Small Potatoes, Wide Open
Oppet Spar translates from the Swedish as 'Open Track'. Here is my experience from skiing the Oppet Spar last Sunday.
Despite being 90 kilometers in length, the Oppet Spar is small potatoes. Oppet Spar is the 'Open Track' version of theVasaloppet, Sweden's
largest, and one of the worldloppet series most prestigious cross country ski races. Preceeding the main worldloppet Vasa race by a week,
the Oppet Spar is a bona-fide trial run on the same 90km course. The Oppet Spar attracts some 8,000 skiers, about one half as many in the Vasa race.
Dinner at the Scandic hotel in Falun consisted of the usual fare; the 8th consectutive night of fish, salad and.. small potatoes. There were always two varieties of small potatoes, boiled and baked, without skin. I must have consumed 88 of them during world masters the previous week. As it turned out, I was 2 potatoes short. Having competed in the 45km Masters World Cup skate race on Friday, the 2am(!) Sunday wake up call came all too soon. We departed by bus for Mora, where we continued onto Salen, arriving at the start by 6am to collect race bibs. After dropping off the clothing bag and deliberately applying 6 layers of blue kick wax over binder, I slotted into wave 4 for the 7:00am start. Sweden was experiencing the coldest and snowiest winter in 30 years, and this day was no exception. -8 C, new snow and slight overcast made for perfect conditions.
Immediatley I went to the margin alongside the groomed tracks. Despite not being groomed, it was the only way to get thru the mass of humanity. I double-poled past about 4,000 people the first few kilometers, then settled into a select group of Swedes, a Frenchman (he was wearing a France uniform and we conversed a bit in French), and a Czech. We motored along, passing group after group. I had no idea if there were 8 or 800 skiers ahead. After about 30 k, the clues appeared. I noticed that only 1 of the six groomed tracks had been skied in, and there were eveidently not many pole plants in the track. The track was Wide Open. With 30 k remaining, as we skied thru a downhill area, someone yelled to our group 'fertun, femtun, sextun'. We were skiing in about 15th place. We had skied a steady hard tempo for 60 k. We then skied moderately for the next 10k, before the pace picked up for the final hour of the race. With 7 k remaining (every single km is signed!) I went with a fast move as our group was dissolving. One other skier and I immediately put daylight into the remnants of the group. Two km later I had the sensation of not being able to maintain this for another five k. The last two km were agonozing, yet 2 k is not very far after having skied 88. I wish I had eaten another 2 of the small potatoes, 1 for each km. I was 2 potatoes short. The damage had been done, and I skied in solo for 16th place, 5:55, about 15 minutes behind the top finisher. Times were 30-40 minutes slower than normal, on account of the new, cold snow. The real Vasa race with the Worldloppet stars was a week away, yet over the same 90km course, the Oppet Spar was a thrilling experience.
