My record attempt for ”A Swedish Classic” has started! In Swedish at tri.se/Bloggar/BloggInlagg.aspx?id=23950 A finish time of 1.49.28 at Lidingöloppet this weekend was the beginning of my attempt to break the current record for ”A Swedish Classic”, which consists of 4 legendary races in Sweden that all have to be completed within one year. In addition to Lidingöloppet, a 30km Cross Country run (the word’s largest), I will be taking on Vasaloppet in March (90km Cross Country Skiing), VätternRundan (300km bike race) and Vansbro Simningen (3km Open Water Swimming) during 2014. The record stands at a total time of 14.09. 55 and is held by XC-skier Richard Andreasson. I ran 17mins faster than his time this weekend, and I will certainly take another 30mins at Vansbro and hopefully around the same at VätternRundan. Then the decisive factor will be whether I can get within a good hour of his amazing 3.42hrs in Vasaloppet, which was a top-10 performance in absolute world class. Read more about A Swedish Classic at ensvenskklassiker.se/english/ Since my retirement from professional triathlon one year ago, I have been doing much less training than previously, but still been able to maintain reasonable fitness. I have taken part in a few races in triathlon, duathlon, running plus trial runs of both Vasaloppet and VätternRundan already this year. Given that I haven’t had the time nor the motivation to train the volumes of past days, I have tried to be very specific toward my upcoming events, and subsequently I have practically only been running for the last 2 months leading into this weekend’s hard and long running race at Lidingö in Stockholm. My weekly running volume has only been in the 50-60km range, which (including a bit of strength training) doesn’t add up to more than 5hrs/week. That is very little, but I have been focussed on doing some very hard and specific intervals in similar terrain to what we were facing at Lidingö. It is a very tough course with uphills and downhills constantsly and no chance to find your rhythm at any point. I started in the first row of runners – with the other 20.000 people behind me – and got off to a good start. After some 400m a group of 5-6 runners had pulled away by a few meters, all Kenyans. Then there was a Swedish guy, and then me! Hey, I was doing alright, I thought. As things then settled in I was running with a group a bit behind the leaders, but realized that I had to slow down a notch if I was to maintain my power for 30km in this terrain. I tried to get my HR down to aound 165 which I knew was sustainable for me, but the fast start make it take a while. I did my best to find a rhythm, which wasn’t easy. I let the group, with among others my Danish Friend Christian Madsen, go and eventually got company from behind. I was constantly hoping to suddenly get those golden legs that I have been lucky enough to have on numerous occasions through my career, but it never happened. I had to work my way through the race and get the best out of it. Fortunately I had access to Enervit’s two special aid stations where I got one of their Liquid Shots of energy and two of their GT Tabs with electrolytes after ca 10 and 20km respectively. That kept my energy level up, so I didn’t get low at any time. It was more my legs that just weren’t able to run quite as fast as I would have liked to. My goal was to run between 1.45 and 1.50hrs, and with 1.49.28 I guess I was within that, although I didn’t have one of my greatest days. It was one fantastic experience, however, to take part in this huge event in the Swedish Capital, and I am eager to try to prepare oen notch better for the next event, Vasaloppet early March. For full results, please visit lidingoloppet.se/sv/Resultat/Lordag/
Posted on: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 08:33:07 +0000
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