For many who take part in the Vasaloppet, the main goal is simply to cross the finish line—a fantastic achievement in itself. For a few, the aim is to win. Between these extremes is a large group of skiers who enjoy pushing their bodies just a little extra. Perhaps you have already completed a few Vasaloppets and checked off the goal of reaching Mora. In this text, we discuss how you might think about setting your next goal.
Setting goals in the Vasaloppet is not as straightforward as in, say, a running race, where a results-driven individual can target a specific time. This approach naturally works in the Vasaloppet as well, but the risk is that the dream can quickly slip away if external conditions turn against you. The fact that the finishing time in the Vasaloppet does not accurately reflect performance is evident when you consider that the winning time in subsequent years has historically varied by over an hour on several occasions—Figure 1 below shows the winning time for the Vasaloppet year by year since 1980. In addition to the considerable year-to-year variation, we can see a trend toward shorter average winning times. It remains to be seen whether this trend will continue in the future. An interesting aspect is whether the fluorine ban might have an impact.
Figure 1. Vasaloppet winning time year by year since 1980.
How should we think instead of simply setting goals? In personal development, it is common to talk about goals being SMART—specific, measurable, realistic, accepted, and time-bound. Goals can also be divided into performance goals and outcome goals, where the former depend primarily on one’s own performance and the latter depend on one’s performance relative to that of others. Johan Olsson has discussed this extensively and written about it in his book “Våga välja eget spår” (Dare to Choose Your Own Path), which he co-authored with Anna and mental coach Stig Wiklund. They strongly advocate for performance goals, and we share the same view.
The major challenge in the Vasalopp is how to set performance goals when the race time does not reflect actual performance. It is easy to set an unrealistic time goal simply because our pace is, quite frankly, too slow. In such cases, we need another metric. In this context, power—which we have written about several times—is a much better key metric. For those using Skisens poles, one can target a specific average power output, which is far less dependent on external conditions (see, for example, our latest newsletter, “Find your perfect pole timing with Skisens | SKISENS”).
For those who do not measure power, we need to find alternative metrics. A common goal in the Vasalopp, especially for those positioned toward the front, is to aim for a specific placement. By definition, placement goals depend on others’ performances and are therefore outcome goals. However, the positive aspect is that when many skiers take part in the Vasalopp, the results become more a matter of statistics rather than direct head-to-head competition. Thus, a placement goal can be viewed as a performance metric, and given the challenges mentioned above with time goals, we believe that placement goals are far better performance measures than race time. Even better is to relate your placement to the starting group in which you began. For example, a goal might be to advance one starting group. We discussed this in a previous newsletter (“How difficult is it to advance one starting group in the Vasalopp? | SKISENS”), where we showed that for starting groups 1–4, about 5–10% succeed in the feat of advancing one group. We also demonstrated that advancing two starting groups is extremely rare.
Figure 2. Number of starters per starting group who manage to finish within the top 150, top 500, top 1000, and top 2000.
Another common goal in the Vasaloppet is to earn a medal—that is, to finish with a time that is faster than the winning time plus 50%. Assuming that the overall winner is equally strong and that the lead pack always races hard, this is, in a way, a performance goal. For many years, the average number of medals has also remained fairly constant at around 2400. However, the variation from year to year is large, partly due to how fast the lead pack races and also how well the team holds together. Figure 2 shows the number of medals per year since 1980. One can see that the variation is very large, ranging from nearly 4000 medals in 2007 to just over 1000 medals in 2024. There is also a trend in recent years toward fewer medals. Whether this trend will continue remains to be seen, but it could be a conceivable consequence of the Ski-Classics teams entering the scene and driving up the pace in the lead pack.
Number of medals at Vasaloppet since 1980.
In summary, only you know what the right goal is for you, but we hope that this text might give you some perspectives that can be useful in better analyzing your performance and continuing your development.
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