Island to island

It´s an easy enough concept to understand; to get yourself and your teammate from one end of the Stockholm archipelago to the other under your own steam. And since we´re talking 20 different islands of various sizes and a lot of water between them, getting from one end to the other of this course requires you to run and to swim. A lot!

This full day of exercise offers 10 kilometres of swimming and roughly 50 kilometres of running. And to make this challenge even more special one needs to appreciate the fact that this race is an impromptu aquathlon without transitionareas so you swim in your runningshoes and run in your wetsuit. Because, let´s face it; who´s got 20 different pair of runningshoes for 20 different transitionareas anyway? It´s not like Imelda Marcos is racing…

The initiation of this race came about, surprisingly enough, under the influence of a lot of alcohol and a bet. …Now, let me see…Haven´t I heard about other races taking off this way? And who said alcohol and sports don´t mix anyway?

The originators of the Island to Island took two days to complete the inaugural version and for the first two years of the actual race the severeness of the course only saw two or three teams complete the course and these poor souls were basically finishing in the dark. And this is not Hawaii folks…It´s September. It´s Sweden. It´s cold.

So for the third annual race, the organizers had reluctantly decided to include a bikeleg of roughly 15 kilometres to be held on the only paved and semi-paved sections on this course in order to shorten the run and hence the racetime somewhat to allow more teams to finish.

So we´re really talking triathlon here! A triathlon as close to a neverending Archipelago X-terra as we´ll ever see…

I teamed up with my best training partner, Pasi Salonen. Pasi was once the star of Swedish triathlon and won a few national titles in the late 80´s before succumbing to the demands of family and work. And eating icecream. And candy. If that´s not a demand I don´t know what is….

So it wasn´t until lately that Pasi upped his training again, lost 10 kilos and bought a new bike. And than decided to race the Swedish Ironman Championships in Kalmar. Which he completed in 8.53 and placed 5th in the Championship. Not bad of a comeback and not a bad Ironman-PR for a 43-year old!

And here´s the thing…this would be our third try at finishing this beast of a race. The course had beaten us twice and sitting on the ferry back last year we vowed to never return to this long day of misery, tornbushes, slippery rocks and really cold water. Really cold!

Our change of heart came as we both realized wouldn´t be doing anything special on this day anyway as well as learning that the organizers had stripped down the list of mandatory equipment. Previously years had for instance forced competitors to wear a safetyvest for flotation. On top of wearing a wetsuit! Needless to say, swimming became a tad bit clumsy…Not to mention running…

To make a long story short we went minimalistic during this years race. As fins were allowed you could always make the option to wear those or simply take your shoes off during the swims for faster speed while toting them in your backpack or whatever.. We, however, would have none of that! We were going for fast transitions by simply avoiding them altogether. That meant wearing what little equipment we had to carry in a small fannypack and just swim in our shoes without having to spend a minute or two on every entry or exit into water. With 40+ of those that would be giving away chunks of time. As we´ve already learned…

As race morning dawned I was a little concerned as to whether my legs would hold up as I was coming of a 5th place finish at the ITU World Championships- Long Distance, the week before. I had ran my heart out for those closing 30 kilometres and I was sore to touch all week. But I figured that all that swimming in-between running would be great cold water therapy for them so let´s get it on!

The first run is really a very short warm-up for the longest swim of the day and after only a few minutes of running you can look forward to a swim of pretty much a mile. The water turned out to be cold but not freezing. Not yet anyway….

A section of very rocky and slippery islands with no trails followed and you just follow the markers best you can without tripping or stumbling. This is easier said than done for me who encountered my worst injury ever by, sure enough, stumbling over an obstacle and breaking my arm during a run back in 1995.

I knew though that if we would just get through these first islands of which each were a few kilometres long we´d be golden for the first long run on trails and gravelroads. We traversed along best we could under my frequent muttering about the need of more asphalt and less multisport for this race.

After eight sections we hit the longest run of the day and we transitioned past the two leading teams and encouraged by our successful tactics and the fact that all of our limbs were still intact we hauled ass over the beautiful trail and following road.

As the day progressed and we kept motoring we got splits that gave us 20 minutes back to our competitors. A lot of the other teams had some sort of military background and even the Navy Seals were represented by a team as were the Swedish equivalence.

The Stockholm archipelago and this race offers a wide variety of terrain and nature. Some of the runs are on trails, paths or even roads whereas some of the runs aren´t even runs but rockclimbing, traversing, orienteering or simply fighting the forest. The course is still well marked and one rarely has to bring out the map. As the day surprisingly enough didn´t have any rain the rocks and cliffs dried up enough to not be as slippery as they would have been with wet algae and moss on them…

The wind picked up throughout the day and our speed in the water slowed considerably as our shoulders and arms gave out more and more from the cold and towing an anchor of heavy shoe-clad feet across the ocean. My legs had since long been aching but went in to some sort of silent protest mode. Man, I wish I had packed some ibuprofen…

The worst swim of them all is a 1400 metre stretch with a vicious chop and some ungodly currents. Already our first year on this course we had nicknamed this swim but it´s neither translatable or printable. Let´s just say we don´t like it!

It took us more than half an hour to make this crossing and I had to stop quite a few times to wait for Pasi who wasn´t , ummmm, at peace with his inner child. Or something.

The volunteers are awesome and it´s always a treat to come across an aidstation in the middle of nowhere and being fed some high-quality candy or a Red Bull. Not to mention the three or four larger aidstations that served fresh cinnamonrolls or muffins, give me some!

I´ve never been so excited to reach the bikeleg of a race as I was when we after eight hours got to hop on a sturdy touristbike toting a basket. Which was awesome since you´d be surprised the amount of cookies and candy that fit in there!

Also getting to see some asphalt was nice and we did our best of our little two-man timetrial. Quite a sight we must have been; riding along with crazyspinning legs in wetsuits and leaving a trail of cookiecrumbles behind….

All fun must come to an end though and soon enough we had to ditch the bikes and once again foray into the wild on a barely visible trail. By this time we were very gung-ho on finishing first and we made an effort to move along quickly even on the sketchy islands with plenty of options of slipping. I always get a little bit paranoid leading a race for this long and pretty much expect to see any and all pursuers breathing down my neck and licking their chops in anticipation of beating me to the big prize. A big prize that turns out to be about 1500 USD to the winning team and all the bragging rights in the world!

We were counting down the last few sections as we were islandhopping over very small stretches of land interspersed with short swims.

Finally after 10 hours we hit Utö, the last island and the road that would bring us to the finishline at the hotel! We took the time to bask in the glory of not only winning but actually just finishing this monster. And although it´s a long day with a lot of misery, it´s also one of the few races I´ve ever done that is completely unique and a true journey from start to finish.

www.otillo.se