Norseman and my mom

Sometimes I feel like Norseman is a stage where parts of my life are played on. As you understand, Norseman has become more than just a bucket list race for me. I have found out that a lot of things in my life will play out with the race as a backdrop.

So what is the connection between my mom and Norseman? My mom did not have the best start in life. She lost her dad just six years old and that could not have been easy. She has some of her dearest and best childhood memories from Tessungdalen and Austbygde. After the last big hill and the false flat at Imingfjell, you are biking down the switchback to Tessungdalen. When you hit the valley floor you will take a left, or if you want to walk in my mom’s forest you will have to take a right. When you are closing in to T2 you will see a sign for Boeen School. Boeen is my mom’s maiden name. This is her place.



She left Rjukan and got a nursing degree, married my dad and the first 18 years of my life she was an amazing mom. She taught my brother and I about trusting our self, enjoy the outdoors and to take chances. My mom and dad divorced and sadly she ran into some demons later in life, one of them was alcohol. It was hard as a son to see you own mom losing herself when you remember her as a strong person.

My mom finally found the strength to face her demons and worked hard to get her life back. Sadly she ran out of time. At the same time she began to turn her life into something positive, she was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The cancer slowly took charge of her body and she became just a ghost of the former athletic woman she had been. The cancer got the best of her; even though she fought every hour, and trust me my mom was stubborn. But the game was over and she died Charismas Eve 2009.

So what is the connection between me, my mom and Norseman? The last 15 years of her life she lived in Tessungdalen and Rjukan. So she was an early spectator of Norseman. And as all moms out there, she had a lot of trust in her son’s abilities. She said that Norsman was a race for me.



Well her I am, in one month I will with racing bib #320 jump of the ferry and race the race my mom said I could do. When I am tired after the last climb on the bike I will be met by the beauty of Tessungdalen, the place where she was so happy. Closer to T2 I will pass a beautiful church; this is the place she is buried. On the run, right when you turn left to start running up zombie hill, I can look right and see her last house and the window she sat by every morning looking at the beautiful Gaustatoppen. And if I am so lucky to finish at the peak of Gaustatoppen I can say: mom – I did it.