ÖTILLÖ World Championship: The Race Report
At 6am, the gun went off (loudly) and we took the first few steps of what promised to be a very long and difficult day.
On the menu: 24 swims (~10k of swimming total), 23 runs (~38 miles of running total), a whole lot of transitions between swimming and running, a lot of slippery rocks and technical trails, and one really long soul-sucking run that we were dreading near the end.
The start of the race, though, was on the road, and fairly calm back at the back of the pack. It was a controlled start, which meant nobody could tether on this run, and up at the front of the pack, they couldn't run any faster than the pace vehicle. The roads were fairly narrow with several sharp turns, which meant even with only 160 teams out there, we had to walk a few times in the first run as things got backed up.
But mostly we just eased in slowly. This was going to be a long day, and this was not the time to burn any matches. As such, we started near the back, and pretty quickly ended up at the VERY back. We had one women's team just ahead of us, and ultimately we did pass them just before we got to the water.
As we approached the water, I handed the other end of the tether to Trista, she hooked herself in, we executed what felt like a very efficient transition into the water, passing a decent number of other teams as they got themselves sorted out to swim, and we had officially completed our first run leg!
I say it felt like an efficient transition, but we really have no idea. When you have a camera following you around throughout the day, you try really, really hard not to be Team Shitshow when the camera is pointed at you. This was a curse or a blessing, depending on the moment, but we'll get to that later.
First swim! Our preferred sport. Also the longest swim of the day at 1600 meters.
The water felt amazing. We got incredibly lucky with our weather this year, with an air temp starting in the lower 40s and a water temp in the lower 60s. Sunny all day, warming up into the lower 60s. (And then back down again! We got to experience nearly a full day of weather out there!)
Trista and I each brought two potential wetsuits with us, and had pretty much decided to wear the warmer of the two, the Ornö X. As a cold front blew in the week before the race, and the air and water temps both started to drop, we solidified that decision. Trista decided to definitely wear sleeves. I decided to definitely not wear sleeves. Then the waffling began. I wasn't sure. No, I was sure, definitely no sleeves. I tend to run warmer than a lot of people, and am not as impacted by cold water. But that's a big gamble to take in a race this long, with swims this long. What if I was wrong? Having the sleeves with me would give me options. But it's just another thing to carry if I take them off. So definitely no sleeves. Committing to that. Absolutely.
So, yes, I started with sleeves. Everything is mentally and physically hard on race morning, and the last thing you want to do is stand around and feel queasy AND cold. Sleeves kept me slightly warmer, if no less queasy.
Spoiler: I never took off the sleeves.
Once we hit the water and started swimming, the terrible feeling of anticipation that started at bedtime the night before the race and persisted through breakfast, packing, ferry, and the start corral just faded away. It always does in the first swim. We were in our happy place. We were in Sweden! In the archipelago! In the World Championships! It was ridiculous, and I just had a smile on my face the whole swim.
I'm proud to say I know very little about the views on the swims. In the days leading up to the race, one of the pieces of feedback Coach Nico gave me was that I was keeping my head up. At first I thought he meant I was sighting needlessly, which is absolutely true, I sight even though, as the person drafting, there is no need for me to sight. I like to know where I'm going! I like to know if there's another team or obstacle coming up, and we're going to have to go right or left around them! I like to know how close we are to our swim exit! I just like having information. But evidently he didn't even mean that, he just meant I needed to look down more when I swam. Also absolutely true! When I draft off of Trista, I look up ahead at the bottoms of her shoes, so I can tell how close to her I am, make sure I'm spaced properly so I don't fall too far back or swim up onto her. Her shoes have bright orange soles, so it's easy to keep track of her. But evidently I shouldn't do that. See how useful having a coach actually watch you can be?!
So I very dutifully tried all day to just keep my head down and watch the tether directly below me to figure out where to go. Did I crash into Trista a few times when she had to stop and clear her goggles or find the stroboscope? (What we call a strobe light they called a stroboscope, and now we'll never call it anything else.) I absolutely did crash into Trista a few times. But I definitely felt smoother in the water, and by the end of the race, after 10k of swimming, my arms and shoulders, while fatigued, never felt actively sore. In stark contrast to Casco Bay, which had much less swimming, but where my arms felt exhausted in the last few swims. Yay, applying knowledge during a race!
Okay, so, I wasn't PERFECT. I definitely still checked periodically to see how far from our goal island we were. And once when I looked up, everything seemed very bright behind me. I quickly glanced back, and the sun was rising right behind us. It was amazing. It was beautiful. It was absolutely blinding, which isn't great when you need to see where you're going, but I still pounded on the bottom of Trista's shoe to make sure she looked behind her and saw the sun rising. I think that was the only time I hit Trista's shoe to get her attention while swimming, which is mostly just a testament to how few FISH we saw out there. No fish. Disappointing, archipelago. You need to step up your fish game.
It didn't help that the water was pretty consistently brown, so visibility wasn't great. And as everyone had promised us, the water was salty, but not very salty. It didn't do much for your buoyancy, but you could drink it without any ill effects from the salt. By the end of the race, I actually didn't even notice the water was salty anymore.
Eventually we approached the shore of the second island, and it was so neat to see so many other teams crawling out of the water onto the slippery rocks. Also proof that our transition into the water had been efficient, and our swim had been speedy, since we had made up some time and were now in the midback of the pack.
As we got to shore, Trista picked a section of rock that looked promising to her for exit, and we swam up and put our feet down. I would like to say our swim exits were as amazing as our first swim entrance, but overall our swim exits were definitely nothing to write home about. We had chosen to wear the shoes we've been wearing for our recent swimruns, the Hoka Torrent 2s, and while they have decent grip, they definitely still slide around a lot on the slippery rocks, especially the ones under the water you have to navigate to even get onto the shore rocks. Also when you're tethered together, even if one person does a decent job of exiting (that's Trista), they still have to wait on the person in back who can't even get their feet under them, and flops around on their belly for what feels like 20 minutes (that'd be me).
Good news is, that's probably all on film somewhere! Can't wait to see what, if any, of our footage makes it into that video! (Yikes.)
This island had a lot of volunteers, spectators, cameras, videographers, and just general chaos at the swim exit. I was so busy trying to keep my feet under me as we began rock hopping, I couldn't even tell you who was there, honestly.
We had been warned that these first few islands were very technical, full of bounding over slippery rocks close to the water. We had also been warned that the first two time cut-offs in the race were fairly aggressive, and if we were to fail to make a time cut-off, it would either be the first one, or even more likely the second one. Those two facts together are dangerous, and we were determined not to panic about the cut-offs so much that we ran too hard and too stupidly on the slick rocks and injured ourselves to the point where we took ourselves out of the race.
I don't necessarily excel at rock bounding/climbing. I got little legs!
Proud to say we managed to be smart! I mean, all of those people we'd passed on the beach and in the first swim slowly passed us back on these next 2 runs, but we kept nice and steady and safe, and had so much fun.
Another spoiler: WE HAD SO MUCH FUN. Yes, the race was difficult, the rocks were slippery, the forests were full of roots and fallen trees and other obstacles, the swims were often long or sometimes gross, there were very few points where you could just RUN without your eyes and brain fully engaged, and some of the times you could just run were a little mind-numbing, but it was just.. I don't even know the word. Mind-blowing. Amazing. To look up and see the water and the islands in the distance and know that you were making your way through the archipelago. Under your own power. What a truly amazing and ridiculous race.
Okay, sorry, back to the first few islands. Challenging as promised, very doable.
I don't remember if we got fluids at the liquid only aid station on Skarp Runmarö, but we definitely hit the aid station at the Time 4 energy station on Runmarö. This was also the first official time cut-off. We had to be there by 9am, and fortunately we came through with almost 30 minutes to spare. So far, so good!
This is also where I talk about the downside of having a camera on you during a race of this magnitude. As we came in, Edvard was there with the video camera, and Aaron was there with the camera. We approached the aid station knowing what we needed to do: toss trash as we came in, get water and/or energy (as they called their electrolyte drink), maybe get some bonus food if anything appealed. But when everyone is cheering for you and people are documenting it, that all goes out the window, and you just want to get in and out as quickly as possible, trying to look like you have your shit together. We got some fluids, definitely not enough, we threw away no trash, and we each grabbed a little cup of gummy something-or-others to take out with us. It wasn't a "yay, we made it through by the time cut-off, let's celebrate!", it was more of a "go go go go go go!"
After we left the aid station, Aaron ran out with us a little bit, and we enjoyed having him slum with us for a bit! As he fell back, we started furtively glancing over our shoulder, making sure we'd left all cameras behind, and then we could resume our normal pace and conversation.
Trista tried to eat one of the gummy things, chewed a few seconds, then spit it out. I put one in my mouth, determined that this was going to be difficult to eat while running, and instead of also throwing it out, went all in and put the other 3 gummy things in my mouth all at once, and then couldn't actually talk or breathe for like 5 minutes as I attempted to chew this gummy mass that just kept increasing in volume. I'm sure Edvard was sad he didn't get all of THAT on film.
A note about food: The calories from those gummies weren't vital to our nutrition plan. Our plan was to take a 100 calorie gel every 30 minutes. Trista was carrying enough gels on her to last the entire race, I think. I couldn't wrap my mind around putting that many gels in my many pockets, so I was carrying, I think, ~14 gels. That's still a lot to carry on your person. But it's only enough to get through a 7 hour race, if you fuel every 30 minutes. So my plan was to supplement the gels I was carrying with gels picked up from energy stations. Unfortunately I didn't actually check WHICH energy stations would have gels, and it definitely wasn't all, or even most, of them. That was a big failure on my part, but fortunately enough of the aid stations had gels that it never ended up being a problem. And since we were so very far at the back, when we did hit a station with gels, I asked if I could take 2, and they had no objections. Potential disaster averted.
But even though 2 gels per hour feels like a LOT, we knew if we could get in any bonus calories, it would be beneficial to our race. Hence the gummy-attempt. I later ate a salted new potato, but neither of us were willing to try the many other things on offer at the aid stations, like cinnamon buns, sausages, chocolate balls, etc.
As we continued on, I kinda needed to poop. This happened at Casco, too, and I ignored it, and eventually it went away. (WHERE DOES IT GO, WHEN THIS HAPPENS?! So disturbing.) But it wasn't going away this time. I tried to wait it out. I really tried. Finally when it didn't, I told Trista that I might need to stop quickly and poop. She didn't question it, knowing that I wouldn't even bring it up if it weren't mandatory, just helped me start to scout out a good location.
There was not a good location. I had chosen to wait until we were in freakin' downtown Runmarö, where there were houses everywhere. That's funny if you know the area, so maybe I should clarify for those that don't: we were not in downtown Runmarö. I doubt there is a downtown Runmarö. I'm fairly sure the houses we were running by were far enough away from each other, and so wooded, that people can't see their neighbors' houses. But I didn't want to creep people out or be weird or visible, so we tried to find an area where you couldn't SEE a house/yard, and where nobody would be able to see me from the road. I guess it was early enough in the race I still had some sense of propriety.
It took us a few more minutes of searching to find something that.. wasn't exactly remote or private, but was good enough. I took off my race belt/paddles and handed them to Trista to hold, and I ran into the woods. I probably should have had her help me cab down, but by the time I realized that, I was a bit away, and just did it myself.
It's not easy to poop when you're in the middle of nowhere in a wetsuit with everything in the world in your pockets and a pull buoy strapped to your back. But I got it done. Trista peed while I was busy, and convinced the team that ran by during that time that there was nothing to see here.
It felt like it took 20 minutes, and I hated that I was making us stop, but looking at that run in Garmin Connect now, it probably took at most 3 minutes all told, based on the split for that mile and all the ones before it. I can't even describe how glad I am that it didn't take any longer.
That's foreshadowing.
As I ran back and got myself put back together, Trista mentioned that I could just stay cabbed down if it was more comfortable, but we didn't know exactly how much of this run we had left, and I preferred to deal with getting my suit back on then rather than wait until we were suddenly at the water and do it in a panic.
We finished out the last mile or so of Runmarö, and then we came to the dirty swim! Or, as the volunteer at the swim entrance referred to it, and we will now do so forevermore, the poop swim. (Unrelated to the fact that I had just pooped! Pure coincidence!)
This swim goes by the only island that the local owner did not grant the race permission to use. Instead we swim by that island, in a particularly dirty, nasty section of water.
It didn't smell good. The water felt gross. This was one of the very few swims where the swim exit wasn't visible from the swim entrance, and we were swimming next to a men's team, as we all constantly looked up and around trying to figure out exactly where we should be going.
We figured all of that was bad enough, but the TRULY terrible part was the swim exit. It was a rare non-rocky exit, a climb out onto a dirt embankment, but the mud underwater and on the shore of the swim was DISGUSTING. As we put our feet down to climb out, we just sunk to our knees in terrible mud. Trista almost lost a paddle AND a shoe. And then climbing onto the shore, our hands sank into mud and it was caked on everything. We were incredibly happy that the next run was only half a mile, so we could get back in the water again and rinse off. Trista's watch was so caked in mud, she couldn't even read it.
We made it through the just-over-a-mile on Munkö, where we had another aid station, and were reminded how incredibly kind swimrunners are. There was a section through the woods that ended in a climb up some rocks. The kind you have to use your hands for, literally climbing. There was a German men's team ahead of us that climbed up, and then instead of running off, waited a few extra seconds for us to get to the rock, reached a hand down, and pulled each of us up after them. So completely unnecessary and the nicest thing in the world. This selflessness is what really makes swimrun special.
Then another longer swim at 950 meters. A short little run-swim combo after that brought us to Nämdö, where the second time cut-off was located.
We did our typical slidey-crawly rock exit onto Nämdö, and there was Mr and Mrs B, volunteering! We were super excited to see them, since we had been fairly alone since the last aid station, and we went in for hugs!
Hugs were not provided. The Bs told us we needed to get our asses moving right now. I got a swat on the ass from Mrs B as I went by. Okay! Okay! Geez, Bs! We're going!
We made our way through the technical rock section by the water and onto a gravel trail. There was a time station there, and a volunteer told us it was about 4k to the second time cut-off. Cool, cool. We kept running.
We then tried to figure out what exactly that meant for us. Trista thought the time cut-off was at 11, but my paddle said 11:15, and it was roughly 10:45 when she looked, so that meant we needed to go.. about 4k in about 30 minutes.
Now we're not great at math at the best of times, and this was in the middle of a tough race, and involved the metric system, so we knew this wasn't a positive development, but we couldn't really sort of how bad of shape we were in. We knew that 1 kilometer was ~0.68 miles (my bad math, turns out, but close enough), and that 5k was 3.1 miles, which made 4k.... ...... ...... some distance between 0.68 and 3.1 miles! Seriously, we're terrible.
But we knew we had less than 30 minutes to run less than 3 miles, and we were pretty sure we hadn't been running 10 minute miles this whole race, so suddenly our fun frolic through the archipelago of Stockholm took on a new urgency.
For the next ~4k, we were running scared. Our main goal for this race was to FINISH, and suddenly that goal was in jeopardy. We knew that the time cut-offs were aggressive and that there was a chance we wouldn't make them, but I think neither of us ever really let ourselves believe that, if we started this race, we wouldn't finish it. Suddenly we were faced with that potential, loud and clear. And we were NOT going down without a fight.
Fortunately this run was on a gravel road, and we could stretch our legs out a bit (as much as mine do) and actually get a stride going. It was absolutely faster than we would have preferred to go in a race this long. We were outside of our long-run comfort zone. Trista questioned whether we were burning matches that we were going to regret having burned if we DID make the cut-off. But we kept pushing. The minutes ticked down, but so did the kilometers.
After what seemed like many, many 4ks, we saw someone sitting on the road ahead of us. Was that.. yes! It was Matt! My husband was on the side of the gravel road in the middle of the Stockholm archipelago! Or we were pushing too hard, and hallucinating! But as we got closer, it was, indeed, Matt!
Unfortunately I thought that meant we were at the time cut-off aid station, and so my excitement dropped a bit when I saw that he was by himself, no aid station or other volunteers evident. He was playing scout to see if we were going to make it. So we kept pushing as we got to him, and he fell in beside us to tell us we were cutting it close, but we were going to make it. We told him we were running scared, and doing everything we could to make the cut-off.
Fortunately just around the next corner was a straightaway where we could see the aid station. And at 11:12:39, we hit the Time 8 energy station, less than 3 minutes before the 11:15 cut-off time.
Holy. Fuck.
Rasmus, if your goal was drama at the back of the pack, well, we didn't INTEND to provide that, but it turns out you chose your team well! Fortunately Edvard was there to film the whole thing. Trista asked him if we'd scared him, and he confirmed that we had. I was afraid he was secretly hoping we'd miss the cut-off, so he could go play at the front of the pack with the fasties. But we made it, so he was stuck with us. (And we loved him for it.)
Race Director Mats was there, too, and lots of volunteers, all of whom were so happy for us, and also trying to offer us bananas and sausages and the whole thing was just overwhelming. I took a banana piece to distract the volunteers, because I was afraid Trista was going to punch someone if anyone else shoved food in her face, and we got some much-needed water as we headed back out.
This aid station was an out-and-back on the road, and as we headed back out, a men's team headed in just behind us. Soon enough after us that we were pretty sure they had also made the cut-off. As we kept running, we came upon another female team running in. We had no idea if they were going to make the cut-off, so we cheered loudly for them and told them they could do it. We had no idea if they even knew how close they were, and maybe they just thought we were insane for cheering so loudly. We really hoped they would make it, both because we want to see people succeed, but also because while our primary goal was to finish the race, we also sort of hoped we wouldn't be the absolute last finishers, either. It was fine if we were. Finishing last is better than not finishing. But it was still there. So having two teams behind us would mean maybe we'd finish 3rd to last!
We walked for a bit as we headed back out. We knew that after the second time cut-off, the cut-offs were a little less aggressive going forward. But we also didn't want to have that experience again, so as soon as we had lowered our heart rates a bit, we settled back into a steady, sustainable pace. We still had 3k left on Nämdö (however far THAT is).
This next section is a bit of a blur, but there was evidently an energy station during the 2.25 mile run on Mörtö Bunsö, and I think that was aid station with the old people in hats? I admit that while they were great, I got an even bigger boost from the fact that we knew all three volunteers at the actual aid station! Helene, Tarik, and Katie were manning that station, and seeing friendly faces was such a boost right then.
After that, there were a few shorter runs and swims, and then we finally got to the legendary Pig Swim.
The Pig Swim is the second longest swim of the race at 1400 meters, but it is historically the toughest. If you see video of people struggling against a current and waves during this race, that's usually footage from the Pig Swim.
Our Pig Swim was.. not that. We continued to have unprecedentedly pleasant weather. Sunny. Not particularly windy. No chop on the water. Just.. a nice day. As we got to the water, we were told that this was the pig swim, there was no particular current or wind. Just swim straight across.
Okay. I mean, got it. Yay. But.. where is our dramatic Pig Swim?! We paid for drama! Not for a calm Pig Swim!
Fine, fine. We waded in and swam, and while it was certainly a long swim, it really contained no angst or drama at all. Also no pigs, which is just disappointing.
I'm not sure we ever want to do this race again, but we might HAVE to, just so we can have some drama in our Pig Swim next time.
Instead we got our drama as we got out of the water and were handed.. some chocolate. I mean, yes, it was delicious Marabou chocolate, but it was NOT a a Twix, and we had been looking forward to our post-Pig Swim Twix ever since we first learned that a post-Pig Swim Twix was a THING! So very sad, and I felt sorry for the volunteer handing out the not-Twix to all the Pig Swim survivors.
But as we navigated the rocks after the volunteer, we dutifully started trying to eat our chocolate. And just.. couldn't. It wasn't appealing. It got completely stuck to our mouths and teeth. I took maybe two small bites and then we both donated our chocolate back to nature. I'm given to understand we were definitely not the only ones.
What follows is some short swims and a 1.38 mile run with an aid station, all of which I have no memory of, so I'll add a few completely random notes here.
First, I disparaged the lack of fish on this course earlier. But I need to note that as soon as I had resigned myself to the lack of fish, we started to see JELLYFISH! I was so excited! They're not the stinging kind, they're just the float through the water beneath us magically kind, and I spent so much time during the jellyfish-having swims just staring at them and grinning (which I was allowed to do, because they were right underneath me, which is where I was supposed to be looking anyway).
Second, in less great news, this was probably the most trash-filled course I've ever run on. We were SUPER disappointed by this. We were at the very back, so we got to see it at its worst. Gel and other food wrappers on every island, often 2 or 3 or 4 all together. Clearly this was probably someone cabbing up or down and stuff fell out of their pockets, but it was so much and so often, it was just really depressing. Normally Trista and I will pick up a stray wrapper if we saw one, but this was so much it was going to require the sweeper to haul a trash bag around with them to get it all. Michael and Mats said during the pre-race briefing that they wouldn't tolerate littering, and since I'm fairly sure none of this was intentional, I'm not sure if anything would have been done if someone had seen it happen, but for a race through the wilds like this, where we felt so in touch with nature, it was sickening to see all of that trash littered in the forest. Heart-hurting.
Okay, back to the report.
I should note that after the Pig Swim, we were officially on the second column of my paddle notes! Many of the remaining swims and runs in this column of the paddle were super short, with only one long swim left. And one really, really, really long run. Ugh.
After that last long swim, was Kymmendö. I was excited about Kymmendö because we were told there were gates on the island to keep the animals contained, and when we opened those gates to go in, we had to make sure we then closed the gates behind us, so the animals wouldn't escape and have to be rounded up later. Did I want to leave the gates open and frolic on the island with animals? I surely did. But I promised to be good.
Unfortunately most of the island was NOT covered in gates and animals, and was in fact covered in grass that was taller than my head and not my most favorite thing to run through. At least we were coming through after many other people had tamped the grass on the actual path down, though.
After the grass, we did eventually get to a few gates, and saw a few groups of sheep off in the distance. I yelled hi at them, they ignored me. Typical.
Then out of the blue, suddenly there was a very, very loud bleating from off to our right, and there was a pen of long-haired goats yelling at us! Maybe cheering. Probably cheering. We bleated loudly back at them. This is some of the riveting content Edvard did not get to record.
The aid station at the end of the Kymmendö run was also a time cut-off, and I failed to mention there was also one on at the (can't remember anything about) Mörtö Bunsö aid station. We made it through both of those with ~40 minutes to spare, so we were feeling much better than we had earlier about our chances of finishing this race.
Maybe a little TOO good. At the Kymmendö aid station, Trista saw there were swings, and so ~4 hours after we pushed to make a time cut-off by less than 3 minutes, we sat down on some swings and swung for a few seconds. We contain multitudes. No regrets.
After Kymmendö was one short swim, and then finally.. Ornö.
Our least favorite part of every swimrun is typically the 'long' run. How long that run is depends on the race. At Casco, I think it's 4ish miles. When all the other runs are 1 or 2 miles max, 4 feels like a lot. The long run at Lake James is 8 miles, and we always dread it. The long run in World Champs.. well, actually, that was a subject for debate before we did the race.
We were first told it was a half marathon. Then 20k. Then 12 miles. But the times and distances pdf says it's 10.96 miles. So we went in honestly having no idea how long it really was, other than it was really long. And we were dreading it.
People also dread it because it's one of the only places in the race where you run any distance on the road. I admit, I wasn't dreading that as much as others. First, I actually like road running. I just like running, so road, trail, I like all of it. Second, trail running and rock running, especially the really technical kind in this race, take a LONG TIME. I was looking forward to ticking off some of the ~40 miles of running a little FASTER through this section. I mean, we had no idea how we'd feel when we got there, but hopefully even if we were WALKING on the road, it would be faster than some of those technical trail parts.
Then we finally got to Ornö, and I found out maybe I hadn't paid enough attention. I thought it was nearly all road running, with some technical stuff at the very end leading down to the water.
That proved not to be true, as the first few miles were all .. I guess it was technically trail. It wasn't road. Often it was across big giant slabs of stone that were almost like house foundations or sidewalks. It was a weird run section. We went past houses that made no sense out in the middle of what seemed to be nowhere. There'd be a house number on the side of the trail, and we couldn't figure out who was supposed to consult that house number to see if they were at the right destination. IslandTrail DoorDash? No idea.
I was beginning to think the entire 'road' thing was just a weird joke, when finally we got to a gravel trail, and then eventually an actual paved road.
The road was a blessing and a curse. It was amazing to be able to turn off my brain for a bit, not have to pick up my feet as much, just run lazily without having to constantly jump over roots and trees and bound over rocks.
On the other hand, road is tough on the body, and our bodies were a mess at this point. I felt like my shoes had no padding on the soles at this point, and I told Trista I was going to retire my shoes after this because of that, even though I went into the race with only 30 miles on those shoes. I knew it was just so much time on my feet, but it felt good to threaten my dumb shoes with retirement because they were letting me down.
I should note, as alluded to earlier, I was still wearing my sleeves. Our original plan was to cab down for any "longer" run. Longer than a mile, maybe. So we wouldn't overheat. But we weren't overheating. We were still comfortable. We were DEFINITELY gonna cab down for Ornö, though, because it was so long. But.. we didn't. We stayed sleevey and cabbed up the whole time. I definitely wasn't cold for Ornö, but I wasn't warm enough to want to be colder.
It was shortly into the road portion of Ornö that Trista confessed that her (ugh, I don't remember which, I'm a terrible partner) IT band was very unhappy. This has been an ongoing issue that ebbed and flowed, and she thought it had been related to a period of trainer riding she'd done. It had gotten better before the race, and hadn't really been a terrible issue, but now it was back, and the repetitive road running had finally irritated it enough that she felt she had to let me know. I told her to do whatever she had to do, and we'd get through this. If we needed to slow down, we'd do so, or if we needed to walk, we'd do so as aggressively as we could. We had some wiggle room built up, and now it was just a matter of constant forward motion.
Her body was clearly not feeling amazing, and there was some groaning and grunting involved, but we continued our banter, and managed to never go to any dark places. We joked about how clearly there was something wrong, because Trista was having to walk some of the DOWNhills. Downhills are Trista's favorite thing. I made sure she understood that while I didn't have any specific body part that was yelling louder than others, like her ITB, my entire body was tired and sore and I was having to push to keep going.
We joked about just being DONE with this stupid run. So I sang this song to Trista, which she previously did not know. It's a good song to have stuck in your head, so I share it with all of you now.
We came up to the most amazingly-stocked aid station, where a person with a hose offered to hose us down, and there was a huge selection of foods to choose from. We still weren't interested in random foods, unfortunately, and when I asked if they had any gels (I was still collecting them at every aid station I could, as my pocket supplies dwindled), we were told this amazing smorgasbord wasn't even an official aid station, just some truly amazing island people out offering help to the racers, and who were STILL out there for us at the very back, hours later. This sport and the community are truly beautiful.
We had another 2k of road running on Ornö before we got to the actual official aid station. I grabbed some gels there as we hydrated, and we continued down the road. A man appeared on the side of the road ahead of us, and it turned out to be Edvard! He filmed us going by, and we tried to pretend like we were still holding our shit together, even though it was getting harder and harder to pretend that.
Trista was getting increasingly annoyed at the fact that there was water VISIBLY OVER TO THE LEFT, and yet we continued to run down this road, when the route could easily jaunt over leftwards a bit and throw a few swims in to break it up! We would definitely have been up for turning some of those run kilometers into swim kilometers. Nobody was around to accept our helpful feedback, though.
Except some slugs. There were giant black slugs on the road with us! I thought Trista was making it up for a while. She'd say "Giant slug!" and I'd look, and there was no slug. She said I'd just missed it. I told her I absolutely needed more advanced slug notification. She accommodated, and I finally saw a few of the giant slugs.
Why do no other ÖTILLÖ World Championship race reports contain riveting details about giant Ornö road slugs? THIS is the shit we wanted to know before we signed up for the race. You're welcome, future WC racers.
After all this road running, I was a little concerned about my ability to do anything OTHER than road running. We didn't have a TON of race left when we were done with Ornö, but I knew the end of Ornö was technical, and that the last few runs were suspiciously short, which almost always means a technical island. After so many miles of lazily not picking up my feet, I wasn't sure I COULD still pick up my feet. Whether my eyes could still pick out rocks and roots in the forest, especially as the light started to die a bit as it got later. I was afraid this was going to be when I started really tripping over things and might finally have a real fall.
So far we had pretty much managed to stay upright. A few times slipping on rocks in the water at swim exits. A few times sliding down rocks on our butts into the water. And I had at least one low trip over something where I did the thing Trista loves most about me, where I start to fall, and yell out, "I'm okay! I'm okay!" before I actually hit the ground and confirm that I AM okay. (I was, though! I was okay!)
I was very paranoid the falling was about to begin, because I was so tired. And that was doubled when suddenly Ville appeared! We'd met Ville earlier, as part of the media crew. Really nice guy, definitely not who we expected to randomly show up as we entered the forest at the end of the Ornö run.
And he was just there to run with us. To get us through this forest part to the water, and make sure we were doing okay. And presumably to take some photos/video of us, but honestly I couldn't look away from my feet once we hit the forest, or I was definitely gonna fall.
So now we have Ville, who is tall and agile, leading us through a darkening forest, and Trista, who is better at forest running than I am, and whose ITB clearly likes this kind of running better than road, and me at the back, just trying to stay upright and with the group.
Lest you think Ville was providing us with an unfair advantage, he also led us the wrong way at one point, and we had to backtrack a bit. (I kid, it was like 5 steps the wrong way before we figured it out.)
Ville went on and on and on, chattering away about the race, telling us who had done what at the front, telling us about moose, telling us he was going to do the next swim with us, which was exciting and very confusing! He said he'd left his stuff at the water's edge/time station. He asked if he was talking too much. We said no sir, keep it coming, anything to distract us!
He also told us there was a time cut-off at the end of Ornö, which somehow I had avoided recognizing, even though it was clearly written on my paddle. We had to make it to the water by 6pm, and we got there at 5:48pm. I didn't know that at the time. All I knew is as we got to the water, a volunteer yelled that we'd made it in time.
We'd officially made it through the part of the race we were dreading. We made it through Ornö. At that point, we had a 1.18 mile run, which definitely seemed like a marathon, and then a handful of short run-swim segments. We knew we could finish at this point. We really hoped we could finish before the 14 hour cut-off. When we asked Ville if there really was a 14 hour total cut-off, he said there was, but he'd make sure we got to finish. But like the Director's Choice thing.. we didn't want someone to grant us favors. We wanted to earn it. We were determined to come in under 14 hours.
We realized after this swim that .. we had no idea what happened to Ville. Did he swim with us and then disappear? Did he not swim with us? We had no idea.
I don't even remember the island of Långbäling, though according to my paddle there was an aid station there. We were just pushing to get through these last runs and swims as efficiently as we could, even if it wasn't quickly.
The sun was getting lower in the sky, and at this point we actually WERE getting cold. My feet were a little frozen after a longer swim, and I almost never have frozen feet. (Trista lives in a state of perpetual frozen-feet.)
The last few runs were super, super short. Suspiciously short. 0.09 miles each. The kind of short that says "I am an incredibly technical, rocky island". And that turned out to be very true.
I wish I'd had a GoPro for this section. There were many parts of the course that I wished I could record to show people after, because nobody would really understand otherwise. But nothing more than these last few short islands.
It was like a cruel joke. Spikes of volcanic rock, with the navigation flag on top of a ledge, or across a ravine. We were using our hands just as much, or possibly more, than our feet on these islands. And our poor hands were so waterlogged from swimming all day, and torn up from climbing over trees and branches. The volcanic rocks were SO PAINFUL on our hands, but there was nothing to be done but continue climbing up and scrambling down.
I couldn't understand how I didn't remember anyone mentioning these last islands being so terribly technical, and figured maybe it was just the best-kept secret in swimrun, and I was about to have to sign something that said I wouldn't tell WC newbies about these islands either, to keep the secret. I was pretty annoyed that nobody had warned us.
But it turns out, instead, that this bit of the course was new this year, so it's not that it was being withheld from us, and was in fact just as much of an unpleasant surprise to everyone else as it was to us.
And when I say 'unpleasant surprise', I mean it was so incredibly fun and completely absurd, and even as tired as we were, we LOVED it. We'd get to a climb or ravine or something terrible with no obvious path forward, and we'd just stop and stare and say "Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?!" And then we'd jump or climb or fall or whatever it required.
We were so exhausted, but still in awe of this amazing thing that we were about to complete.
This is also where I lost the ability to navigate the course written on my paddles. According to my paddles, we should have been on the last island, Utö! Yay! Except when we came out of the water, it was more volcanic rock terribleness, no humans, no indication this was the last island. It was a little disappointing, honestly. And still so difficult to navigate. And then it navigated us right down to the water again, for what it turns out was our actual last swim to Utö. Oops. At least it was really the first time I got it completely wrong!
Our last swim few swims, we seemed to gain more and more boats accompanying us. There was nobody else to guard or to film, so we had our own personal boat escort watching over us.
That made it extra funny when we slid slowly into the water, started swimming, then Trista realized her goggles were on her head still, and as she fixed it, my buoy came out from between my legs, and I had to flip over to fix it, and then Trista started backstroking. Lest people think we finally got our shit together by the end of the race.
Eventually we managed the last short swim over to actual Utö, where the swim exit looked more like a real populated island, and there were people there to greet us, including Matt!
We'd done it! We made it to the last island! Of course, instead of a nice little run up the beach to the finish line, we still had 2.17 miles of running on Utö to get to the finish line. But at this point we could do anything. Running on fumes, but those fumes were enough.
After we passed Matt, we had to run up a steep gravel hill, and then suddenly Matt rode up the hill past us on a bike. That was unexpected for so many reasons. Did Matt steal a bike? Trista thought it was an electric bike, because he didn't seem to be exerting any effort at all on this gravel uphill, but I said no, that's just how a Matt do. So incredibly strong, and that helped motivate us to be strong up the hill.
I don't even remember what we talked about in those last couple miles. I asked Trista if she wanted to walk some of the early part, so that once we got close, we could cruise through the last part running, but she said I shouldn't offer up walking as an option, just tell her to keep running, and that's what she'd do. And so we did.
As we got closer, more and more people appeared around us, cheering and pacing us. We knew that we were either the final finishers, or that maybe 1-2 teams might be behind us, so we knew that everyone would be waiting for us at the finish line. Everyone was so supportive of us all weekend, hell, ever since we qualified and registered. We knew that the finish line was going to be crazy. I said it would probably be a hug PR.
As we got even closer, we had a decision to make. We always do some sort of finish line move, and for this race we had an ambitious one. One we'd intended to practice every day we were in Sweden, so we'd know we could nail it at the end of such a race. Best laid plans, right? We didn't manage to practice it until Saturday. We practiced it maybe 10 times, decided that was good enough, and now were about to find out whether enough of our body parts still worked to pull it off. In front of a lot of cheering people. And cameras. And video cameras. We figured if nothing else, a failure would be both dramatic AND caught on film. Very Team Shitshow, very on brand for us.
The last bit of the run leading to the finish line is a hill called Heartbreak Hill. We decided to use that hill as an excuse to walk, so we could strip off all our gear for our finish line move. This wasn't the kind of move we could do with our gear still attached.
As we got to the hill, people surrounded us, cheering for us, telling us we could do it. We had to announce "Hey, just fyi, we're about to start walking, not because we can't run up this hill, but we need to take off all our gear. It's cool, we're fine." And so we got our buoy, paddles, race belts, etc, all gathered up in our hands, and then resumed running all the way up to the finish line.
It was just as crazy as we'd guessed it would be. And enough people know about our finish line antics that there were a lot of cameras on us.
We weren't sure how long we could actually DO this finish line move, so we ran all the way up to the finish line. We didn't want to get disqualified for leaving anything on the course when we finished, so we dramatically pitched all our gear over the finish line and off to the side.
And then we formed up, and crossed the finish line.
Somehow we remained upright, and it even sort of looked like it was supposed to. Sort of. Close enough!
And so we completed the ÖTILLÖ World Championship race in 13:32:06.
I don't even know how to finish this report. It's all so much. Still, a week later.
We didn't think we'd be so close to the time cut-offs, at the same time we weren't sure if we could make the time cut-offs. We knew the race would be hard, but I think we underestimated exactly how technical this course is, and how much of a toll of all that technical running would take on us.
We had hoped we wouldn't be the last finishers, and we were sure that we were. But it turns out that female team we hoped made it through time cut-off 2 did, and they finished between us and the 14 hour cut-off.
So many people to thank.
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