Happy New Year!

At this very end of year 2014, the racing season is over and we are looking forward to next year. But, before we close 2014 and celibrate new year’s eve, it is time to take a quick look back.

Adventure Racing season 2014 for us, the short version:

• April 26-27, Highlander Mountain Marathon, Iverness. 1^st
• May 1-2, Le Grand Tour, Filipstad. 1^st
• May 25-29, Expedition Africa. 2^nd
• June 28, Haglöfs Åre Extreme Challenge. Robert 1^st, Björn 2^nd, Mattias 3^rd
• August 17-18, Haglöfs Björkliden Mountain Marathon 70 km. 1^st
• August 24-25, Kiruna Extreme. 1^st
• August 25-28, Wulong Mountain Quest, China. 4^th
• September 8-9, Suquian Challenge, China. 3^rd

We started our season in late april, when Aaron and Björn travelled to Scotland for the Highlander Mountain Marathon. After two days of strong running on a very scenic route, they reached the finishline as overall winners. Just a few days later, Mattias and Robert won Le Grand Tour, the first race in the Swedish Adventure Series.

Both these races were part of our training towards the main goal of the spring season, Expedition Africa. We left north of Sweden still covered by snow and travelled almost as far south as possible!

After 3 days and 12 hours of racing, including less than 2 hours of sleep, we crossed the finish line of Expedition Africa in 2^nd place, behind Seagate (NZ). During those 3½ days, we went through many tough challenges, battled big ocean waves, thick bushes with nasty thorns, steep hills and very hot temperatures. But, we also went through countless of amazing sceneries and got cheered by thousands of the always smiling local people.

While Björn, Mattias and Josefina were suffering the South African heat, Robert was back home in Sweden, training for the Åre Extreme Challenge. Less than a month after finishing Expedition Africa, Björn and Mattias filled up the podium in Åre, with Robert on top!

August is the month for mountain marathons… Björn and Josefina had a great race in Björkliden, and won Haglöfs Björkliden Mountain Maraton ahead of all male teams after two days of running and camping out in the mountains. A week after, Björn also won Kiruna Extreme Maraton, this time together with his ski friend Klas Nilsson.

Late august, Josefina, Mattias and Robert travelled to China for the Wulong Mountain Quest. The 4^th team member this time was Scott Cole, as neither Aaron nor Björn could go. The team fought well and took a strong 4^th place overall after 4 days of high intense racing against many of the world’s best teams.

A week later, Mattias and Josefina was again racing in China, this time together with Björn and Emil Dahlqvist, in the Suquian 24 h race. Another tough and warm race against very strong competitors, but now they made it all the way to the podium and finished 3^rd.

Back to Sweden to a long, partly cold and dark, period of training and preparations for the Adventure Racing World Championship in Ecuador, wich started in the best possible way but ended way too early as Josefina broke her wrist which forced us to leave the race after only one day of racing.

Prior to the World Championship we identified several challenges, with high temperature and thin air to mention a few, on top of the normal challenge of getting fit for all different disciplines. When we evaluated our preparations we are proud that we did such a good work prior to the race and we are confident that we took many good decisions and listened to the right people. Unfortunately, this time that was not enough. We just could not prepare for bad luck.

Currently, we are in the middle of a nice and long winter training period. We will be back for new adventures next year, hopefully luck will be with us in 2015.

Happy New Year!

/team Haglöfs Silva
Aaron, Björn, Josefina, Mattias and Robert