Going forth

It’s four o’clock in the morning, and I’m in a tent in a dark forest, hiding from the rain together with close to eight hundred other people, all of us preparing to go out and run Ultravasan, Sweden’s most prestigious ultra marathon and – more to the point – a trail ninety kilometres long. It’s more than double what I’ve ever done before.

The atmosphere is akin to what I expect it must be in an army right before battle commences – there are a lot of grim faces and thousand-mile stares, as people make last minute adjustments to their kit. Some try to sleep, others make surreptitious dashes into the wet darkness to empty their bowels, like birds of pray before taking flight.

There’s four in our group; myself, my sister Sofia, my brother-in-law Anders, plus Magnus, a friend whom I talked into signing up in early January, and who I suspect has regretted the decision several times over since. As we get closer to the starting time there are embraces and selfies and jokes, as the gravity of the situation is sinking in – we’re going into the unknown, and anything can happen. We line up in the start pen with ten minutes to go, the announcer’s incongruous natter finally replaced by stirring music, and the feeling of going forth is further reinforced when the soundtrack from the Hunger Games comes on, drones hanging in the air above us, filming for television. “We who are about to die”, I mutter, giving a half-hearted wave to one of them. Then suddenly it’s a matter of seconds, the Vasaloppet theme song comes on, and we’re off.

Up, up and away!

The first thing that happens as the crowd starts moving is you pass a signpost saying Mora 90, Smågan 9,2. The former is too huge a number to compute, so I focus on the latter, marking the length of the first section. Vasaloppet famously starts with almost eight kilometres of uphill logging roads, but people are too fired up to care, and shoot off like Superman. I force myself not to get drawn in, and have scores of people overtake me. Sofia and Anders quickly leave me behind, and Magnus disappears behind me. The rain hangs in the air like a particularly invasive mist, but it feels good.

There are plenty of places along the way offering drinks and refreshments, so I’ve elected to leave my Camelbak at home, which means all I’m carrying is a flip belt (essentially a double cummerbund with openings into which you can jam things) with some toilet paper (in case I have to Pope), paracetamol pills and three energy gels, plus my iPhone – not essential, but since I want to document the adventure I take it along both as a camera and a safety precaution. My secret weapon is inside the little bag that my sis bought at the expo yesterday, which is hanging on the outside of the flip belt in the small of my back – it’s supposed to be used for carrying litter, but I’ve stuffed it with chocolate protein balls.

Eight in all, these magical pills full of goodness will have me flying along – or that’s the idea, until five k into the race I realise that disaster has struck! Like the U.S. paratroopers invading Europe on D-day, I’ve been betrayed by untested equipment; they were issued canvas bags to store their weapons in only the day before their deployment, and the overstuffed bags mostly ripped clean off the soldiers and disappeared into the void, taking the weapons with them. In my case the bag was still there, but without me noticing, the balls had been bouncing out of the bag, leaving only one at the very bottom. Like Hansel and Gretel, I had been leaving a trail of sweets behind. Unlike them, however, I had no intention of turning around, so gritted my teeth and pressed on into the forest proper. I would have to make my own magic.

Run, Forest, run!

After Smågan we’ve reached the end of the road. The trail becomes exactly that, a single track trail leading deeper and deeper into the forest. Pine tree roots have you Fred Astairing your way forward, as they try to trip you up, and rocks are everywhere, meaning a fall would be most unforgiving. It’s beautiful though, the mist hanging low, and the rain lending every surface a fresh polish, making for a landscape where trolls seem less part of mythology, and more like a distinct possibility.

Then it’s on to the bogs, wetlands where only stunted trees grow in the acid waters, and you have to balance on boardwalks, slippery with rain and algae, laid out on top of the grassy knolls, as stepping off them would mean sinking to untold depths immediately – there’s no telling how solid the water-sick ground is; you might only sink foot-deep, but if you’re unlucky you’re instantly submerged – this is the kind of landscape our forefathers used to depose dead bodies and ritual sacrifices in, after all.

Another sign of clear and present danger is literally carved into the boardwalks themselves. They are made of sturdy two-by-fours, but every so often I come across places where furrows have been raked into the wood as if it’s nothing but warm butter. They’re territorial markings by the brown bears that roam these lands, and they leave precious little to the imagination. It’s a disquieting sight – the fact that bears apparently make use of the boardwalks to cross the bogs as well doesn’t inspire confidence in the construction so much as conjure up visions of what the consequences of a close encounter with a 700 lb version of Mr Cuddles would be.

Feed me, Seymour!

Thankfully no incidents occur, and the inhospitable terrain requires full focus, so the kilometres slip by almost unnoticed. I pass Mångsbodarna, the first of the depots serving food, and realise I’m ravenous. Breakfast was at 0200, and now, five hours and 23k later, my body is craving nourishment. Pancakes with jam, blueberry soup and chicken broth, anyone? I eat it all with gusto, and wash it down with coffee and water. In the cold and rain, the warmth of hot beverages is a godsend to be savoured.

I had worried that eating too much would affect my ability to run, but since my strategy is to keep a pace where I don’t get out of breath or my heart rate too high, it seems not to be a problem. The theory is that by keeping that kind of slow pace, your body never switches into aerobic mode, which means you can go on more or less indefinitely, as your organism doesn’t burn fuel the same way. I don’t know. I read it in a book. I thought seven minutes per kilometre would do it, but my feet seem to be saying 6,40/k, and who am I to argue? I’m only along for the ride, after all.

Fairy trails

And so on it goes. The trail stays lethal, an obstacle course made up of jagged rocks, but I am too distracted by the man in front of me wearing a sports bra to pay much attention. Turns out it’s a good way to prevent bleeding nipples, apparently. That still doesn’t explain the bright pink colour, of course…

The final destination is still much too far away to contemplate, but getting to the next station in Risberg is intimidating in itself, as the section prior to it is infamous. By this stage I’ve done 28k, and know the next five will be nothing but uphill. I walk parts of it, and try not to think about the fact that I still have two thirds of the way to go.

Risberg to Evertsberg, the approximate halfway mark, feels long, but thankfully the surroundings are mesmerisingly beautiful, even though the rain keeps falling. I pass little lakes in the woods, where moose would be grazing on less crowded days, old mills and cottages that look like they belong in Middle Earth, streams and burbling brooks. By the time there’s a signpost saying we’ve now gone past the finish line of a regular marathon I still don’t feel the least bit tired, and note with satisfaction that I’ve done it in about the same time it took me to do my first ever marathon, Berlin, which is famously flat and easy running – not something that can be levelled at this race.

The Halfway Inn

The kilometres keep rolling by, and before I know it I roll up at Evertsberg, which has loomed ahead as a Fata Morgana for quite some time. More pancakes, gherkins and blueberry soup, but more importantly, this is where the drop bags await, with whatever provisions you have seen fit to send in advance. Bench upon bench full of people taking stock of their situation. I strip off my wet t-shirt and socks and apply liberal amounts of Vaseline all over, in places I wouldn’t even point at in public under normal circumstances. No one gives a damn – they’re all busy doing much the same. New, dry clothes on. Two of my toes have gigantic blisters, but since they don’t hurt I decide against changing shoes. This is probably a wise decision, as doing so will prove Magnus’s downfall. He will go on to develop so many blisters that he essentially has to hobble the last twenty k’s.

After Evertsberg it’s gently downhill for six kilometres, and that, combined with dry(er) clothes, a stomach full of food, and asphalt, glorious asphalt to run on make these some of the easiest kilometres of all, whizzing by at breakneck speed – sub-six minutes, even. Joking aside, my strategy to not go out too hard is starting to pay off, as I now start overtaking other runners instead of vice versa. It’s not my prime objective – that was always just to finish the race – but it feels good, even so.

Wood sprites

Another thing that helps is the support you get from onlookers. By now I’ve been out for close to seven hours, the rain has finally stopped, the sun is out, and normal people are starting to wake up. Given that the race is run in the wilderness there aren’t many supporters, but what they lack in quantity, they more than make up for in quality.

Some groups and individuals clearly follow a particular runner’s progress and if you keep up with that person they show up several times along the way. A trio of bikers – a giant of a man who looks like a cross between a bear and a troll, plus his wife and mother, of similar stock – start recognising me after I urge them to do the wave as I pass, and soon they are looking out for me and doing their wave as soon as I show up. Others join in, making me feel like a superhero.

There’s a mother-and-son duo from Norway that show up more often than anyone else, always enthusiastic and shouting encouragement (at least I think they do – it’s in Norwegian), but my personal favourites are the two beautiful young women who suddenly appear around the 70k mark, offering candy to all runners.

At this point I’ve had my only low of the entire journey – I had been running together with a woman from the UK for awhile, and although Lucia was as pleasant as can be, her tales of having run a 30-hour race in the Lake District just two weeks previously, her plans to do another ultra in Switzerland in two weeks’ time, plus the fact that I couldn’t keep up with her, conspired to bring me down a little, and when I twisted my foot on top of that, I started to wonder if I was going to have to walk the rest of the way.

So I dropped behind, and walked for a bit, but when my foot didn’t get any worse I started running again, and then there was the silly Volvo video thing you can see at the end, which raised my spirits quite a bit, and then there they were, like two dryads with a huge bag of candy, and in spite of my parents having told me never to accept sweets from strangers, I happily deviated from that rule, and made sure to tell them just how glad they had made me with this selfless gesture. They, too, would pop out of the woodwork (as it were) several times more, to my unbridled delight.

The long game

The last twenty kilometres? Well, it’s weird. Twenty k is a long run by any standard, and yet it seemed easy. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was still able to run, even trundling up inclines that I would previously have used as a welcome excuse to walk a few steps.

Sure it helped that it was mostly slightly downhill on relatively easy logging roads, and sure I wasn’t running fast by this stage, but I was running when most runners weren’t running at all. I passed most everyone I saw, with one notable exception – occasionally along the trail there would be the odd runner I would overtake, only to find them ahead of me again, over and over, and at the end there was Zebra Girl (you name people when you see them again and again, and she had striped tights. I’m not at my wittiest after ten hours’ running, what can I say?), whom I overtook around the 80k mark but who then kept pace with me, occasionally ahead, but mainly right behind.

Coming in to Mora, I passed a man on the outskirts of town who said we would probably make it in under eleven hours. He seemed a little doubtful though, and since my GPS-watch had long since given up the ghost, I had no choice: I found resources left in me to sprint the last six hundred metres, running hard, rejoicing in the feeling of seemingly endless strength.

The audience cheered and clapped, but I was particularly pleased to find my two Candy Angels waiting just across the finish line. If you look at the video you can actually see how I swerve as soon as I crossed it to give them both a huge hug and to tell them again how much they had meant to me. It was a delight to be able to share that moment with them, as they symbolised all the good people who had helped me along the way; volunteers, onlookers and well-wishers, all giving freely of their time to spur me on.

Karma goes both ways tho, because a minute later Zebra Girl taps on my shoulder to thank me for having been there for her – for the longest time, she said, she had only managed to keep running by literally following in my footsteps. We hugged as well, united by our struggle and our accomplishment, sharing goofy grins and the joyful realisation that we had done it!

This more than anything symbolises ultra running to me: regardless of how and when you finish, you are a victor. Sofia and Anders beat me by more than three quarters of an hour, but I ran what felt like a perfect race – I was never overexerted, never had a negative thought, and finished strong. I might have been able to do it half an hour faster, but at the prize of my enjoyment of the experience. As it was I loved every step of the way, I took in the beauty of the nature, the goodness of my fellow runners and all the other people involved, and even managed to spread a bit of happiness in the process. You can’t ask for a better result.