last official starter of the race.

I hadn’t planned on doing this. I’ve never ski raced before (or competed in any organized race, for that matter). But life doesn’t always go according to plan, a reality that was brought home to me a week earlier when my father called to tell me that my 93-year-old grandfather, his dad, had just died.

After making arrangements to return to Minnesota for the funeral, I called Dad and asked about the Birkebeiner. A nordic skiing nut and born-and-bred Midwesterner, he’s only missed it once in 20 years. It’s the perennial highlight of his winter. But with the funeral scheduled only two days before the race, he sounded completely bereft of enthusiasm. He told me he might just skip it.

Then, impulsively, I blurted out, “Why don’t I ski it, too.”

“Oh my,” he replied. In true Midwestern tradition, my dad is reliably even-keeled—I can’t

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recall actually ever hearing him sound melancholy, and his greatest expression of enthusiasm is that something is “fine”—but, clearly, I’d surprised him here.

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I’d never expressed much interest in the Birkie before. Sure, I’d taken some pride in Dad placing in the upper reaches of his age division in such a global contest (8,000 skiers come from 19 countries for the race), but it was always his thing, not mine. This time, with Dad getting older, and Grandpa passing away, I felt like we needed to be together—and, ever since I was a boy, sharing outdoor adventures has been our way of doing that. Plus, it’s not like we were going to sit around being sad; we’re Midwesterners. We don’t talk about our feelings.

“You know there’s the shorter Kortelopet,” Dad offered, referring to the 23K race that runs simultaneously with the Birkie. He knew I hadn’t been training or racing, and he seemed skeptical I was up to the Birkie.

And he knew I didn’t have a skinsuit.

Like my dad, I love skiing, but in Montana—where I moved after college—it usually involves metal edges and deep powder. Even though the Birkie (labeled a “ski marathon”) is more than twice as long as I have ever skinny-skied, it’s a smooth, groomed course.

How hard could it be? Plus it’s in Wisconsin, and everybody knows Wisconsin is flat compared to the Rockies. After all, I’m used to backcountry skiing—skinning up into deep woods and charging down wild bowls and couloirs.

You know, real skiing.

“Kortelopet, shmortelopet,” I retorted. “It’s all or nothing.” What I didn’t say out loud: Grandpa was a reminder that death is real and life is short. Why not go big?

“Oh my!” Dad exclaimed again, sounding even more surprised, and maybe a little pleased, now that it was clear I was serious. It was decided. We’d both ski the Birkie.

Even after missing the start, it doesn’t take long to catch up to the stragglers. Their bib numbers indicate that they’re all skiing the Kortelopet and, inexplicably, many wear those giant foam hats you usually see on overzealous fans at football games. I’m the only Birkie skier in sight, which may have something to do with the fact that I can’t get an ounce of traction out of my skis. They’re slipperier and skinnier than I ever imagined skis could be.

Plus, looking to give me every possible advantage to overcome my total lack of training and experience, Dad slathered them with ultra-high-tech, super-flouro-crystal-hydro wax (nordic skiers, it should be noted, treat their wax with a level of seriousness usually reserved for nuclear disarmament negotiations). Instead of charging ahead, I’m flailing around like a drunk sea lion.

The trail soon pitches upwards and, as I flounder up the first hill, spectators lining the course ring cowbells and yell, “You’re an inspiration!” It’s unclear if they’re talking to me, or the guys in the foam Stetsons but either way it’s a disturbing thought.

Reaching the top of the hill brings a surprise—the trail ahead yo-yos across another series of steep hills that rise and fall into the distance like a huge, white roller coaster. It’s a startling sight—and the beginning of my realization that this is going to be a really, really hard—like Touching The Void hard—race.

Wisconsin is not as flat as I has imagined. In fact, it’s savagely hilly, and every time the trail angles up, even the slightest bit, I’m reduced to a spastically slipping herringbone—the strenuous, V-shaped, duck-waddle technique nordic skiers usually reserve for only the steepest hills. I’m using it practically all the time, doing everything I can to keep the chopsticks on my feet from slipping straight up into the air and sending me ass over teakettle into the snow. I start to think that maybe there’s more—more technique and skill, more strength and grace—to this sport than I had realized.

The instant the trail angles downward it becomes clear that my tormenting, Teflontoothpicks of skis do have an upside—they’re absolute rockets on descents. I weave and dance through the other beginners, who are either walking with their skis in their arms or are splayed across the slope with limbs shooting out at unnatural angles as if they were dropped from airplanes. At the bottom of one hill, several medics are kneeled around a particularly crumpled skier who isn’t moving at all. I’m reminded of my Dad’s advice: Always be ready to dodge people who fall in front of you.

Approaching the crest of what seems like the 50th or 60th consecutive hill in this masochistic amusement park ride, something big happens: I pass another Birkie skier.

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Granted it’s a woman from North Carolina who hasn’t skied since she was 17, but more importantly, I’m no longer in last place. I wish her luck and, looking over my shoulder, see her savagely face-plant on a downhill behind me. OK, I tell myself, you’ve caught up to the people who haven’t skied in 20 years—that’s something.

Yet, after several more kilometers, when the Kortelopet course branches off from the Birkie on its short, easy, deeply tempting loop back to the town of Hayward, I haven’t seen another Birkie skier. I’m still in second-to-last place, still flailing wildly on my swizzle-stick skis, and the Kortelopet bail-out option calls to me like a scantily clad seductress on a shipwrecked desert island. I resist. Though I’m already pitifully sore and hopelessly behind, I stay on the Birkie course.

The previous day, while Dad and I drove northeast from the Twin Cities into the Wisconsin woods, he’d told me his long-time Birkie dream is to finish in under three hours. Thanks to some recent injuries, he figures this year he’ll be somewhere in the 3:15 to 3:30 range.

Exercise—intense daily exercise—is my Dad’s longtime recipe for vigor, and this race is his annual measurement of success when it comes to defying the inevitability of aging. The whole year builds to the Birkie. At 61, he knows that—probably soon—he’ll start slowing, but damned if he’s not going to forestall it as long as possible. Using all my effort just to bring up the back, I’m finally starting, after 20 years, to appreciate my Dad’s accomplishments here. I look at my watch and shake my head with a smile: He’s probably finishing right now.

Pressing on, I gradually begin catching up to other stragglers, the fellow inexperienced and under-trained. Everyone looks spent. One woman actually sits down on the tails of her skis to descend the hills. More than one in 10 Birkie skiers don’t finish the race, and I’m skiing with that group right now.

“The race for last is getting heated,” I say to three guys standing just past the road crossing that marks 23K, the first cutoff line. They’re from Chicago and also skiing their first Birkie. We’ve all barely made the cutoff time of 4 hours, and, as course workers begin shoveling away snow that allows skiers to cross the road, the Chicago guys tell me that it’s another 20K to the next cutoff. Then they ski away.

This is bad news. I’ve been averaging about a kilometer every 10 minutes, maybe 11. Not only that, I’m physically decimated. To make the upcoming cutoffs, I’ll have to boost that speed to a kilometer every seven minutes. It just doesn’t seem possible.

I think about what it would be like to not finish. I think about Dad, and about my uncle, his brother, who’s in town and waiting to hear about the race, about what it would be like to tell them I couldn’t make it. I think about Grandpa, about the last time I saw him, when I knew his health was failing, and all the things I wanted to say but didn’t know how. I remember our last handshake, when he gripped me longer than normal.

As a boy visiting my grandparents, Grandpa and I used to walk to the general store in the small Mississippi River town of Homer, Minnesota. Except that I would always run. I was only 6 or 7, but I would sprint all the way there, as fast as I could. Grandpa always got such a kick out of it and seemed so proud of me for that—even more so when his neighbor kept telling him, “that grandson of yours is the fastest 6-year-old I’ve ever seen”—so I kept running, always trying to go faster than the time before. For the rest of his life, Grandpa told that story.

Now, moping in the Wisconsin woods, it hits me like lightning, and—even though my legs feel like sacks of wet cement, and even though there are 25 kilometers to go and I’m as blown as I’ve ever been—everything is clear: Grandpa is gone, and one day I’ll join him, but right now I’m here, skiing this damn race, and nothing on this earth, not fatigue, not time, not supernaturally slippery skis, is going to stop me from finishing.

I start passing people. Perhaps not coincidentally, I also begin inhaling vast amounts of caffeinated Clif Shots. And, after five hours of flailing, my skis and I are finally beginning to develop a rapport. I’m figuring out how an extra little oomph in my kick can get the miniscule traction points in the bases to bite into the snow crystals.

I pass the Chicago guys and tell them I’m timing the kilometers. A few minutes later one of them catches up to me. His name is Colin and he’s determined to finish as well—even if it means leaving his friends behind. We ski together, and at every kilometer I call out our time. At first we’re running about 40 seconds a kilometer slow, so I ratchet up the pace.

Colin starts to drift back a few times, but always manages to stay with me. Later, when I tire, he moves out front to set the pace. He confides that when he first saw me slipping http://www.ruhooked.com/artman/article_1163.shtml

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wildly early in the race he’d thought, “No way is this guy gonna make it.”

The hills aren’t as bad now and we actually get a few minutes ahead of time. We’re only a few kilometers from the last cutoff. Just as my elation starts building, we hit a few devastatingly big hills and slow to a crawl. I see a kilometer marker and look at my watch.

We only have one kilometer to go, but less than four minutes to get there. We launch into an all-out sprint and, suddenly, I’m the fastest 6-year-old in the world again, running to the corner store with all my might.

When my skis slide across the last cutoff—with 25 seconds to spare—I’m on the verge of puking. Colin crosses a few seconds behind me. The skiers who come in after us, including Colin’s friends, will be stopped and loaded into buses. We‘re the last two in the race.

At last, we ski down the town of Hayward’s Main Street, which earlier in the day was packed with cheering spectators watching Italian Marco Cattaneo blow away the rest of the field and win the Birkie in 2 hours, 3 minutes. Now, at shortly after six o’clock, the storefronts are vacant and dark. A few intrepid locals are still here, cheering us on from street corners, ringing their cowbells one last time. A voice booms from a loudspeaker as we near the finish-line banner, “Look, here come two more… Aaron Teasdale from Missoula, Montana, and Colin White from Chicago, Illinois!”

Colin crosses the finish a fraction of a second ahead of me at 8 hours, 6 minutes, 44 seconds—and instantly a woman with a microphone is upon us. “Hi, I’m Nicky Kellar from WOJB. How are you feeling? How did your race go?”

Immediately, we’re surrounded. A race official puts an official “Birkie Finisher” medal on a red, white and blue ribbon around each of our necks. Dad, long done with the race, is there, smiling. I can see the pride in his eyes. Another guy says he is writing a book on the Birkebeiner and can he interview me at a later time?

As Dad and I walk back to the car, away from the media and race officials, he tells me how he fell hard early in the race and dislocated his shoulder. After several minutes, a passing skier finally stopped and helped pop if back into its socket. Then, in dizzying pain (and probably facing a moment of truth a lot like mine), he got up, rejoined the rush of skiers and continued, injured arm dangling at his side, until his shoulder gradually became functional enough to resume poling. When I tell him I’m sorry, he says, in unusually gushing language, “No, it was great—after that all the pressure was off and I could just enjoy the race and have fun.” He still managed to finish in 3:31, over twice as fast as I did.

Back at our hotel, where Dad has long since showered, I head straight for the hot tub. It’s packed with rowdy skiers and surrounded by empty cans. A radio plays in the corner. I walk around to where there’s room for one more person, and ease into the frothing water.

“Heeey, how was your race?” someone says.

“Good,” I reply. “I got last.”

The crowd instantly erupts in yells and cheers. “We just heard you on the radio! You’re famous!” an enthusiastic man says.

I’m beset by high fives and someone hands me a cold, sweating can of Miller Lite. Another guy on the far side of the hot tub calls over, “These French guys want to give you another beer,” and points to two skiers next to him with huge grins who ebulliently raise their fists in the air. I raise my drink towards them in thanks and sit back into a rapidly enveloping hot tub stupor.

Everyone wants to hear the story, so I tell the whole thing. The whim, the skis I didn’t know how to use, the guys from Chicago, the race against the clock. There are many cheers and hoots and bursts of raucous laughter.

A grandmotherly woman sitting on a folding chair next to the hot tub leans over and asks why I had come all the way from Montana so unexpectedly for the race. When I explain about Grandpa, she says, “Oh… I’m sorry.”

After a pause she turns back to me and adds, “Well, I think you made your grandfather proud today.”

“Yeah,” I say with an exhausted smile, and then, as if to myself, “I think I did.”

Last Updated: Mar 6th, 2006 - 07:23:06 http://www.ruhooked.com/artman/article_1163.shtml

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