My feet placed firmly on the floor where the center console should have been, I braced myself for any bumps in the snowy road ahead.

At 5-foot-8, girls my size are too big to sit on a box in the middle of an Astrovan, but I was lucky to be there and had no complaints whatsoever. Andy Gerlach graciously let me tag along with the Salomon support team on Feb. 25 as they chased eight racers throughout the 2012 American Birkebeiner.

That meant I could squeeze in a van loaded with skis, energy gels and water bottles and listen to Gerlach and the Birkie radio announcers narrate the 50 k race. What a great way to cover it.

Hinging my head forward to avoid hitting the ceiling, I chatted with Gerlach in the driver’s seat and his passenger, Salomon Nordic Brand Manager Alex Haas. Once the man behind the Subaru Factory Team, Gerlach was back for his 18^th Birkie. He took two years off, but caught the bug once more and was back.

Haas was in Wisconsin for his first Birkie. He had come all the way from France along with Salomon’s designer to see what this race, the largest nordic event in North America, was all about. Salomon sent nine service people to the race, including U.S. nordic product manager Isaac Wilson and Zach Caldwell, the guru of stone grinding.

And here I was, bouncing around the back roads near the Birkie trail with them. I had been told we’d have to run on some snowmobile trails to get to the feed spots, my vantage points.  I planned accordingly, wearing a pair of tennis-shoe-like kicks that were paper thin.

One spectator even made fun of me out on the course. I’ll be better prepared next year, I thought. Meanwhile, I pretended they were warm, and when the packs of racers whizzed by, I forgot about my frozen toes.

I was like a kid on Christmas, but this was better than the excitement one feels that December morning. I hadn’t been to the Birkie in 10 years, and 10 years ago, I was an adolescent newbie on the scene.

Back then, I skied the 23 k Kortelopet and didn’t see any elite racers until I hopped on a bus and rode down to the Birkie finish in Hayward. And I don’t really remember what I saw, except Main Street brimming with groomed snow, lots of spectators, and finally, my mom struggling to stand up at the finish.

Now I was taking in every sight, smell, sound.

“Pole, pole, pole, POLE!”

The cry for help intensified as the chase group entered an open field and skated toward the Salomon guys around 44 k.

Liebsch had been using a some kind of touring pole for the last five kilometers; his former Central Cross Country (CXC) teammate, Santi Ocariz was still trying to give him his. The Team Strong Heart/Team Birkie skier refused at first, but accepted when he realized a replacement wasn’t waiting for him with 6 k to go.

Liebsch ditched the heavy pole he picked up after breaking his, and Ocariz handed his over. Both yelled for a pole. Once Salomon figured out who needed it, they ran it to Ocariz (CXC) and he continued behind the group.

After the race, Ocariz said he didn’t need the pole as much as Liebsch did. He knew Liebsch had a shot at the podium, and Ocariz was OK with finishing a few spots back.

“What’s the difference if I’m eighth or 14^th? He had the chance to win,” Ocariz said after placing 11^th.

Sometimes, acts like those go unnoticed. That probably didn’t matter to Ocariz and his wife, Carolyn (the women’s 54 k classic Birkie winner), who will start rollerskiing across the country in early March to raise money for those starving in Latin America and the Caribbean.

However, most every man in that chase group had something nice to say about Santi after the race. At the end of the day, he was a human rather a competitor.  He had grit, he had endurance, but he saw the big picture.

As the top elites and citizen finishers looked up at the banner stretching high above the finish in downtown Hayward, many of them wore similar expressions. They were either ecstatic or exhausted. Either way, I’m guessing they were thrilled to be done.

After the Birkie and the next morning at Telemark Lodge in Cable, Wis., I’ve never seen so many athletes high on endorphins. They were still happy, giddy even, and it was contagious.

I don’t even remember when my feet thawed out. It didn’t matter.

“Birkie Fever” is overused, but it’s appropriate. Glad I caught it. I’ll be back.

Note: This blog has been corrected to reflect that I apparently never met Matt Liebsch’s dad and it was someone else that ragged on my shoes. Too bad.

Parked at the world-famous “OO” trailhead about halfway on the Birkie trail, I stood outside my little Nissan Versa rental trying to figure out what to wear after sitting in the car for more than five hours on Monday.

I turned around to a man who looked like he was in his 80s and was carrying his waxless skis in crisscross fashion. He stopped at his vehicle next to mine.

“Is it going to snow?” he abruptly asked me with a Scandinavian accent.

I thought he said, “It’s gorgeous, no?” then put his words in context. It didn’t make sense why I would know with my Minnesota plates; I didn’t look like a weatherperson. Heck, I didn’t even look like a skier in my yoga pants and scarf.

But the old man asked anyway, and I told him I heard something about an inch or two on Monday night. Suddenly, I was glad my iPhone didn’t work with the car’s stereo and left me with nothing but local radio for my entire drive north from Madison to Seeley, Wisconsin.

“We need it,” he said.

Looking around at the snow-covered woods, I could already tell the conditions were better than most everything I skied this season. I changed the subject and asked him if he had a good ski.

“Yes, a few hours,” he said.

I’d say that’s good, I responded. He wanted to do 40 kilometers, but retracted his plan in preparation for the Birkie.

“I don’t want to burn out,” he said.

An 80-year-old man worried about burning out. I held back my giggles and watched as he quickly loaded his Lincoln town car and drove away.

That was my first taste of Birkie fever and the angst, dedication and buildup that surrounds the 51 k event. I got another more relaxed perspective from a family of four out on the trail.

Two Midwestern-born sisters in their 20s were getting ready for their first Birkie. Their dad and brother would be at kilometer 39 hooting, hollering and cheering them on.

It’s a big party, the father said. We listen to Motown and dance.

I turned around near the 29 k mark on the skate trail, meandering back north to the parking lot before dusk. It was firm, but not too icy, especially on the lesser-traveled parts of the extremely wide trail. Yes, more snow would help, but this was pretty awesome. Tracks were sold and the conditions were fast – just the way I like it. I zoomed back to the parking lot and packed up, taking a few photos before I left.

One woman said I should take a picture of the clouds in the distance and hope they were snow clouds. What am I now, some kind of superhero with the power to summon precipitation? These people are funny, I thought.

 

The SuperTour

I figured the comments were linked to their excitement. Everyone wants the 39^th American Birkebeiner to be perfect. That meant great snow, ideal conditions and reasonable temperatures on race day.

Although days are rarely perfect, I would argue Wisconsin has recently had some of the best weather of the year, if you like plenty of sunshine and mild temperatures.

While in Madison covering the SuperTour sprints last weekend, I was able to stand around and enjoy the races in 30-degree temperatures – and get a tan while I was at it.

My gracious hosts, Don Becker and his fiancé Heidi, lived about a mile and a half from downtown so I was able to walk along Lake Monona to the state capital both Saturday and Sunday.

Not a bad commute, I thought as I looked out at the ice fishermen around dawn and some recreational hockey players skating before dusk.

Work itself was fun with back-to-back sprints Saturday and Sunday on a 1-kilometer loop around Capitol Square. The Central Cross Country Ski Association (CXC) as the SuperTour host coordinated with the city to create and stockpile snow at a nearby energy plant. At 6 p.m. Friday, they shut down the square and dumped it on the streets.

From my understanding, the whole process of unloading about 90 dump trucks and spreading the snow with a single Bobcat bulldozer took more than five hours.

I was there until about 10 p.m., and race director Yuriy Gusev was still zipping around in his John Deer Gator to make sure everything went down according to plan. Later that night, they used a PistenBully to groom the track.

Click here for more photos.

It looked great Saturday morning with four meticulously set tracks for the classic sprint. And while the SuperTour races were the first events of each day, they were only a part of Madison’s eighth annual Winter Festival.

Up on the backside of the hill, skiers and snowboarders competed in a rail jam. Organizers had built a ramp and lifted snow onto it to create a steep enough slope. On the square, junior and high school races also used the cross-country course, along with disabled sit skiers. On Sunday, a fleet of rental skis and boots was available for anyone to rent and ski a few loops.

Working inside a coffee shop overlooking the capital, I watched as some people came by lap after lap. Unlike the newbies on skis, they looked more focused, like they had something on their minds.

Must be the Birkie.

 

Fever in the Twin Cities

Before Madison, I flew into Minneapolis and spent an afternoon and evening in Saint Paul. I stayed with family friends, including Jay Tegeder, who is embarking on his 26^th Birkie. Already a Birchlegger, someone who completes 20 American Birkebeiners, Jay said he might as well go for 30. Maybe they’d have a new club by then.

Jay is about my dad’s age, in his early 50s, and loves the Birkie. I knew this before I stayed with him and his wife, Kathleen, but I didn’t understand how serious he was about it until then.

He’s in Wave 1, right behind the elites. Enough said.

A former top-notch racer, Jay would rather be in Wave 2 so he could pass others more than be passed, he said. But he didn’t seem too concerned about it.

A few hours after my plane ride in from Albany, N.Y., Jay took me to Green Acres, a little nordic and tubing facility east of Minneapolis. There, we skied a 3 k loop around a farm and on a frozen pond, and while it was in an open field on a 40-degree day, the snow and crust skiing was great.

According to Jay, the owners were farmers, not skiers. They apparently knew how to please the nordic community with snowmaking capabilities and some variable terrain (including one honker hill). On a Thursday afternoon, a manure spreader ejected snow out onto the course and rolled along to fill in the thin spots. There were about five people skiing, but it didn’t matter. They made keeping up the trails a priority.

Coming from the East, where you might drive an hour to a nordic center to find that they haven’t updated the website and didn’t groom or aren’t open at all, I was impressed. Tubing was probably the moneymaker of the operation, with plenty of kids zooming down the large hill on a school day (must be worth skipping class for!), but having somewhere to ski close to the city was important, too.

Most years, people in Minneapolis and Saint Paul have plenty of options for pre-Birkie training with several golf courses allowing skiers to putz around for free. This year, they were lucky to have places like Green Acres.

As we zipped around the loop with Jay’s friend, John Wyland, we enjoyed the sunshine and chatted. Wyland, who was also doing the Birkie, was particularly inspirational. After having shoulder surgery last spring, he essentially skate skied with one arm, yet was committed to his training.

We spent some time on an upper flat loop – too long for John. He wanted some hills. And so we dropped down and did some hills, and the two told me their different approaches to racing the Birkie. Jay would try to attack the last half like he always did, and John would aim to survive. I gave them both a lot of credit.

Throughout our 1 ½ hour jaunt, we ran into a few skiers, most of which Jay and John knew.

“Are you doing the Birkie?” Jay would ask.

It almost wasn’t a question. In the Midwest, if you’re skiing, doing the Birkie is pretty much a given. It seemed that unless you were sick as a dog or had some other unforeseen circumstance, you would do pull yourself together and ski 51 k.

I’m not sure I could handle the pressure. Then again, if you live in the Midwest, particularly in Minnesota or Wisconsin, maybe it’s just a way of life, something you don’t think twice about. Maybe that’s what the fever is.