Local grads prepare for 213-mile Scandinavian relay

WASILLA — Ten years after graduating from different Matanuska Valley high schools, distance runners Allan Spangler and Cody Priest are meeting up in Sweden to compete in a 213-mile relay around Scandinavia.

Spangler, a 2005 Colony graduate, and Priest, a 2006 Palmer grad, are part of a 17-person team slated to run the St. Olavsloppet from Osterund, Sweden, to Trondheim, Norway, beginning on Wednesday, June 29. The four-stage, 337-kilometer race consists of 51 legs ranging in length from 3.5 to 11.7 kilometers, and concludes on Saturday, July 2.

To prepare for the race, Spangler has been literally running (and biking) around Europe with his girlfriend, Nina Schwinghammer — who also is running the Olavsloppet — since they quit their jobs and bought one-way tickets east at the end of March. A month later, he won the 125-kilometer Abbots Way race in Italy.

“Thanks to everyone who helped out with the Abbot's Way! That was an amazing experience. Anyone who completed this race is tough as woodpecker lips,” Spangler wrote in a Facebook post after the race, using a phrase coined by former Colony ski coach Ed Strabel.

Meanwhile, Priest has been tearing up the mountain running scene, taking fourth in the Government Peak Climb on June 4 and 12^th in the Robert Spur Memorial Hill Climb up Bird Ridge.

More than a footrace

The team Priest, Spangler and Schwinghammer belong to call themselves the Alaska Salmon Runners, given their mutual connection to the state, the running scene here and a love of salmon.

According to team co-founder Stian Stensland, a sport fishery researcher at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences who also was a visiting scholar at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) in 2009 and 2013, the team name was “a natural choice, since wild salmon is an important part of Alaskan culture, economy, nature and identity.”

But that’s not all. The team aims to raise $2,000 in scholarships to send eight people to the Bristol Bay Fly Fishing and Guide Academy, which according to its website provides place-based river education courses that foster “sustainable outdoor employment opportunities” for the young people of the Bristol Bay area.

The runners — especially those traveling from overseas for the race — are also being mindful of their carbon footprints.

“We want to contribute to sustainability, so our runners are also offsetting their emissions by buying climate quotas (through myclimate.org),” reads a recent post on the team’s Facebook page.

According to Erik Melin of Sweden, the other team co-founder, runners will also buy low carbon footprint food to further minimize their impact on the environment. Melin is currently working on a master’s degree in climate change at the Copenhagen University in Denmark.

For information on the team and the St. Olavsloppet, including a complete roster with photos and biographical information, visit www.facebook.com/alaskasalmonrunners.

To donate to the Bristol Bay Fly Fishing and Guide Academy via Alaska Salmon Runners, visit http://aksalmonrunners4bbffga.causevox.com/

Contact reporter Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.