Vätternrundan 2011

Vätternrundan (pronounced vet-turn-rund-an) is the largest recreational bicycle ride in the world. The 300 km course follows the shoreline of the beautiful Lake Vättern and early starters can see the sun set and rise over the lake during the ride. Vätternrundan starts and finishes in Motala, Sweden, which swells to three times its size during the cycling events. Many cyclists return year after year to be a part of this large and welcoming cycling community.


I've participated in this great event together with my dear friend Henrik and his mates from Sandvik, we have planned  to join the race well in advance since the registrations only take few days to fill up the 25.000 openings. The race was in mid of June 2011, weather was a threat, can still be very chilly by this time of the year in Sweden. Remembered the week before the race me and Henrik been training together in Sandvik, beautiful landscape, so enjoyable weather and company, great weekend, also recall to tell Henrik and Karin that me and Sandra would start "working" on our first baby as soon as I would arrive in Bangkok, that surely happened, not only for me and Sandra but also for them, both Karin and Sandra delivered in March 2012, Diniz and Ludvig are both mid summer boys.

Back to the race report, me, Henrik and his mates started the race around 2 am, in the middle of the night, was still dark but soon the sun rising and we could ride without lights on. We were about 15 riders group who worked together during 9 long hours in this amazing experience. There were several stops to piss, eat and drink, about 5 or 6 times if I recall right, but I add to stop even more than the rest of the group, earlier in the race I've stopped alone and had to make huge effort to catch up with the group again.

There was time for almost everything, chatting, laughing, suffering and bit of racing towards the end where at 40 km from the finish line I decided to take off from the group and race as fast as I could, great feeling of accomplishment in the end, finish with 9:17 (the best time among all the colleagues of Atlas Copco that participated that year and maybe best time ever)