This past weekend was full of sporting events to watch and to compete in here in Lillehammer. It all started on Saturday morning with the opening races of the Biathlon World Championships in Pyeongchang, Korea, which turned out to be a historic day for the Norwegians (their four starters placed 1-4).  Later that day I went outdoors for a sunny extra-blue classic ski to watch the World Rally Championships take place on the roads in and around Lillehammer.  On Sunday, I completed my first ski marathon, which was the longest race of my life thus far. So yeah, it was a great weekend. Below is a picture of my teammates and I at the start of the race.

The Madshus ski marathon is a point-to-point 42km race that starts in Raufoss and ends Gjøvik. It’s a fairly small race (for Norwegian standards) including roughly 400 competitors. The weather was perfect for a classic race—low 20s and perfect extra-blue conditions. The race was a seeding race for the Norwegian Birkebeiner, which will take place towards the end of March.

Seeing as this was my first marathon, I had made up my mind to start conservatively to see how I was feeling. This never happened. My teammates persuaded me to go for it at the start in order to keep contact with the lead group (and I’m happy they did), thus the pace at the start turned out feeling like a 5km race pace, which had me quite worried for some time. Somehow I managed to keep contact with one of the leading groups of fiendishly fast Norwegian marathon skiers for the first seven kilometers, upon which I fell on a downhill, flying off the course. After getting up I tried my hardest to reel in the group I was working with, but I wasn’t able to manage it. After that point I simply got in a zone and watched the kilometers pass by on my own. I also managed another heroic fall that I wish would have been caught on video. I ended up flying down a hill looking something like a ski jumper (with a pole stuck between the legs) and after hitting the ground, slid for another twenty yards face-first (ouch!). Somehow neither of my falls affected my position in the race. Both of them took place while I was in seventh position and I ended up finishing in seventh about 7 min back.

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the race (even with the soreness the day after) and I’m already looking forward to the Norwegian Birkebeiner.

Speaking of which, best of luck to all those participating in the American Birkebeiner next weekend!

Here is a video I shot of the World Rally Championships in Lillehammer. I wonder if they are in control or if they simply bounce of the snow-banks all the way to the finish ☺

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 5:22 pm and is filed under Norway, Racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.