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Mustasch Vättern

300 of the best kilometres in my life!

By TheBikepack

August 7^th, 2019

If you know, you know

This is the Swedish long-distance exercise race that makes every rider hearing the name stand a bit straighter/taller, reach for their gels and switch to their game face. This is the 300 km cycle party that takes place every year the weekend before midsummer on the 15th of June. When 23 000 excited cyclists gather in Motala, sharing the joy of cycling and take on one of the world's largest bike challenge : to circle the lake - Vättern. This is the true cycle mecca of Sweden, nirvana for two wheel junkies, with a little bit of something for everyone. We are talking about Vätternrundan!

This was my first time riding Vätternrundan and also the longest ride off my life, so do I need to tell you that I was nervous! My best friend Dennis (who is a seasoned Vätternrundan “räv”) had to put up with one million questions about everything from food to the course and what to wear, back to food, the course and of course more questions about what to wear. This is a brief report about the best bike ride of my life, with some pointers and tips that we hope will help you along the way when exploring your own 300km adventure and some great moments that we had to put on paper!

Hope you enjoy the read!

Here’s the main takeaway right away, (in case you - like me, are reading this while eating breakfast in a hurry and can’t read more then the ingress) : Whatever you do, make sure to sign up for the next Vätternrundan race ASAP! It will be the best bike ride of your life! (Hope your breakfast also tastes great :) )

My name is Johan, I’m an avid weekend warrior with a big passion for cycling, you can ask anybody and they will tell you about how I wont stop talking about it. I’m located in Stockholm, Sweden, a beautiful city with a big portion of amazing cycle roads and bunches of great people to catch a ride with pretty much every day of the week. Every Swedish cyclist is aware of the “mount Everest of cycling”, the “Mona Lisa of bike riding”, the baptism of a cyclist allowing him or her to enter the halls of giants - Vätternrundan is the ultimate trail and this year is my year. There is no bad way of cycling around Vättern but I sure know what way I would choose if I could pick!

Team Mustach - Sub 9

Let me introduce you to Team Mustach, not only the best looking team both in terms of attire and facialhair but also a great group of people cycling for a great cause. Team Mustach is advocating riding according to the principles of the three “s”. Säkert, Snyggt and Snabbt (safe, good looking and fast) and is gathering every year to rais awareness for and “cycle in” money in favour of prostate cancer research. Make sure to follow @abloccamps for more info about this and don’t hesitate to apply to join or donate money if you want to support.

Let’s get back to the race!

We arrived in Motala with newly cut mustaches, looking like one million dollars and with the tingles in our legs from excitement, stepping out of the car and taking a deep breath of “good vibes only”. This place is a bicycle all-you-can-eat buffet during this weekend every year. Cyclists everywhere, bikes high and low and happy people all around cheering and or getting ready to embark on their ride of a lifetime. Motala is a beautiful summer town at the north shores of Vättern, sporting a great beach walk, cozy city center and a kick-ass car museum. We are here for the main attraction the 300km Vätternrundan and we are starting at 02.45 in the early morning, late night or whatever this time of day is called.

The night was sweet but short, very short.. try two hours of “sleeping” with the same excitement in your body as you used to have the day before Christmas growing up. The alarm rang and we flew out of the tent and into our matching Mustache gear. The bikes were prepped and the provisions for the race were packed, water bottles were filled and we were on our way in a jiff. A short team-tactics meeting and some pictures later and we were at the starting line of Vättern Rundan, 300km, 2019.

We rolled out of Motala at 02.45 like planned, a long train off celeste and blue colored riders, lights shining in the night as a band of pearls on a woman's neck. You could feel the anticipation in the air and how we all wanted to rush like cows let out of the barn after a long winter. The embrace of the early morning was warm and the smooth wind was cool but not cold, a perfect start of a great day!

Race specifics

The celest/ blue mustasch train steamed on with slender and brute force, cheering and boosting everyone we met. I caught myself thinking “one should really wake up at 02.00 in the morning every day, it is crazy how much stuff you can achieve instead of sleeping” as the sun was rising in the east and we already covered about 80 km of awesome cycling.

We cycled through the morning and faced an amazing day with dry roads, a warming sun and fair winds. The course around vättern can be split into three main parts.

Phase one is the stingy first couple of kilometers when you are all excited about being on the road and need to remind yourself and your teammates to keep the temp down and ride safe.
Second phase is the Honeymoon ride, all the way down to Jönköping. This is a fairly easy distance to ride and a lot of nice views to enjoy making it an even more pleasant experience. The key here is to enjoy the ride but not go to fast.
Phase three is when you have passed Jönköping, this is when the climbing starts and the real race begins. The next 200k is where you will have to work, keep the spirit up with your teammates and make sure to eat and drink. We sang in the uphill climbs - great way to keep up the team spirits.

A key component to any long distance cycling adventure is nutrition, hydration and mineral levels, especially if it is a warm day like ours. The most important factor is continuity, you will be totally fine if you remember to drink and eat something on a regular basis, very much depending on the day but at least every 30 minutes and prioritize on drinking. Another recipe for success is mixing sports drink in your water, this will give you some extra energy but also the electrolytes and salts that your body needs to refill with.

There is 9 stops along the cycle course where you can refill with water or sports drink and get some carbohydrate refills. Have fun, eat and drink alot and the ride will be an absolute pleasure!

THe rollercoster

We kept singing our way up the hills and cheering on everyone we met and we were well into the 3rd phase when I was starting to feel a dip coming my way. Long distance cycling is like so many other things in life.. like a rollercoaster. We all have different ways of tackling this beast but mine is talking, talking and eating. This was literally like the world series of “fake it till you make it”, trying to fool myself to keep pushing our 35km/h average pace for another 100km. The great thing about it is that all you have to do is trick yourself to ride to the next crossroad, and then to the next lightpost and then down the hill, compartmentalizing the struggle into manageable chunks. And just like the roller coaster is sure to go down, it sure as hell did turn around after about 20 minutes or so of said compartmentalizing.. and I was back! Fresher than ever (well that is a lie, but we are still doing the fake it till you make it here :) … at least fresh enough to tackle the hills with a big smile under my kind of bushy mustache.

The 4th Phase

The hands down best part of the race was also the by far hardest, finishing. This should actually be added to to list above as the 4th phase of the race.

4. The Finish - Passing the last pit stop in Medevi and hearing the guy on the speaker shouting “Here comes Teeeeeeeam Mustach looking fast and fresh! What a good looking group!” made my day and you could feel how the pace instantly was cranked up a step. The fokus was at once switched to Defcon 2 and you could almost smell the delicious post ride meals waiting for us in Motala. The last 23km was tough for me, real tough but also a big reason why I’m writing this with a big smile on my face. The struggle and the effort pushing the last km’s and how the team all came together to bring all of us over the finish line together as one team, and what an overwhelming feeling to arrive in Motala with cheering from our fellow cyclists and the crowd. Passing the finish and stopping the clock at 8 hours and 30 minutes for our 300km ride. I'll admit that I had shaky legs stepping of the bike but man did I feel good!

This is the short version of my first but definitely not last Vätternrundan, join us next year for the “long version” of 8,5h and I promise you won't regret it! Feel free to reach out if you have any question!

Have a great day and until we meet again, keep the pedals spinning friends!

Thankyou

Thank you Team Mustache and Abloc for putting together an amazing team and creating the best prerequisites for a fun, safe and great ride! Thank you Vätternrundan for arranging a smooth, challenging, inspiring and monumentally fun race! And thank you Bianchi for the carbone power that took us around the lake in no time, you rock!