This was our third One Water Race.
And the feeling before the start was completely different this time.
The first two times, there had been so much nervousness around the unknown. This time, we knew. We knew what the archipelago could do to us. We knew how long the nights could feel, how quickly a small mistake could become a very big one, and what sleep deprivation could do to your ability to make even the simplest decision.
We also knew how much it hurt not to make it all the way to Landsort.
But strangely enough, knowing all of that made me calm.
We had prepared what we could prepare. We had learned from our mistakes. We had talked about transitions, navigation, food, equipment, communication and all the small things that become incredibly important when you have been moving for two days.
Of course, there were still things to worry about. Would someone get sick? Would we stand on the start line and suddenly realize that we had forgotten something absolutely essential?
But mostly, I was just excited.
And there was something else that felt different this year.
The atmosphere between all the teams was amazing. Of course it is a race, but somehow that felt almost secondary. We genuinely wanted everyone to make it. As many teams as possible all the way from Arholma to Landsort.
As many teams as possible all the way from Arholma to Landsort.
A camaraderie – we were all out there trying to solve the same crazy puzzle.
And I felt incredibly lucky to get a third chance.
Because when you strip away the suffering, the cold, the sleep deprivation and everything else, One Water Race is also something ridiculously beautiful:
You get to spend a few days in the Stockholm archipelago, on a treasure hunt with three of your friends.
What a luxury.
FINALLY, THE START
This year, the start had been moved from Tuesday morning at 07:00 to Monday afternoon at 16:00.
For us, it was perfect.
Instead of spending a whole night pretending to sleep while actually unpacking, repacking, checking things for the 400th time and waking up disappointed after two or three hours of nervous sleep, we got a full night.
We woke up. Ate. Prepared. Took our time.
And then Team 7 – Alex, Anders, Nanna and I – walked together towards the start.
Thomas counted down from ten.
We got the maps.
And we were off.
We had a pretty good idea of where we were going already. There aren’t that many sensible ways to start this race unless you want to do something completely crazy, and we had actually taken this route during our first One Water Race.
So we ran.
Hard.
And almost immediately I managed to run straight into a fence cable.
The hit was insane.
It hurt so much.
But we had literally just started One Water Race. There wasn’t exactly time to stand around discussing my encounter with a fence.
So I kept running.
We hit the water.
And I LOVE that moment.
All the waiting is over.
You’re racing.
There were several teams around us initially, running the same routes and entering the water together, but soon everyone started disappearing onto different little trails and making their own decisions.
Then, after our first swim, Anders realized he had lost his compass.
Not ideal.
Then, after our first swim, Anders realized he had lost his compass. Not ideal.
For a few seconds there was definitely a little panic.
Luckily both Alex and I had compasses, so Anders got mine and we continued.
Then we got a little lost in the bushes.
And then I got a stitch.
A proper one.
I honestly cannot remember the last time I had a stitch, but apparently my body had decided that the first hours of One Water Race were the perfect time to bring it back.
Alex and Anders, meanwhile, were flying.
Strong. Happy. Full of energy.
I ended up on the tow line trying to breathe and keep up.
Normally swimming is where I can recover.
Not behind Alex.
Alex swims so ridiculously fast that being behind him is not exactly a spa treatment.
So suddenly I was fighting on the runs AND in the water.
Looking back, I probably should have moved back in the swim formation immediately and saved some energy. But at the time, I just fought.
And we were moving well.
The hours blur together in this race. First day, second day, morning, evening – eventually it all becomes one long sequence of islands, water, food, maps and movement.
But I remember that first day feeling good as a team.
Nanna gave us great directions from the boat. Our transitions were so much better than previous years. We had promised ourselves less standing around, less unnecessary walking and more forward movement.
And we did it.
Then the first night arrived.
And at one point:
Team 7 was leading One Water Race.
First team overall.
Of course it was somewhere in the back of our minds.
But we also knew better than to get excited.
This race is very, very long.
And then things started to go wrong.
We chose the wrong route.
We thought we were somewhere we weren’t.
And eventually we found ourselves standing in a field of reeds in complete darkness.
Trying to navigate when you’re surrounded by reeds is… interesting.
Alex and Anders both took out their compasses.
South.
Okay.
We started moving south.
After a while, we checked again.
The direction that had been south a few minutes earlier was now north.
What?
We tried again.
Same thing.
At one point, we were basically walking in circles.
To this day, none of us really knows what happened.
Something in the rock?
Our headlamps interfering with the compasses?
Or are we simply already losing our minds.
Or were we simply already losing our minds?
No idea.
What we do know is that we definitely weren’t leading One Water Race anymore.
We went from the front to the back.
But this was our third time.
And if One Water Race had taught us anything, it was this:
Don’t panic.
Don’t bury yourself mentally because of a mistake.
Just keep moving.
It’s a long race.
So we did.
And slowly, we came back.
Day two was when things became really difficult for me.
My breathing had started getting worse.
Alex and Anders were still incredibly strong. They just kept going.
I tried to contribute in other ways. Reminding everyone to eat. Trying to keep the energy up. Trying to encourage the team.
But it’s difficult to be the world’s greatest cheerleader when you’re struggling yourself.
At times I genuinely felt sorry for Alex and Anders.
They were so strong and they had to drag me around.
They could probably have tied a plastic bag to the tow line and had roughly the same experience.
I felt like this fragile little porcelain doll the guys had somehow ended up bringing through the archipelago.
And that bothered me.
Because that isn’t who I wanted to be out there.
I wanted to be strong. I wanted to contribute. I wanted to be the happy, loud, encouraging person in the team.
Instead, my breathing got worse and worse.
In the water it became terrifying.
At times it genuinely felt like someone was holding a hand over my mouth.
I remember swimming with this horrible feeling of panic because I simply couldn’t get enough air.
If I had been racing alone, I would have stopped.
100%.
No question.
But I wasn’t alone.
I had Alex, Anders and Nanna.
And after not making it the previous year, there was absolutely no way I was going to be the reason we stopped again.
I told Alex that in the worst case I would just hold onto his feet and he could swim on his back or whatever the hell we needed to do.
But I wasn’t stopping.
I understand now what was happening.
When I get cold, my body produces a lot of mucus. The colder I become, the worse it gets. Eventually my throat gets so congested that breathing becomes difficult, and the only way to clear it is to properly cough everything up.
So my strategy became simple:
Stay warmer.
Swim easier.
Don’t push myself into a situation where I couldn’t breathe.
I explained it to Nanna. We changed my clothing around. There was some messing around with layers and equipment, but I needed to get warm enough to continue.
And Alex and Anders just accepted it.
No drama.
I moved back to third position in the swims, controlled my effort and concentrated on breathing.
We weren’t swimming anywhere near our maximum speed anymore.
And yet swimming was still one of our biggest strengths.
Slowly, we started catching teams again.
Slowly, we started catching teams again.
Somewhere during that second day, we also got one of those moments that means so much more than you can explain when you’re deep into a race like this.
Ragnar Söderberg and his family came out to see us.
The energy it gave us was incredible.
After hours and hours of being inside your own little world – moving, eating, navigating, swimming, running – suddenly seeing familiar faces standing there cheering for you does something to your entire body.
Instant energy.
I remember the smile.
Ear to ear.
Those moments stay with you.
And we kept moving.
By the second night, we had worked our way right back into the race.
Eventually we reached the final swim before Ornö.
And it went really, really well.
We climbed out of the water a little cold, put our running clothes on and knew we now had a long stretch of running ahead before the next swim.
But mentally, something huge had happened.
We were on Ornö.
Around this point – roughly 40 hours into the race – was where our previous attempts had ended.
Not this time.
We had crossed that invisible line.
For the first time, it felt like:
Now nothing can stop us.
We moved well across Ornö.
Really well.
And then…
One Water Race reminded us not to get too confident.
Again.
We got lost.
Properly lost.
We were exhausted and our brains were starting to do some very strange things.
I had begun hallucinating.
At one point I was absolutely furious with Alex and Anders because they couldn’t see all the boats.
There were huge yachts.
Sailing boats.
A harbour.
I could SEE them.
Obviously we were looking at the sea.
The guys thought we were looking at a lake.
Idiots.
How could this possibly be a lake with all these huge boats in it?
Anders eventually got so annoyed with me that he told me to go down and point out exactly where these boats were.
Fine.
I stormed down there, absolutely furious, ready to prove my point.
And when I got there…
There wasn’t a single boat.
Not one.
They were trees.
Pine trees.
I had been staring at pine trees and seeing an entire marina.
I had been staring at pine trees and seeing an entire marina.
Right.
Sorry, guys.
Turns out Anders may have had a point.
That is what One Water Race does to your brain.
Eventually we found a trail.
Anders’ patience was disappearing rapidly.
But we kept going.
And going.
And FINALLY we reached the checkpoint.
I was so happy Nanna was still sitting there in the boat.
Part of me had started wondering if she might simply have given up on us and gone home.
We had lost so much time.
Again.
Other teams had passed while we were wandering around having arguments about imaginary yachts.
But again:
Keep moving.
Soon it was time for the swim we had been waiting for with equal parts excitement and fear.
Danziger Gatt.
8.5 kilometres.
We knew it was going to be huge.
But we also knew we had incredibly good equipment for exactly this kind of swim.
We changed.
We sat on a jetty in the sunshine.
And we ate what may genuinely have been one of the best meals of my life:
Cheap instant noodles with seasoning.
Four-krona noodles.
Absolute fine dining.
There were people around us cheering, taking photos and encouraging us.
It meant SO much.
When you’ve been going for that long, someone simply shouting something positive at you can give you an unbelievable amount of energy.
Anna was there.
She calmed me down.
“You’ll be fine.”
I carried that with me.
Then we jumped in.
Our plan was to stop every 30 minutes and eat something.
At the first stop, I could feel my breathing becoming difficult again.
And then I started coughing.
Really coughing.
And I am sorry to everyone involved, but I basically sprayed an absolutely disgusting amount of mucus into the Baltic Sea.
It was horrific.
And it was GLORIOUS.
Because suddenly…
I could breathe.
Properly breathe.
For the first time in what felt like forever.
And then everything changed.
I could swim.
I could push.
I could finally enjoy it.
At the next stop I was singing Kung i baren.
At another stop we were laughing and talking.
I was back.
Finally.
I watched Alex fighting at the front, pulling us through the water.
Then we hit an absolutely brutal section of current.
We were barely moving.
I could hear Alex screaming from the front.
So Anders and I pushed.
Everything we had.
And eventually we made it through.
8.5 kilometres. Done. And the best part? We weren’t freezing. We were warm. We were happy.
8.5 kilometres.
Done.
And the best part?
We weren’t freezing.
We were warm.
We were happy.
We were ready for the final part.
And, for some reason, we had convinced ourselves that we had maybe two or three hours left.
How hard could it possibly be?
Well.
We were about to find out.
TWO OR THREE HOURS LEFT…
We thought there were roughly three kilometres of swimming, almost no running, and then the final 3.5-kilometre run on Öja up to Landsort lighthouse.
Easy.
We actually couldn’t understand why the teams ahead of us hadn’t finished yet.
What were they doing?
Why was it taking so long?
Oh, sweet innocent Team 7.
We disappeared into the forest.
Again.
And this time it became dark.
Then evening became night.
Night became midnight.
Midnight became morning.
And we were still out there.
After 53, 55, 56 hours without sleep – honestly, who knows – your brain simply doesn’t work anymore.
You barely know whether you’re walking right or left.
And now you’re supposed to read a map?
When the terrain makes no sense?
When one member of your team has spent the last two days seeing boats that don’t exist?
And when all four of you just desperately want to reach Landsort?
There was another option.
The sea.
We could potentially have entered the water and swum around three kilometres.
But the headwind was brutal.
Even now we don’t completely agree on what would have been smartest.
Would swimming have been faster?
Would it have destroyed us completely?
Would we have made it?
We’ll never know.
We chose the land.
And we fought with that decision for hours.
Then, in the middle of one of the absolute worst navigation disasters of the entire race, something wonderful happened.
Jesper appeared.
And he gave each of us a hug.
That’s it.
Just a hug.
But at that moment?
It was EVERYTHING.
When you’re exhausted beyond words, lost, frustrated and desperately trying to keep moving, a hug from someone who understands what you’re going through can reset your entire world.
When you’re exhausted beyond words, lost, frustrated and desperately trying to keep moving, a hug from someone who understands what you’re going through can reset your entire world.
Thank you, Jesper.
We needed that.
45 MINUTES
Eventually – after far too much drama – we made it to Öja.
We entered the water and ended up swimming farther than originally planned.
And it was wonderful.
The sea felt warm.
Nanna was beside us in the boat.
She had this huge light showing us exactly where to go.
No maps.
No imaginary boats.
No guessing.
Just swim towards the light.
For me, there was such an incredible feeling of safety in that.
We swam.
We reached land.
And then we got the message:
45 minutes.
We had 45 minutes to reach the lighthouse.
The team that had finished third had taken two hours and fifteen minutes to cover the distance from where we had just landed to the finish.
We had 45.
And if we missed the cut-off?
It was over.
Imagine spending almost 60 hours fighting your way across the Stockholm archipelago, finally reaching Öja, seeing Landsort ahead of you…
…and then reaching the lighthouse door a few minutes too late.
Absolutely not.
Alex’s foot was in terrible shape. He had barely been running during the previous hours.
Now he had no choice.
He had to run.
And fuck, did he run.
Nanna pushed us.
Our headlamps were dying or already dead.
It was pouring rain.
Everything was complete chaos.
And we RAN.
In my head, we were running four-minute kilometres.
My cheeks were basically flying backwards from the speed.
This was Usain Bolt stuff.
We later heard that we held about six-minute kilometre pace…
Never mind.
It felt like four.
Our cameraman, who had followed and filmed us throughout this insane adventure, was running with us.
And then there were people.
The captains.
Magnus – who probably needs some serious therapy after the orienteering misses he had to experience with us (Magnus is an orienteer and also has a summer house on one of the islands where we really struggled).
Thomas. Anna. Otto. Lottie.
Everyone standing up there at the lighthouse in the pouring rain waiting for us.
And then finally: The door. The fucking lighthouse door.
And then finally:
The door.
The fucking lighthouse door.
We had done it.
59 hours and 33 minutes.
Around 230 kilometres through the Stockholm archipelago, approximately 70% running and 30% swimming.
And we reached the finish with…
17 minutes to spare.
Seventeen.
After almost sixty hours.
THIRD TIME’S THE CHARM
There are so many things I feel when I think about those 59 hours and 33 minutes.
Pride, obviously.
But mostly gratitude.
I’m incredibly proud of our team – the first team finishing with no multisport background.
Alex and Anders were unbelievably strong. Nanna guided us, encouraged us, put up with us and was our safety out there. And when I wasn’t the teammate I wanted to be – when I couldn’t breathe, when I needed to slow down, when I became the porcelain doll seeing marinas in forests – they adapted.
Nobody blamed anyone.
Nobody gave up.
Not once did quitting become an option.
We just kept solving the next problem.
And maybe that’s what One Water Race is really about.
Not being the strongest person every minute.
Not executing some perfect race plan.
But continuing together when absolutely nothing is perfect.
We also knew what was happening with the other teams during the race.
Every time we heard that another team was doing well, it genuinely made us happy.
You could feel it in your heart.
And every time we heard that a team had been forced to stop, it hurt.
We wanted everyone at Landsort.
Four teams made it this year – more than ever before – and I hope one day all eight will stand there.
Because this race is so much bigger than the eight teams moving through the archipelago.
There are captains, skippers, race directors, media runners, photographers, social media crews, food, logistics, safety and countless people working around the clock so that eight teams get the privilege of doing something completely ridiculous.
Thank you.
To every single person who made this possible.
To everyone who stood somewhere on an island and shouted our names.
To Ragnar and his family for giving us that huge injection of energy on day two.
To Jesper for those hugs when we desperately needed them.
To everyone following from home.
To the entire One Water Race organization.
And to Alex, Anders and Nanna.
Thank you for dragging the plastic bag all the way to Landsort.
Three attempts.
Two heartbreaks.
And finally, on our third try, we opened that lighthouse door.
We didn’t come back to One Water Race because we needed to win it.
We came back because we needed to reach Landsort together.
And this time, we did.
A dream came true.
So… what are we supposed to do now?
