FL-1000: Nina Skramstad om etappen fra Varangerbotn til Sirbma
Skrevet av: Ole Martin Jøraholmen
Dato: 14.03.2012 09:34
Nina Skramstad from Brandbu has over the years become an experienced musher, and she has finished the FL-1000 since 2008. She continues tradition and was at the start this year too. On the leg from Varangerbotn to Sirbma, Skramstad has both good and bad experiences. – For me this leg either goes very good or very bad, she says. –It’s one of the other, because in four years I still haven’t had anything in between.
When the mushers arrive at Varangerbotn they have completed 672 kilometers of the race, and it is hard to lift the anker at checkpoint Varangerbotn. – I think the terrain towards Sirbma is very hilly and challenging, says Nina who knows what she is facing. Varangerbotn is not a checkpoint where Skramstad has gotten a lot of sleep, which shows in the following 74 kilometers to Sirbma. Ups and downs comes hand in hand, but the best memory is from the year Skarmstad had the same run time from Varangerbotn to Sirbma as Inger-Marie Haaland who won that same year.
What Skramstad remembers best from the leg in 2009 is an incident from the river ice in Tana. – We had held an even pace the whole leg and I was a few meters ahead of Inger-Marie as we came down on the Tana river. I had to go to the bathroom and turned to see if Inger-Marie had closed in on me. She hadn’t, so I took a chance and unzipped, Nina laughs. When there is a race to the finish stopping for errands like these is not an option. –I heard an outbreak of laughter behind me, and realized that Inger-Marie had seen what happened, Skramstad explains with a grin. –Inger-Marie got an unexpected sight in the middle of the leg, but she didn’t get closer. I heard her laughing for a long time afterwards, and realized that it had to have been quite an element of surprise, concludes Nina Skramstad. Since both Skramstad and Haaland is starting this year, it remains to be seen whether we get the same duel again – and who will give the element of surprise this year.
Photo: Jørn Losvar