Due to the wife having some weird alien bulge that should enter this world around the Stockholm marathon, we, or I should say I, decided not to partake in this years 42 km torture. The potential for no sleep leading up to this grueling task is not something I look forward to, let alone leaving my newborn and wife all alone. Plus the following days of probably being more helpless than the little one (you know, that crippling muscle pain feeling) wouldn't go down too well, it wouldn't be easy for Johanna to look after two babies......
This is where Vikingarännet comes into the picture. Loosely translated as 'the Viking race', it's a fairly long, 80 km race from Uppsala to Stockholm on the ice, on Sweden's third largest lake, Mälaren. The course is quite nice, for me, it's still bizarre to think that the open water can really freeze all the way to Stockholm, and still be safe to stand/skate on. There is one small blip, possibly where some fast water meets (maybe two rivers/tributaries or something) which isn't frozen, which results in a 2 km walk to get to the next ice point.
I'm not sure of the number of participants, but I'm hazarding a guess of around 3000, mostly with sharp-tipped poles that help (apparently) with the speed and balance. I opted for good old flailing arms......
The other difference, which most non-Nordic people won't know about are the skates. They are all based at least on a Nordic skate, which normally has a separate boot (the same boots used for cross-country skiing) that clips/ties into a long blade, mine are 50 cms, meaning you can glide a lot easier than on normal ice skates. I would say the down side is the weight at the end of this long course, after many thousand repeats of pushing and lifting your legs back into position, lets say, you feel it, mostly in your lower back, arse and generally every muscle you never knew you had in your legs.
It maybe trivial to a Swede, but being on natural ice is something I'm definitely not 'used to'. For me it's a great feeling, although restricted in the sense that you follow a course that has been brushed by a car (yes on the ice) with plough, there is something quite special with being on it. No, not just the idea that if you fall through you could die within minutes (You should carry these spikes that fit around your neck, which you can stab and grip the ice with), or avoiding some rather large cracks in places (very easily done and very messy when your 50 cm skate disappears and gets wedged, resulting in a rather comical and painful immediate halt on one foot, usually ending in a face plant of some kind). I love that 'almost' freedom feeling. Ice skating, well this Nordic skating, is not something probably anyone (or at least very few) can appreciate in England, but it's awesome. I'm by no means good at it but I did finish this race. It took me 5 hrs and 21 mins and just one quite spectacular fall, which hurt like hell and amusingly landed me at the feet of a nice old Swedish lady, who kind of laughed, asking 'Gick det bra?' (Directly translated as 'went it good?')......yes, bloody marvelous actually, I love landing on my arse and the colour of brown and blue, you know, those things called bruises.
This year the wind was also quite perfect, from the north, around 7 m/s so quite chilly on the willy but mostly a tail wind. The ice too was apparently quite magnificent, which although I have nothing really to compare to, is highly understandable. This was shown with a new course record, some 2 hrs 35 mins by some Dutch speed-skater guy. Truly remarkable, really. Especially as last years time was 30 mins slower. The conditions must have been really great. This is probably more confounded as a couple of years ago it was cancelled (it's only been running for 10 years) because of lack of ice........believe it or not, Sweden isn't like -20 all winter......just occasionally (I practiced once on a frozen lake a few weeks ago and it was -26 before wind chill and my apparent wind.....not very pleasant).
I feel ok today (one day after), not quite as bad as the marathon, but my legs definitely know they've done something other than the typical 4 km walk to work and back. I will no doubt enter next years, now I know what I'm up against. Fingers crossed the wind, the weather and more importantly the ice is all behaving. Otherwise I'll have a battle on my hands, as it's quite staggering how much the wind can kill you. My average time per km into the wind was say 4 mins 15 secs. Downwind on smooth ice is a whole other ball game, I managed just under 2 mins 30 secs for consistent periods, which if my maths is correct is around 24 km per hour. That feels pretty fast on a bike, let alone a set of bloody ice skates........I'm amazed I'm still in one piece come to think of it.........picture Bambi on ice and you're pretty much there.
p.s. I shall try and post a video (not mine but someone else's) so you get the picture. Or if you are really adventurous, you can youtube it, probably not many videos of this year, but last years is around.
