Post Birkie is usually a good time to hang up the skis for a bit and relax before spring running season starts, but this year there was much more skiing to be done, and after a rainy January I was still itchy to get out and glide. Since Seeley Hills was cancelled I signed up for the 50k classic race at the Pepsi challenge to get one solid classic race in on the season. I had the perfect plan to get myself classic ready too, a week of skiing at Bearskin lodge up on the Gunflint Trail.
This is my second year winning a ski week at Bearskin lodge from the Hoigaards challenge, and I cannot say enough good things about the place. The cabins are cozy, warm, and right on the ski trails. The staff is out grooming pretty much every day and knows the snow conditions up there well. The trails are fun and there is a great variety of terrain with beautiful forests and lakes everywhere. The cabin was nice and cozy, and we had a good stockpile of food, ski magazines, and board games to fill the time when we weren't skiing. I borrowed a game called Pandemic, and we played at least a game or two every night of the trip I think.
Last year I skied mostly on my own and put in a lot of km. This year my friends Erik, Elspeth, and Emily all came up and stayed the whole week, so Erik and I skied together the whole week. The first day we skied the whole Banadad trail, which cuts through the boundary waters and intersects the Gunflint trail at a couple points. Erik and I started from the cabin, and the girls took a car to the far end and started skiing back towards us. We met somewhere in the middle, stopped for a granola bar snack, and kept going our separate ways. Over the course of the week we covered the entire trail system, with only a bit of planning required to make sure we caught everything. There are moose in the area, but I didn't see any. There was plenty of evidence of them on the trails though, the groomed ski trails also make for easy walking if you're a moose. Over the course of the week I skied some 250km or so, a nice relaxing week before the last ski race of the season, the Pepsi Challenge.
Pepsi is a race I've had on my calendar to do for several years. It always used to overlap with the Vinterfest race in Amery, but due to being cancelled a few years in a row due to bad weather in January they moved the race to March, where snow is much more reliable the last few years. This year it seems like it was a good call. Many January races got cancelled, but the March snow for Pepsi was plentiful and great skiing. With temps hovering just below freezing and fresh snow falling as the race got ready to go there was a mix of hard wax and hairies in use. The fresh snow made for a slow start. Everyone realized this so there was nobody really anxious to get on the front line. I lined up between Dave Nelson and Josh Doebbert, and the other competitors finally cajoled Jennie Bender into moving up to the front line. I figured these three would be my main competition for the race, so I was happy to find out that Jennie was only in for the 25k. This meant Molly Watkins would be the biggest threat to me finishing my season without getting beat by any women, a goal of mine ever since the first time I passed Sarah Hunter in a Birkie. My first year skiing the Birkie from wave 2, also my first year skiing in the U of M bumblebee suit, Sarah passed me from wave 3 just before OO, and for many years after that I judged how well I did in a race by my finish in comparison to hers. I remember the first time I beat her at Mora, and the year I qualified into the Elite wave I knew I was having a great race when I caught up the eight minute gap to Sarah.
Anyway, back to Pepsi. I started the race at a reasonable pace to get a feel for things. I ended up in the lead so stayed relaxed and tried to take the best line available since it was much faster to ski out of the tracks except on climbs where the tracks helped hold my technique together. After a while Jennie took a pull. She is much more liberal on taking skating steps around corners than I am, and much more smooth at it as well, so I tucked in behind and tried to mirror her technique. When we hit the steeper hills of the Silver loop I did a bit of work to break things up just to get a feel for things. Jennie followed me and a kid named Tamer Mische-Richter also came along. The three of us traded off pulls, I tried to get them to do more of the work, but Tamer didn't have the most consistent pacing, and the pace slowed until a couple more 25k skiers caught back on, then Dave, Josh, and Erik caught back on as well. I tried to keep a smooth tempo on my pulls and keep the pace high enough that things didn't come back together any more. After the last food stop on the loop at 21k or so Jennie, Bjorn Adelsman, and Tamer started racing in earnest. I tucked in behind them and tried to keep contact while doing as little work as possible. They started to get away on a couple of the climbs, but being behind on the downhills let me ride in their tracks and catch back up. They pulled me away from the rest of the group and when I came around the lap lane and they all went in to finish I was on my own.
I had maybe 25-30 seconds on Erik and Dave at that point, Josh was on a slow pair of hairies and didn't make the gap. The snow had stopped a bit in to the first lap, so the track was well skied in for the second time around. I put in some strong double poling and really worked to get the speed up on the striding climbs to get out of sight of the two guys following me. I knew if I could get out of visual contact I would be a harder mark to chase down. After parting ways with the 10k skiers I had been passing it was a lonely trek for me for quite a while. This made it really easy to just focus on technique and skiing by feel. I pushed hard without letting my heart rate get out of control and stayed relaxed on my recovery. The first skaters, a pack of 3, passed me at about 18k into the second lap, far later than I expected. The third guy was falling off the back when they went by me, and I reeled him in on the next up hill. Striding actually looked more efficient than slogging up the hill in the soft skate lane, and on the flats he tucked in behind me and double poled, something many of the top skaters were doing on and off I later learned. I was able to ski with him for several km before the trail flattened out and he got away from me. At this point it was starting to snow again some and my hard wax was icing just a bit. It was mostly downhill for me at this point though, so I focused on cleaning the snow off the ski bases over the tops of hills and forcing the double pole whenever possible to keep the bottoms of the skis clean. I had a good run in to the finish where the top skaters were just exiting the finish area. I had held off Nate, who was skating, and all the other classic skiers. I ended up winning by a little 10 minutes. Dave was 2nd skiing on hairies, and Erik 3rd. Josh ended up dropping out due to his slow skis. Molly won the womens race and was 4th overall, an impressive finish.
Byron Lubenkov was waiting at the finish line with a shot of peppermint schnapps, a welcome treat after a long race. The post race food was good, although I did not partake in the Pepsi products. It was fun hanging out in a warm building within sight of the finish line. I had a good chat with Jennie Bender and Molly before getting back on the road to the rainy twin cities with Erik and Elspeth. We got back to St. Paul, ate some of the leftover food from the bearskin trip, and played one last game of Pandemic before I headed back to Northfield.
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