Birkie Fever and Chills (part deux)

It's February 23rd. Three days before the Birkie.

I was told by a track coach in high school that it takes 8 days for a specific workout to have an impact on your fitness. According to that rule, anything I do from here forward will only hurt the freshness of my legs. This was also the same coach that tried to motivate our team via the inspirational methods of accounting. "It's like you're making a deposit into the bank account!", he would say enthusiastically to a room of blank-faced students. So who knows how true that is.

Sunday was my last-ditch effort for any sort of fitness going into this race. I slogged my way around a shortened, icy track for almost three hours. The sun went down, and I was still there, cranking around the loop with a look of spellbound fatigue in my eyes. I silently was praying that my coach was wrong, and that I would be able to reap the benefits of this workout in time for the 50K. Maybe it's 7 days? 6?

Needless to say, if the skiing community had Birkie fever over the past couple of weeks, it has now been replaced by the chills. There's no more time to say "Oh I'll get in a workout tomorrow", or "I'll just race myself into shape!". Nope. Now it's 8,700 skiers drinking beer and melting $700 worth of fluorinated wax into their skis, cursing to themselves, and breathing in borderline toxic fumes.

"But just go out and ski it for fun!" you say "Just enjoy the experience".

Oh what a world that would be. What a fantastic and wonderous world I would live in, if I could just ski the course, passing out flowers, helping the elderly up big hills, and smile and wave to spectators. I would let people pass me, and get joy from the fact that they felt good about themselves. Heck, I could even stop and have a snack break. It's just a race! Enjoy it!

As great as this nordic utopia sounds on paper, it would crumble like a house of cards the moment I heard the  starting gun. As soon as that gun goes off, no matter who is next to me, no matter how I was feeling prior, no matter WHAT, I will devolve to a single-minded automaton of competitive energy. If you're in my way, prepare to have your poles broken. Drafting me? Prepare to get cut off. Are your skis faster than mine? Well, then...you suck, there's nothing I can do about that.

So I would like to offer a formal apology right now to my legs, for pending hurt-fest. Because when 75 year old Bjorn Bjornson passes me on a downhill at 40K, there's no way I'm going to let that old man beat me to the line...