This year marked our 19th time for the Finnmarkslopet. After 8 month of training, and 4000 km running, and up to 30 hours training a week, Finnmarksløpet is the “eksamen”. I only pick the dogs if they are good enough, and if are they trained enough, and get the right training.
The race runs from Alta to the Russian border, and back again it is a total distance of 1000 km. All the best dog teams in Europe was on the starting line. My hope for the race is of course to win, but to even be in Top 5 would be hard.
I start out with 14 dogs, and have to finish with a minimum of 6 dogs. This year it was shoulder problems that was the big problem, after 500 km, I was 2.5 ours behind the leader, and still 12 dogs left. But then I lost 3 of my best dogs. All with shoulder problems, then at the next check point I lost a big male. So now I have 8 dogs, and still 350 km to the finish line, this means I have to take more rest than I had planned.
At the end of the race it gets very cold, under minus 40 degrees Celsius, and I took an extra rest of 3 hours, and had to leave “Fink”, a little female. With 7 dogs and 230 km to go, I still catch up to dog- teams on the next leg to Karasjok.
So after 5 days, and 21 ours I made it back to Alta, in 11th place. I have never driven the race so fast before, and never had such a bad ranking. But I was beat by 10 very good dog teams. All the dogs I took out of the race was fresh after a few days.