Probably some of you have placed bets that I will give up on this skiing thing and DNS Öppet Spår. Sorry, but you will lose that bet. My start is paid for and so is my paket at Green Hotel in Tällberg which includes all the right food and mysig Dala natur that makes me feel all lovely inside. So I will start.

Will I finish? No clue. The 17km of paralysis the other day was a worst-case situation with completely wrong eating and no water. There is food and water every 10km during the race. And going in a straight line is faster than turning, falling and starting again. I am also training more than what Vasalöparen magazine suggests for nybörjare. So for my own sanity I am trying to ignore everyone telling me that this race is the toughest thing they have ever done.

If I finish I will be on top of the world. If I don't, I will try again next year. No reason to worry over it.

I woke up feeling stiff and my back was not all that happy. When you start to approach gubbe age, any pains in the back should not be taken lightly. So no ski this morning. I didn't really have time for that.

The choice again was running with the same route as last week up to Furulund and the forest trail which today was covered in a nice layer of ice. So this was a lot of terrainlöpning. Did this cure my träningsvärk? Nja...my legs feel a bit better. But since I was able to run the whole ice-free cykelväg hill down to Allum I have pain in different places. Running downhill for 2km straight is also training.

With CX on later today and then skiing, I should be able to curl up and become fixed in one position pretty soon. Excellent. This is how to make Monday's feel extra tough.

My skiing yesterday has left me with a pretty decent stiffness. So that messes up my hope of any 42km race tomorrow. But, in case you missed it, I don't care. Maybe tomorrow I will head off to Borås for some skiing. Maybe not. We will see soon.

This week I get the key to my new apartment which is in the next building. Yes, 20m closer to work! But this will be a major step up since I will have an extra room for my bikes/skis/clothes and if you see my apartment now you will understand what a huge difference that will make. It feels almost silly to pack since I will just be walking across the courtyard. But it will go faster with things in some kind of box and I have lots of boxes. So that was today's project.

I headed down to Skatås where they have converted our nice CX track into a konstsnöspår which costs 60kr for 2.5hr. Maybe that sounds expensive but it would cost the same in gas for me to drive to Hindås.

Nervous was an appropriate word for my first ride on the superelite Atomic WorldCup skis. Good news is that the skate bindings work just fine. And I had loads of glide so I decided to take it easy. There is this hill in the corner that I only did twice because it didn't really have a track. The first time down I was fine but the second time I was one ski out of the track and heading for the expected outcome. My first two laps were tough and I fell four times. They are 9cm longer than my old skis so two of the crashes where me tripping over the tips.

But in my defence, where I was falling were places that were technical corners where you had to lift up the ski. I could never do this with the old ones because they were heavy and they tipped on the binding. So I had never really practiced this. But I tried this today...wow...it works! Light skis! Hurray! Then things became fun!

The track is 1.7km so I decided before I got there that 10 laps were going to get done, even if it killed me. The time I went was a bit off in terms of food so this was with no drink and I was damn hungry at the end. I was keeping the same pace with one woman since we passed at the same point but you gotta respect those guys that actually can do this. They were sailing around at twice the speed looking like this was nothing to them while my muscles were just dying.

Today I was somewhere around 9km/h which means new skis has just cut 2hrs off of my Öppet Spår time. The wow feeling is coming...

I have to say that I feel much better now that I stopped caring about skiing. I am just along for the ride now and whatever happens happens. And to continue the adventure I just received the email I expected to get after buying a pair of skis. Can you guess? Of course. Pölder Sport has just mailed me another pair of skis to make up for the ones that got lost. So soon I will have a third set of skis and I can really get into this valla thing. Yep, one pair for each set of conditions. World cup here I come!

Note to reader...now would NOT be a good time to mention my entry last fall where I wrote that skiing is so much cheaper than cycling.

As you already know, I have had a hell of a time with most things involving skiing. So why should that change now? When I picked up the skis yesterday, I noticed the word Skate on the binding. I asked the salesperson if that was right. He said that he had no clue but an expert put it on so I should not worry. His honesty was good. But I worry about the expert. Of course Fischer R3 Skate binding is different from Fischer R3 Classic binding and whether that matters I don't know yet. My boot goes in with some effort and certainly takes effort to get it off again. So there is a risk I have to make another visit to the store very soon.

All of this stuff has made me quite stressed. Skiing was supposed to be my alternative training instead of cycling and it works great for that. It must do something since I had zero träningsvärk after my run on Sunday. So who cares what happens? As long as I am training, it's all good.

Look what I picked up today! Atomic Worldcup skis from the 2009/2010 season which means OS medals were won with these babies. And with some luck I will cut an hour or more off my Öppet Spår time with the right equipment. I can certainly hope...

Borås is looking like my choice for testing them out before Sunday and I worked extra today to try and make up for a future disappearance...

Tomorrow I pick up my skis and, typically, the snow has melted. A quick look at the ground outside in Partille shows a bit of icy/snow and a lot of green. A quick look at Skidspår shows endless reports on the lack of tracks. Borås seems to have some snow. Is that true? Anyone within an hour's drive of Gbg have a nice ski trail to offer me?

I have signed up for the 42km Stråkenloppet this Sunday in Mullsjö and they seem to still have some snow. But I am slightly worried that I will be taking my first ride ever on the super skis in a race situation. Could be fun. Could be a disaster. But I am sure I will get the hang of the skis after 42km worth.

It has been raining all night and it was still going this morning when I woke up. What can I do when the snow is like this and the local roads are covered in wet ice? Well, I could cry. Or I could point out that this is because I found my skis. But instead I thought a good run in the forest would be the best choice. If I am numb for 3 days I will not get upset over lack of snow.

Heading up to Furulund for my 'favourite' route of about 10km is nasty even during the summer. There is no rest on those hills and with the wet snow it was an adventure in many ways. But it felt good to know I still have some kondition. My theory is that if I can run a half-marathon at a relaxed pace, I should be able to ski a whole marathon. And the 10km I just did is more like 15km in a flat place like Uppsala. So maybe Stråkenloppet next weekend will work.

With 10cm of new kramsnö, temperature of 1C and a bit of light rain starting, today was what you would call the definition of svårvallat. But since I have become one of those 'perfect condition' skiers (like cyclists that only ride in the sunshine), I went out anyway. Slop on some Swix universalklister in the easy-to-use can and off I was.

Expectations were low and that was the right approach. My first 5 laps after making the trail were okay but after that it just got slower and slower in the snow. Twice per lap I had to stop and scrape off all the snow that was stuck to the ski. By stuck I mean a solid layer of packed snow/ice. So now I know what this kind of snow feels like. Need to experiment a bit more with this I think.

Three more days until super skis...

Tonight is Fredagscrossen but unusually I already have adventures in store for this Friday night. And that is a shame since everyone knows that the best plans are made over a couple of pints at a local pub.

The adventure continues with my Pölder Sport order. Posten says they will have to reklamera which obviously means the skis are lost. Yep, losing a 2m box seems hard. Now that I think back, it was quite smart of me to choose 'Faktura' so this adventure hasn't cost me anything.

After work today it was jaktstart for any pair of skis I could get. The plan was to spend the weekend visiting every possible store looking for basically anything. Failure there would then mean a trip to Borås and finally an excursion to Norway where they should certainly have skis. But I got shit lucky, one could say.

Udéns Sport just up the road from CykelCity was unpacking a shipment of skis when I showed up. Check this out. Atomic WorldCup superduper elite skis from 09/10 with bindings for 2995kr! I was worried that a ski that good would be completely uncontrollable but the guy speaking Dalmål said it would be perfect for Vasaloppet. I buy. He should know about Vasaloppet. So Tuesday I will pick up my ticket to Mora. =)

With rain in the forecast I decided to head over to Hindås again for a lap of their 7km track. That would be all I could manage before it was too dark. The new jacket felt great and it is definitely windproof. The poles were outstanding! This is the first time I had really tried them out in actual trails so my diagonalåkning was pretty good. My skis were, as usual, slow but that was fine since it was icy. There are only 2 downhills there and I fell on the first because the tracks disappeared at the bottom (someone was braking, obviously) but a fall in snow is fine for me.

Since I was only planning 1 lap I was trying to keep a decent speed and that was sort of working. But it takes a lot of energy to try stakning for the entire last km. Öppet Spår and my hotel is paid for but it feels like I am going to have to do it again. Glada motionär pace is fine but I am capable of better than that...

I am sure you have noticed the new design here. It is not entirely finished yet since I am still playing around with things. But, if I may, I have to link to Artisteer which is the program I used to make the template. It is fantastic, easy to use and exports to all the usual blog formats like Blogger and Wordpress. Great new toy if you ask me.

The pictures were taken by a friend that came to watch me battle it out at ValhallCrossen in Sthlm. Thinking back, that course was pretty much the same idea as LundaCrossen but with more reasonable hills. And damn was I fast that day...

The 2010 season is over and I am sure that many of you have already planned in your race adventures for 2011. I mean it has been a whole 2 days! Plenty of time for goals. Okay, fine, I am joking. But here is SCFs Tävlingsprogram if you want to have a look.

My thoughts for the year are more variety. I certainly need more XC training and MCK training plus the races in May are perfect for that. Långa Billingeracet and Kinnekulleloppet are not the same day this year. I have taken a few laps of Kinnekulle and it is cool. One of my big question marks is about the MTB SM in Borås. With it being so close, I could actually train there first so it might be less painful. But H30? Ajjj.

Which races will you do? Is there anything I should try that I have not already noticed?

I see yesterday was very close to my besöksrekord, probably because everyone was eagerly awaiting Björn's report on the weekend. Most of my visits come via his page, afterall.

And meanwhile I am spending this little bit of fame dissing everything I can. Not good. But in general we have to diss these winters in southern Sweden. How fun is it to have solid ice and -1C all the time? I need to train but at the moment I can't even walk to the bus.

But at the top of the Chris Diss List at the moment is Pölder Sport. 19 dec they mailed my skis and Posten stopped it in Jönköping the day after. 3 jan they said they would contact Posten to see what happened. And to top everything off, this morning I get an email from them asking if Posten has called me yet. Why would they call me? Nowhere in our email contact has this been mentioned before. If I order a product, why should I have to fix delivery myself? This kind of thing is frustrating. If someone messes up, just admit it. Don't put me through this round of bull shit.

So at this point I will have to suggest shopping at Skistart.com instead.

Now that Merida Northwave CX Cup is finished for the year, we can check the final standings in the cup. See the list here.

I managed an amazing 34th place out of 131 in Super Speczial Klass by essentially finishing last place in every race I did. Overall Mölndals CK did very well. Looking at the top 10 we had 5th Björn, 6th Tomas, 9th Lasse and 10th Axel. If I ever had enough time for training, obviously I am in good company with this group.

I guess one gets a bit spoiled after FK Trampen's perfectly arranged Sandbycrossen. When I arrived today for LundaCrossen about 10 minutes before the first start, CK Lunedi was still marking the course. 1 hour delay.

With such a warm day yesterday, one would predict with some logic that it could freeze a bit today when it was cooler. So the first part of the course was a bit of snow but mostly solid ice. After a short grass part it headed towards a football field over about 10 m of pure ice. What the hell? Back to the starting area they were making a little path through with less ice but still some patches here and there. Up a hill (a mountain in Skåne) and then something crazy. They had a downhill on an angle down (banked) and then at the bottom you had to turn left immediately unless you wanted to hit a metal railing. But the bottom was essentially all ice patches. So I walked down and over to the stairs which were fine until the next part which again was a bunch of ice. If you slipped here you would fall down the hill to the left. The top of the hill was okay and nice but when I reached the other side they were changing the course to drop straight down instead of the gradual way 'because the corner was too icy'??? That was followed by another sharp drop which was a place that most people crashed at. Then back to the start area.

I didn't see the point. I am chicken so what is the fun of running down these hills and being even farther behind than normal? I have spent far too much money on ski stuff now to get injured. This is just for fun so why risk it? So I put my bike back in the car and that was it.

I walked back and went up the hill and Karlsson had just changed the course to skip the downhill. When MTB profs Emil Lindgren says that it was a nasty hill, what am I supposed to think? Karlsson seemed to be arguing with someone who thought CX should be a challenge and hills like this were good. Fine, Söderköping had a hill but it was straight and did not turn directly at the bottom. So Open and the kids classes ran with the safer route.

Later on I heard Karlsson talking with a few Elit to maybe add the hill for their class only since they were used to this. But some ice had to be cleared so I followed Karlsson and Caroline and started clearing the path. After a few minutes of that, the speaker announced that Superklass would also take the hill and stairs. We had removed enough ice so it was reasonable but still, why should we have to do this? The answer there has to be that Mölndals CK actually knows about cross.

When MCK had our race, we had a safety inspector to make sure that the course was reasonable. Where were they today? How can anyone approve today's course in the state it was before we started removing ice?

So my season ended yesterday and that was perfectly okay because I really liked Sandbycrossen. But now on to the next sport...

This felt like a bit of a comeback today after missing the last 3 races. And FK Trampen did a fine job of finding a course that was jobbigt, snow-covered and also very Skåne. A climb up to a windmill is worth bonus points in my book.

The start went semi-fast and I was right with everyone. It headed directly up to Möllan so I jumped off early, put the bike on my shoulder and ran up to the top. Running was a good strategy and I caught up to people this way. Pedal troubles meant that Mats passed me at the hill down towards the start area which was a jem of snow and mud ready to send you flying. Then it was time for the running section. The snow was impossible and it was probably 300m worth. Aj. Mats could tell that I wanted passed so he let me and I ran up to the next group.

The next two laps were a battle between Håkan and I which was fun because I have never been anywhere near him before. The Ridley was fantastic in the grass/mud sections and we were jumping positions. Back to Möllan and I was riding up while Håkan was running and it went well until I messed up and he took off. It was amazing how fast the gap opened.

So now it was just time to finish and try not to fall apart. Obviously I went out quite hard because it was tough at the end. I was lapped and it seemed like I would not have to do the last lap which was good because I had just incredibly made it all the way up to Möllan and back down again without jumping off once. Small achievements are great.

Not last is all I can say. I decided for fun to ask Karlsson if I made the VM team. He said I would have to try again tomorrow. =)

Yep, this was great today!

And so I am back in Lund for the 4th time. First was in 1999 during my first year here. I was on my exchange in Sthlm and a classmate was here in Lund. What a crazy weekend! I learned all about gröna hissen and some cool little club. Next visit was 2001 when I was doing a little Tour de Skåne. And then there was the Lundakarnevalen weekend. Oj. I even managed to learn the u sound that people only seem to use in Lund.

This is a university city and since I am researching at a university, this is one of the six places I can work in this country. But after spending the last 2 years dissing Uppsala, a move is not what I need. At the same time, Lund has a charm that Uppsala doesn't have. I think it is the Danish architecture and cute little streets. It was dark for my walk tonight but maybe I can see a bit tomorrow after the race.

So...the fog is thick and there is quite a bit of snow still. But it is not ice (yet) so I suspect tomorrow will be a lot of sliding. High of 6C tomorrow = Sunday muddy Sunday.

Since I didn't really have time for any major ski trip, I walked over to try out my new CT4 poles. Yes, turskidor and these poles...what a mismatch. I also polished the glide section more and that improved it a bit. The snow was crusty on the top so I had to walk around the first lap just to make a path. But once I was on actual snow, it was incredible. Yes, 5cm of pole makes a difference. I was the master of diagonalåkning today.

Being a good scientist, I didn't change all the variables so this is still my old jacket. But I look like one of those 'glad prick' as some people like to say here.

Now it is snow scraping time and off to Lund...

That guy in Stadium Solna C can relax a bit because things went well today. After asking the pole length question in 3 different stores to 3 different people that seemed to know what they were saying, the answer was clear. There is no reason, beginner or pro, why I should have had short poles. One said it would be really tough to diagonalåk with short poles. No shit. So Intersport Backaplan was the lucky winner since I bought a set of Swix CT4 comp which is one level above what I had and is not so glow-in-the-dark as the Oneway poles.

Then my other 'blow the budget' issue was the jacket. The one I have is not windproof and that makes a world of difference for keeping warm. About all that was left was the supersnygg Craft EXC jacket with the superduper price tag. Aj. But, like everything from Craft, it fit perfectly and does what it is suppose to. So it's mine.

My good mood has made me ignore the fact that it is raining and will be 1C all night. Tomorrow morning could work for skiing before I head off for Lund.

I am trying to be patient but it is failing miserably. I WANT MY SKIS NOWWWW! Come on Pölder Sport. Enough is enough. If you are so overworked why not hire some extra people???

And I will now tell you why that is not a good idea. I already said that my skis are the wrong length but now I have also learned that my poles are 10cm too short! Maybe this does not mean so much but any small improvement will matter over 90km. So if the guy in Stadium at Solna Centrum from 2004 that sold me this ski equipment happens to still work there, we need to talk. I need to make a return. It will hurt.

Normally I would have given up long ago but I've been bitten by the ski bug. I like it. I want to ski. Öppet Spår is going to kill me but I will do it anyway. So I have just thrown out the budget because there is nothing affordable left in the stores now. Gloves? I just threw away 550kr on a lovely pair of Craft Elite Wind gloves which have perfect fit. Why? There was nothing else in my size.

I hope I can find some reasonably-priced poles tomorrow. But I am terrified that the only thing left in the right length will be the gorgeous Swix Triac that the pros use with a price tag of 3200kr. Hjälp!

Since the google searches have started, here are the links to the finale weekend for CX-Cupen.

8 jan Sandbycrossen arranged by FK Trampen which, if you believe their website, is the most representative for the colours of Skåne (yellow). The course map is here. This will be efteranmälan for me since I was late.

9 jan LundaCrossen arranged by CK Lunedi which, if you ask me, has one of Sweden's best looking uniforms. Love the modern design.
Their course map is here and it looks fantastic!

Weather forecast says 2C which should promise some serious mud. Bring it on!

The last couple of days have not been so ideal for training outside and today was one of those abrubt 'return to stress' days at work. But that was no surprise. Snow is on the way so that will boost my spirits.

Pölder Sport has been in contact with Posten who are now looking for my skis. Huh? Their tracking says Jönköping so how big could the sorting place be there? Just give me my skis. I have been a good boy.

I was also looking at all the ski marathons between now and Vasaloppet and there is no need to go all the way to Mora. Borås, Ulricehamn and Skövde all have races where I can humiliate myself. And I know that the first one is going to hurt like hell. The second one too. So why not make my 3rd be Öppet Spår?

And then we are only a few days from the CX finale down in Lund. I am going and I am late deciding so I still have no clue about my 2011 licens. But if you ask me I think SCF is making this difficult for themselves by putting two races in the next year which are still in last year's series.

And so it was time again for the annual review. Yes...2010...the year I became Chris Cross. The season started with a strange leg injury and continued with 3 races in Senior class of Västgötacupen. That went quite poorly so I switched my goals to marathon.

I set the goal of 10 MTB marathon in 2010 which did not work out because of my lack of money and job security. But now I am set for work for 2011 so one thing is looking better. In June I raced 3 marathon in 3 weeks with 2 in Norway. Raumerrittet was the toughest race I have ever done while Farrisrunden was so muddy and rainy that I do not know what to think. Summer also meant Mörksuggejakten which is still one of my favourites despite the heat, my dehydration and poor performance. Långlopp season ended with CykelVasan which was brilliant.

Then I hand picked every part on my Ridley X-Ride and had a go at assembling a bike myself for the first time. The cross season has been long but very worthwhile and there were some great races. Sucks that I was sick for the last two but shit happens. Speed highlights for me were in Ludvika, at our own race and both races in Sthlm. The rest, well, at least I could race with Dam elit.

Overall, 2010 was a fairly good year for me on the bike. But for 2011 I think I need a better plan. This year I just followed the 'train by racing' philosophy.

Thanks to everyone reading this and posting comments. It keeps me writing.