The Midnight Sun Half Marathon

On Saturday night (22nd June) I ran the Midnight Sun Half Marathon, a 21 km run in arctic Norway that takes place at midnight in the middle of summer. The event includes just under 1000 participants who make their way, en-masse, most of them at speed, from the centre of Tromsø (at 10:30pm) along the south-west coast of Tromsøya, to the airport, and then back again. There is also a 42 km marathon version of this... maybe I'll do it next year, or maybe not. As it turns out, it wasn't as much a midnight "sun" marathon, as a midnight "cloudy and rainy" marathon, and therefore puddle navigation was an essential skill. Luckily running in winter in Cape Town had prepared me for this. Below is a photo of the start of the 10km race prior to the half marathon.

Photo of the start in the main street in the city centre, showing the 10km race setting off before the half marathon. Photo courtesy of MSM facebook page. 

Running in the middle of the night in the light is a strange and surreal experience, and contrasts significantly to the typical race story of getting up ridiculously early, in the dark, and making your way, half asleep, to the start of a race, where it takes at least the first 3km for your body to even register that it is no longer slumbering, and is required to perform impressive physical feats when it should be quietly eating breakfast. I must say, I definitely prefer this running at night thing. It's significantly more civilised. 

The overall experience was absolutely spectacular. The race starts in the historic (spectator-filled) main road of the city, loops through the downtown streets next to the harbour, and meanders through suburbia to the southern-most point of the island (Sydspissen). The majority of the race then winds its way along the coast, providing runners with views of rolling green fields on one side and panoramic views of the sea and snow-capped mountains on the other. Runners finally reach the airport on the western side of the island, and then turn around and follow the same route back to the city centre.

Half marathon and marathon runners returning to the city centre along the coast after the turning point at the airport. Photo courtesy of MSM facebook page. 

My experience of the race was absolutely amazing. I had done a fair bit of training beforehand, and I think all the walking I've been doing around Tromsø (being without a car and all) has improved my endurance more than I realised. The first 11km of the race flew by, and I ran personal best 5km and 10km times, improving upon previous times for these distances by several minutes each! I got to 15km feeling fantastic, and wondering why previous half marathons had felt so hard, and then I hit the 16km mark and my significantly faster than normal running pace caused my body and mind to go to war with one another. This is a phenomenon that most runners will have experienced at one point or another. My calves began to cramp, my hamstrings started to feel tighter than over-tightened guitar strings, and self doubt hit me like a bus. 

Kilometres 17 and 18 continued like this, with my legs feeling worse and worse, and the war between mind and body eventually culminating in two options just after the 18th kilometre. Option 1) give up and stop, or option 2) push beyond what I perceive to be my limit. One of the reasons I run, and probably why a lot of other people do too, is the addictiveness of the feeling one gets from reaching this point and choosing option 2. When you manage to push through what feels like your limit, your mind ultimately wins over your body, which is an extremely powerful feeling. Everything goes a bit numb, and you start to feel like anything is possible. This time my mind beat my body so thoroughly into submission that I completed the race surfing a happy wave of endorphins, through a crowd of spectators lining the main street in the city, and finished in 2:03:18, a 12 minute improvement on my previous half marathon personal best. It was an absolutely amazing race, and like none I have ever experienced. It is easy to see why this is such a popular event and I will definitely be doing it next year!

Just before the finish of the race, at about 12:30pm, looking happy about getting to the end. 

I've been here a month!

I have officially been living in Tromsø for a month, and I am starting to settle into life in the far north. I've noticed a lot of changes over the last month, in both myself and in Tromsø. I have learned a lot about how I deal with new, and sometimes rather challenging situations, and I am realising more and more that life can be as hard, or as easy as you decide you want it to be. This is such a beautiful and amazing place that it makes having a positive perspective really easy. Moving has definitely been good for me, and I'm sure I'll learn a lot more in the coming months and years.

The change in Tromsø has been astounding. When I arrived, there wasn't a green leaf in sight, there was snow on every horizontal (and some not so horizontal) surface, and it was cold! In 4 weeks all the snow in the city, and a lot of snow on the mountains, has disappeared, and Tromsø has turned into a botanical garden of greenery and flowers, with yellow daisies and fluffy dandelions adorning the sides of the roads, soaking up the sunlight and car fumes. The area outside my bedroom window has turned into a Durban-esque jungle, in comparison to what it was a month ago, and one gets a sense that if we let them, the plants would take over completely. Below are pictures I took on my second day here, contrasted against photographs of the same views taken a month later.

Left: Photographs taken a month ago. Right: The change in vegetation and snow cover a month later!

The longer I live here, the more funny little things I notice that I am not used to, or have never experienced before. I have (apparently) been incredibly lucky with the weather, and Tromsø has had more beautiful, sunny, warm days in the last 3 weeks than it apparently had the whole of last year. This does mean that the people here truly appreciate the sun, and it is hard to find Norwegians inside when the weather is nice out. A yoga class I attended last week was even moved outside onto the roof of the gym because the teacher could not bare the thought of being inside on such a beautiful day. This appreciation of the nice weather is awesome, but it also means that Norwegians seem prone to randomly taking their clothes off (presumably to get a tan) whenever and wherever they feel like it, and I have seen a lot of half naked, rather pale (or red) people walking along the street, or lying on patches of grass. I even saw a granny walking her dog in a bikini. 

All this nice weather does mean that I have spent a fair amount of time barbecuing (that's braaiing for the the South Africans) and at the beach, and I even had to buy myself a bikini! Because the weather doesn't usually allow for it, not many people own proper grills, and so everyone buys these disposable things called "engangsgrill". Coming from a country where braaing is taken really seriously, and a typical braai consists of a big wood fire (only charcoal if the wood is wet, or not available), with meat comprising of giant hunks of bloody steak, or chops and boerewors, with maybe some chicken (to satisfy vegetable requirements of the meal), and perhaps an obligatory salad, it was a huge change for me seeing people barbecuing hot dog sausages and fish fillets on tiny charcoal-fueled disposable tin foil "grills".

Left: A disposable grill as bought from the supermarket. Right: A small, non-disposable pink bucket grill and a disposable grill, in use. 

Another surprise for me is that people actually swim in the 5ºC arctic sea here. I put my feet in, went numb, and rapidly moved back onto the beach. It's going to take me a while to get the courage up to fully submerge myself!

Left: People swimming at the beach in the freezing cold Norwegian Sea. Note the snow on the mountains in the background. Right: Norwegians at the beach.

A few other things I've noticed:

1. I thought Cape Townians talked about the weather a lot, but people here are on a whole other level! I'd say the majority of conversations I have had have included something about the weather at some point, and I am amazed at how everybody seems to religiously follow the weather prediction websites. I guess this behaviour is a response to the rapidly changing nature of the weather here, and the fact that people really need to take advantage of it when it's nice.

2. The rain here is not real rain. It is drizzle. It's the kind of rain that happens in Cape Town after the proper heavy storm rain when things are calming down, and starting to clear up, except here it continues for hours, and hours, and hours.

3. Fizzy drinks are significantly bubblier... in fact they're so bubbly that a mouthful sometimes brings back memories of having pop rocks as a kid.

4. When talking about dates, Norwegians talk about week numbers. For example, someone might ask: when are you teaching? The appropriate norwegian response would be something along the lines of: week 5 and 6, and then week 35. Google calendar does not have a week number option (well, at least I can't find it if there is one), so I have had to label weeks manually.

And finally, on arriving at the gym, I discovered that there is an place in the entrance area where everybody leaves their outside shoes. Initially it made me nervous leaving my shoes (especially my nice leather boots) in a place where they are at the mercy of any opportunistic person, but then I realised that this is Tromsø, and you can leave clothes hanging in a tree and come back a few days later and they'll still be there! So far, my shoes have been fine. Fantastic!

A "Night" Hike in the Midnight Sun

On Friday night, instead of going drinking and partying, as most normal humans would do, I joined a group of new friends, and hiked the highest peak on the mainland near Tromsø, a 1208 m-high mountain called Tromsdalstinden. This is a very popular route in the area, and I am told that on a sunny Saturday afternoon one can find several hundred Norwegians (and some tourists) making their way to the top, with little, 65 year-old Norwegian ladies breezing past at unimaginable, mountain-goat speeds. It seems like the people here treat it much like Cape Townians treat Lion's Head, except the hike has almost triple the amount of elevation gain, there are no chains, and it is significantly more strenuous! 

The time estimates for the hike that I could find on the internet were anywhere between 6 hours (most Norwegian websites) and 9 hours (most foreigner or tourist websites), the total elevation gain is 1180 m, and the distance is somewhere between 12 and 14km. And we started the hike at 8pm! 

The hiking route

Left: A view of Tromsdalstinden from the island showing the last part of the route (red). Right: A map showing the summer (red) and winter (green) routes. The black box shows the part of the route that is represented in the photograph on the left. 

The idea was to hike through the night, utilising and appreciating the midnight sun. Despite this, I really had to put effort into parting with my headlamp (usually a fixture in my bag on any hike). Also, planning what to pack was rather difficult, since having only hiked in snow once in my life, I had very little idea what to expect. So I arrived completely over-prepared, and ended up carrying several jackets, pairs of pants, and general warm clothes I didn't need all the way up and down the mountain. It was in fact warm enough that one of the hike participants remained in a bikini most of the way up, and I ended up rolling my pants up into shorts and seriously regretting my choice to wear a t-shirt instead of a vest.   

The hike started off along a gentle gravel road which runs parallel to a U-shaped valley for about 4 km. It then crossed a bridge across a very strongly flowing river and followed a slightly steeper, and very slushy and muddy path. This was definitely the muddiest hike I've ever experienced (and I've hiked in the middle of winter in Cape Town!), and almost all of the paths on the lower slopes doubled as rivers. The snow is apparently melting very fast this year, and so the rivers are extremely full. As you walk along the valley all you can hear is the thunder of water as hundreds of waterfalls rush down the valley sides converging in the river below.

Left: One of many waterfalls. Middle: The river most of the waterfalls seem to deliver water to. Right: A river... oh no, wait, it's actually a hiking path. 

The hike then crossed the river shown above (via a bridge, of course), and meandered it's way through a forest up the muddy, lower slopes of the mountain, which slowly became less forested, and eventually ended up as open areas vegetated with low scrub and peppered with fields of snow. Crossing the snow fields was made rather interesting by the speedy melting, and there was always the risk of putting your foot through the snow into a river running below. Luckily my socks remained dry!

Left: Crossing a snow field. Right: A river under he snow.

The hike progressed into significantly steeper, leg-burning territory and we scrambled up what can be best described as a pseudo scree slope with loose rocks and some slippery mud (luckily by this point we were high enough that the paths had stopped being rivers). The slope then shallowed out and the hike took a never-ending clamber along the edge of the bowl-shaped mountain top, with a sheer drop to one side, to the summit. This final slope is comprised of an ankle-breaking boulder field (with some rather good chunks of eclogite), the nature of which is such that you never see the top until you actually reach it... and therefore get stuck in a seemingly eternal cycle of false hope; "Is that the top? Oh no, it's not, maybe that's the top. Oh wait, that's not it either." We did eventually make it to the summit, just before midnight, enabling us to take the extremely essential, touristy midnight sun photos.  

Left: The pseudo scree slope. Right: The slightly less steep boulder field to the summit.

A touristy photo of the midnight sun.

(Which is not a different sun to the one we see during the day as some tourists apparently believe)

The views were absolutely amazing, and if I had the ability to make a 360° panoramic video I would have, but since I don't, here are some gratuitous view photos.

Top left: View towards the northwest showing Tromsøya (Tromsø island, red arrow). Top right: View towards the east showing the Lyngen Alps. Bottom left: View towards the south showing a fjord. Bottom right: View towards the southwest showing another fjord.

After sitting around on the top having a midnight snack, we descended via the same route through the early hours of the morning. There is usually the option to take the slightly longer, but less steep winter route down (shown in green on map above), but it was decided that there was still too much snow, which would mean lots of slipping, sliding, and general mushiness. We arrived back at the parking area at around 2:30am, having taken around 6.5 hours for the full trip, which is Norwegian-level hiking speed, and therefore a rather good time by non-Norwegian standards. Today, however, my legs do hurt! And with that, I'll leave you a final photo of the orange mountain slopes in the 2am sunlight.