Training Log Archive: Rosstopher

I love the Linné training bank. Joined in with a group running the Gropenextreme hill course in Sunnersta on a day when otherwise I likely would have skipped training altogether.

Tough to get up in time this morning, and so I jumped on my bike a little later than planned, and ended up having to race the whole way to the start, arriving 5 minutes late but in time to see the group head up the first hill.

Caught up with them on the second hill and settled into a first lap at an easy conversational pace. Weather was warm and lovely, conversation likewise :) Was surprised when the first lap ended and all the people I was following stopped running; drinking water, running home, or pausing for the others to catch up.

I was a little confused, but I just kept on running, because the plan was to do 3 laps, and I picked up the pace a little bit, thinking to get progressively faster on each loop. Legs felt great, and I was moving well for the first little bit, pulling ahead of the gang, but then I made a wrong turn and not wanting to mess up even more, I ran back to meet up with the pack again and followed along behind Anders Boström for the rest of lap two.

On lap three, Anders took the lead, and he really created a huge gap immediately. Pretty disheartening really :) I've run a lot of hills this week, and my legs were feeling it, but I kept the effort high and could still see Anders' back off and on. Thierry came along behind as we started up the ski slope, encouraging me to close the gap as he effortlessly scaled the hill in like one or two strides.

In the end I finished just a bit after them, but very pleased with the effort and the time. I would have liked to stay around and hang out more, but a thunderstorm was rolling in, and so I raced as fast as possible up to the lab to get a few things done and to wait out the downpour.

A nice morning for a longish Hiitaut run. Sam and I headed north, sweeping up a few of the more boring controls out in the industrial parts of town. It was lovely weather, we're having a nice summer, which makes long runs even nicer.

One more super long hittaut run for this month, and then I plan on waiting until the July release of controls to get all the rest.

I didn't have a plan of my own, and today is a sort of holiday if you're technical staff at the university, so it was nice when Sam invited me to join up for a lap of the Sunnersta hill course, just over 5k around the Uppsala Alpine Ski Center. For reference, this hill is much shorter than even the blue hills ski slope.

We met, Lina, Hilda, and Hilda's friend Anna on the street in front of our apartment complex, then we biked down to collect Lisa so that we could escort her to work. After dropping her off, the rest of us parked our bikes at SLU and from there warmed up by jogging over to the start of the course.

Sunny and warm. We ran across the board walk in the marshes on the way down.

There was one copy of the map, and I was allowed to run with it. We all started together and I headed up the first hill at high speed and was surprised at how Hilda was right on my heels. She's speedy. Even with the map I was hesitating and making wrong turns, so Hilda often had to correct me and was leading the way a bunch.

After a couple of kilometers Hilda slowed down because of her asthma, and I ran the rest on my own. It's a nice course, it seems a little bit gentler than the backbana but I guess times would be pretty similar between them because the gropen is a tad longer. I especially liked the section down into the gravel pit where you get to ski the scree all the way down.

Happy with my effort and time for my first outing. Not sure that it will replace backbana as my default hill location, but nice to put a face to the name at last :)

A nice group cool down run back to the bikes, and then halfway back Lina realized that she left her bike key back at the course start and so Lina, Sam, and I turned around and added on to our cooldown.

I was starting to feel quite tired by the end. Glad to have a good session done early in the morning. It leaves more time in the afternoon to go get frozen yogurt :)

June 6th is National Day. OK Linné, put on a running race called the Ekebyloppet, and so much of the club spent the morning and early afternoon down at the race arena.

This was the first year of a hopefully annual affair, and we decided to do something like this as a way to raise money for the club (CSU had the same thought with our skyline trail race in the fells).

The people masterminding the operation did a great job. I think Albin did the lion's share, but all told we had about 800 participants in a 5k,10k, and kids run format. Definitely the coolest aspect of the race was the shopping cart challenge. (Take note Biggins). With 2km to go in each of the four classes (Men's/Women's for the 5k/10k) there was a shopping cart full of prizes from the grocery store that was one of the big sponsors. So, if you were leading the race at that point, you needed to choose between having a good time or pushing a heavy cart for 2km to get a special prize. The drama involved in that decision was pretty awesome, and I wish I could have been there to witness it all.

I helped out with the kids race, which was a 1km trail loop a bit apart from the main chaos of the arena. As it was mostly for fun, we were allowing free start times during the 10am to 2pm window and we were using sportident to time the kids. As added fun, we put out 4 controls along the way the kids could punch to get split times.

Each kid got a tshirt and a slip of paper with their name on it over at the main registration. Then they followed the trail of balloons over to our table where we took the paper, gave them an SI card, explained how to use it, and then sent them off around the loop. When they got back they downloaded into the computer, got splits and then got a juicebox and a packet of candy.

It was great weather, and all the kids had a blast. The administration of the race was in fact almost a comedy of errors, but we did our best to cope and everyone was happy in the end I think :). But for next year we'll definitely need to mark the course better. A couple of irate moms were vocal when their kids spent an extra 20 minutes running around in Eriksberg :)

We helped take everything down and then headed home where I attempted to figure out which kid ran which time so that we could publish results. After many, many hours, and quite a bit of voodoo, I got a list that I think it at least 98% right. A little disappointed that these results are not yet published :) though I suppose maybe it's not so important that they are published, as the point was that all the kids had a blast and at least one kid said. I am going to run the course again, but not right now. But maybe next year.

I wanted to get a good hard day in today, so I left work a bit early to get some 400s in at the track. Not much of a warm up, as I was pressed for time, but I did force myself to do a few drills and strides before getting into the session.

My time allowed for 6 x 400, and I liked the session from last time so I stayed with 2:30 rest between each interval. Times were good, and I was able to speed up a bit as I went.

70-68-68-68-67-67

Then hopped back on my bike to scramble home in time for training.

C • Nice Work 1

Boris organized an SI training to be used as a test race for selecting the Linné women's teams for Venla. Everyone was welcome to come and run though, and as it was SI training in nice terrain, lots of people came.

I got to start first, and I was orienteering pretty well. A few times I found myself farther off the line than I wanted, but I was able to run hard and stay in pretty good contact.

Rassmus started 2 minutes behind me, and caught me on the way to 7, but he was taking it a bit easy so I was able to stick with him on and off for the rest of the course. I would pick different lines, and I made a couple of mistakes, but when I got out into an open bit of forest I could usually catch back up again.

Splits

Jumped into the lake afterward and swam out to the platform. Surprisingly warm and refreshing.