Meeting Gunnar - what a hero!

We woke up to a sunny day in the Swedish mountains, we couldn't have asked for more. We even managed to book a training session last minute. We booked a two-hour session with a personal instructor. We met Gunnar and it was instantly clear that we had struck gold. Gunnar was 70 years old and had completed 16 Vasalopp! He started with talking about some general tactics, some of which I of course forgot to take usage of during the race, and that in hindsight would have helped me to improve my time significantly.

Gunnar's 70 years could not be seen when we were skiing with him. He flew away from us and it was a bit worrying thinking about the race when someone of his age was so much faster than us. He focused the training on a couple of technical aspects of the basic techniques. Quite quickly it became apparent that me and Martin had different strengths (which I guess we already knew); Martin is better at skiing "diagonally" and I am better when we just training on pushing ourself forward with brute force. I guess that it says something about our two personalities *smile*


We spent the evening in the local bar (best way to relax and take our mind off what was ahead). The next day we took it very easy and only went out for a brief check that our professionally waxed skis were OK, we had left them with the local ski shop to be prepared for the race. We were a bit worried that we seemed to have lost all grip, but put it down to the fact that on the race day it would be different weather then on the Saturday. We didnt do anything about our concerns and didnt go back to the shop - something that we later had to pay the price for. I put it down to pure inexperience and not really knowing what it should feel like to ski cross country.