‘This will all just be a story one day’

Lessons from racing the Lapland Arctic Ultra ❄️

Through the long Arctic night, I pushed my fatbike through soft snow in the dense forest. The clouds blocked out the stars, and the tree canopy pressed in on me. Running my front light on the lowest setting to preserve the battery, I was surrounded by darkness, with only a small patch of light shining on the snow in front of me to show me the way.

The very image of grim determination. Photo by John Summerton.

I wasn’t supposed to be pushing my bike. On cold snow, my fatbike runs like a tractor over the trail and movement is easy. But the March weather in Lapland was too warm, hovering around the freezing point for days, and now the deep snow was too wet to support the weight of my bike, and any time I tried to ride it, the front wheel would crash through the snow cover and throw me into the wet banks of the trail. The process of continually mounting my extra large bike, riding a few pedal strokes, falling off, crawling my way out of sometimes leg-deep snow, lifting the heavily loaded bike up, and then starting the cycle over again, was absolutely exhausting. It was only feasible to walk, and through the long dark night, I gave up and did just that.

Around dawn, when the temperature dropped to its lowest, I was able to ride a few kilometres and roll into the next checkpoint. I estimated that out of the 75km I had covered on the race course, I had walked over 60 of them. I got into the checkpoint and crawled into my sleeping bag for a 90-minute nap. There was still a very long way to go.

I woke up before my alarm, and knew in my bones that this just wasn’t right. I had come to Lapland not just to race, but to have an experience. I wanted to experience the deep cold conditions and sleep outside in fluffy snow and, mostly, ride my damn bike. The race course was now being diverted around the lake crossings, the ice no longer frozen enough to safely hold us. We had crossed one lake the first day and the amount of water seeping through the surface had made me a little nervous. Things just weren’t working out the way they were meant to.

This is called ‘post holing’ and it’s awful.

Ultras are all about adapting to the issues that arise. The weather conditions are often one, or a few, of those issues. By walking and stripping off my warmer layers, I had adapted as well as I could, but after 24 hours on the increasingly slushy race course, I had to make a call about what kind of experience I was there for.

Another full day of walking, pushing, occasionally riding short spurts. Another long night in the pressing darkness, including a short bivvy mainly because I had carried my -30C rated sleeping kit for so long and wanted to use it. When the melting lake diversion forced the race course onto a road for 10km, I finally got to ride fast and overtake all of the participants on skis and foot (*the race allowed for three disciplines. Normally the fatbikers are by far the fastest, but in these conditions, we were falling behind everyone). I overtook every participant except for one, and arrived back at the start/finish area in overall second place. There was still a second loop on the course, but I had settled surprisingly well into the knowledge that I would not be attempting that loop.

I had an early breakfast at the checkpoint with the man in first place, who could not hide his dismay and frustration that I had come within minutes of his lead (he’s a whole other story - I’ll tell you about it sometime!), and then I handed in my tracker and let the volunteers know that I was calling it, downgrading my participation to just the one loop.

And, weirdly, I was totally okay with that. Ellie and John were out there somewhere with a rental car, documenting the race, and also having a marvellous time touring around the Arctic Circle, finding moose and adorable Swedish cabins in the snow. We still had one more night before we were due to travel home, and I wanted to spend it with them doing something nice, instead of wading through melting snow any longer.

We found a mountain hut that was at high enough elevation to still be frozen. I rode my bike the whole way up, delighting in how it felt to actually move on a trail. We made a fire outside and took pictures of the most magical sunset I’ve ever seen. We slept in the hut and drank tea and chatted and just had an all around great experience.

—

Something I tell myself in ultras and challenges is “this will all just be a story one day”. It’s a reminder to myself that, even if things are shit right now, soon it will just be a memory that you can regale your friends with about that totally shit time you once had. It’s a useful reminder just to know that the bad times - and the good times - will end. But the point is that in the moment, you need to make a story you want to carry with you. I don’t normally like stories about races that weren’t successful, but on that occasion, I knew that getting the magical winter wonderland experience was a story I was far more interested in. Even now, writing about my objective failure to ride my bike in a race, I’m still happy with my story.

And here’s the beautiful film that Ellie made about our story!