Race day started with a bus ride to Överkallix for the start. There wasn’t much time between our arrival and the start. Not having to stand around outside for long was sensible, but it didn’t give much time to go to the loo and reattach my pulling shafts. I also underestimated Pulkee’s turning circle, and sllightly embarrassingly capsized her and emitted my first ‘for fucks sake’ at myself. The route started with a long section along a frozen river. The underfoot conditions were good, and it was fairly easy to move at a decent (~3 mph) pace. As usual, most of the field pulled away into the distance, but I did have company at the back. In the first few miles, I chatted to Wendy (whose name I recognised from a Facebook group for academics) before she and her husband Richard (organiser of various interesting races) pulled away. In a pattern that would continue for days, I backed-and-forthed with various people, including a 30-something Dutch couple (Kimberly and Emiel), as they moved faster but took longer rest/eating breaks.

A couple of challenges appeared. There were some short, sharp climbs and descents as the route temporarily climbed onto and off of the river banks, and Pulkee wanted to descend faster than my right leg did. After a couple of hairy moments, I learnt that sitting back into my harness (and telling Pulkee sternly that we were going to go at my speed, not hers) fixed that issue. The tougher issue was body temperature control. It wasn’t particularly warm, but I soon started overheating. Eventually, after removing outer layers and opening all zips, I resorted to stripping down to my ‘base’ layers (a thin top and fleece leggings). However, because I’d already sweated too much, I then got cold when the temperature dropped sharply as the route went into shade.

After about a half-marathon, the route came off the river and started climbing, gently initially, towards the first checkpoint, Laxforsberget, on top of a hill/mountain at ~23 miles. As the Sun dropped behind the trees, I took a break to eat a dehydrated meal. Almost all of the handful of people behind me passed while I was stopped. I wasn’t bothered by this, though. Given the issues I often have with eating in the first few days of multi-day races, I was happy to get some calories down while I still had a decent appetite. Eventually, the Sun set, and I discovered that my red light fitted quite securely onto the pocket at the back of my harness (a solution to a problem that I’d worried about, and failed to solve, for weeks). The route passed along a forestry track, and there were some patches of ice. I inched my way across them OK without stopping to put spikes on, but ‘what if the rising temperatures lead to lots of this’ became my next thing to worry about. The last mile or so to the checkpoint was quite steep. Hauling Pulkee, who was somewhat overloaded/overweight, up the hill was hard, but I was expecting this and quite enjoyed it. I also overtook a couple of people who’d stopped to have a break.

CP1 was a handful of teepees, plus a small cabin where the race crew were boiling water to refill bottles. Despite being at the back of the field, it was very busy, but well organised. The biggest issue was parking Pulkee. I was using a kakau, a bag which sits between the rigid poles and can be accessed without removing your harness. However, this meant I couldn’t fold the poles backwards (without risking breaking them at least), so she needed a long space. I was told that I was ‘the last athlete in the 500km race to reach CP1’. This annoyed me. Firstly: I wasn’t last (I’m also not an athlete…). One of the people I’d overtaken on the climb was doing the long race. And secondly, ‘so what?’. I’m often last, or nearly last, at CP1, but I rarely DNF or finish last. I tried to keep my annoyance to myself, but it did give me a potential title for the ‘running’ autobiography I’d like to one day write: ‘Last to checkpoint one’. In retrospect, I suspect they were indirectly trying to warn me not to get a false sense of security from being surrounded by lots of people doing the 185km race, since their time limit was (relatively speaking) somewhat more generous.

I was allocated a spot in one of the teepees and given some hot food and a hot chocolate (the first of many). I took my gloves, shoes and socks off for the first hand and foot check. They were fine, but I was concerned about how much steam was coming off my wet (with sweat) jacket. I decided to ditch my front pack to hopefully let the sweat evaporate better. This required some rearranging of kit, from the front pack into the kakau, and from the kakau into the pulk bag. I also took advantage of the long drop toilet to change my tampon in relative comfort.

The route down the mountain was a bit steep and windy, but I managed to keep both myself and Pulkee upright. Over the next few hours, I started passing people who’d stopped to bivvy. I’d initially planned to keep going through the first night and stop to sleep for the first time at CP2 at Jockfall. That plan had been binned due to the lack of sleep in the preceding week, and instead I intended to stop at around 2 am and get ~3 hours of sleep before starting moving again around dawn. After passing someone setting their tent up in what appeared to be a high, exposed, frozen bog, I decided to stop a little bit early, at ~1.30 am, when I spotted what appeared to be a suitable spot: a flattish area in woods, with a gap between the trail and the trees.

My first ‘sleep out for real in the Arctic’ was, literally, a bit of a shit show. Unthinkingly, I parked Pulkee some way in front of the patch of snow I stamped down with snow shoes to pitch my tent on. This meant a lot of back-and-forthing as I transferred gear and also contributed to the subsequent ‘poo incident’. The temperature had dropped significantly. I’ve no idea how cold it was (I tried and failed to find a cheap, compact thermometer which can handle Arctic temperatures). Other people are saying it went well below -20. I’m not convinced that it did (the air didn’t feel colder than it does in Stockholm at -20), but it was definitely cold. I knew the sweat that had collected in the empty fingertips of my gloves had frozen. However, I wasn’t expecting showers of snow/ice to fall out of my jacket when I took it off. The water in my insulated Nalgene bottle had also started freezing, so I added hot water from a thermos to try to warm it up so I could use it as a hot waterbottle. I changed into dry ‘sleeping’ gloves and socks and put the damp ones down my fleece tights to dry. My shoes, gaiters, outer tights, waterproof socks and jacket went into separate heavy-duty bin bags at the bottom of my sleeping bag to stop them freezing. This didn’t leave much room for me. I had also inadvertently pitched my tent on a slight slope, with my head facing downhill, so I ended up curled in a ball in the top half of my (special short…) sleeping bag. After a couple of minutes of shivering, the ridiculously over-the-top -50 rated sleeping bag did its job, and I fell asleep quite quickly.

After an hour or so, I woke up with stomach cramps and an urgent need to poo. Unfortunately, I’d left my ‘poo and period kit’, containing tampons, wet wipes (individually wrapped so they can be defrosted in an armpit) and dog poo bags in my pulk. Getting it would require putting on socks, shoes and snow shoes, which wasn’t going to happen in time. Fortunately, I was using a piece of yoga mat as a door mat for standing on when removing and putting on shoes and socks. So I rapidly scrambled out of my sleeping bag and crouched on the mat in my socks. I didn’t fancy getting up in the morning to a pile of frozen poo on my doorstep, so I used a snowshoe to flick it into the woods. On stuffing myself back into my overcrowded sleeping bag, I realised that my ‘hot’ water bottle was decidedly cold, so I removed it.

I heard a few people passing by in the night, but slept fairly well until my alarm went off at 5 am. The socks and gloves I’d stuffed down my tights had dried off overnight, and my shoes and waterproof socks hadn’t frozen. But other kit hadn’t fared so well. My water bottle was now mostly full of ice, and the sweaty jacket was now a frozen lump. Thawing the icy water used up a lot of my remaining (now not so hot) water. I had a spare, dry mid-layer jacket. However, drenching and freezing jackets on a daily basis clearly wouldn’t be sustainable. ‘You need to get your shit together’, I told myself, out loud.

By the time I’d packed my kit up, and struggled with frozen ratchet straps, I was a bit cold, but getting moving again soon warmed me up. My first goal for the day was the Björkadamskojan cabin. The route meandered through woods, and it took longer to get there than I thought it should. I passed several people who had stopped to melt snow, but I had just enough water (albeit now fairly cold) to get me to the hut. The hut was quite busy, with half a dozen people eating or resting. It was mid-late morning and quite warm, so I happily melted snow outside. The race photographer appeared, and got a good photo of my stove, and purple-duck-tape wrapped thermos flasks (they’re much more photogenic than I am…).

melting snow outside the Björkadamskojan (2nd & 3rd photos: Jonas Palsson)

After eating a dehydrated meal, I set off for CP2 back at Jockfall. My initial ‘no sleep to Jockfall’ plan had me arriving there early in the afternoon. Having stopped to sleep on the trail, I was hoping to get there before dark. The afternoon was a slog. The trail had been chewed up by the footsteps of all of the people in front, and it was like walking through damp, lumpy sand. The route undulated fairly gently, but it felt like it was almost all uphill. I was also having to be careful about foot placement. My knee was mostly fine, but if I put weight through it at a funny angle, it twinged uncomfortably.

Before I even reached the river, and the final few miles to the CP, I had to put my headtorch on. A snowmobile with a sledge-like trailer on the back passed in the opposite direction. Shortly afterwards, it overtook me with a retired racer and their pulk in the back. I felt jealous. Eventually, I reached the river. The place where we’d stopped and set up camp on the final day of the training camp would serve as a ‘not too far too go’ marker. I kept convincing myself I could see the flattened patches of snow in the distance, but they took forever to actually appear. I eventually arrived at CP2 after 7 pm. While I was organising stuff from my pulk to take indoors, Emily and Nathan came out, on their way to a cabin to sleep. We agreed that this was proving much harder than expected.

Inside, I organised charging various devices, removed damp kit and ate a large ‘athlete’ meal. I was already considering changing into my backup shoes, as snow was accumulating on the tops of my boots. On taking the boots off, I discovered that, despite being essentially new, the uppers were already splitting. I hadn’t had time to break in the backup shoes (they were a last-minute panic buy, in case it was really cold and I needed larger footwear that would accommodate toe warmers), so the boots went in the pulk in case my feet and legs didn’t like the shoes.

During multi-day events, I usually rely on autocorrect to correct my tired, reading-glasses-less typing. However, I’d switched my phone to Swedish to search for place names in weather apps, and now I was sending the OH gibberish (“Knee tvingas occasionsöly.”).

Having slept on the trail on the first night, I had originally planned to press on for a few hours before sleeping on the trail again. However, I now switched from plan B to plan C. It was dark. I was tired. Indoor sleep here should be quicker and better. It would put me way behind my original schedule. However, at this point, I wasn’t worried, as I knew that Karl and Harriet had had a long second stop here. What I hadn’t yet realised was that I was moving far more slowly than they had.

Olov from the training course was at the CP, checking in on people. He asked if I’d had issues with condensation when sleeping out. ‘No’, I happily, and truthfully, replied, and kept the multiple sleep stop issues I did have to myself. Wendy and Richard arrived at the CP having dropped. We had a quick conversation about how hard the conditions were. They wished me luck. I said I’d need it.

Kimberley and Emile had arrived at the CP a while before me, but were ready to sleep at the same time. We were led to one of the ‘wilderness’ cabins with two bunk beds and one prior occupant. It wasn’t the greatest sleep. Nobody snored, but someone was breathing loudly, and I was conscious of my breathing syncing with theirs.

I woke at ~1 am. My alarm hadn’t yet gone off, but I was feeling OK, so I decided to get up. Apart from some indecision about how much hot water I needed for the short, 17 mile, stage to CP3 Polar Circle Cabin, my departure was fairly efficient. The rest of the night was fairly uneventful, plodding forward with occasional stops to remove and re-add my jacket as my body temperature fluctuated. Around dawn, I got sleepy and stopped for a hot chocolate to try to wake myself up. Kimberley and Emile passed me and disappeared into the distance. In another recurring theme, it took far longer to get to the CP than I was expecting. Hours before I got there, I started looking out for cabins tucked away in the trees.

Towards the end of the stage, there was a lake crossing, with a cold, snowy wind blowing across it. Putting goggles on would have been a good idea, but when I ditched the front pack, I moved them from the kakau to the pulk bag. Rather than stopping and rummaging in my (at this point) not yet optimally organised pulk, I cinched my hood in, pointed my face away from the wind, and wiggled my eyelids around to stop the eyelashes freezing together. Some of the race snowmobile team stopped as they passed me and said the CP wasn’t far after the end of the lake.

Just after the lake, there was a small cabin, with Kimberley and Emile’s pulks parked outside. Thinking this was the CP (despite having written in my notes that there was a small emergency shelter close to the end of the stage), I squeezed Pulkee into a small space and went inside. I thought it was strange that there was no race crew there. However, Kimberley and Emile were settled in with shoes and socks off, so I went outside to get my thermoses and a dehydrated meal. At which point another, potentially race-ending, shit show ensued. For some reason, I’d taken all of my gloves off and, thinking that it wasn’t that cold, I started undoing the bungies and straps on my pulk with bare hands. And then I didn’t spot the ice just inside (yes, inside) the cabin door and slipped and landed in a heap on the floor, clutching my thermoses. Just before I headed back out to gather snow to melt, I said that I was surprised that this CP wasn’t crewed. And Kimberly told me that this was just a cabin, and the CP was a km and a bit further on. As I was reloading my pulk, Emily and Nathan came past, having left CP2 several hours after me.

CP3 was small and quite crowded, with 5 participants there at the same time. But the race crew were there as expected, providing hot water, hot food and chocolate balls. After an hour-long stop, including another luxury long drop toilet visit, I headed off. I was somewhat embarrassed to realise that someone had kindly placed the mitts I’d carelessly left on the ground on my poles. It was snowing steadily, so I put my googles and snowshoes on. The snow was beautiful, and it smoothed out the trail so that Pulkee started gliding really nicely. Walking for hours in snowshoes was challenging, however. I kept treading on and tripping over my own feet. I also had a panic on seeing what looked like loose, fluid-filled skin on my fingers (had I got frostbite from touching metal with bare hands?). I quickly realised that, fortunately, the temperature had risen significantly, and my hands were just too hot and sweaty in 2 pairs of gloves plus mitts.

Not long after dark, my head torch batteries ran out, somewhat sooner than expected, given I’d changed them at CP2, and it wasn’t that cold. I dug out my backup ‘bulletproof’ headtorch, but the sling for its massive battery pack broke, and I ended up shoving the battery pack down my tights.

I soon arrived at the Tarasjarv shelter and stopped to have a dehydrated meal and change the batteries in my main head torch. I shoulder barged the stiff door open, disturbing Rebecca and Lee, who were resting and trying to dry their clothes. Lee had done the race before, and they gave me some useful advice, including a suggestion of a good sleeping place on level sheltered ground up a small hill just after the 3rd of the upcoming lake crossings.

I was expecting the lake crossings to be cold, but actually, I was fine with just a baselayer and thin-ish fleece jacket on. The three crossings passed fairly quickly, but I developed an unnecessary habit of taking my harness off when having snack stops. Someone else had already pitched their tent at the start of the level, sheltered ground, so I kept going for another 100 m or so before stopping. Setting up camp went much more smoothly this time, and I had a pretty good 4-hour sleep.

As I was lying on my back, with my legs in the air, trying to get my over trousers on, Emily and Nathan appeared over the brow of the hill. Patrick, the occupant of the other tent, also emerged (hopefully my alarm didn’t wake him; I probably should have camped a bit further away). Not long after I’d started moving, he overtook me. The trail descended onto a long lake section, marked by wooden poles with red crosses on. It was daylight, but the Sun hadn’t yet risen, and a cold mist rolled in, and Patrick vanished into it. It felt like a scene from a polar expedition film. At the end of the lake, there was a tent, wedged in just off the trail. I felt glad to have been tipped off about the sheltered area before the long lake.

I decided to stop for brunch just after the next lake, and discovered that Nathan and Emily had had the same idea. Emily kindly offered to boil some water for me, but they were clearly nearly ready to leave, and I needed water for both eating and drinking. Emily also broke the news that Roisin had had to pull due to illness. This was a surprise; with her experience and all-around air of competence, I’d thought she was a ‘slam dunk’ to finish. I checked the tracker and discovered that another 2 of the 5 women who’d started the 500k had also stopped. Since we were in a ‘me in front’ phase of my back-and-forthing with Kimberly and Emilie, this meant that (somewhat surprisingly) I was currently the first-placed woman.

Next up was an undulating climb underneath power cables. I slowly closed in on and passed Evangelos, who was struggling with a heavy nosebleed. Shortly after, as the route meandered through forest on slow trails, I started to struggle, and he repassed me. In particular, my feet began to really hurt. On taking my shoes and socks off, I discovered that in the warmer temperatures, my feet had overheated in the 3 thickish pairs of socks I was wearing. They weren’t yet macerated, but they were very soggy, and a lot of dead skin had come off. I let my feet air dry for 5 min before putting on thinner dry socks. I stupidly stuck the wet socks down my bra to try to dry them out. After a good start, eating had also become a problem. I was struggling to eat the Swedish cashew nuts and sweets, and had resorted to picking Never Stops out of my snack bags.

The route finally topped out, and there was a good view followed by a long, not-too-steep descent out of the forest. My pole setup meant I couldn’t sit on my pulk and sledge it, but it was still good to make fairly rapid progress. As the Sun began to set, I started really struggling due to a combination of lack of calories and getting cold. I had multiple stops to, variously, layer up, force food down, and remove the wet socks from my bra. Kimberly and Emile passed me and disappeared into the distance. Eventually, after multiple lake crossings, the lights of Överkallix came into view. A headtorch started closing in on me from behind, which pushed me to try to move a bit less slowly.

There was a short, sharp slope up to the CP. Going up wasn’t too bad, but I wasn’t looking forward to going down it again on the way out. The CP was moderately busy with finishers of the 185 km there too, but thanks to my slow afternoon, Emily and Nathan had already left, and Evangelos had had time to eat and go upstairs to sleep. Irjen, whom I’d spend a lot of time with later on the race, was getting ready to leave having slept. I got a gentle telling off from the race crew about my soggy feet, but my hands were deemed fine. [I also got a deserved, less gentle telling off for getting over enthusiastic and talking too loudly, given that people were trying to sleep nearby.] After eating a decent meal, I put my outer layers back on and made a ~15 min round trip to Co-op to buy more Never Stops. I got the impression that people thought this was a bit odd, but if I was going to finish, I needed to find a way to get more calories in. Going somewhere without Pulkee felt really strange.

Just as I was getting ready to go and sleep, Rob arrived. While there were quite a few 185 km participants behind us, he was the back-marker in the 500 km. He complained that the only person he’d seen to talk to all day was the race photographer. Ironically (given my somewhat antisocial nature), I’d seen lots of people, thanks to moving more slowly, but spending less time stopped than everyone else.

I was shown to an oddly normal-looking bedroom with two single beds close together in the middle. Later on, Rob would occupy the other bed. Unlike various other people I shared sleeping spaces with, he slept completely silently. Hopefully, my somewhat disturbed night didn’t disturb him. First, I got up to go to the loo. Looking in the bathroom mirror, I looked absolutely awful, with giant red bags under my eyes. Later, I woke up in a panic with no sensation in my hands or feet. In a half-asleep panic, I went and asked one of the medics to check them for frostbite. They calmly pointed out that my extremities were nice and warm and had probably just gone to sleep. It was 1 am, and my alarm wasn’t going to go off for another hour. However, I was now wide awake (and very embarrassed). Given the forecast rise in temperature to +6 degrees, I decided that it was best to make the most of the rest of the colder night. Before leaving, I had one of my dehydrated breakfasts to try and get more calories in.