Vikingarännet 2010 – 80km Ice Skating Marathon
In 2010, there was enough ice to hold the 80km Vikingarännet (Viking Run) ice skating marathon from Uppsala to Stockholm in Sweden (see GPS track on the map below). My former postdoc, Patrik Magnusson introduced me to this very Nordic sport in the late 1990s when we were holding a course in Uppsala, and he had the chance to take us out on the ice. I absolutely loved it – and we had talked ever since about one day doing the Viking Run, and 2010 was cold enough for the ice to permit the full trek between those two Swedish cities along the old postal routes across. In 2025 again the race, now named Sigtunarännet was canceled.
Back in 2010, I was out training nearby on Lake Norrviken with Patrik the day before the race, when a skate got stuck in a crack in the ice and I fell hard on my chest – it hurt like hell, and crushed my cell phone which was in my chest pocket, but we continued skating the remainder of that 14km track. My side was in extreme pain, especially when I touched it or rolled over on it during the night, but despite the pain, I decided to skate the Vikingarännet the next morning despite the soreness. I did the race without poles, as despite Patrik’s efforts to teach me to use them, it did not work for me…
So the day of the race, I was very sore, but once the endorphins got pumping and I got out on the ice, I was okay. But it hurt to move my body the way I needed to if I wanted to have any speed. After the first rest stop, where rather than gatorade, they provided the racers with warm glögg – yes, they gave us alcohol – I felt another sharp pain on my side. Anyway, I kept going but it was getting slower and more arduous… After about 8 hours of skating I got a phone call from Patrik telling me to meet them in the Chinese restaurant when I got there (they assumed I had quit and went back to the hotel), but I sent back a photo of the 4km to go marker). I made it, barely, before they closed the shop and I got my medal for finishing the race. I took a lot of crap for being so slow and so weak and complaining about being sore…
When I got home a few days later, and went to the doctor, X-rays showed that I had three broken ribs – the third one broken in a different spot – probably from the event during the race, while the other two were broken on Norrviken the day before… For about six weeks every time I rolled over in bed, I woke up with extreme stabbing pain, as is normal I learned for broken ribs – this was my first broken bone since I tried riding the turntable on the record player as a 2 year old and got thrown across the room breaking my collar bone…. Anyway, while my race was slower than I would have liked, and more aduous, having completed it with three broken ribs made it slightly more satisfying and makes for a better story than finishing in the middle of the pack with a healthy body would have given me…
