Midwest musings

Evelyn

Another Birkie is in the books and I'm back home for a breather before taking off for Europe and the Engadin Skimarathon. For those of you curious, this year was my fifth Birkie (1/4 of the way to my birchleggings bib...kind of scary).
This year, I teamed up with my old club team, XC Oregon for lodging. Ollie's grandmother's college roommate (how's that for a connection?) graciously let us stay at her cabin near Hayward. While Herrm may be just a few months shy of 90, she regularly skis with her dog, Scooter, records family history with a keen pen and tweets and facebooks when she has time between her various projects. Needless to say, she recorded all our bib numbers and ski suit colors so she could cheer for us on Main St.

me, Matt, Ollie, Jason, Herrm

While not my best Birkie finish, I was pretty happy with fifth place. I failed to bridge the gap to Caitlin and Holly after they made a jump at OO and almost put myself in the hole trying to catch them. The pack of chase women also skied past me and for a while I considered pulling up and waiting for a friend -one of my weaker moments and definitely not proud of it. I came to my senses and told myself to stop being such a giant wuss. After chasing the chase pack for a few kms, I latched onto the back of them and realized with some relief that they had pulled up and were playing tactical games with each other. We finished as a group of four and while Jenny smoked us in the finish, Laura, Rebecca and myself finished in a three way sprint. I ended up sandwiched between Laura and Rebecca. Both are moms of multiple children and pretty impressive skiers to boot.

The hardest part about this? climbing up there

After a traditional Moccasin-nap-awards-Sawmill celebration, I managed to sleep through both flights on the way home. Back in good ol' Bend for a bit and enjoying the ridiculous amount of snow we're getting.