Perfect weather for PolarNight

It takes place during the polar night period, when the sun doesn’t rise above the horizon and the landscape is bathed in blue Arctic light. 1972 runners from more than 70 countries took part in the Polar Night race on 3rd January.

169 started in the marathon, 800 in the half-marathon and the rest in the 5km and 10km race.

For most of the runners this is a unique start of the year and many of them have a dream also to be lucky enough to see the Northern Lights.

The weather was perfect on the race day with a clear sky, –10 degrees Celsius and light winds, said the race director Nils Haetta. The surface on the course was as good as we could dream of, with dry cold snow. That mean you could run the race without spikes, but still, many of the runners prefer to use rubbers with spikes on their running shoes.

The marathon course starts outside the city of Tromsø, and runners run along the sea for about seven kilometres before the climb up to 180 meters above sea level, passing a valley surrounding high mountains and beautiful sky with a moon lighting up the mountains. This fulfils the dream of winter running for many of the marathon runners who started in the Polar Night Marathon.

The Polar Night race has been organized every year since 2004, and the marathon distance were introduced in 2021.

Two new course records were set for the marathon. Yngvild Kaspersen finished with a time of 2:55:38 and Lasse Aleksander Finstad finished in 2:47:45.