Right now I am working very hard to save Sunday and my race premiere in Kvänum. To be honest things look pretty bad at the moment.

Apparently this whole Påskhelgen thing has messed with my mind. Yesterday I had no clue it was Tuesday until pretty late in the day. And a long day it was. Leaving home at 07.00 and returning at 19.30 is fairly long, yes. So I am starting to lose hope of any Tuesday or Thursday MCK training despite being entitled to 1 friskvårdstimme per week.

I am seriously considering a cheap bike for commuting so at least I get some training. But XC? Nja, I just don't see it happening at the moment.

Today has mostly been about Liège-Bastogne-Liège because of my jävla björk headache. No, I don't mean our favourite Icelandic singer here. I am talking about pollen.

The good news is that things are early this year. The björk peak last year was at the Hjo/Tidaholm weekend. During those races I had zero energy at all and pushing myself led to a nasty week of sicky sicky.

Maybe that is the answer to why my best races of the summer are always in August and that things start out well in CX season. No allergies.

Sure, my arm still hurts. But it doesn't seem to hurt when I ride. So, I ride. This was the pass I was planning last weekend. It started along the cykelväg to Jonsered and then some grus parts around the station and factory. I could not go quite so fast through here because it was busy. Then it was time to see if there was any ler in Lerum on this fine day.

Every cyclist knows that road along the water and that is where I saw a pile of LVG people going the other way. Today was one of those very strange days where the wind was going west so this section was brutal. No ler so far. There was some fun in the little forest patch but not much. I had my MCK shirt on and half the people look at me with respect and the other half are just plain evil. But then I turned up towards Riddarsten where I was welcome and could get the ler effect. To get my total trip over 40km I needed to take one lap of the running trail. So why not take two? There are some nasty hills there and I understand why running that helped me so much. Aj. So I stopped for a Squeezy gel and was quite pleased.

Then I took the road over to Olofstorp which is kinda busy but a good workout. Once in Olofstorp I wondered how I could have ever lived in such a tråkig place. From there it was time to fly along the old railway line and that was going very well. I didn't really feel extremely weak but I still felt like I was pushing very hard. The hills at Angereds kyrka were still big and nasty. No way to avoid that.

And then we have Lexbyvägen back to Partille and I just can't say enough about how wonderful that road is. And the last bit back home went just fine today so I am improving. This was 2 hours which feels good for me on an MTB.

So here we are on the first day of Påskhelgen which is essentially a dream for cycling. Perfect weather...half of the city is gone or working in their gardens...what could be wrong? You can already guess the answer to that.

I will go back to the doctor and get a proper referral so I can finally find out what is really wrong with my arm and shoulder. Most probably I have broken or ruptured one of the little muscles/bones in the shoulder because anything else should have healed by now. This is April and the skiing was February.

Realistically it is best to just take the races I have already paid for and focus on them rather than trying to do everything. Glada motionär until CX season is also a plan. So other than 1 maj, that means Farrisrunden, Mörksuggejakten, Grenserittet and maybe Engelbrektsturen. Den Långa Dagen in Ludvika was also a good test of form. Anything above these will be considered a bonus.

Once again my stupid shoulder is in pain and I just can't figure out what it is that keeps re-injuring it. What am I doing???

As I expected, my suggestion of Korta Billingeracet led to a comment. Here it is in case you missed it...

Nej Chris..Du måste köra långa. Så kan vi tampas, fika o mysa ihop:-)
Sven

And yes, Sven, this is precisely what Långloppscupen means for about half of the people there. So many of the motionär never join clubs. They just race HMotion and enjoy the day out like any old LVG trip. One bonus about Billingeracet is the Ryfors kola at the food stops. Yummy! So the fika strategy is good, yes. Didn't Kristina and Bernt use this strategy last year? A group of 4 would form a lovely MCK klungan.

If I am falling apart I can quit after 37km since it returns to the start area halfway through. If not, we can all continue so I can unleash my monster spurt on the last hill and leave you all behind. Yes, Sven, you may be right... =)

Taking HSport for 1 maj already feels like a compromise of sorts but with zero progress on my arm, I can't really expect any more. So then what about Långa Billingeracet? 75km is just fine for my legs but probably too much for my arms. So maybe I should take their motion alternative and prepare for the comments. You know, comments like 'Ha ha...you can't finish the whole race so you must be a chicken!' etc.

The fact is that I could fly around 37km and get a rather respectable time for once. Maybe I could even break the 2 hour mark. Korta Billingeracet sounds like the best way around this crap season start...

I slept in a bit so my original plan for a distanspass had to be swapped for a shorter and more classic trip. We can call it backpass of death, if you want. The start is the same as my running route up to Furulund which for the most part is easier on the bike compared to running until you hit that one monster where the 5km trail starts. Aj. And I had no speed because I had to dodge a confused and funny old man and his dog but in a way it was good because then I had to test the hill from stop all in one go. I was basically out of breath all the way around to the stables at Kåsjön.

Next up Landvettervägen and left towards Tahult to see how the next hill of death was holding up. Yep...it is still there. Not quite so bad as my premiere ride last year though. Once you are up to Tahult things are nice but the road is falling apart so I would not suggest any LVG on that downhill just yet. Left on Härkeshultsvägen and a few little hills again up to the forest which I just love. So close to the city yet complete silence and wonderful nature.

At that point I was thinking how good my legs feel and what a nice steady pace I can maintain. CX and skiing has kept me in decent shape I think. Then I hit the worst hill of the trip and it never gets any easier. No choice but to just shift down and take it. For some MTB experience I turned onto one of those grusväg called Knipavägen which is in horrible shape and is therefore the perfect MTB road. From there I turned right and went passed the hunting club and down a bit of a tricky hill since the mud was grooved and you could not really see that it was grooved.

Down to Jonsered and then I was behind another cyclist probably coming from Lerum but he turned off thereby avoiding the race I know we would have had. I headed right over to Kåhög feeling rather weak as usual. One has to ride this stretch to push yourself. Heading west the wind is against you on 90% of the days on this road so the whole experience is nasty. No prestige for me today...I was dying. But not as bad as last week. Progress is always good.

Excuse my disappearance for the passed few days. By the time I am finished work and get home there is not much energy left for writing witty comments or training. At the moment I am still 20% at the old job but that has been extending into weekends. And today was one of those bonus work days.

The 80% Scientific Editor job is under control because I have help with practical things and a good place to do my work. It's the 20% Mad Scientist bit I need to get sorted out. And that should be possible once I get these two articles written.

I also went to Sport Rehab and on that particular day I was pain-free but now the pain is back to normal. I was told that I can go cycling again but that I already started. =) The problem is that my muscles just don't work in my arm. So now I believe in those rehab exercises. Now the time is right.

Another missed MTB training could mean either that my shoulder still hurts or that I am swamped with work and can't leave early. Both would be the case.

But now I have some sort of plan. 1:a Maj loppet is part of this plan but I will take HSport because I simply won't be ready for anything more than that. I will pass on Hjo/Tidaholm since something else has come up but, if things go super, I will do Billingeracet. But to do that, I need to get some trail practice. I have another appointment at Sport Rehab tomorrow and would like to hear what they suggest before I go on ignoring it.

So this is pretty realistic considering my slow start to the season. Umm, well, some could say that I am slow no matter what start to the season I have. But let's try and ignore that for the moment...

And here folks is a bad way to end a Monday. After trying to check my email at Yahoo, my anti-virus software Avast popped up a red warning window telling me about a virus. Not good. And this was true for every website I tried to visit. I closed the browser and went to the Avast program to do a scan and within the first 30 seconds it had found 273 infected files. FCUK. I stopped it and it suggested restarting so it could scan before starting Windows and that is when I knew that it would never start again.

The scan ran all night putting what looked like every .htm (web) file into the quarantine and this morning it finally finished and surprisingly did start Windows. Except that it now says that it is not a genuine Microsoft version. Of course it is. Stupid thing. So probably all of my software is now messed up and I get to waste a lot of time fixing it.

But...this is what makes me terribly pissed. After checking some forums, I found out that there in fact was no virus. It was Avast that messed up their definition file so it thought that there was a virus. If I had clicked update instead of scan, I would still have a functioning computer. Bastards.

Sunday morning before Paris - Roubaix...what can I do? How about a more proper distanspass? Okay. Done. At first I was worried because the strap of my cykelbyxor was hitting my shoulder in a bad spot but once I started it seemed to have more of a compression effect than painful effect. Good good.

The route was Partille - Utby - Gamlestaden - Alelyckan - Eriksbo along the cykelvägar and other little trail sections that appeared once in awhile. From Eriksbo up to Gunnilse is one of those gradual up hills that you don't really noticed until later when your legs are not happy. And from Gunnilse up to Angereds kyrka along Turiststråket is one of those spots where legs complain a lot. This is where the short and steep hills start and continue to Lexbyvägen, Partille's best cycling road.

But, like always, the joys of that road mean I hit the wall somewhere around the horse stable and have to struggle on empty just to finish the last 2km and get home. And that is why I am obviously messing up the idea of distanspass at relaxed pace. I should not have a complete energy crash after 75 minutes. Even if it was 27.5km. That is just how it is.

The other day a woman I have never seen before came up to me and said 'Hallå!'. Perhaps this blog has made me into a Partille B-kändis? And that was the theme of today. At Allum they are having their 5th anniversary which just meant that more people were in my way when I was trying to buy things. Then I saw a sign saying Linda Bengtzing and wondered this. Would she wear the yellow dress that makes her look like a chicken and jump around in a mad Carola-style frenzy and scare everyone? I had to find out. Unfortunately, the answer was no. But B-kändis day continued with their fashion show. They had one of those 'Modell för en dag' scams where women pay over 2000kr to get 3 pictures taken of themselves after being painted with 2kg of makeup. But to make it worse they picked some of them to be in the fashion show. Nothing is more entertaining than seeing a bunch of people pretend to be models. Mental note...I need to stop watching TV11.

But the real point of the day is that I just took a short ride on the MTB over to Skatås and back along the bike expressway beside E20. I figure that if everyone is on about functional training, to hell with gummiband exercises. Why don't I just do what I am going to be doing? Cycling. And my arm did feel much better this time. I didn't do any real MTB but there was some grusväg. All is not lost yet my friends...

I noticed a post in the MCK forum about Billingeracet by the other English-speaking member of the club. The year I did that race there were only 3 from the club that started and I think a few more last year. MCK has never been all that into LL unfortunately.

Like I have said before, Billingeracet is a shock no matter how much you train. There are some tough sections although maybe they have removed those since this year the race is 6km shorter. But that last hill is a classic. I remember battling for the last 10km with the guy who ended up last in H30. My attacks eventually pay off. But after that lovely feeling I hit the final hill. Almost made it all the way up anyway but I had nothing left to give for any sort of celebration for not finishing last.

Fan. Now I want to race it this year. Stupid ¤%#&ing useless shite arm...

I know that I am usually annoyed in some way here but now I am also quite pissed off. Why did we move Slottskogens MTB to be on the same weekend as Sweden's best MTB marathon Mörksuggejakten? Was the idea to exclude Dalarna and therefore a third of MTB cyclists in this country?

Since I had a lot of problems with my shoes and the temperature last year, I am damn motivated to improve. So I had already booked and paid my hotel. Moral dilemma you say? Not when it comes to Mörksuggan. If you only do one långlopp per year, that is your best choice by far. So I won't be around to help. Sorry.

This is the first time I have really had such a serious sports injury so I am really quite confused over what to do. Of course I would like to attend our Tuesday MCK MTB supertraining but it simply hurts too much. The only way I will get better is to not make things worse. But that makes me a very unsocial cyclist. I am really doing the best I can here. If I can manage, I will do HSport for 1 maj and the two weekends after but Billingeracet seems unlikely. But by the end of June I better be ready for långlopp or I will be very pissed.

So for now I will continue with grundträning for CX season...

As you can tell I am not at MCKs MTB training right now. And considering the truly shite weather today, maybe that is not such a bad thing. Good news is that by doing nothing but resting, my arm feels much better.

Yesterday I started my new job and already I can tell that I am going to like this. And what a bonus to have a window facing Botaniska and all those lovely houses right next to it. So now it's time for some hard work to balance some hard training on the weekends with the odd night pass thrown in when I have time.

Was it just me or did anyone else become superglad after watching today's Tour of Flanders? This is the way LVG should be. I really like these 1-day races because it doesn't take a week for anything to happen. This all comes at a time when I need cycling things to mask the fact that I still can't ride without making my shoulder worse. Everything I do right now seems to make it worse so sitting still on the sofa watching Eurosport is good.

Hopefully I can dust off the trainer now that I have started arranging my bike room.

If a distanspass is supposed to be long and of low intensity, I think I missed the point with today's run. My goal was to at least make it around without stopping for a rest and that is a tall order for the over 10km loop I normally take.

It starts with the gradual hill to Björndammen then gets steeper up along the road to the start of the 5km running trail in Furulund. And what a start that is! Basically vertical hill and way way up. Guaranteed cramp monster by the time you reach the top. But once you do you only have to worry about the 5km of smooth löpspår which constantly goes up and down. And for the big finish you run down the hill with your stiff muscles, have a fartökning 400m from the finish and then sprint the last 50m at max.

I did make it but, as you can see above, I look pretty dead. Distans this was but this route will never be low intensity. I tried to measure the höjdmeter with my phone once and it said like 200m which I didn't believe at the time. But it could very well be.