Jag anmälde mig till halvmaraton på Tromsø Midnight Sun Marathon i september 2025, innan jag ens hade klarat min första HM i Uppsala. Då visste jag inte att träningen skulle gå helt åt skogen under vintern och att jag knappt skulle komma igång med löpningen igen förrän det blev varmt i år.

Men jag tänkte att om inte annat skulle det bli ett roligt fyradagars-äventyr, även om jag i värsta fall fick gå hela halvmaran. Spoiler: det behövde jag inte!

Här kommer några höjdpunkter från resan, inklusive själva loppet såklart.

Tromsø and Fjellheisen

I flew into Tromsø in the morning on June 18. Caroline from the RunLetters Run Club was amazing and arranged a hotel discount for us at Moxy Tromsø, which is really close to the airport and just about 3km from the city center. I didn’t want to pack too many activities in before the race, so on the first day I focused on just exploring the city a bit with Kim, another fellow RLRC member. The hotel was great - my room and the main breakfast area faced straight onto the mountains.

The next day I took an easy run into town instead of catching the bus to shake out the legs a little, and picked up my race packet at the same time.

That evening we also went over to Fjellheisen, a cable car lift that goes up to the lower slopes of Mount Fløya. I took a solo hike up the slopes a bit once there - the views were gorgeous and I think I experienced three seasons while I was up there. It was warm and sunny one minute, misty the next, raining and windy a few minutes later. I even got a rainbow!

It was quiet and empty where I was and it felt so calming to just walk around in the silence. At some point I ran into what looked like a mini-lake but was really just a big puddle. Two birds (not sure what kind) seemed to be living there. I imagined how peaceful it must be there for them, living in undisturbed solitude except the one-off tourist like me wandering around.

I also spotted so many interesting rocks.

I wonder what those red specks are? There was a cluster of these stones with these specks in a particular part of the mountain.

(Not)Speaking Norwegian

It’s so cool and a little weird how I could have entire Swedish-Norwegian conversations with people. I’d speak Swedish and they’d speak Norwegian, and we understood each other. Even though I didn’t know all the individual words I still understood the whole context and it worked out somehow!

The race

The start time was 21.00, but with the never-setting sun it felt just like daytime both at the start and the finish. It was cold and rainy the entirety of race day and I had been planning to run in shorts and a tank top. I had a long sleeve with me, but thought it would be a hassle to take it off and shove it somewhere once I inevitably warmed up. Nevertheless, standing around with no other layers for I don’t know how long before the start was not appealing either… I didn’t want to freeze my ass off before the race started.

So I spent a lot of the day looking for arm sleeves that I could easily strip off during the run. Unfortunately nobody sold them, which was strange to me since this seems like a pretty common running accessory? In the end I MacGyvered it by buying some compression socks (Craft to the rescue again) and cutting holes in the toes, ending up with makeshift arm sleeves. It worke perfectly!

Of course they ended up coming off within the first kilometer anyway -.-

The pace

Before the race I figured I’d be happy with anything under two hours considering my undertraining. But once things got going I realized I was keeping a pretty good 5:00-ish per km pace. If I could keep that up for the whole race, I could come in at 1:45:00!

Alas, I ended up crashing a bit around kilometers 13-15. The course was laid out in a way that had you turning around to run back for the last few km. At some point it felt like that last turn was never going to come. My form went to crap. My inner hips were killing me. My feet were starting to burn. More on the pain below… But then the turn came and after a few more minutes of struggle and my last gel, things picked back up and I finished with a chip time of 1:47:09.

My final results ended up being:

• Overall: 599 out of 3617
• Women: 172 out of 1985
• Women in my age group: 21 out of 223

The pain

It really hit at those 13-15km. I was feeling fine all through that first half, but then, very quickly, I became aware of rapidly escalating pain in my inner hips (inner thighs/groin?). My form collapsed, as did my pace. I could barely lift one foot in front of the other, and as my movement suffered I began landing more heavily on the pavement. Soon my feet were burning from the abuse. I could recover for a few strides at a time before my groin refused to lift my legs again. I kept alternating between alleviating the pain at my inner thighs by letting my feet suffer, and alleviating my foot pain by letting my inner thighs suffer.

I managed to down my last gel and that did seem to help, as did seeing the 3km-remaining marker on the road. At that point I felt like I was basically hobbling, but knowing I was so close to the end helped my brain block out the pain somehow. I managed to pull myself together enough to increase pace in the last km and sprint to the finish.

That night I could barely sleep because each time I shifted in bed the pain in my inner thighs would wake me up. I thought my calves would feel the after-effects the most from any muscle group, but they were totally fine. I also felt what may be a small injury in my right foot having gotten exacerbated (obtained not by running but cycling in heels the week prior…)

It’s now Monday and while my legs and inner thighs are still sore, it’s quickly gettig better and nowhere near how bad it was that first night. That foot thing, however, is worrying me a little bit… I did not feel this pain when running. I feel it mostly when walking or flexing my foot in a certain way. I’m not yet sure whether I should wait for it to fully disappear before my next run or if this is one of those things that’s better to (slowly) train through.

The support

This was the first race (out of the three total I’ve done since I started running last year) where I actually had someone cheering me on at the finish line (thanks, Caroline!) Kim had finished a few minutes before me as well so we all met up at the end to pick up our bags. Additionally, I got extremely nice encouragement, tips, and support remotely from a much better runner than I from back home in Uppsala - it felt so good to finish to a bunch of texts sent throughout the race to hype me up, I couldn’t stop smiling.

During the run itself I zoned out a lot and aside from giving some high-fives to some kids along the route I heard and saw nothing. I couldn’t even focus on the gorgeous views, just disappearing into my playlist and my head (but that’s ok - I got to see plenty of them in the days leading up to the event). But I do distinctly remember a large group of people in fancy clothing doing the viking row :D.

Next race

Up next I’ll have the Uppsala Half Marathon again in October. Next year I’m considering doing 6 Sjöar (also half marathon distance). Hopefully I can train properly this time and not half-ass it like I did with this one.