An Oslo Trail Running Adventure

Greetings from Scandinavia trail and gravel friends! I’m traveling in Norway and Sweden for work this week. It’s the first time I’ve been to Europe. While I’ll generally be stuck in the urban areas (those Scandes are enticing!) I’m not missing the opportunity to partake in the trails and fjords. Currently sitting in downtown Oslo, I was able to explore a really nice park and set of trails just southeast of downtown on a run yesterday. I didn’t see a formal name for this park on the maps, but a portion of the park was titled Ekebergskraningen which has a direct translation of ‘the ekeberg crane’. Ekeberg translates to ‘Oak Mountain’. So apparently I was running near (in?) the Oak Mountain Crane.

It turned out to be a fun and surprising mix of buffed out double track, technical single track, and even a little bit of wet rock scrambling, all only a couple of miles from downtown Oslo!

The northern end of the park, which was only 1.1 miles from the downtown hotel, started out with some steep climbing including stairs. About 0.75 miles into the park I had already gained over 350 ft of elevation, but then things leveled off a bit for some more flowy ups and downs. The trail network through the park was a cool combination of wider, buffed out trails that ran the full length north-south but then a lot of single track, more technical trails through the woods that ran back and forth between the two spine trails. I really had no specific plans for which trails to run on, just a general plan to try to cover most of the park. I was able to do that, with a couple of stops along the way to get my bearings. The park sits high above the downtown center (thanks to that initial climb, and a few more that followed) so there were several spots to take in a view of the skyline, like this one:

There were also a lot of really interesting statues along the run. Some were right in the trail, and some were a short diversion off the trail. All had a small sign indicating the meaning and significance of the statue. It was fun to learn more about the culture this way. I’ve always found that running is such a fun way to see and learn about a new place!

All told, the trail run was just under 9 miles, with about 900 ft of elevation gain. It was raining when I started and then just cloudy for the remainder, but such a fun way to get out and see the trails. More trails run here to come this week. And although swimming ins’t necessarily a sport I claim to be good at, I was able to experience the floating saunas on the fjord just across from the Oslo Opera House. A combination of sauna time, jumping off the sauna into the water, and swimming back and forth across the fjord made for a very memorable experience, right in the heart of downtown Oslo.

The Oslo trail run also had me thinking about running in new places, and I thought I’d share some tips for how I choose a route when in a new place. Staying safe and being able to quickly get back to the base point (usually the hotel in a new city) are key, so to that end I always bring my phone with me. I typically just use the maps app but you can use something more specific like asking a buddy or family member to keep tabs on your whereabouts. Life360 is a tool that a colleague recently recommended.

In terms of how I go about finding a specific route to run, it’s usually a combination of a few tools. Most of the time I am in an urban center, and these tips would be different if it was a matter of finding a route in the mountains. At a high level, I always start by looking for the green - literally. Like, walk outside of your hotel and look around to see any significant cluster of trees. Look on the map app on your phone to see if there are large portions of green near you, usually an indication of a park, forest, nature preserve, etc. There are a surprising amount of these in urban centers and I always prefer them over the sidewalks or even a bike path.

Here in Oslo, I went out for a short run the first day I was here and saw the wooded portion of land rising to the south across the bay. Using that bit of info, I first went to my maps app to see that the park was actually quite large. Next I checked out the heat maps and route builder on Strava. I believe the route builder is only accessible to subscribers on Strava, so apologies if that’s not you. While I don’t use it all that often to actually build me a route start to finish that I download and use on my watch, I do find it very helpful in showing how to link up different sections of trail and the lengths of those trails. I’m usually on a tight schedule to get back for an event or meeting so keeping close track of time is important and the route builder gives me confidence in that regard. Strava info is usually adequate, but in a few instances I’ll also check out the trail info on AllTrails.

Quick Hits

As mentioned in last week’s newsletter, there is no shortage of trail and gravel events this time of year. A few days ago, the Mt Washington Road Race took place. The race follows the entire Mt Washington toll road from base to summit, covering 7.6 miles with over 4,500 ft of elevation gain! Joe Gray of Colorado returned to defend his title, making him an incredible 7 time winner. He reached the summit in 60:24. Second place was about 90 seconds behind. Amber Ferreira took the women’s win in a time of 75:16, with second place just 44 seconds behind.

The Broken Arrow Skyrace also had their suite of 4 races last weekend. I caught a little bit of the VK which was super fun to see. The quality of race live stream coverage continues to level up. I liked that they had Tommie Runz and Courtney Dauwalter doing some on course interviews with the runners. Check out the full results here.

And the big one, coming up this Saturday, is the Western States Endurance run, a 100.2 mile trek from Olympic Valley, California to Auburn, CA. There is set to be a slew of pre-race live streams, hosted panels of athletes, and general #trailculture stoke happening, thanks in large part to the folks at Freetrail. Most of the live action will be taking place on the WSER 100 YouTube channel, but if you’re in the mood for some preview coverage, check out Aravaipa’s preview show here. And if you’re hunkering for some technical tips on how to prepare for a race like this, check out Freetrail’s recent video, showing Adam Merry’s training leading up to the event.

My picks for the race? For the women, I’ll take Courtney Dauwalter, Katie Schide and Heather Jackson. For the men, my vote is for Dakota Jones, Tom Evans and Arlen Glick (with an honorable mention going to Mathieu Blanchard).

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Until next time, be safe and enjoy the outdoors!

Ricky

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