"Aarhus 1900 participates in 100 Miles – Around the isle of Mors!

This year’s 100 Miles race got the presence of 2 runners from Aarhus the 1900th Carsten Dalsgaard, Per Hjorth had joined the ultra-long Mother's 100 miles (161km), which started Saturday 11th September at. 09.00 in Nykøbing.

The day came and it was with mixed pleasure to study the local weather forecast. Apart from the first 2 hours they promised rain, rain and again rain with some wind at times. Thanks for the coffee.

But that should not deter us from attempting the challenge to run this far. I had tried the race the year before while Carsten 106 km. as the longest race.

Slowly we started laying Nykøbing city behind us all the while my legs got me around the island. The first 30km we talked constantly with each other plus Thomas, who we wanted to run with. Thomas was inexperienced to race at the other side of 100km.

There were depots for every 5km, where we at some of them had put our own supplies. On such a long run it is very important that you get something more durable than eating bananas and gels. So we had put potatoes, pasta and even bread with chopped liver out of stores with 15-20 km. apart.

Thomas unfortunately has pain in his toes already at 25 km. He was due to the bad weather has chosen to start out in his old shoes. But it turned out to be a wrong decision. Only at 45km, he switched to the new shoes. But by then the damage is done and he had to stop at the 55km.

Carsten said well enough at the 40 km. that he had had a minor crisis between 20 and 25 km. which we did not notice. For he had talked constantly since we started!

The crisis came again moving away from Feggesund and Carsten chose to stop at the 50km.

Now I was alone so far behind. But never mind, nature was still beautiful regardless of the position in the field. At the 70 km. I changed all of my clothes and was completely dry. Be it pants, t-shirt, socks and shoes. On the same occasion came vaseline, Ahh .... What a glorious blessing the next 5-7km where it was dry, running again. As mentioned, it lasted only a few kilometers. So you were a total wet again.

But quietly kept my focus on Nykøbing and breakfast. After 23 hours and 31minutes I crossed the finish line, and the sun was shining most definitely approx. 2-3 min sunbeams in the goal area.

My feet were completely blisters and several locations were skin completely fallen off, because of the wet weather.

40 were enrolled, 34 came to start and only 15 completing, which is probably due to the bad weather.

The race is organized by only 4 years old running club Pain & plague, which had pattern 120 helpers for the event. 2 out of 3 participants from the local club came through. All applauded the UG and the kindness that you met around the island, was indescribable.

For those in the club who has a penchant for long run, I can only recommend www.100miles.dk at Mors.

Can only say to other ultra-runners, that it is probably Denmark's best-organized ultra run and a race you as ultra runner should try. Just too constantly run on something new terrain is wonderful.

Per Hjorth

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100 miles around the Isle of Mors (11th-12th September 2010)

I gave a roar of pride and relief as I crossed the finish line after my 100 miles (161km) round trip of Mors.

Only 30 participants showed up at the starting line by a small hostel beautifully situated just by the Limfjord, and at 9 a.m. Saturday morning we went off to struggle through the hills of Mors. Right from the beginning we also had to cope with lots of rain and strong winds, which made the race even more challenging than it already was. In the end only 15 of the starting 30 managed to cross the finish line within the 26 hour time limit and get the medal.

With such a small race you would expect it to be rather primitively organized, but to the credit of the organizers this is not the case. Depots were placed every 5 kilometers, which is rather close… In the beginning. Later on in the race I was quite happy they were not spaced further apart. The depots were all stocked with water, fruit, nuts, etc. Some of the depots also had some “real” food, I got a sandwich, a slice of pizza and some rye bread along the way. Great!

The support staff did a really good job. The volunteers at the depots were not always ready to fill your drinking bottle when you arrived, but this was mainly due to the fact that they were inexperienced with these kind of races, so I adopted the approach of yelling out that I needed to have my camelbak refilled a little before I got to the depots, and then it worked.

The most well prepared runners had support crews and vehicles following them (this is possible as most of the race is run on asphalt roads). I just had my backpack and a couple of dropbags. The dropbag system worked really well. You could place a dropbag at any 5km depot you wanted, with no upper limit to the number of dropbags. I placed three dropbags and they all found their way to the intended depots (45km, 80km, and 115km).

Due to the fact that there were so few runners, I ran most of the way all by myself. At 55km a car stopped and a local woman jumped out and asked if she could run the next 5km with me. It was nice with some company. I was also extremely happy when the organizers sent out a mountain biker around 90km to keep an eye on me and help me find my way in the dark. I lost my way once during the day, which resulted in a detour of about 1km.

Having company helped me increase my pace, after having dropped off a bit between 80km and 100km, which was probably the worst stretch in the race for me. The mountain biker said goodbye at 135km, where a volunteer runner took over and paced me the rest of the way to the finish line. Thank you both!

Approaching the finish line the organizers had put up flagpoles flying the Danish flag for the last kilometer. Realising I was going to finish the race almost brought me to tears at that point. I managed to hold them back though, and spent my last energy reserves sprinting the last 200m to the finish line uttering a tremendous roar as I crossed.

All in all I think “100 miles – Around the Isle of Mors” was a great race.

Kasper Hjorteberg