Frozen Lake Marathon
Yes, you read that correctly. A marathon. On ice. Why? Because I’d never done a marathon before and would probably never do one again, so I might as well make it memorable: by doing it on frozen lake in Norway, as part of the World Ice Running Championships. Thus, the Oarsman!
We drove from Oslo to Gol the night before, to get our race numbers, and turned up at the race as early as possible to secure some ice running shoes.
“Do these feel right to you?” asked the lady fitting mine, “Do they feel the same size as your normal running shoes?”
“Oh I don’t have normal running shoes, really.” I had to reply, “I don’t really run…”
She looked at me in bewilderment. “You don’t run…and you’re here to do a full marathon…on ice?”
“Yes… I’m with The Guild.” Apparently that didn’t explain anything.
As it turned out, only 50 people were insane enough to sign up for the whole marathon – and of those 50 I was the slowest, especially for the first 6km which I took INCREDIBLY slowly as I tried to convince my left knee to work. By one hour in, Jeff was over halfway through his half marathon, Hakon and Lars were a quarter of the way through the marathon, and Lara was already a clear 3km ahead of me.
And so it was that I saw not another soul for kilometre after identical white kilometre. Every now and then I’d come across Lara running the other way. Not because she was lost or had gone mad, I hasten to point out, but because the course wound back and forth all over the place, which added to the feeling of not moving absoltely nowhere for hours on end. Other than that, the only other humans I saw were the friendly people at the water stations, and Jeff who had just finished his 21km half marathon as my loop took me back past the star/end/halfway point.
It was just me…in the whiteness. For 5.5 hours. And 42km.
What more can I say? I don’t know enough about running to give a blow by blow account: I started out and I carried on all day long, that was all there was to it. I overheated, as per usual, but otherwise – other than the throbbing pain of my slipped dics and burning agony of my en-fucked left knee – there wasn’t a lot of physical experience to report.
In fact, weirdly enough, I actually sped up! After a super slow start, 14-21km was much faster and my second half marathon was significantly faster than my first, which is mad.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved it. I loved the tedium, the isolation, the agony, the endless sea of white nothingness – because that’s what I was there for. I wanted to get around a marathon on nothing but my own stubborness: no crowds, no energy drinks, no techniques, no experience – just sheer fucking grit. And I did! But fuck me was it BORING!
That is until the last few kilometres while I was tripping balls, and an adorable family who had been manning the water stations found a theme song for me which they played every time I ran past (the course takes you past them something like six times because it winds around and around and around) and then followed me in their car for the last 2km blasting heavy metal.
And of course, my mad brother Hakon – who met me with an axe and chased me over the finish line, like the savage he is.
All in all it was a truly epic event that I will never ever forget, but probably never ever repeat.
I am not a running man.
Now, back to lifting. I have to qualify for Britain’s Stongest Natural Man in a month’s time…
Thus, the Guild.