I’ve wanted to do one of the big Arctic ultras for years. But fitting it in around work is tricky; they’re usually in Feb-Mar, right in the middle of the Spring teaching semester. I wasted my one chance (a sabbatical in 2018) on a painful abortive attempt at the Monarch’s Way. Thanks to a boring admin job I wasn’t lecturing in Spring 2019, and while the 2+ weeks off required for one of the big races wasn’t possible, a long weekend trip to Finland for the Rovaniemi 150 was.

150km can be done in a single push, even pulling a pulk, and the race typically has a fairly low DNF rate. But nonetheless I had to face up to several fears: fire, frostbite and falling. As a child my mum put the fear of god into me about fire (some children she taught died in a house fire, which they started by playing with matches), to the extent I was even scared of lighting a Bunsen burner at school. Frostbite was always a minor worry, but the wonky finger incident (and the prospect of having to live with a non-functional finger) has made it worse. Finally, while I’m not scared of heights, I get really wobbly about exposure, and struggle to cross even quite wide areas if there’s a drop to both sides. And one of the features of the Rovaniemi 150 route is ‘The Famous Bridge’, a plank bridge across a small river, which one year someone fell off of into the river.

The Famous Bridge

I’ve been steadily accumulating Arctic kit in sales for years, including a whisperlite multi-fuel stove. Over Christmas I got it out of its box, read the instructions, got scared and put it back in its box again. Instead I bought a white spirit fuelled Trangia-style stove and over several days slowly got to grips with using it to boil water. The snowshoes I’d bought in a sale similarly turned out to be a mistake; overly bulky and hard to adjust. Despite my advanced preparations, the weeks after the Spine Challenger were full of slightly panicked last minute kit buying. I was nervous, in a way I hadn’t been about a race since the Spine. In absolute terms it would be easier to finish, but it was going to take me out of my comfort zone. I like testing gear and practising on similar terrain, which isn’t really possible in the UK for an Arctic race. I did get hold of an old tyre (Tyree), which I sprayed purple and dragged around.

Rovaniemi is the home of Santa Claus, and accommodation isn’t cheap. I got a small single room in a hostel which just fitted me and all of my kit. I arrived late the evening before the race briefing, and spent the morning shopping for food and gear. I went to an outdoor shop to buy white spirit for my stove, but also got some extra kit (an insulated skirt and some more waterproof gloves)which would turn out to be very useful in the warmish-wet conditions.

The race briefing went on a bit. Mainly because everyone had to have their sleeping bags checked individually. I’ve got a -50C PhD bag, which will be suitable for any future Arctic races I do. It was overkill in this case though. It’s huge and I didn’t even need to get it out of its bag to convince the race organiser it was warm enough. Back at the hostel, it took several hours to load all of my kit onto my rented kid’s sledge (Pulkee). Since I was treating this as a trial run for a longer race I had much more, and heavier duty, kit than I really needed. Finally, I took Pulkee out for a quick spin around the town centre. The temperature was forecast to rise over the next few days, and the Rab Vapour Guide trousers I’d originally planned to wear would probably be too warm. But right now it was cold.

The race starts on the (frozen) river in central Rovaniemi, and on my way there I managed to capsize Pulkee twice. Not a great start. I also got to the start far too early, and standing around in -15 degree temperatures my feet got cold. I’m used to being at the back of the field at the start of races, but the combination of my unstable overloaded pulk and the dead straight first section along the river made this more painfully obvious than usual. There were ruts in the snow from snowmobiles, and sometimes when I crossed one Pulkee tipped over. Thanks to the rigid sled-pulling poles, righting her was non-trivial and required removing my harness. Nevertheless I got to the first checkpoint at 11km, comfortably under my target of 2 hours. The route then came off of the river and through some villages. The race is fairly minimal in terms of checkpoint support (only hot water which you serve yourself is provided), but every major road crossing was staffed, despite the very low levels of traffic. Next came some undulating snowmobile tracks through forests. Despite the overcast weather, these were beautiful. However I struggled to keep Pulkee upright, and the handful of people behind me overtook me as I kept stopping to right her.

CP 2 was followed by the first ‘Pain in the Ass’ section, on a narrow path over and around trees. It was a pain, but it didn’t take too long to get through. I fancied a break for some snacks at the end, but one of the race support crew was waiting on a snowmobile so I pressed on along the frozen lake and tried (with mixed success) to eat while moving. As dark came the few people visible in front peeled off onto the shorter 66k route. Eventually, I got to grips with Pulkee, redistributing the weight to make her more stable and learning when and how to hold onto the pulling shafts to stop her tipping.

At CP3 I caught up with another person. I only stopped briefly to fill my thermos flasks and left before him. But he soon overtook and disappeared into the distance. The only other person I saw on the way to CP4 was a DNF getting loaded onto a snowmobile. The Famous Bridge came soon after CP4. It wasn’t too bad. I had a bit of a wobble, but I got Pulkee across OK. What came next though was a different story. It wasn’t marked on the map, but it was far worse than the previous ‘Pain in the Ass’ section, or the subsequent ‘Juhlin’s favourite Hell’ section. There was a significant distance (I’ve no idea how far, it could have just been a couple of hundred metres or much further) where the route was really windy in all 3 directions. It was completely impossible to pull Pulkee behind me, or to carry her. I pushed and I pulled. She got caught on branches, one of the cable ties holding my number on tore off, the bungees holding my snowshoes on top popped off (and I had to go back and retrieve one of them). And I swore out loud, lots. In the end, I walked through to the end of the section, stuck my trekking poles in the snow and then went back to drag Pulkee out. If there was much more terrain like this I wouldn’t be able to finish within the cut-off. A bloke on a snowmobile was waiting at the end. He must have wondered what on Earth I was doing, as my head torch meandered back and forth. I got some spare cable ties out to re-secure my number, but they snapped in the cold. The bloke on the snowmobile told me not to worry, but I pointed out that the race rules specified a DNF for a lost number. He then helped warm one of them up and reattach the number, and reassured me that there was no more terrain like this.

The next 2 sections were, thankfully, on much better trails and I even managed to catch and pass a few more people (including some who were sleeping under a wooden shelter at CP5). I reached the halfway point at Kuusilampi at ~5am, 5 hours inside the cut-off. This was the one indoor CP, a small hut with a fire in the middle. It was full of half a dozen people, some of whom were DNFing. I was feeling pretty good. I pondered stopping to sleep (mainly because I wanted to use my super duper sleeping bag in anger), but some quick maths revealed that the cut-off was over-generous and assumed a negative split. I mentioned this to the taciturn Finns running the CP and got the response ‘yes it is’ and a warning that a storm was approaching. I struggled to eat much of a rehydrated meal while I changed my socks and tried to dry off the bottom half of my fleece tights (my improvised ‘slightly warmer than expected weather’ kit wasn’t working particularly well) before pushing on.

‘Juhlin’s favourite Hell’ section, turned out to be quite pleasant, and I caught a woman who’d left CP6 just before me. We back-and-forthed quite a lot along the subsequent long (10k) road section, as one or other of us stopped to eat or drink. Previously the route had been very isolated, but now (just as I needed a poo) it passed through small villages and past one farm after another. I felt sorry for the marshals who spent hours waiting at very quiet road crossings, to usher us across. As the road climbed we hauled in some other people, including a British bloke who was doing the 300k race. A chat to him perked me up, and (after Pulkee’s first capsize for a while) I pulled away, even managing some jogging on the winding, downhill forest path to CP7. It had started snowing, wet snow, so I changed into waterproofs, including my new gloves and pushed on.

The road out of the CP was narrow, too narrow for a car to pass me. I struggled to manoeuvre Pulkee into the verge, and had the embarrassment of a passenger jumping out of their car, lifting Pulkee (still attached to me) off of the road, and then back on again once the car had passed. The first half of this section was on nicely undulating roads and went by really quickly. The 2nd half was a different story. Initially seeing lights twinkling on the shores of the lake was uplifting. But then the storm came in, reducing visibility, covering tracks and blowing wet snow horizontally into my face, hurting my eyes. I put my goggles on, but then struggled to spot the route markers even with my head torch on full beam (I’ve since, belatedly, bought some clear goggles). Coming off of the lake the route was easier to follow, but dragging overweight Pulkee uphill through inches of wet snow was hard. Race staff on snowmobiles were patrolling the course regularly. Getting started again after stopping to speak to them was hard, but being told ‘you always sound so positive’ (I was putting on a front) and ‘you are are so strong’ was a boost for my ego. And ‘I am so strong’ became my mantra, as I struggled to pull Pulkee even downhill through concrete like snow.

I kept prematurely convincing myself that I was nearly at the final CP. Just as the lights came into view, two people caught me, and we ended up with a traffic jam at the CP entrance. This was a surprise since I’d not seen anyone for hours and thought I’d been moving well (I guess I lost lots of time faffing around with my goggles). One was the woman I’d been backing and forthing with earlier, and she gave me one of my rear red lights which had got caught on a branch and fallen off. The other was a woman doing the 300k race (who I’m guessing had stopped to sleep). At this point I acted like a complete twat. There were trophies for the first 3 women in each category (foot, bike, ski) and only 4 women had entered the 150k race on foot. Beforehand I’d thought that there was a good chance of getting a trophy, provided I finished, because surely someone would drop out. However I (correctly) guessed that we were currently in joint 3rd place. Normally I’m not very competitive, and have sometimes won things accidentally. Here, however, despite being almost at the back of the field, a sudden irrational desire to get that 3rd place trophy kicked in and I charged out of the checkpoint like a bat out of hell. There was only 6k to the finish, but I pushed the whole way, counting footsteps in groups of a hundred. At one point a head torch caught me, but it turned out to be a fat biker. The race organiser appeared on a snowmobile with instructions about the route and was confused that I wasn’t the other woman. I finished in just under 40h, 3rd from last. I pulled out a 20 min gap on the other woman and bagged the 3rd place trophy (but I’m too embarrassed to display it, so it’s hidden in a cupboard). The finish was supposed to be in a tent, but the weather was too bad so instead the handful of last finishers were crammed in a small room. Pulks and gear had to stay outside and I struggled to get into dry gear. Leaving Pulkee behind (I wasn’t sad to see the back of her) I got a lift back to the hostel. After a good night’s sleep I got the bus to Santa Claus Village, which was spectacularly naff.

Some sub-optimal kit choices (and in particular the over-loaded pulk) made it a bit slower and less comfortable than it should have been. Overall it was a fantastic adventure though, and has reinforced my desire to do one of the longer Arctic races. However I will definitely be getting a proper pulk, and also trying to test out kit in advance.