Bergen Fjellmaraton

This is one of the best race experiences I have had so far! Bergen Fjellmaraton took place in the beginning of June this year; it is a half marathon, 21 km. The first 3 km up Mount Ulriken have an elevation gain of around 450 m, after which it is mainly slightly downhill, except for some steep uphills every now and then. My friend Benedicte, my husband Frank, and I decided to join this race during the National Day (May 17) breakfast together. This did not give us much time to practice, but we still got to do parts of the track a few times before the race.

First, Frank and I did the whole track backwards (from Fløyen to Ulriken, instead of the other way round). This was just the morning after I came back from a trip and had landed late the night before, and it turned out to be quite tougher than I had imagined. The slight uphill all the way after the ascent to Rundemanen took all the energy I had and more, and I thought I would never reach mount Ulriken! I was totally exhausted after this practice run, which took us about 3h 30min. I cannot describe how encouraging and patient poor Frank was, as I was complaining practically all the way. I was so slow that the whole thing became just an easy slow tempo run for him, and this made me even more worried about my shape and how I would do at the race. We did not manage to find the exact path, and ended up doing 25 km instead of 21, and this is how I looked at the end:

 

Later Benedicte and I did a part of the track together, about 12 km, and I did on my own about 10 km a few days before the race, at easy pace, mainly to try to find the right path. On the race day, I realized that we had not found the right path during practices. In fact none of the participants I know managed to find the entire correct path before the race, but luckily the track was extremely well marked, and it was very easy to find the right way during the race. 

For the race day, I had got very precise instructions from my trainer Ketil: don't go out too hard; keep the tempo just below the threshold for the first 3 km up, and then GO! The strategy worked perfectly. Many people were fast in the beginning, but I managed to keep calm and follow the plan, and in fact I caught many of them later when they had burnt out all their energy. I had a good feeling the whole way, I walked most of the uphills, and ran all of the downhills and flat parts, and finished in 2h 53min, a time which I was extremely happy about. Frank was of course faster than me, and due to the experience from our practice run together, he was not expecting me that early at the finish. He wanted to take pictures of me as I arrived, but he was enjoying his free hamburger when he spotted me entering the stadium, long before he was ready with the camera. That's why the following picture turned out so blurry, but it still shows how extremely exhausted and extremely happy I was as I reached the finish:

I stretched out on the ground, which turned to be a slight mistake, as it was incredibly difficult to get up, but after 5-10 minutes I started to regain strength, was able to get up, so that we could take a celebration selfie with the whole team:

The rest of the story you know: as I was waiting for the rest of the elites to arrive, I had the pleasure of making the most amazing acquaintance and interesting conversation with Sverre Slethaug. This really wiped out all my exhaustion, and I was so excited and even happier than at finish. Then one by one, several people I know started to arrive, and it was great fun to greet them at the finish and chat with them about their performances. Soon, the main person I was waiting for came to finish as well: my trainer, mentor, idol, and friend Ketil Ola Skjelvan. Although he is too modest to agree, I believe I owe him all of these wonderful experiences I have been writing about, and I am grateful to him in particular for introducing me to Team Melkesyre. He is a person whom I really look up to, learn from all the time, and try to follow the example of as best as I can. 

The wonderful experience of this race lasted for many days. I kept going thorough the whole thing in my mind over and over again, and was happy to realize that I would not do anything any differently. A few days later, the pictures from the race became available online, and then I relived the whole thing once again. I studied every picture closely, found the numbers of people I could recognize from the race, and looked up their finish times to compare with mine. I think definitely this is the race that has so far given me the most excitement altogether.

If I manage to get rid of the pain in my knees, I definitely want to do it in 2015 as well!