Training Log Archive: schnitzer

Elitserien Long H21E4. I started off fairly steady but ended up jogging soon after. Tough forest, not always runnable and quite often steep. One of my club mates counted the contours on the straight line (H21E2 - same distance) and came up with over 1100m climb. Lots of light and medium green bits with sharp branches that really scratched my arms up.

I didn't make any huge mistakes, lost a minute here a minute there but generally quite clean but I wasn't going fast. I'm really not that fast at the moment and could feel yesterday's race in my legs. On a plus point I remember thinking at 15 that it would be touch and go whether I would completely bonk or not but happy to make the distance no problems. Good training for 10mila long night.

Novelty format warm-up event for the Elitserien races. Two middle distances, choose how much time you rest for between the two providing the total time is not over 2.5 hours.

Nice area, not overly technical and quite runnable. First 11 controls perfect then a dodgy route to 12 and bigger mistakes on 13 and 14. Maybe lost 2-3 minutes in total.

Was supposed to be saving myself for tomorrow but went at this a bit harder. Drifted a bit on the first and got confused but spotted Mattias Niggli looking confident so followed him in and punched together. Tried to keep up with him and this got me into trouble. I'm sure he took me on a banana route on purpose, thankfully I managed to relocate on a part of the map I recognised from earlier. No significant time loss from there to the end.

Over the two races I averaged 1 minute per km slower than Mattias' pregnant multiple world champion wife - don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Event: JK 2011
 

One great thing about my job is that I don't work Wednesdays, so off to the Luffarligan event I went.

Was a bit tired from yesterday (and still from the weekend probably) but tried to put as much effort in as I could. A couple of small mistakes. Lush forest, good conditions.

Another great thing about my job is that I really enjoy it, so afterwards I went to work anyway.

Jog with moderately heavy pack from work over to my friend Andrew's place where the Schnitz has been stored over the Winter.

Apart from a few km's worth of trails through the palace grounds this run is all on roads so I kept to the verge a lot, at first because I was keen and towards the end because Andrew lives out in the middle of nowhere i.e. not the best time of day to be running along a main road with no pavements. At least the weather was nice.

Driving back into town was proper ace, didn't go fast - just chilled gradually removing all the rust off the discs. Windows down, tunes on and European green card in the glove box. Ahh, freedom.