By Gavin Kentch
The one true ski race goes off tomorrow: the 50th American Birkebeiner will once again see athletes make their way from Cable to Hayward Cable back to Cable via a series of 10-kilometer loops of manmade snow heroically pushed out at and around the Birkie trailhead.
The Elite Wave will do five laps of this course, thereby effecting a 50km. All other skate waves on Saturday will go for three laps and a 30km. As you may imagine, while completion credit will be given for this year’s race, percent-back times from 2024 will not be used for placement in future races.
Here is when the races will be tomorrow:
American Birkebeiner (local time at venue: Central Time. Add one hour for Eastern Time, subtract three hours for Alaska. Our friends in other time zones can do the math from there.)
| date | race | local time |
| Saturday, Feb. 24 | Wave 1 30km skate | 7 a.m. |
| Wave 2 30km skate | 7:10 a.m. | |
| W Elite Wave 50km skate | 10:30 a.m. | |
| M Elite Wave 50km skate | 10:45 a.m. | |
| Waves 3–4 30km skate (every 5 minutes) | 1 p.m. | |
| Waves 5–10 30km skate (every 5 minutes) | 1:15 p.m. |
Race tracker and live results: here
Results results: here
Kortelopet and Prince Haakon raced today. All Birkie classic skiers will race a 30km on Sunday.
Will there be streaming?
Yes! There will be! Expect it to work, too, because the American Birkebeiner Ski Foundation has a better sense than Outside Watch does of what viewer demand will look like on the single biggest day of the year.
I’m writing this a day in advance so I don’t have a live video to embed for you, sorry. (And Wave 1 tomorrow goes off at 4 a.m. Alaska Time, so, much love for the Birkie, but I’m not waking up to update this.) But if you go either here (Birkie webpage) or here (Birkie Facebook page), that will get you what you need. Adam Verrier is on the call.
If you go to the Facebook page, be sure to click on the real stream, from ABSF, in the post itself, not one of the myriad spam replies immediately below it also promising streaming. Not sure what they’re promoting or angling for, but it’s not what you want.
What does the course look like?
It is a loop, but not necessarily a flat one. Here are the course map, and screenshots of the relevant Strava profiles. The course presents roughly 20 meters of climb per kilometer in total, which I would describe, in the abstract, as “gently rolling hills.” In practice, please don’t hate me if some individual hills feel steeper than that on race day.
What does the “course” look like off of the snowmaking loops?
Here’s the trail at OO as of Friday afternoon. There’s a reason that the race is all snowmaking, all the time this year.
Who is racing?
Most, but not all, of the people mentioned on the list of elite starters in this article (i.e., this list shows registrations rather than starters, and some of the people listed here will not be racing).
Also 3,000+ other people on Saturday alone. Big week in Birkieland.
You’re reading this on Nordic Insights, one man’s labor of love project dedicated to publicizing American nordic skiing (since it sounds like Outside Watch needs the help, amirite). Last season’s GoFundMe is literally the only reason why I turned a profit in year one of Nordic Insights, and in turn the only reason why there is a year two of Nordic Insights for you to be reading now: I was okay with working for very little money to get this love letter to American cross-country skiing off the ground, but I didn’t want to lose money for the privilege of doing so. If you would like to support what remains a brutally shoestring operation, this season’s GoFundMe may be found here. Thank you for your consideration, and, especially, for reading.
