My first ultra

When I registered on the day after Stockholm Marathon, I knew that Umeå Ultra 50k would be a challenge of a different magnitude. After reading Adharanand Finn’s The Rise of the Ultra Runners, I nevertheless felt that I had a fairly good idea of what to expect when the starting signal went off at 9 a.m.

To my surprise, I did not have any pain whatsoever during the whole race but, as expected, it was a daunting psychological challenge to run 50 kilometres on trails filled with stones and roots, not to mention running through a couple of deep moors, especially with the rain pouring down. In the end, I finished all 50.3 kilometres (plus a detour or two when I briefly lost track of the course) in 6 hours and 8 minutes. With this behind me, my next chance to get Strava to label something a “historic relative effort” will probably be the 55k "South Devon Ultra" in February. Before that however, I have a few shorter races, one seeding run for Göteborgsvarvet and one 28k trail run a bit into the country.

Unfortunately, I did not get to take many pictures myself during the race as I was afraid that the battery in my three-year-old Samsung S7 would run out and it would no longer be possible for the race organizers to track me. But I did take one as I passed the magic marathon milestone and my run offically became an "ultra".