My plan today was långlopp training and a lot of it. So that meant mostly gravel roads, a couple trails and plenty of hills. To start I went straight up that nasty hill at Paradiset which ends, drops down again on a gravel path and then heads straight up again until you reach the hiking trails. This was quite useless for MTB since you could not really ride very much so with very little distance travelled I had already used 30 minutes.

The point was to reach a logging road which is the MTB equivalent of a Paris-Roubaix road. These ALWAYS appear in långlopp and they hurt. The stones are the size of my head, wood chips are everywhere and there are holes which shake you around. So by the time I reached Lexbyvägen I felt like a smoothy. Good trail. Then I took a direct left towards Angereds kyrka on a Norwegian-style gravel road which was pretty smooth but full of hills. Soon it was time to head east on the old railway path to Olofstorp and this part went far too fast (more on this later). Then after rather quickly passing a group of 10 motionär who were enjoy the view, I turned left at Bergums kyrka to head off to where they were looking...another set of mountains.

This road is a moderate gravel road with some holes every once in awhile to keep you awake. It essentially goes straight up a good 120 m but does it by going up a bit and then down and then up a bit more. You get the idea. This was the road I used for last minute training for SM-marathon in Falun which was made up of the same sort of roads. Then I found a nice lake.

This looked like a fine place to stop for a banana and a couple of cookies.


Have to have some bike porn in this entry also.


And here I have taken special care to line my nose up perfectly with the horizon.

So then it was time for the jobbig part of the trip. Once I got back to Olofstorp I was faced with one of the worst headwinds I have ever felt. But I kept going, trying to stay as low as I could even if trying aerodynamics with an MTB is a bit silly. The new tight-fitting uniform helped a bit also but the flirt potential is down when you are hardly moving at all.

By the time I reached Angereds kyrka and headed back on that Norwegian road, I could feel the result of wind riding. Aj. But when I reached Lexbyvägen I just stayed on it and since I was almost home I decided to push a bit harder. What a great road! Of course when I reached the bottom and turned right into the wind again, I had my usual energy crash. I should have kept going a bit longer but I was almost home. But this is what I usually face in a långlopp. And I never get this after LVG since you are using less muscles for that.

With these numbers in April, I guess an energy crash is not really surprising.
Distance: 52.3 km
Time: 2:45:54
Hr ave: 162
Hr peak: 187
Energy: 2249 kcal (45 of the cookies I had with me)