XTRI the Journey

the Architect
Hårek Stranheim, 52 from near Oslo in Norway. Inventor of the
Norseman and the Xtreme Triathlon format. This article is extracted
from an interview with Hårek for the Norseman Radio Podcast.
I
live two hours south of Oslo and
I‘m a just a regular family guy who
has enjoyed long distance triathlon
as a lifestyle for some 20 years.
In the eighties and very early nineties
triathlon was fairly popular in Norway.
And then the sport completely died, so in
the year 2000 only nine people competed
in a long distance triathlon. I did my first
in Sweden in 1999 completely out of shape
and I enjoyed that experience so much
that I decided to bring a similar event to
Norway. So I started to look for a place that
could be as great as the one in Kalmar, now
the home of Ironman Sweden.
It‘s a beautiful little city, flat, has
warm water, it‘s always nice weather and
it has good people. I‘ve now done that
race four times, it‘s such a great place for
a triathlon.
Humble beginnings
I discovered that it is totally impossible
to find a comparable place in Norway
so it was quite easy to conclude that we
should do something completely the
opposite of the normal fast flat races.
I chose Hardangerfjord for the
swim as I thought going further north
the water would be too cold. And
since I live in Telemark county, I really
wanted the race to end at the top of our
mountain, arguably the most beautiful
6
mountain in Norway – Gaustatoppen.
It didn‘t take much time playing around
on the map to realise where the obvious
route for Norseman would be. Starting in
the little spot called Eidfjord, travelling
across the Hardangervidda mountain
plateau and ending up on Gaustatoppen.
As this was long before Google
Maps, we were amazed to find that it was
absolutely perfect. 180 kilometres on
the bike and 42.2 kilometers of running.
It was like this event was given to us by
someone as a gift.
Social party of 21
There were 21 people on the start line the
first year. I had spent a lot of time in the
previous year trying to recruit people to
join me during the first race. But as there
were few triathletes around it was not
that easy to find them. But I managed to
persuade some to join. I told them that
this would be a very sociable event, not
a race as such. Just a swim and a bike
ride together, taking photos and being
sociable and so on. As friends do.
I did the race myself. It was a very
small organisation so when I arrived
at the finish line I sent the rest of the
organization away, took over as the
director and welcomed the rest of the
athletes. We were lucky enough to have
had the national broadcasters with us the
Photo: Kai-Otto Melau