Last Tuesday morning I receieved a message from Henrik, a not so close friend. In fact I’ve only met this guy like 3 times before, we have mutual friends.

The message was:

“A quick question: me and my mate is supposed to do Kustjagaren on saturday. He torn his achilles tendon and now I have to find another partner. Are you up for it?”

I told him it sounded fun but I have to realise my limitations and I just did a halv Ironman last weekend.

He said not to worry, I’ll do just fine.

I told him, to continue searching for a partner and if he didn’t find anyone and I absolutely was last resort, I would do it 🙂

Yeah.. it turned out I was his last resort.

I quickly turned to my clubmates in HTT asking if anyone had a wetsuit suitable for Swimruns that could fit me. I just love it how people are so generous and within hours I had managed to borrow a swimsuit, with short legs/arms, that fit me.

Later I went out and bought new running shoes designed for trailing. I youtubed videos on what to bring on a swimrun. Fixed a buoy on a string so I could run with it etc.

RACE DAY:

I picked up Henrik in Lund and we drove to Karlskrona early in the morning.

We had a tactic huddle in the 2 hour drive up and he shared his experiance (consisting of 1 previous race, haha). It was still valuable and we made up a plan on how to complete the different segments.

Also the topic of our team name came up which was “the turtles”. I asked Henrik if it was because we/the turtles were slow. But he said it was because turtles are fast swimmers 🙂

When we neared Karslkrona I started playing “Always look on the bright side of life” by Monty Python and told Henrik if things go rough we’ll still have a blast and whistle the song.

This song always makes me so happy!

We arrived in Karlskrona and went to an information meeting and then we were driven by bus out to the starting line.

It was about 440 participants all together!

And what was cool was that everyone had the same vest and more or less the same gear. It made everyone look professional 🙂

The weather had decided to show everyone what summer should feel like and already in the morning the temperature was 27C in the shade.

Anyways, off we went at exactly 10.30 and it all started with an 8k run.

First ever swimrun for me

8k run, in a wetsuit, in high temperature with no shade anywhere..

Me and Henrik went in a 5min/km pace and I thought this was nice and slow.

But after maybe 3k, Henrik starting struggeling and I saw on my watch that we slowing down. 5.20 pace.. then 5.30 and later just under 6min/km.

I felt great that I wasn’t the one that was the weakest link and gave him a bit of pep talk.

We arrived at the first swim section and the management had set up an extra water/energy drink table due to the heat. We stopped and I had a glass.

But Henrik wanted more to drink so I told him I would wait next to the table.

Suddenly he was gone and I thought maybe he had went to the bathroom.

And at that time the Swedish Radio Blekinge asked if they could ask me some questions. I was in no hurry so I participated. You can hear and read about it HERE 🙂

After this, Henrik still had not come back. I tried shouting Henriks name but was answered with someone elses name. Quite funny!

I went down to the river and found Henrik. Somehow he had passed me without anyone of us noticing.

We told eachother we have to have better communications rest of the race.

To be continued