Tomorrow: Birkebeiner Day
Friday, August 27th, 2010It’s that time of the year again, last Saturday of August, Birkebeiner Day! It’ll be the third time that I participate in this heroic 94km mountain bike race through the forest from Rena to Lillehammer…as you can see below it should be easy, uuhhh! 😉
(and the fact that I hardly trained will certainly not help my pace uphill…)
The history behind this event is quite special:
Way back in the 13th century there was a civil war in Norway. Two groups were fighting for the throne, one of them was called the birkebeiners. Their leader died and the birkebeiners wanted to find safe haven for his son, then still a baby. Because of the difficult winter conditions, two of the birkebeiners had to go ahead with the little boy and were able to save him by taking a heroic shortcut via a mountain trail. The boy later became King Haakon and ended the civil war.
Read the full history on the Birkebeiner side or WikiPedia.
If you are interested, you can track my progress via the Birkebeiner site, just search on my name…I expect to start around 11:45h!
