A Canadian in Sweden

I think I first became aware of the Vasaloppet by reading an article in Cross Country Skier magazine when I was about 12 which was written by 17 year old Pete Vordenberg (who is now the U.S. ski team head coach). Pete was a top U.S. junior who decided to spend a year in Sweden on exchange and - naturally - participated in the Vasaloppet. Against all odds, he ended up skiing part of the race in the lead group while the television announcers in the helicopter frantically tried to figure out who this guy was, then finally deciding that someone else must be skiing in his bib because it was impossible that a teenager from the U.S. would be doing so well.

I thought that was an awesome story. I still do.

So I would hazard a guess that I have known about and been interested in the Vasaloppet for about 20 years or so. There are other races that are more challenging http://www.keskinada.com/, races which are longer http://www.boreal100kloppet.ca/ and even races with more participants http://www.engadin-skimarathon.ch/ but in terms of prestige and respect in the xc-ski world, nothing comes close to the Vasaloppet. I can't think of another race - in any sport, actually - that has world class athletes who have decided to specialized their training for this one single event. These guys don't care about the Olympics, World Cups, World Championships or even making the national Swedish team. The truth is, they are so highly specialized for the Vasaloppet that they could not compete in anything else. But in the Vasaloppet, they are untouchable. Gunde Svan, Thomas Wassberg and Bjorn Daehlie - all of them were the best skiers in the world at one time. Each had multiple wins in the Olympics and World Championships. All of them tried the Vasaloppet. And they all got their butts kicked. By guys who weren't even on the Swedish national cross country ski team.

All that to say that I think there is a certain romance about the Vasaloppet that is hard to understand unless you are a) Swedish, or b) a real xc ski enthusiast.

Even at the start, though, I was a bit worried about the condition of the snow : it was -2 C and warming up. Kick waxing for temperatures around 0 C are notoriously difficult to wax for. Either you wax too soft, and you end up with a big ball of snow stuck to your skis, or you wax too hard and have no kick at all. However, there was no point dwelling on it because there was nothing much I could do about the weather, and I certainly knew I didn't have the technical waxing skill to figure out the best wax to put on. So I just kind of figured I would see what would happen.

The start was not as chaotic as I had feared. I think this was largely because I was up front in the 2nd seed. The biggest uphill of the race is in the first 3 km, and the trail narrows from about 50 lanes to 4 lanes in those 3 km. It is historically a gigantic bottleneck, with the folks in the last seed waiting around for up to an hour just to start climbing the hill. But in my seed we flowed up the hill without hardly slowing down. Everyone in my seed were fairly good skiers, and I think they all generally understood that what happened in the first 3 km of a 90 km race had no importance at all on the final results. So there was very little jostling for position or aggressiveness. I was pleasantly surprised. What I had not counted on was how hard it is to pass anyone when there are only a few ski tracks and they are all totally full. It is like trying to pass cars in a traffic jam. Granted, everyone was moving forward at a good speed, but there was no room to pass anywhere. It was like that for the first 25 km at least. After that, the trail opened up somewhat. Of course, I had absolutely no kick. I stopped 4 times to try to fix my wax, and every time absolutely nothing changed. My glide was actually fairly good, and I was really worried about messing up my glide with too soft a grip wax. I knew that double poling was critical in this race, and slow skis would be deadly. The second thing I didn't count on was that although the Vasaloppet is generally very flat, there are still some pretty good hills. If you don't have any kick wax, you have no choice but to double pole up those hills. Which of course I had to do. This was OK for the first half of the race, but by the second half I knew I was going to be in trouble. At about 70 km my back and arm muscles totally gave out. After that I had to deal with the frustrating situation of having my aerobic engine on idle because my chassis couldn't handle the strain. I think my heartrate over those final 20 km never went above 120 or 130 beats per minute - a slow training pace. I lost 225 positions over those last 20 km. That sucked. Another thing that sucked was that my carbo loading seemed pretty inefficient. I always err heavily on the conservative side when figuring out how much food to bring on a race because I hate bonking. This race was one of those times that my conservative estimate was barely enough. I had 2 big waterbottles filled with calorie-laden sport shakes - I figure each bottle had about 1000 calories in it. For comparison, an average inactive male requires 2000 calories a day, total. I also brought 2 bananas and some gels. I had eaten all of it by about 50 km, along with lots of blueberry soup and sport drinks at the aid stations. Despite that, I barely held off a bonk during the race. Digesting that much food in a race is not easy. After the second waterbottle, I barfed. Just a little, and just into my mouth, you know? Not like a projectile vomit or anything. But definitely a puke. This hardly ever happens to me,and I can't say that I recommend it.

I was quite happy to see the finish line. I was not so happy to see my result. I was hoping for a top 500 result, and I didn't even break 1000. In fact, by placing 1052, I will lose my 2nd seed in next year's race by 52 places. That really sucks.

And yes, there will be a next year's race. I don't plan on leaving the Vasaloppet on a bad footing. Now I have something to prove. Especially because Phil Shaw placed 126th. I have raced Phil since I was in high school, and I had no idea he was here. I only found out when one of my colleagues called me with the results fresh off the Internet and told me that the top Canadian was... Phil Shaw. I beat Phil at the Montebello 25 km ski race in about 1989 or so. I run into him once every couple of years at a ski race. If Phil can place 126th, then I can too.

Vasaloppet 2008: Top 126. You read it here first.

P.S. Pete Vordenberg eventually bonked and ended up out of the top 100, as I recall. I have searched the Web for this story, in vain.