160km: done

We are back in Turku after driving for 10+ hours today. But that drive was nothing in comparison to what Jeremy accomplished this weekend: a 160km ultramarathon. He will write up a race report and I hope to post it here, but in the meantime, here are just a few pictures.

Before:

The amount of prep, planning, and packing required for the non-exercise practicalities of an ultramarathon is astounding. Jeremy had two (or was it three?) "drop bags" that he left at predetermined checkpoints so he didn't have to carry all his supplies and contingencies on his back. He also had a start/finish bag. Everything from food to band-aids to first aid is planned down to a science...plus a million "just in case" items. Here he is getting it set up to be transported by the race organizers.

He still wears a pack for the essentials, including drinking water. But in Finland, the runners just drink from the streams along the way. I found this to be extremely hardcore. Jeremy drank from the streams but treated the water with iodine tablets. He didn't grow up drinking that water and an ultramarathon is not the time to experiment.

Five minutes until the start!

During:

I don't actually have any photos of Jeremy "during." So here's us (I think one of the kids is in this photo somewhere) at the Angry Birds park in Kuusamo. It was an amazing amount of fun.

When not crawling around with my kids on this thing (I seriously got a great workout), I was glued to the screen of this GPS tracker for Jeremy's race. You can still go there and watch a replay of how it all went. The leader dropped out with only 25km to go due to a broken ankle (!). (The dots that move really fast and end up at the finish line are obviously traveling by car due to dropping out.)

After:

The kids and I got really excited for him to finish and showed up there about four hours too early. It was a long wait, but we busied ourselves playing at the lake and doing some mini-hikes (we didn't want to stray too far). When the time got close, we hung out at the finish. I think Sterling was really confused by it all. But Jeremy did show up and we were so glad to see him!

Remind me what I'm looking for?

The moment we've been waiting for!

We have been looking forward to this race almost since we first moved to Finland. It's thrilling that Jeremy was so successful! The unofficial results have him at 12th place out of 42 men and 7 women, with a time of 26:29:33. Congratulations to Jeremy on a race well run!