Riding in Sweden’s Sverigetempot Brevet
Words and photos by Johan Björklund

In 2012 I thought about riding the Sverigetempot for the first time. I had never done it before and so I didn’t know what I was getting into…

Then my new friend Patch started talking about doing it in 2014 and all of a sudden our young almost elite runner friend Julius was coming along. Soon we had registered to do a 2100km ride on a 177 hour time limit from Riksgränsen in the far north above the Artctic circle to the furthest southern point in Sweden in Smygehuk.

Two days before the start on June 25 we started driving north with Tereza and Olle, two friends who came along to document the trip. When we started thinking about the fact that it would take us two whole days to drive the same distance we realized how insane this was. And how much fun it was going to be.

I had done 200km, 300km and 400km brevets as well as a ride of 586km within 24 hours to win the Flèche Nordique in the last months, so I was in decent shape. Our plan was to split the distance in seven parts with roughly 300km every day.

Unfortunately I only made it 1300km and had to abandon during the fifth day with a very swollen knee (as it looks now infected with borrelia that took advantage of my overstrained body), but Patch and Julius amazingly made it to the finish. I’ll be back with a vengeance in 2016!

For Strava routes, see these courses:
Sverigetempot Day 1
Sverigetempot Day 2
Sverigetempot Day 3
Sverigetempot Day 4
Sverigetempot Day 5
Sverigetempot Day 6
Sverigetempot Day 7

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