Sweden and Norway

            NORWAY





                 and


            SWEDEN






 Our last stop on our trip through Europe ended up being Norway and Sweden. Visiting Sweden has always been a dream of mine. I told Hayden that Sweden was in my top 5 countries that I dreamed about visiting. So, Hayden being the amazing husband he is, made it happen. He got invited to the Fjall Marathon race and we decided to go! Hayden's parents also decided to join us and we were so happy and excited to see them as it had been a few months since we had seen family. We are pretty close with both his family and my family, so having them come was great!

Trondheim, Norway

We flew from Geneva to Trodheim, Norway and spent our first day in Trondheim. Trondheim was probably my favorite city that we visited in our travels. It was what I pictured it to be with the colored houses and the beautiful fjords. It reminded me a lot of Anchorage, Alaska. It was a nice city and had some cool things, but it wasn't super touristy and had a nice, laid-back feel.

A nice surprise was the Nidros Cathedral which was originally built in 1000 A.D.
We also enjoyed watching people try to take the bike lift up to the top of the hill.

Trillevalen, Sweden
After a day in Trondheim we picked Hayden's parents up at the airport and we were very excited to see them!
We then drove to Trillevalan, Sweden which was a 2 hour drive.
The race put us up in a place that was near the start line and close to trails and fed us all meals. It was nice because Sweden is actually really expensive. We really enjoyed the lodging because a lot of the other racers and volunteers were staying there and we got to make friends with some amazing Swedish people. We really loved the people there, they were very nice and spoke great English which made communicating a lot easier.
Some of the activities we did were:
1. going to the lake- Sweden is know for it's beautiful lakes and we were able to go enjoy a few of them.

2. Trail running with Hayden. We had someone to babysit Crosby, so that was fantasitc! It was nice to go run together and Hayden's parents hadn't seen Crosby for a long time, so the tradeoff was good!

3. The adventure park in Norway- this was about a 1hr drive and one of our favorite things. It big and small zip lines, climbing, a ropes course, and canoeing. It was beautiful and something I would definitely recommend. I also overcame my fear of rock climbing and heights!

4. The Fjall Half marathon, VK, and 7k.

Hayden and I raced all 3 races and Hayden's mom and dad and Crosby(carried in a pack) did just the 7k.  Hayden won the VK and took 3rd in the Half marathon and I was 5th in the VK and 6th in the half marathon. The half marathon course was so beautiful, but way different than anything that Hayden or I had ever run. A lot of the race goes through a swamp area and the ground was very spongy and muddy. They even said this was a dry year!! We enjoyed it and had a good time. 

 

This was my first VK (3 mile race with 3000ft+ elevation gain) and I really loved it. 

The true hero and champ for the weekend was Hayden's dad. He had never done a race before and we talked him into doing this one. This one was probably a little bit intense to start on, but he made it and did well! He was not liking us at all the first half which was climbing over 1500ft  for 3 miles. After we hit the top and started going downhill, Hayden's dad took off and left us all chasing after him. He ran the last 1.5 miles and finished his first race ever. We are so proud of dad Hawks for doing it with only 4 days of training! Hopefully we didn't ruin him forever on trail races. (haha)

We loved our time in Sweden and Norway and want to thank everyone that made it possible for us to go there!