Reach a major goal in 24 hour - make you energized and full of power

Yesterday I reached one of my major goals for 2008. The completion of the Swedish Classic. The challenge consists of four events; Vasaloppet (90km of cross country skiing), Vätternrundan (300km of cycling), Vansbrosimmet (3km of swimming in a river) and Lidingöloppet (30km trail running). Sitting on the bus from the final event yesterday I realized that all challengers have a lot of thier own stories to tell, almost like when we did the military services.

The first question from friends that have completed the event is which one is the toughest and which one is the easiest. I would ranke them as follows:
Hardest - Vasaloppet
Harder - Lidingöloppet
Hard - Vätternrundan
Cold - Vansbrosimmet

Vasaloppet require technique and solid strength in legs, back and arms, and the moments when you can rest are at the break and a few downhill slopes, otherwise you are active all the time. But is also the most beautiful nature experience.

Lidingöloppet is an exercize for your legs and feet, no other parts really into play. The last 10km is a lot tougher than the two first 10km stints. Yo can make it with a few 20km runs before, but is perhaps the hardest if you carry a few extra kilos.

Vätternrundan is the longest one, and is the one where the static pain i butt, back and neck is the hard to deal with. As long as you stick to the group it doable but it is a long exercize.

Vansbrosimmet is hardest before, all your concerns about how to protect you against the cold, wetsuit and/or vaselin and/or wool-grease.

I did take on the challenge with inspiration from a very good friend, determination to improve my physical shape and to have a major goal to focus my exercizes towards. During the journey I have visited many small villages for cross country skiing and enyojed the difference between a chunk of meat and a HälsingeStintan style Entrecote. I have enyojed bycicling around the neighbourhoods of greater Stockholm, a town with bike trails everywhere, and realised that you see a lot more at 30km/h on a bike than in 90km/h in a car. An I have found a beatutiful running trail around the island of Djurgården that is fantastic for early weekend morniung runs.

But an even better take-away from this challenge is that I this year could go on vacation with a lot of phisical energy without any need to recover for 4-5 days with 12-14 hours of sleeeping time.

As the figure nerd I am I would like to share my times 7:44:27 for Vasaloppet, Vätternrundan 11:51:00, Vansbrosimmet 1:21:42 and Lidingöloppet 3:00:24 (Including a 1km detour in the start due to a blunder by the organizers). Or if you sum it up 23 hours, 57 minutes and 33 seconds. I never had this as a goal but I was very happy to realize that I was on the right side of the bottom line even though missing yesterday's goal with 24 seconds. But as long as you complete the big ones, some scratches in the small ones is OK. Time for setting up new goals in life