Training Log Archive: Rosstopher

Truly excellent day to be out skating today. I was once more picked up at the apartment this time Bengt and Rose-Marie (Johan's parents) and Johan and Elisa. They just got new long skates as a present and so we were all faster today. Parents went for a walk on the orienteering map instead of skating.

Blue skies! clear flat ice! just a little too windy and so my hands got cold.

We did a lap of the main lake, then hopped over to the next lake by scampering over a wooden bridge, and explored that lake as well.

Feeling more secure each time I go out. My new Christmas present from Sam and Hill of sport sunglasses is really great. I was using the red lenses and I looked cool :)

Orienteering in Lunsen! Johan set a training and a bunch of people signed up. We parked in a tiny parking lot just north of plantskolan and filled all of the spaces with our cars and bikes.

No GPS tracks this week, as I seem to have misplaced my cradle, but finally I don't need to guess at times, as I have replaced the battery in my watch and I have access to all my alarms and even indiglo again :)

Five intervals, 23 controls, no streamers, and a really good group to run with. Simon, Johan, Mats, Carl-Johan, Pontus, Liutas, Riina, Conny and Anton were running as a pack and Inga sometimes too. As always, I'm not so quick where there aren't streamers in the forest, but I was able to hold my own and the group really only needed to wait for me on one of the intervals :)

After training, back to bed for a short nap. Stayed up too late last night watching the live coverage of the WC sprint.

Johan always says there is forking, but this time there wasn't any real forking, just Riina who was running a slightly different version of the intervals.

C • staying up late 10

Quick warmup jog with Johan, down to Ekeby, where we did some drills and light plyos behind the gym, before coming back up to his apartment for rockgympa. Warm evening.

Johan has made the new rockgympa program and we tested it tonight. There were a lot of requests in the last version of rockgympa to reduce the amount of arm exercises. Well, the new version has very few arm exercises but the legs and abs are really tough. we're going to be strong after this winter :) Music is good too.

Johan's hardwood floors are hard! All of the jumping is more intense than the somewhat cushy floor of the school gym we use on Mondays.

Watched a movie in the evening. Sam needs to come home and teach me how to make popcorn better... I am not a professional :)

C • Share! 1

Johan and Elisa took me skating at Fjällnorra. It was a warm morning, and it was a bit drizzly even, but it was just so nice to be out on the ice. The warm and the rain meant that there were parts of the plowed track that had up to a couple of cms of standing water to skate through. Johan and Elisa were on hockey skates and they were content to skate at my speed.

I think that I could get a lot faster at skating if I did it just a little bit more. It's fun, but I am not very confident with my balance yet.

Club intervals in the evening turned out to be a rather exclusive affair. Johan and I jogged over to the clubhouse to wait for the group, but no one else showed up, and so we headed off down to the Gottsundarundan to do the workout. We started with a few minutes of drills and then headed off with a 5'-4'-3'-3'-2'-2'-1'-1'-1'-30"-30"-30"-30" =24 minutes of intervals. Rest was active (well we were better about that at the start) and 2' after the 5 and 4, 1' after the 3, 2, and 1's and 30" for the short ones.

Felt good to push hard running with Johan. Easy to keep pace at first but then it got much harder to stay with him near the end of the workout. Stomach was rebelling at that point, too much lunch too soon before the running.

Then a lovely evening of dinner and games at Johan and Elisa's tower :)

Well, shouldn't really call this orienteering, because I ran without a map, but I decided to go out and try to follow Johan's reflexbana. The course is marked by a line of reflective silver tags nailed to trees along the length of the ~5k course, visible if you shine your headlamp on them. Of course, some have fallen down and some just get obscured by the growth of new stuff, but it makes for a fun way to go running in the woods.

Without a map to follow along, I was stopping occasionally and looking around wildly trying to find the next marker, sometimes it would take a couple of abortive forays in various directions to find the trail of breadcrumbs again.

Fun! Also, this was my first New Year's Eve in Sweden, and there were a tonne of fireworks going off. The whole week really. Small ones being shot around in residential areas and in any small open field.

Running down to Rasa's place. Nice evening, not too cold.

Rockgympa! People came too! We had a full ten show up for the routine this week. Probably the last time with old music... though that means, I should send Johan some ideas for new music to add for next week. Also, we promised a new version of the exercises that has fewer exercises focused on arms and shoulders, so we should also spend some time getting those squared away.

After training, Johanna came over and we watched the 1985 classic movie Clue! It was just as good as ever, though we needed to flip on the subtitles because the actors were speaking a bit too fast :) I understand that feeling... everytime i watch something in Swedish I wish there were subtitles.