Celebrating 50 in Style – Three-Time Champion Returns to Norseman

Susanne Buckenlei won this race three straight years, from 2009 to 2011. Now, having just turned 50, she’s back on the start list — and the story of how that happened starts with a joke.

“I was supporting Hårek Stranheim (Norseman founder) when he had his 50th birthday,” she said. “So we were joking around — when I turned 50, I would come back again, and he would be my support. But of course he’s too busy.” The joke stuck, and the idea of returning took hold anyway.

Asked what makes this race special, beyond having won it three times, she didn’t hesitate with her answer:

“For me it feels like this racing is exactly made how I like racing,” she said. “This morning, jumping in the fjord — I love Norway, that’s one of the main things about it. Swimming in a fjord when the sun is going up, then riding through amazing landscape, which I also do on my holidays. Then doing a triathlon here, being supported by your friends — that is also something that makes it so special, to be supported by your close ones.” Running uphill to the finish, she added, was always her favorite part of the format. “It was the first triathlon where you run up to a mountain finish. That was the thing I liked most about it — to finish on Gaustatoppen.”

Coming back as a former champion, rather than a contender, hasn’t been complicated for her.

“No, not even for one second did I think about being in the mix somewhere or fighting for the podium,” she said. “It was always like coming back, doing a good race, training to do a good race at my age, and to enjoy it. That’s the main thing I’m here for.”

Still, muscle memory has its own opinions.

“When you’re here in Eidfjord — I’ve been here for a week now, like I always did — you sit on the bike or you run around, and it’s so crazy, sometimes you feel the same as the old days. And then you have to stop yourself, slow yourself down — hey, you are here with a complete different aim.”

Her support crew this time centers on her boyfriend, father of her daughter Luna – he will run the Gaustatoppen climb alongside her. A close friend, Julia, is handling second support, along with a handful of other friends scattered along the course — a tradition she says dates back to her championship years, when friends would show up unprompted just to follow along.

“It’s Norway, it’s Norseman,” she said. “So there are some more friends here to support me.”

Off the racecourse, she’s spent the last 25 years as a full-time triathlon coach, working with 50 athletes — which she says is different from actually living the triathlon lifestyle. “In my normal life I’m not at all in the triathlon life anymore,” she said. “I’m more on skis than on a bike.” Ski touring, ski teaching, biking and running in the summer fill her calendar; she says she barely swam for years before ramping back up for this race. “I don’t call myself a triathlete anymore, that’s for sure. But I love sports, and I will do sports as long as I can.”

That philosophy has clearly rubbed off on Luna, who she describes as talented on skis and mountain bikes but entirely uninterested in competing.

“That’s also something I love — that she’s doing it because she’s liking it, not because she has to fight or beat someone.” It’s a trait she recognizes from her own childhood. “I was the same when I was a kid. I hated competitions. I just found out that I’m good on the bike, and that fit to me, and then I started to do some triathlons growing up. But as a kid I didn’t like to do competitions.”

Norseman, she said, has shaped her life well beyond the finish line — built on years of family trips here with her parents. The only challenge this week has been to convince Luna that her mom isn’t going to win.

“I just have to tell her more often per day that I will not win again, because she’s for sure sure that I will win tomorrow,” she said, laughing. “But that will not happen.”

As a coach, she’s realistic about her own limits. “I’m quite good at knowing — I’m a coach and an athlete, so I know exactly what I can do and what I’m can’t,” she said. “I would be really happy if I could get a black shirt, because I know the competition is hard and it’s getting harder every year. If I can stand on Gaustatoppen with the black shirt, that’s all I want.”

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