...Another great week in Stockholm, the amazing weather continues!!!

After a busy day of training & shopping we decided to have a picknic on the pier overlooking the lake where we live. 'Very niceeeee...' Dragana whipped up some Quinoa mixed with Olives, Garlic and Hazelnuts. Just what you need after a long day & as you can see from the pics we did enjoy ourselves. The bird sitting on the fence was very well mannered and hunted for his own food!

For the past four days we've enjoyed tons of sunshine & temps in the mid 70's. Toasty!!! Consequently all Swedes are going bonkers and flocking to the beaches desperatly trying to get a tan and at least have one tick in the box for "Beach 2008" ... ;-)

Thanks to Peter's cousins Martin & Per coming to Stockholm for the Kiss concert this past Friday, we finally got enough of a kick in the ass to finish unpacking! We busted our tails from 5 to 10:30 pm and by the time the boys cruised in the place was spotless!!! Can ya believe it?!?

Next step is to try and get some more appropriate furniture as we got rid of some stuff in Austin & this place looks totally different. The most critical investment right now is a kitchen table. Looking for a bar table so we can make use of the bar stools we brought from Austin...

Dragana has tons of ideas & me I'm just trying to keep up...

This weeks training....

Monday: rest day.... too much work & felt tired after last weekend's semi long runs.

Tuesday: 5 x 1 km intervals on treadmill. 3:25 min / km w/ 2 min jog. Had planned to do 6 intervals but didn't feel good & could only muster up 5... All in all ~ 50 min & 11 km.

Wednesday: 1hr 26 min ride on P2C in beautiful weather & great scenery. Will try to take pics of this route next time. All in all ~ 27 miles.

Thursday: 1 hr 24 min Bike intervals on the DA out on Ingaro. Slightly improvised as I had to combat a 'stop & go' bus several times... Base set after 15 min warmup was 10:30 all out, 4 min roll easy, 12 min all out, 4 min roll, 11:30 all out, 8 min roll then 3 - 4 max pickups of 2 - 3 min. 10 min cooldown. Pace during the all out sessions averaged ~ 26 mph / 42 kmh. Felt great!

Friday: 45 min easy trainer ride, ~ 18.5 mph average.

Saturday: 1 hr 30 min / 12.5 miles (4.42 min / km avg) trail run. Consciously took it pretty easy & felt OK but not great. Had planned to do about 2 hrs in total but whimped out & the lure of the Stockholm Marathon on TV got too strong....

Sunday: 3hrs 38 min ride from home to Ingaro for 2 long laps & back on DA followed by a nice and slow 38 min run with Dragana around Sickla Sjo. Total for today: 4 hrs 18 min.

Feel quite OK and look forward to this week as we're off on Friday. Big week(end...) ahead?!?

Total for the week: 9 hrs & 33 min. Had hoped to break 10 hours this week, better luck this coming week?!???

I'd be exaggerating if I said that summer is here by Swedish standards, much less by Austin, Tx measures, but at least we're approaching low 70's & not a cloud in sight today!

Not bad 'eh?!?

We're slowly starting to settle in to life in Stockholm & every bit of sunshine helps! I just wish we could muster up the energy to work through all the boxes in our apartment and finally finish “unpacking”.... We're about 75% done now, but it seems it's getting harder with every box.

This week we have a very good incentive to finish the unpacking though as Peter's two little cousins from Tidaholm are coming to the Big City to see a Kiss concert on Friday. How the heck did these guys get to like Kiss, they were not even planned when Kiss were big the first time?!?!???

On the training front things have gotten a lot better in the past 9 days:

Saturday, May 17:

~ 10 miles trail running in Hellas Garden. It became very obvious that you forget things over a span of a couple of years. Thought I knew the trail I was running on & it was looking sooo good running next to this little lake. That is until the trail all of a sudden ended, and I was all of a sudden rock climbing. At least someone had marked a “path” with the little yellow dots I had been following when the trail ended. All in all I had a mix of jumping, jogging & climbing for ~ 2.5 miles and that took well over 30 min.... Overall pace was slow & comfortable at ~ 7:45 min / mile.

Sunday, May 18:

~ 13 miles in Hellas Garden. This time I decided to stick with a trail I remember a little better which made for better rhythm & steadier pace even though there are lots of hills on this one. Averaged about 7:10 min / mile.

Monday, May 19:

~ 40 miles on the bike. Broke out the Cervelo P2C & had planned to just go for an easy 45 min spin to loosen up my legs that were a bit tired from the past two days of running. That was untile two road racers passed me & instinct took over. ½ mile later I had chased them down & explained that I was just looking for someone with local knowledge to learn some roads from... Thankfully they were cool & they could ride too. At lest one of the dudes who was quite chatty let on that he's working in a bike store in town & was taking the long road home...

Tuesday, May 20:

Tot 55 min running / ~ 7.5 miles on a treadmill. 12 min warmup then 6 x 1 min ( 2 min jog). First 5 were @ 3:30 min/ km – 5:38 min / mile. Last one was 3:15 min / km = 5:14 min/mile. Felt surprisingly good even during the
last one. When it hurts, just crank it up & hope that it feels better. Many thanks to the dude on the treadmill next to me who continued to blurt words of encouragement during the last 3 intervals!

Wednesday, May :21

REST. I really needed a day off.... Spent the evening on the couch watching Champions League Soccer Final. Wow what a match!

Thursday, May 22:

1 hour stationary bike, hard! Power Intervals 3 x 7 min (3 min easy) + 2 x 8 min in a very heavy gear & low cadence.

Friday, May 23:

50 min stationary bike at moderate pace.

Saturday, May 24:

2 hrs 28 min bike (Felt DA) ~ 41 miles fairly easy effort. Just focused on finding my form & positionon the new bike + 30 min run @ ~ 7 min / mile pace.

Sunday, May 25:

1 hr 45 min bike (Felt DA) ~ 36 miles moderate effort. + 38 min run.
Seems I may have found a good guy to train with. For months I've been reading a blog from a guy named Jojje (nick name for Robert...) where he's documenting his effort to qualify for Ironman Hawaii. Last week I dropped him an email and today we managed to hook up for a short ride. Good guy & looking forward to training with him again!

Since our apartment is still full of boxes we can't publish any pic's of that yet so we decided to take a few shots from the balcony so you can see what we see when we go out. Then thee are also a few from across the lake where we live. This is about 2 miles away & right next to an extensive network of trials to run on. Yummie...

Until later...

After an awesome week last week with lots of riding and running this week has almost been a total write off as far as training goes.  

For obvious reasons Peter was a bit deflated after the Scandic Bike Tour but still managed an easy stretching & strength workout on Monday. 

Didn't feel too bad...

But go figure...  As Dragana was already fighting a cold when she picked me up in Boras on Sunday it was seemingly only a matter of time before I caught the bug.

Felt like crap Tuesday so i decided to take a few days off to get rest & sleep.  Felt good on Saturday morning so I went out for a 9 mile run in 1 hour & 4 minutes, and felt pretty good, just cruised along in the brilliant Stockholm sunshine.   Felt like I was back in it and planned to do about a  ~ 2 1/2 hour run today.

Not to be though....  Woke up & felt like crap again. Sweating like  pig so I'm like carrying a fever or something. Spent the whole day on the couch watching F1 from Turkey & Stage 2 of the Giro d Italia.  Good enetertainment but still feel grumpy, just as Dragana...

She is feeling a lot better so hopefully we'll both be 100% soon! 

Yesterday we had our earliest start so far, wheels down at 8:30 am. I was a bit concerned that the first hour or so would be a bit chilly with such an early start, but not so! 65 F and sunny right from the get go, WOW!
 
Unlike the ride on Saturday, I felt really strong from the start, and I was looking forward to some good fast paced riding. I didn't have to wait too long... After about 30 minutes 8 of us in a group of 10 were rotating, taking pulls of 3 - 4 min each. Even though we were rolling along at just over 25 mph the pace felt very comfortable and we were just chewing up the miles like nothing!
 
 A couple of hours in to the ride the pace went up even further and we were rolling along at about 27 mph, hence the number of people willing to take pulls at the front decreased by the mile and after a while there were only 5 of us, 3 Pro's, 1 Semi Pro & me...   For some reason it seemed I was always at the front when we hit a hill and thus forced to go absolutely all out for 4 - 5 minutes to the point that I almost blacked out. Thankfully I was able to hold on and survive to the next 'pee break...', only for the pain to resume shortly after rolling again.

If I thought we were going hard as it was, there was apparently one more gear to put in as a few guys put in a monster sprint going up a hill about 7 miles outside of Borås that blew the field wide open.  5 guys escaped and I was momentarily left befind...  Once we crested the hill I was able to pull away from the three I was with (in all honesty Jonas didn't care to chase...) and and give chase going downhill.  I finally caught up with the lead group about 3 miles outside Borås.  Thankfull no one  wanted more  so we just  cruised  it home  to the finish at Onyx Gym in Borås where we quickly suited up to go for a run.  This felt like a good idea while on the bike but ~ 5 minutes in to the run I felt awful and wanted to stop but didn't quite know where I was so I continued on...  Strangely I was starting to feel really good and at the end of the half hour run I felt like I could've easily run for another hour.  A great way to end a fantastic day!!!

All in all 121 miles on the bike in 5 hrs 2 minutes, avg speed not counting roll out from Växjö & roll in to Borås was about 23.5 mph, how 'bout that?!?   We saved the fastest ride for the last day!!!

The day started out with a slow 45 minute run on legs that were "ok" but... the itching from my running tights were killing my balls. Not good if you have to hop on a bike less than 2 hours after the run... After lubing myself up with vaseline…. we were back on the bikes  in near perfect weather, 62 F, Sunny and a light headwind.  Despite the conditions I was feeling a bit deflated from yesterday’s  130 mile trek.  After an hour or so I was starting to feel better as we upped the pace a little and started chewing up the miles rolling across small twisty country roads towards Smaland.  Despite the group “agreement” that  we were going to have a nice easy ride from Karlshamn to Vaxjo, that all went out the window with about 25 miles to go…  Then when David and Ted took to the front for a monster pull the pace went up to ~ 27 mph which is where it stayed for the next 30 minutes or so. By this time I felt pretty ok and had no problem ‘cruising along’ in the third pair.  All in all we did 63 miles at an average speed of 20 mph today. Tomorrow we roll out of Vaxjo at 8:30 am aiming for the finishline in Boras some 120 miles away!  

Today started out with a nice 45 min 10 K "jog" with Jonas, Ted, Clas, David, Pasi & Anders.

Next up huge breakfast to get ready for the 130 mile trek from Lund to Karlshamn.

When we rolled out at 11 am the sun was shining and it was taost by Swedish standars, 65 F!!!  Todays ride started out pretty leisurly for the first hour before we picked it up a bit but still to what was comfortably uncomfortable at most.

A little over 2 hours into the ride the boys decided to pick up the pace & really dropped the hammer, all of a sudden we're in full wing formation doing a MONSTER Team Time Trial averaging over 27 mph for about an hour...  I was taking pulls a little more than half ways through this stretch but as there were only 6 of us doing the rotations it was very very hard and the last three rounds I just had to "ease" up a little and hang on for dear life! Thankfull we rolled into Ahus, not a minute too late, where we stopped in the harbor to sample the local specialty, Strommingsmacka. Mmmmm goood!

As we rolled out of Ahus we had picked up a couple of local riders and pretty soon we were roasting them good. As the dropped off we picked up the pace and soon enough the Team TT was back on, this time on much smaller roads so we could "only" do 25 mph... I was taking pulls here too, but towards the end I was just trying to hang on to the group and this took several redline efforts where the legs were burning....

Thankfully Jonas decided that we should cruise it in the last 30 min. This lasted to the city limite when I ended up at the front of the pack with David who never misses a pull, and soon enough the hammer was down again!  Thankfully I was able to hold my own and make it look credible!

All in all just a tad over 130 miles of riding in 6 hrs 1 min ~ 22 mph. That plus the 45 min morning run earned me a small bag of candy after dinner.... ;-)

 Tommorow's agenda is a 1 hour run in the morning, ~ 65 miles from karlshamn to Lund and then maybe a short run when the triathletes go swimming.

After a beautiful day yesterday, the weather god's had an off day today, it rained cats & dogs all the way from Halmstad to Lund.  This is normally a very beautiful ride but it's a bit challenging to appreciate when you have to devote all your focus on the road....

The best psrt of today's ride was the climb over Hallandsasen which separates Halland from Skane.  All in all it's about a 3 mile long climb where you climb ~ 1200 ft.  I was 2nd wheel going into the climb and 5th when we reached the top, not bad considering the field!

I felt pretty decent for most of the ride although no real snap in my legs which was going to cost later. About the only annoying thing so far had been that my right aero bar had come loose and in the process started to make the bike a bit tardy with the shifts...

With about 20 miles to go we went around a right turn and unfortunately I was in the wrong gear when the field decided to hit the hammer big time. For a second I thought I was OK as I had Jonas right next to me but he quickly pulled out a few meters and after a while I was left to chase by myself.  And chase I did, 80 miles into the ride, in the rain I was doing an all out time trial by myself where i did ~ 24 mph alone for over 20 minutes when the group finally slowed down, puhhhhh.....

After 99 miles of riding in 5 hours and 1 minute, we finally rolled into the hotel.  A warm shower & dry clothes has seldom felt soooo good.

The evening would've been perfect if it hadn't been for the Fawlty Towers standard of the service in the hotel restaurant.  At least the food was ok...

Big day tomorrow, so I'm gonna hit the sack now.  Run ~ 6 miles at 8 am, then a quick breakfast before we roll out for our longest ride on the tour, 135 miles from Lund to Karlshamn! 

The only appropriate description of what happened today is WOW!!!!!!!....

Still can't believe I am doing this, and who I am riding with.   In our group we have a mix of a few fairly average bikers who get dropped pretty quickly once the pace picks up a bit. Then there are the wannabe's, which is where I fit in, the serious amateur triathletes, and then to round it out , there are 4 Pro's....

Not just any Pro's, in addition to Jonas Colting who is a sub 8:20 Ironman athlete & 2 x UltraMan World Champ we also have Ted As who's won the Swedish Ironman Championship several times ~ 8:34 IM best, and to round out the "awesome list" we have Clas Bjorling who holds the Swedish IronMan record at 8:15:59 and is an insanely talented athlete who is built like a rock... 

It's always fun to train with good people who push you to improve, my training friends in Austin, you all know who you are!  That said this is "everyday training" which is very good, don't get me wrong, BUT when you have a chance to train right next to World Class athletes it's a whole new dimension! 

Even though these guys see some of this training as fairly easy, they're great sports about this tour and really do their best to make everyone feel comfortable and a very chatty.

For the first few hours of todays ride I was having a hard time believing I was really training with these people.  How cool is it to be taking a 5 minute pull in the aerobars with Jonas Colting on your right and Clas Bjorling on your wheel...

Today's ride started out at a fairly easy pace as we rolled out of Boras heading south towards Halmstad.  This was supposed to be 95 to 100 miles, if it hadn't been that the local, Jonas, led us down the wrong road after about an hour which added a few miles and the excitement of riding a TT bike on a dirt road.  How's that for a first?!?

Most of the day was spend on small country roads, mainly rolling hills which added great variety.  About 90 minutes in to the ride we started upping the pace a bit letting the stronger riders take turnas at doing 2 minute pulls at the front.  Early on there were 8 of us rolling around, smoothly cruising mile after mile at ~ 25 mph. After a couple of hours we were down to six guys in the rotation, and up until that  point I hadn't missed a pull.  During the las hour of fairly hard riding we were down to 4 guys, Jonas, Ted, David (amateur who's done a 9:11 IronMan...) and ME.....

Overall I felt very good, never tired but towards the end I was hoping & praying that I didn't spend too much of my energy on the first day and then blow up tomorrow...  We shall see!

All in all today 106 miles (170 km) which were covered in about 5 hrs 20 minutes!

Tomorrow it's Halmstad to Loddekopinge ( ~ Lund) which should be about 130 miles (210 km), except for one looooong climb up & ov er Hallandsasen this should be a relatively flat stage. Then perhaps a 30 minute run after the ride.  Unlike some of the guys I am not doing the 1 hour morning swim, I will be pulling some much needed zzzzzzz's then!