I had to get up at an insane 04.45 just to get the bus from Mora to the start in Sälen so I was pretty asleep on the bus. I had been drinking Vitargo twice a day from Thursday but I switched to an Enervit PreSport on the bus plus two bananas and the sportgryn from 05.00. So by the time the race started at 09.00, I was tired but not hungry.

The pace was fast from the start and the first hill was long but certainly not the worst thing I have seen. Smågan appeared after no time and I heard someone say that we had done 30km/h for the first 11km...not bad on an MTB and grusväg. Not much happened up to Mångsbodarna since I was trying to ride behind people as much as possible to save the wind and when things were slowing down I would pass and join the next group up. Of course this is mean but in MTB the strongest wins. No one waits till the end to make their move.

The first 2 stops were a 'splash and dash' since I just grabbed a cup and kept going. But things became risig near Risberg after a short km of wet gravel that just sucked my tires down. On the road part after that my legs were dead and I needed to stop at Risberg for a gel and a break. I actually felt that I would never make it which is unusual for so early on. But then came a nice long road part to get my confidence back and keep up the speed.

I knew that the last half would be all Vasaloppspåret so I pushed on through the road parts all the way to Evertsberg where I had to stop again for another gel. Then came the downhill and boy did that feel great! At the bottom of that came the hardest part of the race in terms of technical stuff. There were some muddy singletracks and more sucking grass and rocky bits but it was better than I expected.

Oxberg has a fantastic view so I stopped a bit while they filled up my bottle with more Enervit sportdryck. At this point I was going through a pretty tough mental battle because I could not remember how much was left and there were no more km signs at this point. There was a bitch of a hill up to Hökberg and after that I had no idea how far was left. I could see small signs saying distances to Eldris but I thought there was one more stop after that. My toes were killing from the shoes and my arms were completely numb but my legs kept on moving.

Finally at Eldris I saw the 9km sign and had a burst of energy. That didn't last so long because everyone knows about those small little hills in the last 9km. Up and down all the way in. But with 5km left I had nothing to lose and again, unusually for me, I was up on the stora klingan flying along. The Conti Race Kings were superb in the nice gravel/hardpack dirt and soon I was passing under the bridge which leads to Mora camping. There was only one real uphill at this point and I nailed that with only a slight gear change. Somewhere I heard someone say 'Bra jobbat Chris!' and I could not see who it was with my quick glance back. Sorry about that.

When I saw the church I knew it was time to unleash the big guns and push myself to collapse. I wrote earlier about the 'förvarning' timing mat so I can see that my last push was 1:11. It felt so wonderful to go flying along Mora's main street towards the most famous finish line in Sweden, passing someone in the last 20m.

Finally, a race went according to plans. The energy worked. I was finally over 20km/h in a race. This race, my 5th MTB marathon of the year which is a record on its own. This was pretty much the race of my life so far. And when I recover from the cold I now have, I will celebrate!