Endurance 24h indoor ultrarunning event was held last weekend and I was there to crew friends of mine. As the name suggests, it’s an ultra race on a 390m indoor track starting at noon on Saturday and ending 24h later on Sunday. Just two days before the race there was a minor adjustment to the crew, Jaakko decided to move to the other side of the crewing table and join Kati and the other runners 🙂Even better that way!

One would think crewing in an event like this for 24h would be about the most boring thing to do. Surprisingly, it wasn’t boring at all! While there isn’t a whole lot to do it’s enough to keep one occupied. I had my laptop and a book with me to but ended up using the computer for maybe half an hour and not reading at all. Helping the runners with drinks and food stuff takes only so much time but during the day there were a lot of friends and family helping and cheering the runners. I also shared the table with Marc who was crewing another runner, thanks for the good company!

It was easy to lose the track of time there. I was aware what time it was but it all felt the same. Three pm, eight pm, two am – nothing really changes. At some point I started to feel like I was on a big ferry, like the ones between Helsinki and Stockholm. The floor trembles the same way, aircon creates similar ambience and at some point of the night you start to see people throwing up 😬Between 02:00 and 05:00 I tried to get some sleep. I’m not sure how much I slept though, I was in a brightly lighted locker room and loud hand air dryer went intermittently on and off.

Unfortunately Jaakko had to stop running due leg issues around half way of the race. He was doing great and I can’t wait to see the results when he runs the full 24h! Kati reached her goal and ended up impressive 4th women and 9th overall with over 204km!

The race saw new Finnish, Irish and Estonian records. Another thing that blew my mind were the elder runners, the oldest being 74 and still running 138km! How is that even possible?