Geography

This year, as last, we compared the four big ski cities: Duluth, Madison, Minneapolis and Saint Paul. Not adjusting for population—in which Duluth would win the number of skiers per resident going away—Duluth generally wins by time, Minneapolis leads in the total number of skate skiers, and Madison leads in classic skiers. Does MadNorSki push striding?

In Saint Paul, one in 1102 skiers skis the Birkie. 1:702 in Minneapolis, and 1:472 in Madison. Duluth beats out Madison, but just barely, at 1:402. I didn’t run the numbers for Cable, but I’m pretty sure everyone is either skiing the race or cheering it on.

Last year, we had competitions, by state, for states with more than 10 skiers in the freestyle Birkie and five in the classic race. Basically, we sorted the top ten or five skiers from each state with a “full team” and assigned them points in descending order. Here’s the results:

FS Men
1367 Minnesota
1268 Wisconsin
1157 Michigan
1005 Colorado
805 Idaho
769 Alaska
714 New York
685 Utah
659 Iowa
642 Massachusetts
637 Illinois
544 Oregon
462 Washington
441 Montana
169 California
FS Women
523 Minnesota
357 Wisconsin
301 Michigan
293 Idaho
264 Colorado
82 Illinois
CL Men
349 Minnesota
332 Wisconsin
310 Michigan
278 Washington
240 Idaho
235 Colorado
205 New York
175 Utah
142 T Illinois
142 T Iowa
131 Texas
102 Montana
90 California
63 Indiana
56 Massachusetts
CL Women
149 Minnesota
133 Wisconsin
103 Michigan
84 Montana
64 Idaho
61 Colorado
36 Illinois

Migrating very complex tables in to WordPress is proving difficult. So we’ve put our statistics for every state (number of finishers, average finish time) on a separate page (it should open in a new tab/window). If anyone knows a lot about WordPress and has ideas, shoot me an email.