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The legendary Norwegian Birkebeinerrennet race, the ‘Birken’, is rich in tradition.  It was founded to commemorate a journey made by two Birkebeiner loyalist skiers carrying an infant over a mountainous course.  They were saving the infant prince from death by a rival political group.  The young Prince Haakon was brought to safety and grew to be the king who united Norway after hundreds of years of civil war.  Great history!

Now for the tough part…. Every participant in the Birken race must wear a backpack with 3.5 kg in it (~8 lbs.) to represent the infant child.  Although it did wear on me a bit up the hills, for the most part, I forgot about that baby weight on my back.

Before the final 14K descent into Lillehammer, the racecourse is wide and open as it passes through Sjusjoe n. The course is lined with fans who come bringing furniture, firewood, shovels, food, drinks, music, speakers, and cowbells.
They dig out shelters in the snow drifts and line them with blankets, build fires
blast music, ring cowbells, and scream.

The energy is tremendous. At one point I skied by speakers blasting “Stairway to Heaven”. So appropriate, I thought.  As exhausted as I was at that point, I still felt as if I was skiing in heaven.

The descent to Lillehammer was coming up soon. It starts with some fast wide, down hills quickly changing to narrow wooded trails. Having skied the race last year, I knew I’d be in for some steep scraped off chutes. However, I wasn’t envisioning what I actually encountered this year… chutes of glare ice.

There were fallen skiers on both sides of the narrow trail as others zoomed by narrowly missing them. There were also skiers taking off their skis and walking down the more treacherous parts. The only spectators along this portion of the race were the emergency staff at intersections standing with medical sleds.

Flashback to yesterday when we met up with Murray Banks, former MNC director and coach extraordinaire. Although he wasn’t participating in the race this year, Murray skied the descent portion of the course the day before.
His somewhat kidding comment was “You have a 50-50 chance of surviving this.”
“ Murray, do you think we should scratch from the race?”
“ No”, he replied, “You absolutely must do the race!”
We all beat Murray’s comical odds and survived.
The long straight view of the finish line at Lillehammer Stadium, with huge crowds cheering, put a large smile on my face.
The brief portions of “no control on glare ice terror” were tremendously overshadowed by the extraordinary course, scenery, and energy of the Birken. As Murray also stated “No one puts on a race better than the Norwegians!”

I am so grateful to have experienced, now for the second year, skiing, in not only this race, but in the country of Norway where Nordic skiing is deeply rooted in the culture and is a part of day-to-day life.

Our cabin was a short walk to the ski trails as most dwellings seem to be.
We skied in the morning stopped for lunch and skied in the afternoon.
We skied from town to town to cafes and bakeries on impeccably well groomed, trails with breathtaking scenery.

MNC Master Elle Bouffard and I traveled together. We planned our trip to arrive to have one day recovery from traveling before the race and the full week after to enjoy the heavenly ski trails of Norway. Our timing plan worked out perfectly. Doing the race at the beginning of our trip allowed us to ski our hearts out all day every day for the week to come. With the race behind us, we had no concern about pre-race limiting mileage or tapering.

It was fabulous to have so many MNC friends nearby before, during and after race day.  MNC was well represented by masters, coaches past and present, as well as MNC junior alumni.

The view from my cabin bedroom window.  Ski trails right off our road that connected us to everywhere.

Eliza and I were so happy to see former MNC Director and Coach Murray Banks in Sjusjoen.

Garrot Kuzzy, previous MNC coach, gives Eliza some pre-race tips at the start line.  Note all the backpacks on the racers!

Smiles at the finish in the Lillehammer Olympic Stadium.

Post Race waiting to return to our cabins. Six tired but very happy skiers!

Jordan Shuster (Eliza’s SLU collegiate teammate), Eliza Thomas (MNC junior alumni), Karen Alence (MNC master), Kati Christoffel (MNC master and coach), Michael Dillon (MNC master and coach), Ellie Bouffard (MNC master)

The view from Kati’s dogsled ride – the day after racing.

Coach Pennie (Rand) and daughter Annavite, enjoying the trails during the days after the race.

Skiing trails with breathtaking scenery and stopping at cafes and bakeries.

Pascal provides the following great recap from the American Birkiebeiner, the biggest XC ski race in America! There are also a great collection of photos which I couldn’t quite get to re-size into this post, but will work on that!

Mansfield Nordic Club Masters at the 2025 American Birkebeiner

Two weekends ago, a group of MNC masters traveled out to Wisconsin for the American Birkebeiner. Our group included myself, Renate Adamowicz, Steve Hunter, Owen Lenz and Chris Flannery. For Renate, Owen, Chris and myself, this was our first “Birkie” while Steve has done the race several times. In addition to our group, Colin Pogue, Chase Rosenberg, and Lukas Adamowicz from MNC also competed in the race.

We had all trained hard through the winter in preparation for the race. It was great to have so many good MNC practices at Sleepy Hollow through December and January. However, unlike Vermont, Wisconsin was not having a good snow year. There was snow cover in the Cable to Hayward area in late January but it was minimal and there was not enough on the ground to use the full 50k course. The Birkie race organizers were looking at the possibility of having to do a shortened course or multiple loop course like they did last year. Fortunately, it stayed very cold in the Midwest and the Cable/Hayward area got small storms in early February to gradually add to the base. On February 10th, the race organizers were able to give the good news that there was enough snow to do the full course starting in Cable and finishing in downtown Hayward. We would be able to get the full Birkie experience.

We left Burlington on the Thursday before the race and had smooth flights to Chicago and Minneapolis. We then drove 2 hours to Hayward and arrived there early afternoon. We had time to go to the Expo and pick up our bibs and gear bags before going to our spacious Airbnb in Spooner which was about 45 minutes away from Hayward. This worked out well for Chris as he was doing the 30k Korte Loppet the next day. The highlight of the Expo was seeing the Untapped table. Untapped was providing all the fuel and hydration out on the course.

On Friday, Chris left early in the morning to get to the start of his race. The rest of us drove into Hayward later in the morning to get a short ski in and watch Chris’s finish. The Birkie course was closed but we found out that were several trail options in the Hayward area. We ended up finding a small network of trails behind the hospital close to town. The trails were very beginner friendly and nicely groomed with two sets of classic tracks. Not good for skaters like Owen and Steve but great for Renate and I who were doing the classic Birkie the next day.

We then parked our car at the spectator lot in Hayward and took the shuttle bus to the finish area in downtown Hayward to see Chris. Steve was familiar with the finishing stretch of the course and suggested we walk out onto the lake to see Chris come in before going up and over the International Bridge to the finish. That ended up being a great place to watch the end of the race. You could see a steady stream of skiers in the distance on the lake. There were a group of college students lined up along this last section of the lake blasting techno music, shaking cowbells, and cheering loudly for the skiers coming in. This perked up a few skiers who would do little dances on their skis. It was inspiring to see so many skiers of different abilities out on the course and seeming to have a good time doing it.

Chris finished his race close to 2:00 and after getting some lunch in town, we headed back to the Expo and then to our Airbnb to get ready for the next day. For Renate and I, that meant getting down to the business of putting kick wax on our skis. We had opted to wax our own skis while Owen, Steve and Chris wisely took advantage of the waxing services of Gear West. It was a little daunting trying to choose from the different wax company recommendations for the race but basically whatever brand of wax you used, it seemed to come down to some combination of a binder with layers of hard wax as the snow out on the course was supposed to be firm powder. We ended up going with the Toko recommendations as their rep did the best job of explaining how their waxes would work, alternating layers of green base binder and blue hard wax. Renate had great kick throughout the race while I ended up starting to slip a little about 20k into the race and stopped twice after that to add Toko red and then Swix purple. Although I added several extra minutes to my time for these stops, it seemed like a good decision after watching many people struggle to get up the final hills on the course while I was able to get up them more easily.

We had an early start on Saturday, leaving our Airbnb at 6:00 to make sure that we had enough time to get through traffic and get to the Birkie Ridge parking lot for the bus to the start of the race at the Mt. Telemark ski area. It was tricky to plan our time because we were all in different waves with different start times with my wave being the earliest at 9:10. As it turned out, we were able to beat the traffic crunch and got to the start area a little after 7:00. It was still very chilly in the starting area, so we crowded ourselves in with hundreds of other excited and nervous people in the warming building to wait for our waves to start. Time seemed to go by quickly between briefly testing skis to making final clothing adjustments, dropping off our gear bags and visits to the port-a-let.

The process for getting to the starting line was very systematic and well-organized. At 8:55, I got into the 3rd pen for my wave, at 9:00 moved to the 2nd pen, and then finally at 9:05 to the pen for the starting line. Five minutes later, the start signal went off and my wave left with the next wave going five minutes later. I had the benefit of being in the 70-year-old age group which was given a special wave of its own right behind wave 2. As much as that gave me the opportunity to ski freely at the beginning of the race, it also caused me to go out too fast and by 5k, I could feel myself slowing down. Had I known about all of the hills to come, I might have gone out more conservatively. In the end, all the waves get mixed together anyway and you’re skiing with people from many different waves so finding a pace that works for you seems important to do.

For the first half of the race, the classic skiers ski a separate, parallel course to the skaters and then both groups join up a little after the 20k mark. This separate course adds 3k to the distance for the classic skiers, but you have the benefit of having at least 3 tracks to ski in. Once the merging happens, the classic tracks get reduced to 2, and sometimes 1 or none. It is a mind boggling experience to join a continuous stream of skiers that are all skiing close together at different paces.

During the second half of the race, the snow on the uphills turned into mashed potatoes. This created a bottleneck of skaters and classic skiers trying to get traction to get up the hills. Despite these conditions, the groomers did a great job with preparing the course and making it safe for the skiers. There were good classic tracks on most of the course and no icy downhills or bare ground.

The most enjoyable part of the course might have been the last section on the lake. From there, you could see the town water tower in the distance, so you knew you were close to the finish. Coming off the lake, you went up a small hill and left on a street that took you to the bottom of the International Bridge which spans over the main road in town, Route 63. The climb up the bridge and descent down it was short but steep. The day before, we had seen someone lose their balance and do a headfirst slide down the hill, so I was very conscious of not leaning too far forward when I got to the top of the bridge. Once down the hill, it was a quarter mile on Main Street to the finish. There was a lot of noise from the crowd, but I could still hear Chris and Steve cheering me on. A little later, I got to join them and Owen to cheer Renate as she finished. She probably had the biggest smile of all of us going down Main St. to the finish.

Once we each got through the finish area, it was on to collecting our baggage and going to the changing and food tents. One of the coolest things about doing the Birkie is the recognition you get from people on the street. They would see the sticker with the number “1” on your bib and immediately congratulate you on finishing your first Birkie. It felt like you had just gotten your high school graduation diploma. And speaking of numbers, we didn’t get a chance to see Colin after the race, but he had an amazing performance finishing in 7th place in the classic division!

I think all of us first timers would say that it was an amazing experience on many levels. There is no question that it is a hard race, but it is so much more than just a race. It’s a celebration of cross-country skiing and an adventure that you want to experience again. We now know what “Birkie Fever” is all about.