Yesterday team Ssideline City ran up a mountain!
We raced the Peak Performance Vertical K. A race where you run, walk, or crawl 5km while you gain 1000m in altitude. For those of you who call themselves trail-runners this might be another day in the office… (In our defense, you are a hybrid between a mountain goat and a human). But for the rest who, like us, consider themselves leisure runners this was no easy task. Especially, if you come from the plains in Spain, and train in Stockholm, where the highest training point has an altitude gain of approx 86m. Luckily, and thanks to Ssideline City and Peak Performance, we could go to Åre a few days before the race and try out the course. We arrived Saturday morning, left our bags in the house, ate some breakfast and off we went!
Within the first 100 vertical metres I could already feel my stomach disagreeing with me and after 250m I could taste what a big mistake had been not waiting after breakfast. Nonetheless, we all made it to the top during the first trial, all but one, who was still in Stockholm because of work and would face the VK blinded (#fromzero2hero). The day of the race and the day before it had rained heavily, all I could think was of the mud we were about to face. Especially since my shoes had lost all their grip the first day in the “allegedly” 8km run back home on Saturday (turned out to be 23km, thanks Michal and Edvardas). However, we were extremely lucky, and the schizophrenic Swedish weather decided to grant us a beautiful sun.
I personally don’t remember much of the race, pain overtook all my senses and all I could think was the next step (and the beer I was going to have after the race). In summary, the first vertical 500m is a gruesome ascension up a ski slope with mud and ropes (yes, it gets that steep). And the second 500m are a beautiful rocky section which, once I recovered from a massive lack of energy, I enjoyed very much. Four of us arrived to the top almost at the same time, but we still had our hero running up! So, irregardless of the lack of energy, we started cheering for every runner until the last one! The run was over, it was time for an ice cream, a beer and a burger (in that order).
/Miguel
Our team members for 2017 were: Rikke Bonde, Edvardas Moseika, Michal Frankowski, Elias Uhlin and Miguel Carracedo
Comments