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Something a Little Different by Sylvain Garde

Vasaloppet ~ Oppet Spår 2005

  On Friday 25^th February the CLS cross-country ski team of Dan, Christian, Jerym and myself travelled once again from London to Vasterås to Mora, where we met fifth member Jan-Olof and his wife Christina. We’d left London in the snow and found Sweden equally snowy, only much colder.

   
Even the toy horses were on skiing mode   

     
    J-O told us this was also a good drink for skiing

 
Skis, skis, skis everywhere    

  
  The finish line in Mora town centre

Saturday was spent getting our skis professionally waxed to suit the forecasted temperature then testing them for a couple of kms, stocking up on carb-heavy food (I’d never eaten so much before), watching the impressive finish of the women’s 30km race (wondering how Charlotta and Jessica would have fared had they taken part as originally planned!), and fine-tuning our equipment for the following morning. Christian, who confessed a 10km run being the closest he’d ever come to an endurance event, had done extensive research on nutrition, and stockpiled an impressive number of energy bars and drinks, with a precise feeding strategy. We finished the day by religiously studying the course profile on the maps.

            
he women’s race was won on a sprint…

   … by local Swedish girl Sofia Bleckur in 1h34

           
Ski waxing is an obscure art  

     Numbered bin-bags for spare clothes – typical Swedish organisation  

     
Christian needs wide open spaces for stretching

  Gustav Vasa, the man who started it all in 1520

           
This time lake Siljan was frozen solid   

  The CLS team, anxious smiles before the start

Sunday saw us rise at 3.30am, munch on breakfast silently and catch a bus to the starting town of Sälen, close to the Norwegian border. In the frenzy of activity there we all got split up among the 8,000 racers, and when the start gun was fired at 7.05 I was still sat on a portaloo. This wasn’t such a big drama, as the microchip attached to our ankle only started our timing when we passed under the start gate, but it meant I had to dodge through hundred of skiers to reach my own skis and get going, realising too late that my race number was upside down. It also meant that the first climb, a super-steep 2km ascent, was overcrowded, and overcome at what sometimes felt like walking pace. From the top though, the four to six ski tracks got a lot more fluid and made it easier to get into a rhythm. The sun rose over breathtaking scenery, wide open spaces of frozen lakes and dense pine forest, the start of a beautiful clear day. Temperature was below minus 20c though, and it took a good while until the increased blood flow brought back the feeling to my fingers.

Participants ranged from teenage girls and boys, to veterans who look well into their sixties or more. From then on I had a great race, punctuated by short stops at the seven feed stations – where hot energy drink and blueberry soup were handed; and marred only by a handful of falls, two of which on steep downhills - scary to say the least. I bumped into Dan at Evertsberg, halfway into the course, and I think we were both equally surprised! (but I learnt later that he’d started ten minutes later than me). Christina had driven to one of the feed stations, and via phone calls to her dad who was on the internet following the live tracking of out chips, was providing much needed vocal support and imnformation. Signs were posted every km showing the remaining number of kms, which was also of great help. When they indicated only 20km to go, I knew I would make it, and started increasing the pace slightly, coming across Jan-Olof with only 7km to go. The final few kms, mostly on downhills and flats, brought a great feeling, as did the cheers on the last few hundred meters, located within the Mora town centre.

In the end, Dan improved his already good personal best of 6h51.18 by more than 12 minutes in 6h39.27, despite several mishaps including a strained leg muscle which forced him to double pole (using only his arms) for the last 20km. Jan-Olof also bettered his time of last year by a whopping 1h23 in 7h05.46, and I was chuffed to finish in 6h59.28, an hour under my (optimistic) goal. Jerym and Christian took longer but both finished in 9h47 and 10h23 respectively, and later reported a number of incidents during their race, including comedy crashes (Jerym hit a stone wall after trying to avoid a fallen woman, and Christian ended up in the forest after a missed turn on a downhill); over-use of the spare waxing spray we’d bought (the commentator at one food stop, seeing Christian’s skis’ poor grip, summoned him on the loudspeaker to get them sorted), and a dubious use of Vaseline by Christian. We all agreed it was a tremendous feat for us three novices to actually even complete the race, never having stepped foot on a cross-country ski a month and a half before.

                
Jerym as he finishes his race  

  Christian’s expression after his says it all

             
 This guy finished in 3 years, 78 days…     

   … using one of these antique wooden poles

On Monday we hobbled clumsily to drop Dan at Arlanda airport, popped into Solna then had a quick tour of Stockholm, which began with a snow storm at T-Central and ended with a clear blue sky in Gamla Stan. Jerym and I even had time for a well-deserved vodka cocktail served in an ice glass at the Ice Bar (soon to open a branch in London), where the temperature was a mere -5c – pretty mild after what we’d been through.

               
Stockholm was rather quite cold…     

   … and so was the Ice Bar

                 
 We asked the waitress if she had ice cubes for our drink, but she was not amused

One again the five of us must thank Dan for convincing us to partake into, some would have said a foolish venture, but which ended being a fantastic experience, and being our host in Mora.

Also thanks to everyone who has helped raising more than £660 for Médecins du Monde.

   The course profile

  Sylvain