Sometimes you have days when you just "don't have it", yesterday was definitely one of those days...

Ever since racing PowerMan Zofingen three weeks ago I have been fighting a 'semi cold', ie. I've had cold symptoms but it hasn't developed into a fully fledged cold...  It's been kinda 2 - 3 days when I've felt like crap and hence done no training, just focused on getting lots of sleep, chugging down huge amounts of Vitamin C and plenty of fluids. The back to light training to keep the body 'loose' for Lidingoloppet, only for the 'crappy' feeling to recur...

Going in to the race yesterday, Lidingoloppet 30 K XC, I'd been feeling pretty OK since Tuesday so I at least had hopes of having a decent race. 

My legs felt really light & loose when I started my warmup which is always good, but even when just jogging at a very relaxed pace my heart rate shot up to 150 BPM which is about 20 beats too high.  Could it just be the heart rate monitor that was going nuts?!???

Unfortunately it wasn't...  Just 2 K into the race I felt really winded and had a heart rate of 188 BPM even though I was just running at a 38 min 10 K pace. This was still ca 20 BPM higher than normal...

I kept plugging hoping that I would settle into a normal pulse rate and feel better. Sadly it was not to be...  I came through the 5k mark at ~ 19min 15sec which was still well on pace for  a sub 2 hr finish.  BUT I just felt worse & worse and by now I was starting to get light headed and dizzy....   Arrrggghhhhhhhhh.... Sooo  frustrating.

Time to face the facts. I still have some kind of "bug in the system" and there's no point in trying to push the limit when you're not feeling well. Hence I decided to call it a day when we came through the 8 km mark where we passed an area with spectators where Dragana was standing.  Just as she screamed "c'mon Peter!!!!" I stopped.  Sorry babe.....

I immediately started to excuse myself for dragging her along to the race when I didn't finish, but with a few minutes of perspective and still with a sky high heart rate it was evident that a DNF today was the right call.

So that's that.  The end of the racing season.  Time for some recovery.

I just realized yesterday that I have not had more than 5 consecutive days off from training since February 2007 so now I will grant myself a full week with no training!  The focus in the coming week will be relaxing with Dragana, eating what I want whenever I want, focus on unhealthy food like Pizza & Kebab's etc...  Then there's Red Wine, there will be lots of that too!!!

Once the "sloppy relax week" is over time to refocus and start building for next year, ease back into training in preparation for the first goal of 2009. More on that goal soon....

made slightly better by a great rider position!!!

2008 Mens TT World Champ Bert Grabsch from Germany on his Team Columbia, Giant TT bike.  Arguably the ugliest looking bike in the business, but wow what a position, his back is totally flat. 

Wish I sat like this on my TT bike....

Next year maybe?!?  ;-)

Today I finally found a picture of the new Cervelo P4 TT bike.  This is the much "ballyhooed"  sucessor to the the worlds most successful TT rig the P3C. It's been a myth on discussion forums for a while so I was no doubt curious to see what it would look like.

Whilst Cervelo has tricked it out with some really cool features, the visual appearance is quite anticlimatic...  It's not a pretty rig but thankfully not as ugly as Team Columbia's 08 Giant TT bike.

Or...

What do YOU think?

This coming Saturday I am going to run Lidingöloppet which is a 30 Km Cross Country Race run on an island just east of downtown Stockholm.  The race is run primarily on trails, gravel paths and a few hundred meters on a bike path.  By Swedish standards the course is considered VERY challenging with a rolling course profile and one very long & very steep hill at the 25 K mark. After the 30 K run portion at PowerMan Zofingen that leads you up to the top of an actual mountain, twice... this will seem flat by comparison ;-) 

That's not to say that it's easy though...  I've run this race twice before and so far my best tim is 2hrs 4min, something I hope to improve on this year. Hopefully there's some juice left in my body for that!

This race is a real classic that has been around for 43 years.  From 'just' one race, this is now a running festival from Friday to Sunday with different races for all ages.  All in all there are around 15,000 participants in the different races, where the 30 K race  on Saturday is "The Big One"!

More info on the race can be found on

http://www.lidingoloppet.se/start/invitation_eng.cfm?Rac_ID=

...almost.

Since PowerMan Zofingen that is ;-)

Strangely enough my body felt very good right after the big race, no soreness anywhere just some serious overall fatigue...

Right as we got home from Switzerland on Tuesday, Sept 9,   I took 4 days off where I did no excercise at all. Instead full focus on trying to get as much sleep as possible.  This proved to be easier said than done as I had to try and  try to squeeze in an entire work week into just 4 days at work with tons of meetings.

Only workout of the week was riding the bike to and from work for a 90 minute total.

Needless to say when the weekend came I started feeling really deflated and signs of an oncoming cold...   Consequently, Saturday almost never existed. Got up 10:30 had breakfast, felt like crap and went back to bed, got up at 3 pm and watched the Vuelta Espana Cycling race. Then back to bed again around 8 pm.  All in all I slept 18 hours over a 24 hour period....

Apparently you do NOT recover enough to start doing any kind of quality training with 10 days or so after a gruelling 7hr 35min Ultra Duathlon...

The following Tuesday I managed todo an 18.5 K run at a decent pace on hilly cross country trails and an easy 1 hour ride on Tuesday.  Then started to feeling the cold symptoms again.  More rest needed...

Ended up resting until this past Sunday when I did a 50 minute run where I warmed up and cooled down with Dragana.  Just focused on rythem and keeping the pulse below 150 bpm.  Finally my legs are starting to feel a little alive...

Monday was a moderate 1 hour trainer ride after work that felt ok & today a 25 min tradmill run at the gym.  10 min warmup then 10 min at 37 min 10K pace followed by a 5 min cool down and stretching.

Folks, the man is hammering hard already....

For an in depth 5 minute video special on Lance's preparations for the upcoming comeback, go to http://mashsf.com/ and look for the video in the lower right hand corner of the screen. It should start automatically.

Apparently urban riding is the way to go these days...  Doesn't seem like he's lost any of his aggression, just look at how he cuts off a car when making  right turn from Riverside onto 1st Street!

Contador you have been warned...

This past Sunday I competed in Powerman Zofingen which is the Duathlon Ultra Distance World Championships (the Duathlon equivalent of Ironman Hawaii...) over the distances of 10 km Run - 150 km Bike - 30 km Run. 

Before going in to any specifics and perhaps expletives... this is without a doubt the hardest race I have ever done, and that's mainly due to the brutal course and not the distance.  All in all the course had ~ 2435 meters // 8120 feet of elevation gain...

Forecast for the day was rain and indeed it was raining at the start, albeit just a light drizzle...

The first run was uphill right from the start and the darn thing lasted over 3 km. Not the way you want to start a long day....  After 5 minutes my pulse was already at 170 bpm and my legs felt like lead and by now the light rain at the start had turned in to a torrential downpour... How was this going to end????   After a while I finally settled in to something that resembled a 'controlled' rhytm and turned on the cruise control to set myself up for the bike leg. 

After two laps on the 5 k course I came into T1 with a 38min 42 sec 10k time. This was a few minutes faster than planned, and still I was just in 82nd place of the 200 starters....  This was going to be a long day! 

 Onto the bike the rain had let up a little so I could at least see where I was going  which helps when the roads are narrow, twisty and slick and difficult to handle to begin with ;-)  

I decided to start out slowly and work my way in to a rythm I could live with for the 150 km for which I had 'budgeted' about 4hrs 30min. Focused on drinking lots of fluids and eating gels, bananas and bars early.  The eating part was definitely good as I had plenty of energy all the way.  Seems like I drank a bit too much though as I felt like stopping for a leak about 2/3 rds into the first lap.  I pushed myself a bit longer & made the first "pit stop" about 1/3 rd into lap 2 at the bottom of the Bodenberg climb.  Man what a relief.......

After the stop I started to feel a lot better and upped the pace considerably which resulted in dropping the 4 or 5 riders I had been towing for the better part of a lap!  Out onto the western part of the lap between 20 to 35 km into it I was "flying" doing well in excess of 50 km/h // 30 mph for several minutes at a time and easily averaging 42 - 44 km/h  // 26 - 27 mph for this section.   If the whole lap could have been like this things would have been great as I was catching lots of riders and dropping them like hot rocks on this section.  Did not get passed by a single rider on this part all day!  That was in contrast to the hills where I was not as strong as I had expected.

All in all I had a good bike leg and averaged 33.15 km/h  //  20.6 mph for a total ride time of 4hrs 35min. This was a very controlled ride where I was saving myself for the last 30 km run, so with a bit more effort I could easily have gone 7 - 8 minutes faster. Unsure where that would've put me for the second run though. But inretrospect I would have loved for the bike leg to be 200 km as I felt great!

Out on to Run #2, a nice little 30 km Cross Country trot, my legs felt pretty OK.  That is until we hit the HILL, WALL or whatever you want to call it....  The pace quickly dropped from 45 - 47 min 10K pace to something like 60 - 65 min 10K pace and what must have looked like a drunk shuffle.....

By now negative thoughts started popping up and I momentarily thought "F**k this, I'm quitting...."   Thankfully Dragana's pre race words of encouragement and "Come Onnnnnnnn" out on the course quickly made me change my mind and press on.

After being passed by 3 - 4 runners going up the initial 4 km climb up a mountain to the park overlooking Zofingen I  amazingly enough started feeling a LOT BETTER very suddenly once the terrain levelled out a bit.

Soon I upped the pace to ~ 44 - 45 min 10K pace and started passing people left & right.  This worked wonders for the mindset and I dared to start pushing harder and harder.  Going down the mountain I was going sub 40 min 10K pace and felt great!

Coming in top the "Stadium" / Transition Area to go out on lap 2 was an amazing feeling with more than 1,000 people cheering on and 'high fiving' from the stands.  Dragana was standing just before the Stadium entrance so I saw her twice in 5 minutes, and the yelling definitely helped!!!

The second climb up the mountain was A LOT easier than the first one. That's not to say that it was fast by any means, but according to my clock I did the 5 k climb about 5 minutes faster the second time around which would equal 25 min 5K pace. Not bad for such a steep climb.  Coming up to the park at the top of the climb I decided to gamble a little and really push during the flat 5 k section and off and on managed to get close to 40min 10K pace. 

Coming down the second time I was hoping to really light it up but it soon became evident that my legs just couldn't go faster than ~ 38 min 10K pace, thigh muscles were just too shot...  I still passed 7 people going down the hill, but unfortunately also had 2 pass me and they were both in my age group.....  

I finished pretty strong though, coming through the last km in ~ 38 min 10K pace, and all in all the 30 K felt surprisingly good.  Never thought I'd say that after the slooooow start...

Total 30 K run time was 2hrs 16min 27sec which was 5th fastest in my age group and 27th fastest overall. Easily my best  effort on the day!!!

All in all I finished in  7 hours 34 minutes 55,5 seconds for 8th in my age group (of 45 something starters) and a 35th place overall of 200 startes  and 165 finishers in a very strong field stacked with good athletes!

I was extremely happy when crossing the finish line at a packed stadium and now brilliant sunshine!!!

This is by far the hardest event I have ever done, and not having done such a long distance before I think I paced myself pretty well as I was strong all the way and felt great when I came across the finish line!!!

Having all the fantastic Swiss Fans and great Volunteers out along the course aid stations was a huge help, you guys were awesome!!!   Most of all though, Dragana, you made me stay strong all the way, thanks BABE!!!!!

With a few days of perspective it's easy to pick out what I did wrong. I could have done this, that and the other better etc etc etc.   Still I am very happy, but definitely not satisfied as I was just 3 min 10 seconds out of 3rd place in my age group....

That was about the only bummer of the day, that I was soo close to the podium as I had plenty of juice left at the finish.  Analyzing the race I "gave up" the podium on the first run as I was just 19th in my age group on Run #1, but 6th on the bike and 5th on Run #2.

That said I had not ben comfortable going much faster on the first run. So, to get on the podium next year I need to develop more natural run speed, likely working my way down to where I can do a 10 K in less than or right around 35 minutes.  As for endurance, I have enough of that, as is also the case when it comes to bike speed.

I will be back to this awesome race & I will get that podium at some point. Preferrably already next year!!!!!!

Here are a few pictures of the bike course at Powerman Zofingen.  As you can see the local fans are out in force even the day before the race :-)

This was a really awesome course, 3 x 50 km loop for a total of 150 km  (~ 94 miles) that had a little bit of everything...   1really BIG 3 mile climb up the infamous Bodenberg where the steepest sections are ~ 17% for almost half a mile & we did this 3 times in the race. Then there were 2 smaller climbs that we also did x 3.

On the east & west side of the Bodenberg climb there were some fairly flat parts where you could really hammer, especially on the west side during the second half of the lap there was a 5 something mile stretch where I was in the 53 / 11 gear the whole time humming along at almost 55 km/h  ie.  31 - 32 mph tucked down as loooow as possible. That was the most awesome part of the course, and just because of that I wish we would have done 4 laps and not "just" 3....

It's late here in Stockholm, and I am still very tired after the race, so I will have wait with the detailed race report & lots of great pictures by Dragana until tomorrow.  But to kill the suspense a little, yes I did finish the race in a decent position & time, more than a full minute faster than the 2nd place Women's PRO athlete who happened to be Swedish. Thus I was the fastest Swedee in the race :-)

More tomorrow!!!  Over 'n' out for now ;-)