Sunday Mar 30 |
 | Running warm up/down 9:00 [1] 1.8 km (5:00 / km) | |
| |
| |
| Orienteering race 58:42 [3]***** 7.9 km (7:26 / km) | |
| ahr:162 spiked:14/17c |
| Orienteering Event, Buskhyttan Öster, Måsenstafetten. One of the stranger orienteering events I've run lately. Considering my spate of bad navigating lately I decided to concentrate. However, I had an on-off switch. I could literally switch my concentration on or off - and I had good reason to switch it off - or at least I thought. Micke Jansson handed over to me about 30 sec behind a train of 5 guys. I decided to catch up with them - i.e. concentration OFF. Ran with them and discovered that they weren't navigating properly - or to my gaffel. They all split up, and I messed up the first control, loosing about 2min (of my own estimated, optimal time). (Saw a couple of them as I took the control). I sped off to the second control in control - i.e. concentration ON. Stormed 2 and 3 (loosing less than 1min per km on these legs to the supermen, which is good for me). Run off towards 4. Get caught unluckily in a scrappy area, and a guy gets 100m or so ahead. I decide to catch up - i.e. concentration OFF. He should know what he is doing, and I can just take the control behind him - he's heading in the right direction. He doesn't know what he's doing and the two of us flap around in a scrappy area that we weren't quite expecting judging from the map. Finally cop on and take the control. Lost about 3:45 min here!!! Totally unecessary... Now I'm pissed, and on my own - i.e. concentration ON. I storm around making only small errors - like 10 sec here and there. Very good for me. Get to the second last leg. There's a path near the control, after about 400m over some spurs/reentrants. Paths are easy to find - i.e concentration OFF. Sprint off, and find the path, and look for the control among some small hills. Not there. Look more - there's the field, the slopes are right, these small hills are right - why are those girls I passed earlier trundling by without stopping? Blast! I'm too early - the path I crossed must have been formed by the earlier runners... Lost 1:15 here
So, at least I know I can get it right, when I have to. I've also learnt when not to take risks (relying on others, or 'easy' controls) - not quite never, but close. A couple more weeks, and I reckon I'll be in fine technical form... Hopefully I'm just so fit right now, my navigation hasn't quite caught up. |
Friday Mar 28 |
| Running warm up/down 19:00 [1] 3.2 km (5:56 / km) | |
| ahr:120 |
| |
| Orienteering race 1:45:00 [2]***** 12.5 km (8:24 / km) | |
| ahr:140 spiked:10/17c |
| Orienteering Event, Grymnatta. Angårdssjöängarna. Was really cruel. 10-15min of mistakes. White is green, green is hell. Course planner toyed with us leading us into areas with loads of clippings all over the place, and other areas where you would actually run faster if blindly waving a chainsaw in front of you. Forgto how much I hate this area - Lidingö organised DM here a few years ago. It was impossible finding control sites during the day... |
Thursday Mar 27 |
| Running warm up/down 7:00 [1] 1.2 km (5:50 / km) | |
| ahr:124 |
| |
| Orienteering 56:00 [2]***** 4.5 km (12:27 / km) | |
| ahr:137 spiked:6/13c |
| Orienteering Training, Vendelsö, An area I had never run before in Stockholm! Nice area too - really technical. Ran atrociously, missing most controls. A good reminder that mental preparation before technical training sessions is important - particularly those in more technical areas. A just go-out-and-run attitude doesn't work, unless the area is boringly simple. |
| Running long 1:45:00 [1] 15 km (7:00 / km) | |
| ahr:133 |
| LSD, Ran from Hjorthagen to Säcka, then did about 9km or so of a course around Grönsta. |
Wednesday Mar 26 |
| Running 1:01:00 [1] 11 km (5:33 / km) | |
| ahr:129 |
| Steady Run, Norra Djurgården |
| Strength 31:00 [0] | |
| ahr:107 |
| Strength Training, KTH Hallen |
Tuesday Mar 25 |
| Running 43:00 [1] 9 km (4:47 / km) | |
| ahr:138 |
| Running - Jog around Norra Djurgården. |
| Running Drills 40:00 [1] | |
| ahr:128 |
| Running drills indoors + outdoors + some active stretching exercises. |
| Running warm up/down 41:00 [1] 8 km (5:08 / km) | |
| ahr:138 |
| Warm Up from Hjorthagen to Bosön + then some spurts on the track indoors |
| Running intervals 23:00 [5] 4 km (5:45 / km) | |
| ahr:152 |
| Intervals, 4x1000m with 3min rest. Did not go at all well. Aimed for 3:10 per interval. Got it the first time, then got slower each time. Did 3:20 on the fourth one, and understood it wasn't worth trying to do 6 intervals, like last week. Guess the 3 middle distance races sat, sun + mon took more out of me than I realised. Noticed already on the warm up that my heart rate was slightly higher than normal. |
| Running warm up/down 10:00 [1] 1.8 km (5:33 / km) | |
| ahr:134 |
| |
Monday Mar 24 |
| Running warm up/down 15:00 [1] 2.8 km (5:21 / km) | |
| ahr:128 |
| |
| Orienteering race 32:54 [4]**** 4.5 km (7:19 / km) | |
| ahr:164 spiked:10/16c |
| Orienteering Event, Damn!!! Ran well, didn't make more than 2min errors, and I'm still nearly 6min down!!! Gah! Got fine-tuning work to do to save seconds. I need to train technique at speed. Still, first starter with a few cm of snow doesn't help... WT Martin Larbo: 27:14 |
Sunday Mar 23 |
| Running warm up/down 13:00 [1] 2.5 km (5:12 / km) | |
| ahr:132 |
| |
| Orienteering race 34:00 [3]**** 4.5 km (7:33 / km) | |
| ahr:158 spiked:12/15c |
| Orienteering Event, Ronneby OK, Brunnsskogen, Went better today, although it was much easier in the beginning. Disappointed with a 2min error + a 1min error by not paying attention to direction on a long leg. Got a 3rd fastest split on a relatively complex leg. Nice to know I can get it right sometimes... just need to multiply that one time by 15... Don't fully get why I'm roughly 20sec behind on every leg. It is only partially running speed. WT ca. 29min |
| Running warm up/down 4:00 [1] 0.8 km (5:00 / km) | |
| ahr:129 |
| |
Saturday Mar 22 |
| Running warm up/down 13:00 [1] 2.5 km (5:12 / km) | |
| ahr:136 |
| |
| Orienteering race 45:00 [2]**** 4.7 km (9:34 / km) | |
| ahr:151 spiked:6/13c |
| Orienteering Event, Brunnsskogen, Damn... I can't orienteer when the forest has thick patches of trees/brashings/fallen trees. Was maybe a little out of practice too. And I shouldn't be too hard on myself - I was one of the first starters in a snow-bound forest. WT ca.34min |
| Running warm up/down 5:00 [1] 1 km (5:00 / km) | |
| ahr:133 |
| |
Friday Mar 21 |
| Running warm up/down 4:00 [1] 0.7 km (5:43 / km) | |
| ahr:124 |
| |
| Orienteering 22:00 [2]*** 2.7 km (8:09 / km) | |
| ahr:136 spiked:9/10c |
| Orienteering Training, Jog around the sprint training at Ronneby Brunn. Slow thanks to a driving slush-storm and 2-3cm of slush/water everywhere... |
| Running warm up/down 4:00 [1] 0.7 km (5:43 / km) | |
| ahr:134 |
| |
Wednesday Mar 19 |
| Running warm up/down 34:00 [1] 6.3 km (5:24 / km) | |
| ahr:131 |
| |
| Strength 1:11:00 [0] | |
| ahr:115 |
| Strength Training, Hmmm probably lifted a little too much. Must remember to take it easy in the beginning so that I keep it up... |
| Running 2:07:00 [1] 20 km (6:21 / km) | |
| ahr:134 |
| LSD, Hjorthagen to Bosön, 8km + 4km reflexrundarna, 2km to Bosön... |
Tuesday Mar 18 |
| Running 29:00 [1] 6 km (4:50 / km) | |
| ahr:133 |
| |
| Running Drills 20 [1] | |
| ahr:126 |
| Running drills |
| Running warm up/down 38:00 [1] 7 km (5:26 / km) | |
| ahr:139 |
| Warm Up from Hjorthagen to Bosön, with some spurts at the end. |
| Running intervals 34:00 [5] 6 km (5:40 / km) | |
| ahr:150 |
| Intervals, 6 x 1000m, 3min rest. Tough session - aimed for 3sec faster per lap than my 1000m time. That's 37sec, and I should be doing 3:05 for 1km. 6 times. Ouch. Did around 3:07 for the first three. Down to 3:11 and 3:12 for the following two. Dropped to 3:15 for the last, and my running style disappeared. It was just a struggle. Next time I need to focus on running the first lap slower (I was diong 35sec for 200m), and I should aim for 3:10 per 1km instead and maintain that speed for all 6. |
| Running warm up/down 11:00 [1] 2 km (5:30 / km) | |
| ahr:129 |
| Cool Down |
| Note | |
| |
| Not a bad days training the day after St. Patrick's Day! |
Monday Mar 17 |
| Running 1:11:00 [1] 13 km (5:28 / km) | |
| ahr:134 |
| Steady Run, Loop around Södra Djurgården |
Saturday Mar 15 |
| Orienteering 58:00 [1]**** 7 km (8:17 / km) | |
| ahr:137 spiked:11/11c |
| Orienteering Training, Sigtuna. Same course as I had run with OK Linné during the Autumn. Just ran a portion of it - the butterfly loops in the southern part, running from 'Nyboda'. |
| Orienteering 1:50:00 [3]**** 15.5 km (7:06 / km) | |
| ahr:159 spiked:19/25c |
| Orienteering Training, Night-O. Långa natten test. This was fantastic! Had a great race. The starting procedure was a simulated relay. I started about 1-2min behind - a good position. About 20 or so guys started from the two clubs.
In the beginning I got pulled along. Actually I could barely keep track of where we were.
Then I got to do some navigation myself for a little while. After the map exchange (10.5km) I was in 3rd or 4th place. I led Hans-Olof to the 1st control after the map exchange, and managed to miss it by not looking around the other side of the rock properly. He took it and disappeared... This kind of thing probably wouldn't have happened in a race...
Got just a little messed up on the way to the third and Erik Engstrand caugt up with me. I worked things out quicker, took the control, and got away from him. Saw Hans-Olof coming in to the control from the wrong angle as I was leaving. Back in third place... Managed to keep my lead, until the eighth control. Unfortunately I didn't realise that the last three controls had tape instead of reflective control markers. So when I found the tape I figured I was wrong and began to search around for the control marker. Erik Engstrand caught up, and by the time I was back 5 more guys had arrived... We all agreed that we were at the control and continued. Pushed hard to the ninth, leading abit, but was sloppy into the control. Some others took the control first. But I had lots of strength left... I burst out from the woods, and across the field, and led right up to the last control. Only Martin Ivarsson managed to get past me... Finished in fourth place based on starting positions. Don't know how I fared based on times...
That felt good. I now know I'm capable of running well - the last couple of weeks have been easy training weeks, and obviously that helped. Pity about the eighth though - would have been nice to arrive in third, alone...
I've still some work to do on my control-taking. I can be quite sloppy sometimes. |
| |
| C • Nice work 1 |
Friday Mar 14 |
| Running warm up/down 11:00 [1] 2 km (5:30 / km) | |
| ahr:123 |
| Warm Up |
| Orienteering 11:20 [3]**** 1.6 km (7:05 / km) | |
| ahr:158 spiked:4/4c |
| Orienteering Training, Night-O, Prologue - 1.6km course. Resulting times were used for the chasing start of the next session. I had 11:20. Best time 10min. I had one of the better times anyway - starting about sixth or seventh of around 25 runners from Lidingö and Göteborg. |
| Orienteering 38:00 [1]**** 5 km (7:36 / km) | |
| ahr:135 spiked:1/3c |
| Orienteering Training, Night-O, DAMN!!! This was a good chance to show that I was in good shape physically, and that I can navigate. And it went brilliantly in the beginning... unfortunately I realised by about the second control that I actually hadn't recharged my battery the previous week, like I thought I'd done. Gah! (Yes, Boris, you are allowed to laugh!). However, this kind of thing tends not to happen more than once a year... and never before anything really important. |
Thursday Mar 13 |
| Running long 1:54:00 [1] 19 km (6:00 / km) | |
| ahr:137 |
| LSD, Hjorthagen to Säckatorp, then 8km + 4km reflex rundorna. |
Wednesday Mar 12 |
| Running 35:00 [1] 7 km (5:00 / km) | |
| ahr:132 |
| Jogging. Funny. Jogged a nice slow steady pace, and yet still managed to run to Bosön from Hjorthagen in the same time as yesterday when I do some warm up spurts... |
| Strength 1:07:00 [0] | |
| ahr:114 |
| Strength Training, GG led the session and did a very good job of it too. Keeping Giacomo in check was problematic... |
Tuesday Mar 11 |
| Running warm up/down 27:00 [1] 5 km (5:24 / km) | |
| ahr:136 |
| Warm up around Norra Djurgården |
| Running Drills 30:00 [1] | |
| ahr:122 |
| |
| Running warm up/down 41:00 [1] 8 km (5:08 / km) | |
| ahr:138 |
| Warm Up from Hjorthagen to Bosön with some spurts, + some more spurts inside at Bosön. |
| Running intervals 18:00 [5] 3 km (6:00 / km) | |
| ahr:160 max:181 |
| Intervals, 10x300m, 1min rest. Ran pretty well! had between 49 and 51 sec. Lost my running style on the last 2-3... but not my speed. Max heart rate went up to 181, which is the highest it's been for a long time! |
| Running warm up/down 11:00 [1] 2 km (5:30 / km) | |
| ahr:133 |
| |
| |
| C • wow 3 |
Sunday Mar 9 |
| Running warm up/down 11:19 [1] 2 km (5:40 / km) | |
| ahr:121 |
| A little jog with Boris before race |
| Orienteering race 49:15 [2]**** 7.35 km (6:42 / km) | |
| ahr:153 spiked:11/15c |
| Orienteering Race, VinterSerien, Kärrtorp. Hmmm... I'm able to keep a high speed in this terrain, make mistakes and correct them on the run. My navigation is sloppy - lots of zig-zags and chances for mistakes. Lost 15sec or more on four controls. And I've got more physical speed, judging from my average heart rate... WT: someone did 48:15 or so... |
| Running warm up/down 12:00 [1] 2 km (6:00 / km) | |
| ahr:128 |
| |
| Note | |
| |
| An easy week was on the program - one of my "do-whatever-I-feel-like" weeks... Was a little lazy, but whatever... I like these weeks - it gives my body a good chance to recover from 3 previous weeks of hard training. And hopefully prevents colds and burn-outs... |
Saturday Mar 8 |
| Running warm up/down 19:00 [1] 4 km (4:45 / km) | |
| ahr:137 |
| Warm Up - Hjorthagen to 3km mark of LL10km |
| Running intervals 50:00 [4] 10 km (5:00 / km) | |
| ahr:162 |
| Intervals, 10x4min, 1min rest. Damn I'm slow. Did just 10km during the intervals - 4min per km on the LL10km track. Back in 2003 I could do 4.19min/km - over the entire LL 30km race! I need more speed... but it's not suprising, given that I don't do much speed training. Will put more of an emphasis on it after the winter endurance-training period finishes soon... |
| Running warm up/down 19:00 [2] 3.5 km (5:26 / km) | |
| ahr:139 |
| Cool Down, from Lidingövarvet to home. |
Thursday Mar 6 |
| Running long 2:11:00 [1] 21 km (6:14 / km) | |
| ahr:132 |
| LSD - 7km to Säcka, then 8km + 6km reflexrundarna. |
Wednesday Mar 5 |
| Running warm up/down 10:00 [1] 1.8 km (5:33 / km) | |
| ahr:135 |
| |
| Orienteering race 58:17 [4]*** 9.5 km (6:08 / km) | |
| ahr:167 spiked:18/19c |
| Orienteering Event, MSBN, Livgardet. Ran really well. Suprised myself actually. Maybe I should do 8hr ski races at the weekend more often...
Winning time: Frederik Johansson 54:24 |
| |
| C • hehe 2 |
Sunday Mar 2 |
| |
| Event: Vasaloppet 2008, Sälen-Mora
|
| Cross Country Skiing race 7:40:00 [2] 90 km (5:07 / km) | |
| ahr:139 |
| Vasaloppet! Normally I don't write so much in these logs, but this time... well why not!
The alarm clock goes. I'm already awake and ready to get up. My body knows something big is going to happen. It's 03:45. Breakfast and a quick march to the buses to Sälen. It's a 2hr+ journey - mostly due to the ridiculolus amounts of traffic around the start area. Makes sense - 15,000+ people have to get there... Managed to sleep ok on the bus - or at least relax. My eyes would open now and again to admire the red lights of the traffic convoy ahead. The atmosphere was building up already.
Arrive and stake out our places in start group no. 5 (not a bad starting group, thanks to doing a decent Halvvasan the year before). The Vasaloppet start was one of the strangest I've ever done. It went something like this: Speaker: "Now this is a very, very long race. You should take it easy in the beginning. There's no rush. Make sure to eat and drink a lot. And there's the start of the Vasaloppet!" I mean the guy basically talked right up to the start - no silence, no countdown, no warning! Weird.
15,000 skiers trundle off. I notice immediately that I have absolutely no kick whatsoever - this is going to be a tough race. I see several thousand in front of me as I reach the edge of a small dip in the starting area. The mass of people leads towards the bottle-neck - a steep hill, where the track width is reduced by a quarter. Basically the masses come to a stand-still and we wait, not so patiently, edging our way forward, being careful not to let anyone stand on our skis or poles, while being not so careful about standing on other peoples' skis and poles. This bottle-neck means that you lose approximately 5min per start group on your possible time.
The hill is pretty serious. It's quite steep in places, and it's long - 3km and 200m of climb. Fight my way up the hill, scissoring most of the way, slowly. Get annoyed and stop for 5min to put on some red kick wax. Now I have the grip to start bounding up the hill... it worked well - I only noticed a few people moving faster. I've got strong legs...
Unfortunately, I don't have such strong arms, required for double-poling, Which is mostly what Vasaloppet is about... Once we reached the top of the hill it was time for the relatively flat run through the marshes and lakes. To make matters worse, the tracks were very rough at this stage. Now, I'm ok when skiing in good tracks. But what little technique I have pretty much disappears when the tracks are worn out. There was pretty much only one rough track left. The others had all but disappeared. I made a tactical error here, which I only understood until much later.
Before the next series of little hills, I took another 5min or so to put on klister this time (the red wax had smoothened out). Again, I could bound up the hills faster than anyone around me. But was it worth it? I paid the price later - something I really only understood by the time it was too late.
After the second pit stop there was a nice long downhill - any opportunity to rest tired arms was welcome, and crouching down and letting gravity do most of the work was great. It wasn't all easy though. You had to concentrate fully on keeping your skis in the rough tracks, or avoiding piles of snow in the turns, where the tracks had all but disappeared. By the time you were at the bottom your legs felt like jelly from all the shaking. At least it was time then for your arms to take over.
I got a nice rhythm going with eating and drinking. It felt right, although I'm not sure it was optimal. I'd take some sports drink in between the pit stops, and if I was feeling particularly tired I'd take a sports gel - wonderful, wonderful things! At the pit stops, I'd eat half a bun, and take two glasses of warm blueberry soup. Yum! It was impressive how each of these things gave a little extra kick, though I noticed from the numerous times I stopped to put on klister that rest also helped a bit...
It was on some of the longer downhills that I understood why klister is a bad thing. The loose snow sticks to it like crazy, so you can bound up the hills no end. However when you reach the top all that snow reamins, and causes huge amounts of drag. If I was passing everybody up the hills, everybody was gliding past me on the downhills. And of course it meant that I had to put in extra effort when double-poling. It wasn't until the last 20 km were left that I fully understood this mistake. When I was leaving the pit stop one of my skis ground to an immediate stop, causing me to lurch forward. I jumped onto the other ski, which ground to a halt. I ended up 'stumbling' forward from ski to ski for about 10m. I had to stop and scrape off all the ice which had formed on the bottom of my skis.
Now, I don't have the technique or strength to get up hills quickly without grip. So I felt like I needed klister. What was the trade off? I might have lost a few minutes per hill having to scissors up instead of bounding. However, putting on the klister took at least 5min each time (around 6 times). So I'm losing time by putting on the klister. Add to this the time lost by reduced glide AND the waste of your strength and I was clearly losing time! It's a lesson for next year... Some tricks to get around all this? Instead of using klister, I could have used a wax for wet, 'corny' snow. It doesn't work as well, but might have been good enough to help me bound up the hills. The other trick is to leave part of your kick zone wax-free. The idea behind this is that you roughen it up with sand paper, and that gives you grip. I found that the wax would smoothen out after a while, and you basically had no grip within 45min or so - but that is what wet, 'corny' snow does. The sandpapered, wax-free zone would continue to give you grip. I was thinking that you could have two such zones - in between the kick wax area and the glide wax area.
The other tactical error was that it was worthless changing track if you caught up on some slow skiers. Since there were pretty much no other tracks, it was impossible to get past them (add to this the friction caused by lots of klister outside of the tracks) and I didn't have a chance. You are far better off staying behind them, and getting past them later at an appropriate opportunity.
For the last 9km in the tracks gradually became more slushy. Poling became heavy. Your mind concentrates on finishing. Your muscles protest. You start getting cramps. But then you see the church spire and your spirits rise. You then see the 2km left sign and your heart sinks... You keep pressing on. You think you are getting nowhere poling in the slush, but nevertheless there is progress. You turn the last bend and see the straight to the finish. And whatever energy reserves are left are used to maintain your pace, increase your pace, and cross the finish line...
Jenny had a fantastic race - she had 6hrs 30min, and placed 80th among over 1000 girls. The fastest girl was about 4hrs 45min I think. And Jenny would have lost about 20-25 min on the first hill, plus another good bit time having to deal with bad trails. I reckon she should try for within an hour of the leader next year!
Although the tracks and snow-conditions were hell, and I wore myself out completely, it was still all fun. I could definitely do this again. There's something nice about doing the actual race. And I think I can get a whole lot better - I only did three weekends of skiing before Vasaloppet! And there was no snow in Stockholm this year - the first time since I moved here (and, typically, the year I decide to do Vasaloppet...). I learned some tricks too - save time on changing tracks counts for 10min +. Saving time on waxing/klister amounts to at least 30min. Trying to get into a better start group (I could maybe get into start group 4...) counts for 5-10min.
Yes... I could do this again. Next year...
http://www.resultat.vasaloppet.se/vasaresult/do/se... |
| |
| C • nice one 6 |