Our annoyingly cheerful ultrarunner Damian Hall has been running in record snow levels and -36°C at Arctic Sweden’s Ice Ultra

I wasn’t overly nervous about Beyond The Ultimate’s Ice Ultra in Swedish Lapland, mostly north of the Arctic Circle. I’ve done the Spine Race twice, so how much harder could a bit more snow and the occasional stubborn moose be?

But then, on an internal flight north from Stockholm to Lulea, the friendly Swedish lady next to me mentioned they’d had the highest snowfall for 30 years. And described the current temperatures, -12°C, as “warm”. I like snow and I like the cold – or at least, I thought I did – but this seemed a little, well… real.

The Ice Ultra is a 230K, five-day, multi-stage race where runners are mostly self-reliant; carrying food and kit (but not sleeping bags, as they have to be mahoosive to keep us warm enough at night). Snowshoes, glow sticks and tampons (excellent kindling) are all mandatory kit. Until the local lady had spoken up, I’d been really excited about the Ice Ultra. I saw it as three in one: an Arctic adventure (with a safety net of the race infrastructure), a physical challenge (I quite like running) and a travel experience; I’ve been lucky to travel a fair bit, but never visited Scandinavia, which apart from beer prices always sounds perfect in every way.