Kristian Grue and Julia Skala Talk Winning Norseman After Record-Setting Day
Kristian Grue wins Norseman on his fourth try at the race. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon
Saturday saw an incredible day of racing from start to finish in Norway at the Norseman Xtreme Triathlon. Norway’s Kristian Grue won after two second-place finishes on the same course in recent years, leading from point to point and recording the fastest splits in each leg of the race. In the women’s race, Julia Skala of Germany smashed the course record by an amazing margin of 16 minutes to win by close to an hour. Slowtwitch got the chance to speak with both winners after the event, and although the victories were still fresh for them, they provided some great thoughts on their races.
Finally Number One
Grue was the runner-up at Norseman in 2021 and 2022, and before the race on Saturday, he said he didn’t want another second place so badly that he would prefer third (if the win wasn’t an option, of course), simply to mix things up a bit. Well, second never even seemed like a possibility this time around, as he flew through the course without ever seeing another athlete after the start of the swim.
“I wanted to make it hard from the start,” he says. “I thought I was going to have a bit more company, but I chose a good line on the swim.”
He says he didn’t feel all that strong, but he still managed to open up a sizeable gap between himself and second place. The swim at Norseman is 2.4 miles and features just one turn. Athletes swim along the fjord wall to the town, at which point they turn left and swim next to the waterfront for about half a mile. It was at that sole turn when Grue says he got locked in.
“I managed to focus and [pull further away from the others] around the buoy and on the way to T1,” he says.
The last time Grue raced here, in 2022, he and the other athletes had a tailwind on the point-to-point bike ride. This time he had no such luck, and he says he felt like he was riding “quite slow.” After a while, however, he says things started to feel better and like he could really drop the hammer.
“I was pushing really well on all the hills,” he says.
Luckily for him, there are a lot of hills on the bike course, giving him plenty of opportunities to put time into his competitors. With every passing checkpoint, he extended his lead over second place and the rest of the field. By the time he hit T2, the gap had grown to 13 minutes. It looked like he would cruise to the win, and while it appeared to play out that way in the end for anyone watching, it was very different from Grue’s perspective.
“I felt terrible at the start of the run,” he says. “I knew that after 20K on the run it was going to be hard because I pushed the bike a bit. Around 22 or 23 [kilometres], I was completely dead.”
When he hit Zombie Hill (an infamous Norseman switchbacked climb that lasts four miles), he thought he might have to pull out.
“I was dizzy and couldn’t feel my legs,” he says. “We had to walk the start [of the hill] and just reset the mind. But after a couple of turns, the head came on again and the legs started to come back.” After the third turn on the run, he felt good again, and he says “it was just pure joy” from that point forward. He crossed the line a little while later in 9:45:20.
“Norseman is special to me,” he says. “I love this course. It’s brutal.”
Now, after a career-defining win, he has just six weeks to recover for another big race: the IRONMAN World Championship in Nice, France. A month and a half isn’t that much time, but he says he feels good about it.
“I’ll get one week recovery now, then I have four good weeks of training,” he says. “I’m confident in my shape, so I think this will go well.”
Grue celebrates the first Norseman win of his career. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon
Skala Wins Big
Coming into Norseman, Skala was the favorite to take the win. There were other women capable of sneaking onto the top of the podium, but Skala was the clear pick for first. Her day didn’t get off to the best start on Saturday, as she found herself three minutes back of the lead woman as she exited the water.
“I thought my swim was OK, but when I jumped out of the water, I saw on Michael’s face that he as not happy,” she says. Michael is her husband and coach. The team had a plan, and although Skala clearly hadn’t hit her goal for the swim, she didn’t let that shake her.
Skala gets set up in T1 before the race. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon
“I tried to follow my plan on the bike course,” she says. “Push more watts than normal on the uphills. That’s one thing I can do better [than the others].”
That strategy paid off in a big way — Skala caught every woman in front of her and built a nine-minute lead. When she got off the bike, she says her “legs were damaged,” but that didn’t look to be the case for anyone watching her race, as she flew along the marathon course.
“After 5K, I thought, ‘Wow, long, long way to the top of the mountain,'” she says. Even when Michael told her she was doing well, she wasn’t sure she believed him.
“I felt like they were not my normal running legs,” she says. “The run could’ve been faster, but I had a really good running day.”
So good, in fact, that she recorded the second-fastest run split of the day, behind only Grue. She credits Michael for a lot of her success on the run course, as he was a constant source of encouragement and reassurance.
Skala and Michael after her record-breaking win. Photo: Kevin Mackinnon
“Five kilometres before the top, he said, ‘OK, Julia, when you give everything, you can have the record,'” Skala says. “So, I gave everything I had left.”
By the time she reached the mountaintop finish line, she had unbelievably shaved a quarter of an hour off of the previous course record with her final time of 11:00:23.
“It means a lot for me,” she says. “That’s the first time I’m so proud of a race and how the day went.”
Now, with the record under her belt, the question has to be whether she will come back or not. This year was her first time at Norseman, and with experience on such a tough course, there’s no telling what she could do in another attempt.
“At first, I thought just this one time,” she says. “But I really liked the atmosphere, the people. So never say never.”
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