The Arctic Blast, With a Twist
As published in Gents Cafe, Issue 104
I just want to throw it back to June 16th, 2018.
Here is the scenario: you have been invited to a party, where everyone is sober... yet can speak little English. You all smell but are all smiling, there are bowls of pasta everywhere, and the time is around 1 am somewhere amongst the Tromsø Municipality of Norway.
People are swimming to cool down, common folks have their coffee shops open for refreshments, children are running around playing, the sun is shining bright and there is minimal clouds in the sky above.
Did I mention... yes I did, it was 01:00 - in - the - morning. Welcome to Scandinavia, where in the height of June the sun rarely sets.
I was in a growth stage of my life where the mind took control of many actions of mine – some good, some great, a lot of them questionable.
Having lived next to Battersea Park in London City, I had permanent access to a 3.5km oval road within the park where I could run laps all week. Being a very popular park, people were running at all times, and the groups of runners I saw and the accents of their conversations made me want to try something not too different.
Run a half marathon, in a different country.
That idea is all well and good: you have the popular Barcelona Marathon with said distance available, or perhaps the Berlin Marathon – the flattest circuit in the world. They could have been strikingly appealing.
But how about the Midnight Sun Marathon, in Tromsø, Norway?
Why not sling yourselves up to the arctic circle, run amongst the wild, hire a car of an ex inmate, see reindeers, drive the multiple fjords, get encapsulated by the incredible and untouched scenery, drink the extremely expensive local beer and, of course, run a half marathon?
The idea behind the event is that most people cross the line around midnight, under the evening sun. The marathon starts around 8pm, with the half-distance kicking off close to 10pm, and the 10k option roughly at 11. It sounds simple, but can be super confusing also.
The run itself was a lot of fun: there were plenty of locals there to cheer you on, clapping their hands and shouting “Heya heya heya! Heya heya heya!”
I am yet to learn what that means, but it sure was encouraging.
After the run - which was a nice 11km “out and back” style from the city, around the airport and back, the town square was heaving busy, there was live music playing, local children running around, food stalls open, the kind of buzz of a Saturday morning market.
It was sunny, hot, sweaty - it was a successfully strange feeling.
We did not attend the pasta party, but did go home to join the queue for showers and laugh about what we had just done.
It was a small cool contingent of kiwis living abroad: myself and my friend Bone flew up for it, and my colleague from London Dan, and his friends from the deep south of New Zealand – joined as well. We couldn’t be further from home, not only geographically, but also relatively psychologically.
Life is for these experiences, and it is certainly here for getting out of the comfort zone and looking around the corner.
And for now, lykke til and ha en fin dag!
SBG
