ÖTILLÖ World Championship: Race Week
Click here to read Part 1: The Backstory
When we first began planning our trip to Sweden, it looked like Trista was going to have to do this race surgical strike style. With Justin traveling, Trista would need to be with the kids right before and right after the race, so she planned to fly in Friday and fly out Tuesday, the day after the race. If we'd had to, we would have made that work, but fortunately things changed, and Trista was able to not only fly out on Monday, but also stay an extra week in Sweden afterward. (More on that later!) I'm SO GLAD that's how things worked out, because that week before the race was such a game-changer for us.
4 days before our flight to Stockholm, we got a message from Rasmus. If you don't know who Rasmus is, you may know his work, as he's the one who produces the AMAZING ÖTILLÖ hype and event videos. As an example, and skipping ahead a bit, here is the video they showed this year at the race briefing the day before the race. Safe to say it was inspiring and terrifying in equal parts, given what we were facing the next day. There were absolutely lots of tears, but fortunately it was dark in the room.
We are absolute Rasmus fan-girls, but hadn't had much direct Rasmus interaction in the past, so it was a complete surprise when we got a message that said "Hi Trista and Amy! Do you want a spot in the official race movie?"
...
What?!
First we replied that of course we did, without even talking to each other first. Or asking what it entailed, honestly. You don't turn down that kind of offer!
THEN we asked what it entailed, and he told us that they had a plan to try something new this year! We told Rasmus if they needed something awkward but adorably charming, we could probably help out, and he agreed that's exactly what they needed from us.
THEN Trista and I called each other and mostly just made unintelligible squealing noises at each other for 10 minutes. We had no idea exactly what this would entail, or whether they would get any usable footage from us, but we were incredibly honored to be chosen, excited to participate, and happy to have something to keep us out of our own heads as the race approached.
Fast forward to Monday! One week before the race, Matt and I got on a plane to JFK airport, where we met up with Trista, and we all flew from JFK to Arlanda in Stockholm together. Once we landed, we met up with Marcus of Team Envol Spam Fika, our favorite partners in adventure, and our crazy pre-race week began.
We landed in Stockholm very, very early on Tuesday, which left us no excuse other than extreme jetlag to not do the pool swim on our schedule. Fortunately Marcus knew all the secrets of the local pool, and we did a nice little 2000m shakeout swim. We realized afterward that this was actually the very first time Trista and I have done a pool swim together! Glad it could be somewhere notable like Sweden.
On Wednesday, we met our coach! We've been coached by Nicolas Remires of Envol Swimrun for a couple of years now, but we'd never met him in person until we arrived in Sweden. He seemed like a nice guy online, but would that translate into a good relationship in person? Well, the first thing he did was give Marcus shit, which is also OUR favorite activity, so we realized almost immediately that this was going to be a great relationship.
It helps that he is also an amazing coach. Over the next three days, we met up with him and a few others at various places around Stockholm. Sickla Strand on Wednesday, Älgö on Thursday, and Hellasgården on Friday.
We figured these gatherings would be group workouts, but they turned out to be coaching sessions, which we've never actually received in person for swimrun! And they turned out to be completely invaluable. Nico had us do repeats of things that simulated actual conditions of the World Champs course, including one session in the archipelago itself, so we could know exactly how salty the brackish water was.
Everyone had warned us about the slippery rocks, and we were definitely nervous about them, but Nico got us out on slippery rocks and had us run over the slipperiest part, tethered, repeatedly, and that absolutely helped demystify one of the scariest things for us. We knew we needed to be careful on the rocks, but now we knew how slippery and how big the rocks were and that our shoes had enough tread to keep us safe as long as we weren't careless.
He had us run a runnable trail, then randomly turned off into the dense woods with no real trail to navigate rocks and roots uphill, then abruptly turned to have us run as fast as possible downhill through the forest, avoiding stepping on all rocks and roots.
The sessions were short but intense, and everything we learned and practiced was what we experienced on race day, and we were so happy that we arrived early enough to get these sessions in, and get feedback and advice from a coach with so much direct experience on the course.
I like to think maybe it also showed Nico that while we were just as slow of runners as Training Peaks had showed us to be, we weren't COMPLETE disasters, and maybe there was hope for us.
Between training sessions, we mostly ate a lot and tried to adjust our body clocks to a very different time zone. We also got a massage and pet as many dogs as we could. All very important things.
When we went out for our Älgö training session, Rasmus met us there and did our pre-race interview. We were VERY nervous about this, as we historically don't excel at direct interviews (to be fair, most of the direct interviews we've done have been immediately post-race, when we are not as our brainiest) (this makes it sound like we do interviews all the time; we've done 2 total, and for the second one, that race never released an actual video after, which we assume means our interview was SO BAD, they just scrapped the entire idea of a race video entirely). But Rasmus completely put us at ease and wasn't even visibly annoyed when we'd veer off subject or ramble on unintelligibly or curse (inevitable).
Saturday was an Off Day. No workouts, no coaching sessions, just a day to prepare and relax before the storm truly began on Sunday.
Meanwhile I woke up on Saturday and felt terrible. We would joke every time someone would cough or sneeze that they had 'the covids', but it was a real concern, with all the travel we'd done (masked, but I was masked when I got covid a few months ago), and with so many of the people we knew in the swimrun community around Stockholm having it recently. And having had it recently, I knew it didn't necessarily start with coughing and sneezing, but with aching and feverishness and stomach issues. Which is exactly how I felt. I sat there feeling miserable, convinced I had covid, but unwilling to use the one test I'd brought with me to confirm. The longer I denied it, the longer I could put off having to have the conversation with Trista where I told her that after all of this.. I wasn't going to be able to race. I was pretty devastated.
But Matt and I talked about it, and between international travel and 3 days of some intense, if short, training, it was possible it was just my body objecting and wanting rest. So we gave it rest. We did some laundry and I laid down for a while, and by the afternoon, I was feeling more normal. Less convinced I had covid. By early evening, I was feeling normal again, no longer convinced I had covid, and much more optimistic about my ability to do the race.
We spent the early afternoon at AdorkaFika HQ (aka the seating area of the 'suite' room in the hotel we were staying at), marking up our paddles and applying temporary tattoos.
It started to feel like this might really happen.
In the evening, we headed to Tak Bar in Norrmalm for the Löw Tide Böyz meetup. We'd spent all week meeting small groups of people, most of whom we'd already been following on Instagram for months or years, but this is where the meetups truly began in earnest. We got hugs from so many previously virtual friends who were now for-real friends, plus got to catch up with several of our fellow American teams who had also come over to race. It was a very successful event, and helped prepare us for how crazy and social the next 2 days would be.
Because on Sunday, the craziness truly began.
The logistics of this race are impressive, and so well run. Step 1 is a race-provided bus, leaving from Stockholm Centralstation. Everyone but Trista, who amazingly DID NOT CHECK A BAG for a World Championship swimrun in the middle of a 2 week vacation, had a lot of baggage not necessary for the race, so we got to the station a little early to seek out storage lockers, so we could bring only the things we needed to race. It was a little unnerving, packing up bags on Sunday morning, trying to make absolutely sure I had everything I needed. I felt good that everything I needed to race had made it to Sweden, but now I had to make sure that nothing I needed was left in the bag I put into storage.
Once we had only our race stuff left on us, we killed the remaining time before the buses left by grabbing some lunch. We picked a pasta place down the street a bit, completely choosing at random, and it turned out that by the time we got our food, the place was completely full of swimrunners! We finally got to meet Alexhappyland and Other Amy and Thor and so many others!
The bus ride was uneventful, other than the part where there must have been some sort of accident or construction that stopped our forward progress for what felt like 3 hours but was probably more like 20 minutes?
The bus got us to Djurönäset, which is where we would stay the night Sunday night, and where we would pick up our official race gear, attend the mandatory pre-race meeting, eat dinner, and most importantly, buy all the ÖTILLÖ-branded products we could find.
As we spun in a circle, overwhelmed with all the activity and swimrunners and arrows pointing places, Rasmus found us, and introduced us to our new best friend, Edvard. Edvard was assigned to follow us around and take video of us, and we immediately issued a heart-felt apology to Edvard that he had been given this assignment. We promised to try to keep our shitshowiness to a minimum if we could at all help it, but he assured us we could just be ourselves. Which, as we all know, is pretty shitshowy.
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Our first order of business was to find the merch tent and buy all the aforementioned ÖTILLÖ-branded products, but we ended up finding the registration area before that, and got packet pickup all sorted out. Which unfortunately may have sealed our fate as far as getting a hoody in the size we wanted, but it all worked out okay in the end. We ended up with one women's small and one women's medium hoody, and I said we should have a sprint finish at the end of the race to determine who got the small, but ultimately Trista generously claimed the medium and let me have the small. We also got hats, tshirts, and a reusable cup, which we definitely did not need, but which said ÖTILLÖ, so we obviously bought.
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The merch line took forever, and we felt bad that we showed up late to the Envol team photo, but it turned out most people showed up even later, so that photo was postponed until after the briefing.
The briefing. Hooboy. This is where things started to feel really real. I already shared the video. The video hit hard. So did the course overview and rules review by Michael and Mats. It was all stuff we knew, but somehow having it told to us made it seem so much scarier.
After the briefing, we finally gathered all the Envol folks for a 'Blue Nation' team photo.
And then dinner, which was delicious but really could have used a desert.
And then back to our room for final preparations before bed.
Because the logistics for this race are so complicated, they offer a spectator package to people who want to come along, but not race. The spectators get basically everything the racers get, except instead of a race, they get ferried around during the race to various places to cheer and watch. That meant Matt got to ride on the bus with us, he got dinner, and he got his own room the night before the race. Originally he also had a roommate, but evidently his roommate objected to sharing a room, so got his own room, which left Matt with his own room, as well. I could have gone and stayed with him and let Trista have her own room that night, but it felt appropriate for us to share a room before we shared an entire day together. Plus Matt was pretty tired of us at that point, and deserved a little break and some alone time.
I didn't think I slept at all, but evidently I slept long enough to do a little bit of snoring. I got up at some point to pee, and tried to be very quiet, but evidently it wasn't necessary, since when I got back in bed, a clearly-hadn't-been-sleeping Trista demanded, "Do you have the tether?!" Even though I told myself to be calm and just relax, evidently the concept of this race was just too big and scary to sleep. But I've done enough races on no sleep to know it's possible.
Breakfast started at 3:45am, so I set my alarm for 3:15am, and then got up before the alarm because I needed to be doing something. We actually didn't plan to eat the provided breakfast, and had made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the night before. We aren't always the best at Nothing New on Race Day, but a completely unknown breakfast before a race this big seemed like an easy thing to avoid, so we did.
We actually made two sandwiches each, because one pb&j just seemed too insignificant before a race of this magnitude, but when it came down to it, we couldn't eat more than one at 3:30am.
We ate in our room, got dressed and packed, then headed to the breakfast area to meet up with Matt and hook up with Edvard. Everyone had to put all their suitcases and bags and whatnot on the ferry to the start line, so the conference hall was just filled with luggage against every wall and in every corner. We checked out the breakfast that was being served and were happy we'd brought our own. Probably would have been fine, but why risk it?
The ferries began departing for the start line on Sandhamn at 4:30am, so we joined the ranks of swimrunners and spectators dragging bags and gear through the dark on a gravel path. They'd said the path would be lighted, and that was technically true, but the light was from giant tea-light candles lining the path. Great for setting a mood, not as great for visibility.
As the ferries came into view, someone behind us started yelling, "Hey! Hey!" Eventually we realized he was trying to get our attention, so we stopped and he came up and handed me my goggles. Which evidently had somehow fallen off my person. Which is weird because I swear they had been attached to my race belt via a carabiner, with my paddles which were still firmly attached. I have NO idea how that happened, and I'm eternally grateful that someone noticed and was kind enough to make an effort to return them. That definitely would have caused some panic when I realized it later. I did have a backup pair in my bag, but by the time I noticed, it probably would have been very challenging to GET to my bag, and plus they're the backup for a reason, as they were much older and more worn. Yay, crisis averted!
As we got to the dock and almost to the front of the line, Trista said that Marcus and Kawika were on the ferry and saving spots for us in the back. Then when we were one team away from getting on the ferry, Michael Lemmel slammed his wizard staff into the ground and shouted "You shall not pass!" No, sorry, getting my events confused, that was Gandalf. Michael just yelled that this ferry was full, and we needed to wait for the next one. Definitely a bummer that we didn't get to do our usual pre-race ferry banter with the Spam Fikas, but we ended up sharing a table instead with Nico and Katie, and it was great getting to know Katie a little better.
I don't even know how long the ferry ride took, honestly. We spent the whole time cramming gels into various pockets and storage places on our bodies, and then applying various kinds of lube into the same cubbies and storage places. This seemed like the kind of race where you want to be THOROUGHLY lubricated.
As the sun came up in the distance, they announced that the race would start promptly at 6am (the start time can flex 5-10 minutes either way, depending on shipping channel issues in the first swim). This was good news for those of us concerned about time cut offs, as the time cut offs didn't change if the race started later. The ferry pulled into the island of Sandhamn, our start island, and we filed off the ferry to do what we needed to do before the 6am start.
And by "what we needed to do", I clearly mean "poop", as every single racer headed toward the limited number of bathrooms. Edvard had put mics on us as we came off the ferry, and I should note he was kind enough to remove the mics before we made it to the front of the bathroom line.
We mostly spent the last few minutes hugging other people and wishing them luck and safety, trying and failing to take a full Team USA photo, and then heading into the start chute. If ever there was a race where we absolutely felt we should start at the back, this was it.
As we nervously shuffled around, unable to see or hear what was going on at the front, Phil (Monk 1) mentioned that the start cannon thing was very loud. We laughed about that a bit, and then suddenly there was a deafening noise and I almost wet myself, despite being warned, and then suddenly we were racing the ÖTILLÖ World Championships!
Click here to read Part 3: The race report!
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