Mölndals CK was awarded MTB SM 2012 and tonight we had a planning meeting at Slottsskogsvallen where the races will be held. This is the same place where GöteborgsVarvet starts and finishes so the area is well known for sport. Apparently they raced cross there in 2007 but back then I had never heard of cross.

So that is how things switched to cross talk since MCKs CX will be there on 7 nov and Borås will take 6 nov. I also heard mention of Ludvika which would fit well with Norberg in terms of travelling. Then there was something about an extremely central location in Sthlm. But nothing is absolutely official yet so we will have to be patient.

Our Tuesday MTB training will probably become CX training by late August/early September and then Introcrossen on weekends starting late September. But I need to start earlier. Marathon training means I have no sprinting ability but bloody good endurance.

Even though I still haven't been paid, there is some positive news to report. Several sources have hinted that CX Cupen this year will have 14 races plus 1 SM! That is fantastic news!

So now I hope that one of those top-secret CX Sverige members will leak the list soon. October 16th in Falun is already public and so is SM on November 13th, probably in Kumla. Other locations are certainly Stockholm, Göteborg, Norberg and Borås but the rest are a mystery.

When I wrote that I would not do Mörksuggejakten, it didn't feel all that great because that is one race I was actually looking forward to. But now the choice was made easy. I have still not been paid for June but it is supposed to come in tomorrow. But tomorrow after work I was supposed to leave for Rättvik to see Arcade Fire and then continue up to Trysilrittet. But banks do not generally work by logic so there is no guarantee I will have money tomorrow either. To avoid fees on hotels, I had to cancel the whole thing today. Bläää

On the up side, now I can do Mörksuggejakten instead! After all my high-altitude training in Norway (okay, 500m is not THAT high), Vidablick should go very smoothly but I still need to work on my gravel technique so I don't fly off the trail in that fast downhill part. Then I can just sit back and enjoy the wonderful Dala landscape. But not so much that I lose time. This is still my best race so it's time to set a new PB.

And so we get to the last day of the long weekend without money. Hopefully the pay will come in tomorrow because I am running out of ideas.

All of the muscles I trained at the gym are sore today so I slept it, took a nice walk and now it is time for football. Even though I should be cheering for England, I think Germany is still going to manage. Then again, anything can happen in VM.

It was far too beautiful to sit inside so I decided to take a little technical tour out in the forest. And when I started I remembered a year ago when I had precisely the same idea and ended up breaking a rib. Not the best thought. My left crank was making a hell of a noise and I stopped and tightened it but the noise didn't stop until I sprayed some water on it at Skatås. That makes no sense at all.

The plan was to head up to Furulund on some nice trails and take half a lap of the running trail till I reached Bohusleden / Vildmarksleden, then follow that over to Skatås. This is actually forbidden but I only came across one couple the entire time so it was fine.

The trail was pretty wide at first and full of rocks but completely manageable and quite fun. This is exactly the type of trail I see in Swedish marathons all the time. Right after I thought this, a crazy cliff appeared and I jumped off and walked down. I could see a cyclist at the other side up at the top and was wondering if he was waiting for me to move so he could fly down. But actually it was Peter Hansen from Sävedalens CK who is now the first person ever to recognize me from this blog. So we rode together back towards Delsjön. Well, together is maybe the wrong word. I was no match for his fulldämpad Scott and his technical ability but again I was in no mood to speed up and break anything on my bike or my body.

There were quite a few flat rocks of the kind I fall on when they are wet but today was perfectly dry. A couple parts were tough but it was really only that one cliff and another hill that were unrideable. So this was a great trip and nice to ride with someone else. So now I will post when/where I will ride here in case other readers want to join.

I voted to sit and relax in the sun so Peter headed home and I sat and enjoyed life even more than I already was. I was hungry so I grabbed the Squeezy super energy bar I had leftover from the last race and it tasted pretty good...at first. The cola aftertaste was sick. =( And this had caffeine in it which proved my theory from the last race. Caffeine does not make me go faster, it just makes me want to piss.

Now that I am home I can tell you precisely which upper body muscles are used in MTB. All of them. This is why I stopped going to the gym.

I woke up today with some pretty stiff muscles. This always happens when I start up styrkträning again. But my neck is also sore and part of my back which is probably because my cross has a different sitting position than the MTB I am used to at the moment.

So I will start Day 2 with a bit of lördagsmys with a book. This is something I never seem to have time for anymore.

Since I exercised my upper body this morning, I thought it would be best to just train LVG so I only use my legs. Jaja, here come the angry comments. =) So after readjusting my TRP Eurox brakes for the 100th time on my Merida, I was too lazy to change the tires to LVG so I just went out with my cross tires.

Like always, I freak for the first minutes after a jump from 2.1" to 35mm tires and it really is true that cross 'brakes' are absolutely useless. So it is nice that UCI will allow disc brakes but not so nice since I just bought a new frame.

Anyway, I headed towards Sävenäs directly into a hell of a wind but I was moving along well on a bike that is 2kg lighter than my MTB. With a weight difference of THAT much, it is hard to miss the difference. Then I took a quick lap of the Kvibergs GP track and headed back through Utby and home. A quick but effective tour.

Today I decided to visit Sportlife for what is my most expensive gym visit ever. I haven't been there for quite awhile. There were more people than I expected for a holiday but it was still very peaceful compared to back in the winter.

I did my usual weight routine and learned exactly what I suspected...I have no upper body strength at the moment. And this is not good for MTB and the coming cross season. Gym visits are things I can fit into my busy work schedule so this I will continue.

I thought I would get paid before midsommar but I do not see any cash yet. Like I said earlier in the week, I am broke. Plus, my Västtrafik pass expires today so I am pretty stuck.

So my options for fun are pretty limited. I guess my body will be taking 3 days of cycling...

This week has been hopeless for training. I get home at 19.00 and am ready for bed so I guess all I am doing is resting for the weekend. I am fixing the brakes on my old cross and changing to LVG tires so I can vary my training a bit. Trysil is a mountain area so Trysilrittet next week means I should do some hill intervals this week.

This should be pay week so I was doing a little calculating of how much cash I will need for hotels and race fees for July. Things are looking far from good. Could someone spare some change for a bit of Dala cycling? I am good at promoting hotels and energy products. ;)

Anyway, now I will not do Mörksuggejakten which is a shame because I like that race and I could not do it last summer due to injury. But there is no way I can manage that, pay for CykelVasan and Sandefjordrittet and cover my hotel costs in Trysil. So that means more time for training and I will once again add SM Marathon in Hässleholm to my 10 race list.

Now I would like to talk about the best-tasting recovery drink I have ever had...YT restitusjonsdrikk. This milk drink with a mix of banana and strawberry is perfect so next time I am in Norway I need to buy a car load of this. Good thing my car is small.

Of course Gainomax is pretty similar and I have been using that for a couple of years now. YT has less sugar than Gainomax and the taste is more natural. So this is probably what I noticed. Other than that, the content is the same.

After long races, nothing beats Enervit R2 but for shorter training like I just did, YT would do just perfect.

I woke up today feeling extremely lazy. Training was the last thing I had in mind but after sitting around all day yesterday, I forced myself out into this wet 11C morning. Given my state of laziness, I decided on a mostly-road pass starting directly with the climb up to Furulund. And today this felt almost as bad as the very first time I rode up there. By the time I reached Tahult my body was feeling fine and I was starting to think that cycling was a fine idea at the moment. So then I pushed on.

The worst hill on this road is when it climbs to head over the E20 tunnel. In a marathon, I normally stay sitting for these and just keep up a steady rhythm on a reasonable gear. Today I tried the 'stand up and ride like hell' method which is definitely faster and easier. Problem is this gives me an instant cramp if I have 60km in my legs. So then it was just time to head back from Jonsered by the usual slalom around dogs, horses, alcoholics and slow cyclists.

It feels like I need to get some more variation in my training. I will work on that.

I had a slightly long sovmorgon today. I almost never sleep until 10.00 but today it was easy. So today's plan sort of disappeared in a wave of cleaning, grocery shopping and even some gardening. And to continue my trend, I might as well just watch the wedding because I will have to hear about it constantly everywhere for the next week. It sucks to be out of the loop.

But to celebrate the cross weather outside and to give myself something fun to do while the TV is on, I officially announce the start of the building of my Ridley X-Ride!

After this horrible stressy work week, it is suddenly Friday night and I have the whole weekend ahead of me. So what should I do? Obviously VätternRundan is out and so are the 2 XC races in Borås. All of my remaining money is going to food at the moment. Did I mention how much it costs to race in Norway? Fy 17 maj!

Any other ideas? Should I watch all 12 hours of the royal wedding coverage on TV4? Nää...I think 2 hours is enough. I could clean my apartment. Woohoo...what a funny joke. ;) Obviously I will do some cycling but where, when and in what form are completely undecided. Surprises are fun if you ask me.

Yes, where is the train indeed. This week has been 85% work stress, 15% poor sleep and a 100% absence of cycling. Bläää. But I did sign up for Sandefjordrittet on 31 juli which means I could technically do 11 MTB marathons in 2010. Or I could train cross after Bockstensturen. This idea I like more.

And so we are here in the week that most cyclists in Sweden look forward to...VätternRundan. Like most, this is the first race I heard about and 300km on a bike just sounds silly. But 'the classic' is really the biggest athletic achievement for the average motionär so of course this is a goal of many. I have not done this but two years I did try and find a place to stay, with no luck.

I guess my biggest problem is LVG in general. I would end up somewhere in the middle of the fika crowd and have to actually be social and talk to people for half a day. Since I speak English, I would have to answer these 3 questions over and over...Where are you from? Why did you come to Sweden? When are you leaving? In MTB we are focused on staying on our bike so we keep the smalprat to a minimum.

My advice is to take a real challenge...Styrkeprøven! This is also known as Trondheim - Oslo. 540km all at once! And in the first 150km you have to climb over 1km vertical! And hopefully they will bring back their 6-day MTB etapplopp soon.

Noe å snakke om indeed!

Återhämtning is going much faster since I am already into the deppig part which I called coma cycle last week. That must mean I am in better shape.

So now I will sit back, relax and dream that I become rich so I can move to a place like this some day...

While I wake up this morning with some back pain, I thought it was time to check the Farrisrunden results and see the painful reality. And it was not so bad.

In the H35-39 class I finished 336th out of 358 which is pretty okay considering how many extra stops I made. And overall I was 1359th of 1471 which is also acceptable. My muscles held up very well yesterday and I seem to have the energy issue solved. Soon...

Well, this was another one of those days. I am starting to get the feeling that Grenserittet is the easiest Norwegian race. I also use to think races here were easier than in Sweden. Nope. Still, 70km was a good length for today. It was pouring rain while I drove to the parking and it did let up a bit but just in time for my start it was pouring again. I found these two pictures...


The opening road part switched over to grus a bit too soon and I was getting completely covered in mud. And that is the summary of the day...28km of road and 42km of mud. I didn't really reflect on it at the time but the grus was that sucking mud that made things go quite slowly. In this opening 20km there were 3 singletrack parts which were just deep mud and for the most part unrideable. And I swear that there was an electric fence along the side of one of these. So up to the first food stop was really slow since it was still raining.

The first food stop had a bucket where I could wash my glasses which was great because I could not see a thing. I had pretty much finished my first bottle of energy drink and took some gel and water and then headed off for a well-deserved 10km of road which was pretty okay until it started heading up. This was the start of the biggest hill of the day and it was pretty slow but the rain had stopped so it was fine. It switched over to grus and then it was pretty tough going but I still didn't need to switch to the easiest gears. Last week has done a lot for my climbing muscles. Problem was that I had other strong urges at this point because I wasn't sweating but I was drinking AND having caffeine. So the food stop at the top of Skolapperåsen became a drink stop and a run in the forest and piss stop. I spent way too long there.

Directly after that was the singletrack downhill which I really took it easy on. I was sliding and others around me were falling all over so I ended up dismounting and walking down. It was a nasty hill with first aid help at the bottom. So I was happy to see some grus and road after that but it was another tung backe. This part was pretty nice and the nature and mountains around were wonderful to look at. There were some fun downhill and flat parts and even a serpentine road to enjoy.

But at Kjose things started heading up again and yet again I needed to make an unscheduled piss stop. I have no idea what was going on with my body. These hills were big enough to awake the cramp monster a bit so I switched to the easiest gear. There was less than 20km left so it was looking good...until Kringlemyr singletrack. There was no choice. I and everyone else walked the entire way. The mud was up to my arse and after this my pedals were clogged, my shoes would not really clip in and I was just really pissed off. Which is just when another tough hill started.

Finally there was 5km left and there was a group of 7 together on the road part. I passed 4 rather nicely and then it switched to motionspår with 2km left where there were only 3 in front. I was på rulle with one and the two in front both slid on some mud but I and the other guy were still going. I, unlike many others, had mud tires. So at the very last hill I cut in front and tried to get up the hill which was full of people. I made it half way and then dismounted and ran up cross-style. It was beautiful. The other guy was not up for a spurt so I started towards the finish and could not get one foot in the stupid muddy pedal so I did my little spurt with one foot attached.

So, what was the result?
Time: 4:29:58
Distance: 70km
Yes, longer than the horrible 80km last week. Pathetic. All this because of rain and 7km of singletracks you had to walk slowly through. My bodily issues didn't help either.

I would have loved this race if it was dry. So I will probably have to give it another try next year. For now I am just dead tired and very muddy. I doubt my uniform will ever be white again.

It has rained a hell of a lot here today but apparently it was dry the rest of the week. Still, the YR.no forecast for tomorrow is a couple mm of rain and 9C which is not quite what SMHI said. Sometimes I wonder what these weather people are doing. If it is raining essentially everywhere else, why would it not rain here?

So what was supposed to be an easy race is now going to be wet wet. The roads are not so bad when wet and I usually have more grip in wet gravel but the 7km of singletrack are going to suck.

My energy strategy has been changed by the fact that they could not get my Swedish credit cards to work at the Sport1 tent. Apparently technology is a bit behind here. Which is a shame because they had a ton of great cycling stuff at cheap prices.

So I will have to mix and match with products. Apparently products with caffeine are only 'appropriate' for elite level riders in Norway but the Squeezy representative sold me some anyway. Tonight I will have a couple Enervit Presport before bed. My first two sportdryck bottles will be full of Enervit G Sport Competition (con caffeina) which was great last week. Then I have a Squeezy Energy Gel (125ml liquid) to sip from at the first two stops. If I need it, I also have a Squeezy Energy Super Bar (+ caffeine) and after I finish, my usual Enervit R2 Recovery.

With all this, it should be impossible to run out of energy.

The problem with travelling to races is that you don't normally have time to see anything in the place you go to. Last weekend I was just in a little suburb so there was nothing to see. But Sandefjord is lovely and I would like to see more.

My drive up to Strömstad was much nicer than last weekend where everything was under construction. Color Line managed to keep schedule despite the pouring rain and I passed the 2.5hours in the buffet and wandering around watching Norwegians buy as much booze as they could. I ate way too much but it was a good balance with more carbs than last week.

After bilkö and some attempts to figure out the one-way streets in Sandefjord, I arrived at the Clarion Collection Hotel Atlantic which is just fantastic. The pictures do not really do it justice so I took a few of my own.


When it is a Collection hotel you get free dinner which was in a restaurant full of old sailing equipment and loads of cool stuff for a museum geek like me. So more eating has left me pretty sedated for the day.

But this is a city I would like to look around more. And I don't know if I will have time for that. Perhaps I should be happy that Farrisrunden put a coupon in the start bag for a free cruise Strömstad-Sandefjord! Good good!

According to my normal routine, I should be out annoying people on motionspår right now. But that will not happen tonight. I have been walking around a lot at work today so hopefully that will be enough so that the pile of spaghetti I am making right now will get to my legs. If not, I can jump up and down a bit. ;)

I believe that relaxtion, stress-reduction and getting a good night's sleep are just as important as sprint training before a race. Besides, tomorrow I have quite a heavy schedule of eating.

Even though I feel a bit tired this morning, I am essentially 100% recovered from Raumerrittet. Återhämtning never takes me this long so I take that as a sign of just how tough I worked in that race.

I would say that only Finnmarksturen here in Sweden could come close to comparison with Raumerrittet. In my second season ever I did Finnmarksturen in 7 hours which was pathetic so 4.5 hours last weekend is a step in the right direction.

While the rain pours down here in Göteborg (something which has not been that common lately), I can sit inside and look at the profil of my next race Farrisrunden.

This races looks way more reasonable than last weekend and the organizers promise a beautiful ride. This is only 70km and the largest hill is right in the middle and only 200m. It reminds me a lot of Mörksuggejakten, actually. But after last week I am not looking forward to that downhill section on a singletrack with the teknisk zone at the bottom. I know what that means now.

I am starting in group 9 which is the last of the autoseeding groups. I understand after last week's result. But this is my optimal length so I feel pretty confident. Let's race!