Tavelsjöleden

After spending the whole day yesterday in front of Zoom, it was finally Friday and time to head out along the 39 km long Tavelsjöleden. Meeting Elin shortly after 7 am, we took her car up to the starting point a bit south of Selet (which is otherwise world famous as the home of “Glassbonden”).

Maybe it was the weather, maybe it was the previous weeks of high volume training but already a few kilometres into the run we could both feel that the men’s FKT of running in under three hours was not within reach today. Instead we settled for a slower pace, enjoying the grand forests and all the small lakes along the way. Despite this, I became increasingly dehydrated as the kilometres began to add up. Expecting grey skies, I had only brought along a litre to drink which proved dangerously inadequate. To my great relief, there was a water tap at Hamptjärnsstugan which saved me, allowing us to finish in 3 hours and 53 minutes. With a total climb of 492 meters, I am feeling quite happy about our effort even as we fell short of setting that FKT. Strangely enough, our run also turned out to be two kilometres shorter than the official distance, despite following all the signage. For next time, I guess we need to take another of the four alternative paths around Tavelsjöberget to get to the full 39 km.