Trail ultra part 2: NUTS YlläsPallas 2022, 100km
Right, the second race of the year, supposed to be 100km but was actually about 98km. My Garmin showed some 2800 meters of vertical.
I did have some concerns how I’d recover from the previous race, Karhunkierros 86km on May 28th. I have never done two ultras so close to each other’s. But I recovered well, after one week from Karhunkierros was already doing proper runs. Meaning I had two weeks for proper training & then 2+ weeks tapering towards this.
Those two training weeks went well, felt maybe a bit tired, but was able to hit all targets. Ended the period with back to back to back half marathons, around 2 hours each. So all good there. Now just cooling down & tapering towards the race, right!
But just as I had started my tapering, I was finally hit by Covid… Just two weeks before the race. Got the positive test Tuesday morning & obviously first thought was that I will miss the race. Luckily though I had only very mild symptoms, light fever only during one night. Maybe there is some hope?
The good news was that I didn’t miss any actual training runs, but I did miss runs during that whole week. So felt a bit unsure about my condition as I went back for the first (easy) run on Sunday. Which felt good, no issues, apart from thighs getting a bit stiff. Went out for more runs on Monday & Tuesday and then had to decide (didn’t have any accommodation booked yet). Around midnight Tue/Wed decided to give it a go, booked a room & went to sleep feeling relieved. And a bit anxious too as who knows about the covid aftereffects? What if…?
Anyway, early Thursday morning started the 1000km drive towards Ylläs & checked in to the hotel the same afternoon.
The race started at 24:00 on Friday night, so I had some 30 hours to kill before the action. Spent time eating, hydrating & doing couple of easy jogs around the hotel. And checking my body all the time if any weak signals from Covid. None appeared. All systems are a go!
The race started from Pallas Hotel, about 1 hour bus drive away from the Äkäslompolo village where the finish line was.
Some 200 runners started off at midnight. Very pleasant weather & temperature, sun was shining, and the trail was dry & good to run. First 20km’s was a bit crowded though.
My running philosophy for ultra/trail runs has always been “run when you can”, instead of “take it easy at the beginning”. As I was here for the first time, I wasn’t sure about the trail & terrain, so whenever the terrain was OK, I ran. Which worked very nicely for me again, was catching up people & making steady progress through the field. After the first 35–40km or so, running started to feel really good all the way to the very end: pace was steady as you can see from this table:
I had promised myself not to fall (too many times)… Well, fell three times & not on the soft stuff. First fall was particularly nasty as we were running on old duckboards. Person running in front of me stepped on the other end of the board & it made the other end lift some 20 cm or so. As I was just about to step on it, I hit my ankle to it and fell down hard, bleeding. Didn’t look good, but luckily no other harm done. Cleaned up the cut & upwards and onwards!
The first 4 hours or so in the midnight sun was again magical. You just have to experience it.
As such, the whole run was pretty uneventful. As said, didn’t feel that good to start with (stiff thighs), but the watch told different story. And from about the 40km marker onwards I started to feel much more confident, I was on a roll, this works! The best trail run experience ever!
I don’t know who the race director is, but the person must be slightly sadistic. The last 20km includes two major climbs: Ylläs fell and Pirunkuru (pic below from top of it). Especially climbing up Ylläs felt really hard: the “route” was on loose stones about the size of your head. So instead of just focusing on the climb, I had to focus also on not falling over all the time (again).
But I made it. And the last 8km or so was really pleasant slight downhill, soft track in the woods towards the finish line. Which I crossed in 16h 54mins. Just a bit over an hour faster than my initial target time!
This whole running experience was quite different to the previous ones. Even magical. The scenery was absolutely stunning. Everything worked & apart from the few mishaps, didn’t have any issues. Whatsoever. Felt quite emotional at finish to be honest.
I want more experiences like this.
I think I could do a 100 miler.
