At 07:59 on March 1 this year, me and about 13 239 other people wearing skis, colorful sportswear and race bibs stood on a large, snow-covered field outside of Sälen, Sweden. We were waiting for a salvo of gunfire to signal the start of the 2026 edition of the worlds biggest cross-country ski race: Vasaloppet. I was in the very back of the tenth and last starting group, trying to keep my nerves under control by checking for the fourteenth time that all of my gear was ready for what was ahead of me. When the clock struck eight and the start of the race was announced by rifle fire at the starting line, one kilometer in front of me and too far away for me to hear, all 13 240 people started moving forwards as one. We had 90 kilometers and many hours of skiing between us and the finish line in Mora.
Vasaloppet is a Swedish institution. It’s held the first Sunday of March every year, and for many Swedes, that date carries more weight than our national day. In addition to the up to 15 800 people who take part in the main race every year, and the tens of thousands more who join other races arranged by Vasaloppet during the week of Vasaloppet (“Vasaloppets vintervecka“), millions of people follow the race on Swedish television. Some in the hopes of catching a glimpse of a friend or family member, but most because it’s simply what you have on your TV on that Sunday in March every year. It’s the Swedish Super Bowl.
My preparations
When me and Rebecka moved from Stockholm to the Swedish mountains in 2023 and our cross-country ski season grew from maybe a week to up to six months, thoughts on Vasaloppet entered my head pretty quickly. We lived in a rented apartment ten meters from a cross-country ski trail that winter, and I ended up skiing more than I walked in the months leading up to Christmas. Instead of the main Vasaloppet race, I signed up for “Öppet Spår”, which follows the exact same 90 km route as Vasaloppet but isn’t a professional ski race and is held a week earlier. A month before the race, I caught a bad case of the flu. In the next few weeks, all of my training slipped through my fingers and I realized that I didn’t stand a chance of completing the race. I never showed up for the starting line that year.
For the winter of 2025, my original plan was to ski the White Ribbon – a two month hike along the Swedish mountain chain with a sled and tent on Nordic touring skis. When that plan fell through in the middle of January, it didn’t take long before I started to think about Vasaloppet again. I signed up on January 29 – one month and four days before the race.
What’s the attraction with Vasaloppet? For most people, it’s the challenge – same as with a marathon or an Iron Man. The only way to find out if you’re able to do something difficult is to try it. That’s not the main draw for me though. I’m quite lazy by nature, and signing up for races and challenges is a way for present me to trick future me into keeping in shape. It’s easier for me to motivate myself to go on a run if I have a marathon to train for. Vasaloppet also had a different draw, though. I’ve grown up with Vasaloppet as a pillar of Swedish sports culture and heard stories about the race from relatives who have taken part in it. I wanted to experience all of it firsthand.
Only having five weeks to prepare wasn’t ideal though, and I had done pretty much zero cross-country skiing that winter. My focus had been on the White Ribbon, so all of my skiing had been with the heavy Nordic touring skis I had planned to use on the hike. It was better than no skiing at all, but just barely. My longest ski session up to that point in the season had been 11 kilometers.
So I got to work. In the five weeks leading up to Vasaloppet, I skied four to five times each week save for the week of the race, when I decided to save my strength for race day. In hindsight, I probably should have squeezed in one or two sessions that week as well, to shake everything loose a bit and prevent the muscle memory from atrophying. All in all, I skied 19 times for a total of 313 kilometers between signing up for Vasaloppet and race day.
My training diary for those four weeks looked like this:
| Week | Date | Distance (km) | Elevation Gain (m) | Time (h:m) | Speed (m/km) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | Jan 27 (Tue) | 14.83 | 320 | 01:33 | 06:20 |
| Jan 29 (Thu) | 14.69 | 289 | 01:39 | 06:44 | |
| Jan 30 (Fri) | 10.46 | 245 | 01:17 | 07:23 | |
| Jan 31 (Sat) | 10.48 | 241 | 01:13 | 07:02 | |
| Feb 1 (Sun) | 12.76 | 211 | 01:42 | 08:04 | |
| 6 | Feb 3 (Tue) | 18.67 | 363 | 01:53 | 06:05 |
| Feb 5 (Thu) | 18.73 | 358 | 01:52 | 05:59 | |
| Feb 6 (Fri) | 10.53 | 230 | 01:07 | 06:23 | |
| Feb 7 (Sat) | 12.78 | 152 | 01:16 | 05:59 | |
| Feb 8 (Sun) | 10.51 | 232 | 01:01 | 05:48 | |
| 7 | Feb 9 (Mon) | 20.31 | 345 | 02:04 | 06:07 |
| Feb 10 (Tue) | 10.53 | 230 | 01:01 | 05:52 | |
| Feb 12 (Thu) | 23.64 | 408 | 02:21 | 05:42 | |
| Feb 15 (Sun) | 41.13 | 681 | 04:27 | 06:30 | |
| 8 | Feb 17 (Tue) | 18.92 | 386 | 02:19 | 07:22 |
| Feb 18 (Wed) | 18.70 | 360 | 01:46 | 05:41 | |
| Feb 20 (Fri) | 5.25 | 66 | 00:37 | 07:03 | |
| Feb 21 (Sat) | 12.70 | 246 | 01:27 | 06:55 | |
| Feb 22 (Sun) | 26.97 | 555 | 03:00 | 06:41 |
My longest ski session was 41 kilometers, so less than half of the 90 kilometers I would have to ski on race day. They felt pretty good though. My only goal for Vasaloppet was to make it across the finish line without getting caught by the dreaded rope – more on that later – and after that test session, I thought I would get it done as long as conditions weren’t too bad. Little did I know.
About the race
Vasaloppet was first arranged in 1922, which in addition to the largest cross-country ski race in the world also makes it the oldest active ski competition. You could say it started all the way back in 1520, though. That’s when Gustav Eriksson, the future king of Sweden, travelled through the country to convince the people to rally against king Kristian II of Denmark who ruled Denmark, Norway and Sweden. He made it to Mora in the province of Dalarna, where he spoke to the assembled villagers about rebelling against the Danish, but he had to continue north to escape his Danish pursuers before the people of Dalarna could make a decision.
Soon, word reached Mora that a massacre had taken place in Stockholm. The Danish king had executed nearly 100 Swedes, including bishops, noblemen and council members, all of whom had been promised amnesty in exchange for recognizing him as the true king of Sweden. The massacre would become known as Stockholm Bloodbath. The people of Dalarna decided that they would lend Gustav Eriksson their support, and as legend has it, they sent the two best skiers in Mora to follow his trail north. They caught up with him in Sälen, 90 kilometers away, and brought him back to Mora where he started the rebellion that would free Sweden from Kristian II and see himself seated on the Swedish throne as king Gustav Vasa.
Historians have argued about the finer details about the 90 kilometer ski trip that the two men from Dalarna made in pursuit of Gustav Vasa, but in the spirit of never letting the truth get in the way of a good story, newspaper editor Anders Pers took inspiration from the tale when he in 1922 suggested holding an annual ski race from Sälen to Mora in honor of Gustav Vasas escape from the Danes. The article was published in Dagens Nyheter, the largest newspaper in Sweden, on February 11, and the ski assocation in IFK Mora held a board meeting on March 5 where they decided to arrange Vasaloppet. Two weeks later, on March 19, the first Vasaloppet was held. 119 people stood at the starting line in Sälen, and all but two made it to the finish in Mora.
Over 100 years later, Vasaloppet follows mostly the same route, but instead of 119 participants, there are now up to 15 800 ever year. They range from professional cross-country skiers who race Vasaloppet as part of the Ski Classics world championship to people who have never stood on a pair of skis before. In order to keep the latter group out of the way of the more serious skiers, there are eleven different starting groups in Vasaloppet, which sort the skiers based on how fast they’re expected to complete the race. At the very front, you have the elite skiers in their own starting pen. After that, the skiers are sorted in different pens based on how fast they’ve completed other eligible long-distance ski races – known as seeding races – and their previous results in Vasaloppet. If you’ve never skied Vasaloppet or a seeding race before, you end up at the very back in starting group 10.
By improving your starting group, you improve your chances of getting a good result in the race – and of completing the race at all. The record in Vasaloppet was set by the Norwegian skier Tord Asle Gjerdalen in 2021, at three hours, 28 minutes and 18 seconds. That’s 25,92 kilometer per hour. Many amateur skiers in Vasaloppet take three times that, and for many, their only goal is to make it across the finish line. To make sure that skiers aren’t out in the woods all night, Vasaloppet has time limits for when skiers must reach different checkpoints. When that time has passed, the staff draws a rope across the track, and anyone who hasn’t made it past the rope has to exit the race and take the bus – “brytbussen“ – to the finish line in Mora. It’s the rope and the bus that keeps first-time Vasaloppet skiers awake the night before Vasaloppet.
If you make it to those checkpoints before the rope is drawn, you can take a breather and replenish your energy with sports drink, hot blueberry soup, and buns. There are also toilets, medical staff and people who can put another layer of glide wax on your skis if they’re not as smooth as you hoped for. I’ve listed the checkpoints and the rope times below. If I would have looked around in the tenth starting group that morning, I would likely have seen a few ski poles with the rope times written down on scotch tape.
| Checkpoint | Distance | Rope time |
|---|---|---|
| Smågan | 11 km | 11:00 |
| Mångsbodarna | 24 | 12:15 |
| Risberg | 35 | 13:45 |
| Evertsberg | 47 | 15:00 |
| Oxberg | 62 | 16:30 |
| Hökberg | 71 | 17:40 |
| Eldris | 81 | 19:00 |
| Mora | 90 | – |
Course profile
Race day
Me, my partner Rebecka and our Labrador Retriever Storm took the car from our home in Funäsdalen to Sälen the day before Vasaloppet. It was the first proper visit to Sälen for both of us, so we took some time to sightsee as soon as I had picked up my race bag and handed in my skis for service at the starting line in Berga by. After pasta dinner at the Italian restaurant Appetito (recommend), we headed to our hotel to get as many hours of sleep as possible before an early drive to the starting line in the morning.
Every spare bed in Dalarna seems to be spoken for around Vasaloppet, and since I signed up just a month before the race, our selection was limited. Many sign up for the race and book their room a year in advance, and rentals close to the starting line are usually booked on multi-year contracts. That meant that the closest hotel we could get was the Mountain Lodge at Kläppen, 45 kilometers away.
When we arrived, it turned out that they had a very strict “no dogs in bed” policy, with a steep fine handed out to any guests with dog hairs found in the bed linen after checkout. Storm, our Labrador Retriever, is used to sleeping in the bed with us. I spent much of the night anxious about keeping him out of it, and woke up periodically to push him back down. When the alarm sounded at 04:30, it felt like I had barely slept at all. Other than the dog hair policy, Mountain Lodge was a nice place with friendly staff and a convenient breakfast-to-go package for Vasaloppet skiers. My half-asleep attempts to keep Storm out of bed had paid off as well, because we never received that fine.
Once we had collected all of our stuff from the room and picked up the breakfast package, I walked out to our car to find it hidden beneath a foot of snow. I got out the brush and shovel and started to excavate it, thinking about what this amount of snow would mean for the rest of my day. Tough going during the race, since all of the tracks the Vasaloppet organization had carefully prepared for the race would be covered beneath a thick layer of fresh snow, but my more immediate concern was if I was going to make it to the race at all. All it would take was a single car stuck on the road from Kläppen to Sälen, and I would miss the start of the race.
Rebecka drove while I ate the breakfast package, and the tire tracks on the road ahead told us that we were far from the only ones making our way from Kläppen to Vasaloppet that morning. Thankfully, none of them had gotten stuck. As we got closer to the large ski resorts in Tandådalen and Sälen, the road got easier to drive on and the amount of traffic started to increase. I started to worry that we had gotten up too late. At around 6 in the morning, two hours from the start of the race, we took the turn towards the parking spaces near the starting line and immediately caught up with the traffic jam. A line of red brake lights stretched on as far as the eye could see, lighting up the snow covered road. The minutes and meters crept by as I weighed the pros and cons of following the lead of some of the passengers in the cars ahead, who took their ski gear and left for the starting line on foot.
At 07:00, after a full hour in the traffic jam, we made it to the parking lot and I left to pick up my skis from the service station.
At 07:34, I made it to the entrance of the tenth starting group on the other side of the two kilometer ocean of people dressed in colorful sportswear. The snow was still coming down and there was nothing resembling a ski track on the field.
At 07:50, I found a place at the very back of that ocean of people. I needed to go to the bathroom, but the portable toilets were far away and the lines far too long. There was no time. I put my extra clothes in the plastic race bag that would be transported to Mora by truck and left it by the fence around the pen. I was ready.
At 08:00, everyone started to move forward.
Out of 13 240 skiers on the field, I probably started at position 13 000. I knew that I would have to improve that position in order to stay ahead of the rope, and I also knew that I would need to start doing that on the starting field as soon as the race started. Directly after the field, the Vasaloppet track climbs for two kilometers straight up to the highest point of the entire route, 150 meters above the starting field. It’s a big bottleneck for everyone except the elite skiers, and if you’re at the very back of the line that always forms at that climb, your chances of beating the rope are slim. As soon as the field started to break up a bit, I began to crisscross between skiers to pick up as many positions as possible, knowing that I didn’t need to save my energy since I would soon spend a lot of time standing still.
When I reached the road crossing just before the hill where the congestion started, I could see on the bibs of the skiers around me that many of them were from the ninth starting group, which meant that I had made some progress. From there, I could only go with the flow of the crowd as we all started to make our way up the long, fairly steep hill in orderly queues with the herringbone technique (“saxa“ in Swedish). The line moved incredibly slow. When I reached the highest point of the climb, three kilometers in, I had skied for one hour and 43 minutes. That’s 31 minutes per kilometer. It only gave me one hour and 17 minutes before the rope would be drawn in Smågan, eight kilometers away. Forget about hopes of getting in below ten hours, or above the middle of the results table. I was racing the rope.
I know enough about Vasaloppet to not expect good tracks back in the ninth and tenth group, but the snow still coming down combined with temperatures around freezing meant that conditions were especially tricky. Lots of people with traditional ski wax stood next to the trail frantically scraping large chunks of snow off their skis. My skis had skins instead of grip wax, so I didn’t have that problem, but I also didn’t have much grip to speak of, which meant I struggled with skiing with my usual diagonal stride. It was obvious that I would have to double pole much of the race to have any chance of getting to Mora.
The clock was 10:37 when I reached Smågan, which meant that my margin to the rope was 23 minutes. That didn’t give me much comfort. The rope time for Smågan is generous, since it’s easier for Vasaloppet with bus logistics if more skiers make it to the later checkpoints. Despite that, I heard the speaker at the Smågan checkpoint say that there were still over 3000 skiers that hadn’t made it past the rope yet. There was already a sense in the air that this would be a difficult year. As if to underline that, I did a somersault and landed on my back while standing in line for hot blueberry soup at the checkpoint. I still needed to go to the bathroom, and there was still no time for it.
After Smågan, the Vasaloppet route evens out with long stretches of flat terrain, and there started to be some gaps between the skiers as well. I felt pretty strong physically, but still nervous about the rope. I made it to the Mångsbodarna checkpoint with six minutes to the rope. 24 kilometers done. When I got there, Rebecka was waving to me from the audience, and I stopped to give her a breathless update before I continued my race with the rope. I took some sports drink and a Vasaloppet bun on my way out of the checkpoint. Still no time for a bathroom break.
Directly after Mångsbodarna, the route slopes gently downward for a long stretch, which gave me five kilometers more or less for free. After that, the trail climbed again for four kilometers, and those felt decidedly not free. The climb took us up to Risberg, and just before the next checkpoint with the same name, we arrived at the most famous descent of Vasaloppet: Risbergsbacken. Every year, a lot of nervous skiers fall on their face in spectacular fashion here, and every year, people in the audience document it for YouTube. You can watch the supercut from 2026 below.
I fortunately didn’t make the cut, since I got down Risbergsbacken without falling on my face. When I reached the checkpoint, I had 18 minutes to the rope. I was happy that my margin was widening, but I didn’t want to squander it with a bathroom visit, so that had to wait for yet another checkpoint. The stretch from Risberg to Evertsberg looks flat on the route profile, but if you zoom in, you’ll notice that it’s dotted with a bunch of small to medium sized hills. I was starting to feel pretty tired, and just as I was double-poling my way up one of those small hills, my right ski pole snapped in the middle. I got a chorus of sympathetic groans from the skiers around me as I ambled over to an unofficial drink station next to the track and left the two pieces of my pole in a trash can.
Double poling with one pole is difficult. I limped forward in something resembling diagonal strides, but it was a struggle since I had no grip to speak of. As skier after skier passed me by, I wondered if this was how my Vasaloppet would end. Each kilometer felt like it took ages, and I knew that what little margin I had built up to the rope was quickly running out. Then, I spotted a functionary sitting on a snowmobile next to the trail. I made my way over and asked if he had any spare poles, and he did. He even had one in my size. With it, I was back at double poling. I wasn’t sure if I would make it to Evertsberg in time, but I had lots of nervous energy and put it to use overtaking the skiers that had just passed me.
I got to Evertsberg with two minutes and 47 seconds to spare. Rebecka was waiting in the crowd and waved me in, and afterwards, she told me that I looked haunted as I entered the checkpoint. I wasn’t the only one. Everyone coming in to the checkpoint knew that they had just barely managed to avoid having their Vasaloppet end in humiliation. After some sports drink, I got back to it. From Evertsberg, there’s another section of steep descents, and it was nice to feel the wind again after my struggles on the previous stage. There were some steep climbs as well, especially towards the end, but I was starting to feel hopeful that I would make it all the way after all.
When I reached the Oxberg checkpoint, I still had two minutes to the rope. Over the loudspeakers, we also got confirmation on something that people in the tracks had speculated about: All of the rope times had been extended by a full hour. I was proud that I had managed to stay in front of the original rope times the whole way, but now that I knew that I had time to spare, I decided to take a breather and actually enjoy the rest of the race. I also, finally, went to the bathroom.
Soon after I left Oxberg, it was time to bring out the headlight. The tracks started to freeze after the sun set, and for the first time during the day, the double poling started to feel easy. It was nice to have some sections of the race where I was mostly alone as well. By the time I got to Hökberg, it was almost fully dark. I don’t remember much about the stretch from there to Eldris, which at 80 kilometers is the final checkpoint before Mora. I sat down for a bit in Eldris to catch my breath and look at the other skiers. Everyone seemed relieved to be close to the finish line. Someone offered me a chocolate bar.
From Eldris, the final kilometers into Mora were mostly downhill. When we reached the campground in Mora, I decided to pick up the pace and leave what little energy I had left on the field. When I reached the final straight in Mora city center and could hear the loudspeaker at the finish line, everything was worth it. I crossed the finish line with a time of 12:01:07, but I was just happy that I had made it all the way. Rebecka was waiting for me in the audience. She told me that after having followed me around the whole day, she wanted to do Vasaloppet next year as well. “I wouldn’t recommend it” was my response. In the car heading home an hour later. we both signed up for Vasaloppet 2027.
Lessons for next year
This blog post is already too long for me to list every single mistake I made before and during my first Vasaloppet, but I’ll include some of them here.
Start training earlier
Five weeks of preparations is not enough if you want to have an enjoyable experience at Vasaloppet. Since I decided to do it in late January, the sensible approach would have been to push it a year and done it in 2027 instead. Patience has never been my strong suit, though. Given how late I started, I’m pretty happy with the amount of training I got in before race day.
Stop training later
One thing I could affect is how much to train in the last week before the race, though. Even though I should have known better, I decided to rest that entire week. In hindsight, I wish I had done two or three easy sessions to make sure I stayed in the right mindset. When I put on my skis in Sälen for the first time in a full week on race day, I felt out of practice.
Do seeding races
Another thing I decided against given my tight timeframe was seeding races. Big mistake. Even if I had finished dead-last in one seeding race prior to Vasaloppet, it would have moved me up from the tenth starting group to the ninth, giving me many valuable minutes of extra margin to the rope throughout the day and a much more enjoyable experience. There is one called Åsarna Ski Marathon that’s held two hours from here in late January every year. I was worried that I would injure myself given my lack of training at that point in the season, but in hindsight, that was a risk worth taking.
Get enough energy
As mentioned above, there are checkpoints throughout the race that have sports drink and buns, and sometimes coffee, blueberry soup, and/or hot savory soup. Those checkpoints are up to 15 kilometers apart though, so you should definitely bring some additional energy with you. I had sports drink in my hydration belt, but I didn’t drink enough of it. I also couldn’t stomach the protein bars I carried with me during the race, even though I’ve had hundreds of that brand over the years. Someone in the audience handed me some jelly candies halfway through the race, and I’m definitely bringing a bag of those for next year.
In between the checkpoints, there are occasional energy stations where they hand out gels and sports drink to skiers who have paid for extra energy service. I skipped that for my first Vasaloppet, which is a mistake I’m not making again. There’s no heartbreak like feeling low on energy and passing an energy station where they’re handing out energy gels and sports drink, only to go without because you’re missing a bracelet.
Take the bus from Mora
The nervous drive to the starting line on Sunday morning is something I’d rather not experience again, so for next year, me and Rebecka are staying in Mora and taking one of the buses to the starting line in Sälen during the night between Saturday and Sunday. You need to wake up extremely early, but as soon as you’re on the bus to Sälen, you can go back to sleep again. I’m sure it comes with its own drawbacks, but at least you minimize the risk of missing the race altogether.