How does 52 Birkie ski event compare to marathon?

The marathon is more demanding.

The Birkie would be comparable to rollerblading a marathon.

absolutely not. i have done both, including a 2:30 marathon. in the birkie, you are red-lining from near the beginning. absolute, all-out nuts-to-the-wall climbing for the first 14k. then you think you will get a chance to recover...but the hills keep coming until near the bitter end.

the only difference is you don't pound your muscles like you do on the pavement. in both races it gets hard to move in the last 10k, but the marathon does leave that damage with you for a longer time after the finish.

if you think the marathon is harder, you haven't skied in the elite wave, or you probably just haven't skied hard enough. the first 18-19 miles of the marathon are fairly bearable. not the case in the birkie. (however, i guess if you hammered a very hilly marathon, the effects might be similar)

get some birkie fever (and hope the race isn't totally canceled):

http://www.skinnyski.com/racing/results/2000%2D2001/movies/birkie6a.mpg

birkie wrote:

The Birkie would be comparable to rollerblading a marathon.

yeah, if you turn up the resistance on your blades and find the hilliest marathon in the world, perhaps.

I've never done the the Birkie, but I've done a few 50k classic nordic races here in the northeast. I'll add that I'm far from and elite runner and even farther from being an elite skier. I've trained much better for running than I ever have for skiing. I've had moderate successes and painful collapses in both sports.

With those qualifications, and the comment that endurance racing at one's limit is gonna hurt whether your running, skiing, or on a bike or anything else, I'd make these observations. Running, both racing and training, involves much higher impact stresses so recovery from a race or hard training takes longer. I would expect that runners have a higher incidence of injuries, but I don't know that for a fact. Elite skiers (and cyclists) can and do put in far more training hours than runners because they can do so without breaking down. Depending on the course, skiing tends to be much more tactical with very high efforts on uphill sections followed by near complete rest on downhills. Skiers will put in hard anaerobic efforts at many points during a marathon length race, while runners rarely do. Skiing is a more technical sport, that is mastering efficient form is more challenging than running. Equipment selection and ski preparation are huge factors in skiing, a challenge that doesn't really have a parallel in running.

Skiing takes technique, balance, and coordination. Running doesn't.

Look at all those Salomon suckers!!

Anyways, it's all about what you put into it. Giving 100% in running is the same as giving 100% in skiing, although some things, like your time, will inevitably change.

clarksonxc wrote:

Giving 100% in running is the same as giving 100% in skiing, although some things, like your time, will inevitably change.

i agree in some ways, but the significant differences here are

a) you really don't use your upper body in running, and

b) the birkie is MUCH more hilly than any normal marathon. of course that means you get rest on the downhills, but it doesn't seem to help much. and the person was asking about the birkie, not just any 50k ski race.

i have given 100% in both the birkie and a marathon. i'm a top-1/2 of the elite wave skier, and as stated above, a 2:30 marathoner. not world-class by any means, but decent. so i'm giving an educated opinion rather than the wishy-washy "anything hurts if you go hard." most people don't know what they're talking about anyway, because they don't know how to hurt.

ski racing is a serious of intervals, while running is more of a sustained steady state, sand through the hourglass type of fatigue.

I would agree with the dude who says you hurt earlier in the Birkie than you would in a marathon. I think one has to be a technically good skiier to be able to compare the two, otherwise the difficulty in the ski is getting over your own inefficiency, rather than intensity level.

I agree with piv and hithere: one year I probably in mid 2:20s marathon shape and doing a lot of xc skiing, so I decided to jump in a 25K race in Tug Hill NY (which is not even that hilly by XC ski standards). I knew my form was not great but figured my conditioning would allow me to overcome slight inefficiency in technique. I really thought I would be top third in the race. I got totally owned - I was redlining from the start and was pretty much finished by 10k. I think I finished 35th in my 5 year age bracket. Very humbling experience.

Or you could be like me: slow. I'm a 3:17 marathoner and a 4:59 classic Birkie skier. Despite all that extra time on my feet, I'd say the Birkie (the way plod through it, anyway) is easier than a marathon, for many of the reasons already stated by others.

I did the Birkie and the L.A. marathon one week apart when I was young and stupid. As a middle distance runner, they both sucked for me. I did find out though that if you have hypothermia, they let you go to the front of the line for the return buses. I think the Birkie is a lot harder if you start in one of the later waves when the snow is all torn up.