Karl's Ultra Ramblings

  Part 2 of 2 - The 315km from Overkalix to the finish..... at Overkalix Interlude While Karl and Harriet are sleeping the sleep of the dead at Checkpoint 4 Overkalix, dreaming of medals and cake (but mostly cake), lets take a moment to reflect. Swedish Lapland, described as Europe's Last Great Wilderness is quite simply breathtakingly beautiful. To a larger extent ultra racing to us was endurance-challenge-reward and so what featured most were metrics like distance, time, elevation, terrain underfoot. On technical terrain hours could be spent literally watching ones own feet.  Entering an arctic wilderness is like entering a Christmas card and we were blown away by the landscape from the day we arrived, and were still staring admiringly out of the taxi window as we were being driven back to the airport. Combined with a relatively consistent trail underfoot, and our policy of moving as much in daylight as possible, meant we could fully absorb the scenery.  Had the logistics of taki

  Part 1 of 2 - The lead up and the first 185KM to Overkalix Pre-preamble So we were fortunate enough to be able to take early retirement around Christmas 2021 and had been looking for a "big adventure". Boy, did we find one! This blog covers a lot of ground (like the race itself) so unless you are die hard into this stuff please save yourself an hour of your life by just looking at the pictures. If you are in it for the long haul, grab a coffee, get comfy, and lean into it. Preamble 2022 had drifted by with an early date with the Spine Race in January which we did together (or more accurately I endured in a bewildered drug influenced sleep deprived state while Harriet skipped capably through the Pennine wilderness impeded only by her dribbling husband). But we got there. Eventually. Harriet then had the 4 main Spine medals (Challenger and Full, Winter and Summer) (she doesn't get out of bed for less than 50 miles so doesn't count the Sprint) only to discover the race