Training Log Archive: blairtrewinIn the 1 days ending Aug 1, 2018:
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Wednesday Aug 1, 2018 #
8 AM
Run 41:00 [3] 7.1 km (5:46 / km)
Spent the night in Tarnaby, a ski resort town perhaps most famed as the home base of Ingemar Stenmark, an Olympic skiing gold medallist from the days when Sweden used to produce skiing medallists (one of the things I've absorbed from my Norwegian extended family is the capacity to sledge Sweden about winter sports performances). Had my best night's sleep for a while, which probably had something to do with the room temperature starting with a 2 rather than a 3, and set out for a run along the lake, with a baseline ambition of 40 minutes and the potential to extend if I was feeling OK. As it turned out I had more energy than I have for a while, but Achilles was still iffy so I left it at the short end.
Otherwise it was a long day on the road to get me most of the way back to Stockholm. My original plan was to stay inland for a long way, mainly using the E45, but advice yesterday, although the road was still open, was to avoid it if possible (which I took to mean that it could be closed at any time if fire conditions changed), so instead I headed basically south to reach the coast at Sundsvall. About 250km of this was on back roads cutting south towards Sundsvall, which was fine for most of the time apart from a 20km stretch which reminded me that the old Alaskan joke about the year having four seasons - Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter and Roadworks - also appears to apply in northern Scandinavia. This road was dotted with settlements with a few dozen or hundred inhabitants apiece, most of which appeared to be as far past their peak as many comparably sized places in agricultural areas of inland Australia.
Pleasant scenery for the most part (lots of lakes) without huge amounts of spectacle - there was low cloud early on for the more mountainous sections (the first time this has happened to me on this trip).
On a day like this you spot the quirks, and a couple which were particularly spottable: (a) seeing a sign for the Swedish Caravan Museum a couple of hundred metres after overtaking a contraption which definitely belonged in it and (b) tailing a taxi for about 50km through the middle of nowhere, before we reached a town of sorts and the passenger disembarked at the local Systembolaget.
Otherwise it was a long day on the road to get me most of the way back to Stockholm. My original plan was to stay inland for a long way, mainly using the E45, but advice yesterday, although the road was still open, was to avoid it if possible (which I took to mean that it could be closed at any time if fire conditions changed), so instead I headed basically south to reach the coast at Sundsvall. About 250km of this was on back roads cutting south towards Sundsvall, which was fine for most of the time apart from a 20km stretch which reminded me that the old Alaskan joke about the year having four seasons - Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter and Roadworks - also appears to apply in northern Scandinavia. This road was dotted with settlements with a few dozen or hundred inhabitants apiece, most of which appeared to be as far past their peak as many comparably sized places in agricultural areas of inland Australia.
Pleasant scenery for the most part (lots of lakes) without huge amounts of spectacle - there was low cloud early on for the more mountainous sections (the first time this has happened to me on this trip).
On a day like this you spot the quirks, and a couple which were particularly spottable: (a) seeing a sign for the Swedish Caravan Museum a couple of hundred metres after overtaking a contraption which definitely belonged in it and (b) tailing a taxi for about 50km through the middle of nowhere, before we reached a town of sorts and the passenger disembarked at the local Systembolaget.