Further

At 375 km, I have run further in May than in any previous month. Unlike in the midst of winter, it does not take much to head out around the lake so the kilometres have been adding up fast enough for me to now be 112 km ahead of pace with regard to my annual goal of running 3,700 km in 2020.

Last night, the Falcon 9 rocket blasted off from Kennedy towards the International Space Station as a reminder of a future that is still within our reach. However, back on the ground, deep racial divides have again erupted in violence following yet another incident of extreme police brutality. For every such incident, it becomes harder and harder to see how America will be able to heal and what it will take to bring an end to the hyper-polarization of the Trumpocene. It is fascinating to think that 70 years ago, the American Political Science Association wrote about the need for more ideologically distinct parties as one third of Americans could not see any ideological differences between the two parties (for more on that, see this excellent review in The New Republic).

As for the Covid-19 situation, countries that have been through extended periods of lockdown are now opening up, only to find the number of new cases rise again. While I still believe that Sweden’s non-lockdown approach has been the better and more sustainable one, behavioural fatigue is clearly setting in even here as more and more people are travelling and moving around in society.

With both Boston and Berlin Marathon being cancelled, I am beginning to accept that Tallinn Marathon is probably not going to happen either (though there is nothing on the website as of yet). With this in mind, I just registered for Bergslagsleden Ultra 48k on the 19th of September, meaning that I may potentially end up with one 42k+ race every weekend for the first three weeks of September...

Bulgaria

This morning, summer did make it to Umeå. With the shared neighbourhood trampoline up for the season, the kids are happy and I even find a moment to read the first pages in my new book Cleanness by Garth Greenwell. Last night, I followed Monisha and Jem all the way back to London with the Venice Simplon-Orient Express, wrapping up their 45,000-mile world trip. As such, I was indeed in need of a new journey, this time to Sofia, a city I still recognize thirteen years later.

After making oven-roasted salmon with spring vegetables for lunch, I put on my sunglasses and my Amsterdam Marathon finisher t-shirt for two easy loops around the lake which could not have been more beautiful. Unlike during the virtual edition of Göteborgsvarvet, I even managed to hide my drink bottle well enough to avoid dehydration :-)

Proofs

It is a Friday in May with the summer just around the corner (at least if the forecast is to be trusted).

Last night, I received the proofs for my forth-coming book chapter from Springer Nature and today I was able to set a new PR on my local trail with Seth James DeMoor giving me kudos on Strava afterwards (which I guess is as close to a divine intervention that one gets in these secular times). As for the proofs, I was of course way too eager to submit my corrections, missing that the technical editors in Chennai had made a number of subtle but possibly catastrophic changes to my manuscript (like changing “an all-renewable energy system” to “all renewable energy systems”). Hopefully, they will be able to process my stream of additional e-mails outside the normal production flow but it made me sympathize with all the poor authors out there who have found their work messed up.

Nevertheless, it is a very good feeling that this project, which started with an abstract back in September 2018 and took me to both the Western in San Diego and BISA in London last year, is now finally finished, giving me one more point on the notorious “Norwegian list”. Especially, as with all the uncertainty about the autumn, I am afraid that I will not have much research time during the coming months but rather spend my days recording lectures in front of the green screen and designing different interactive activities for the students...

The false rose

After reading an enchanting review in Dagens Nyheter, I felt compelled to order the latest instalment of the Sally Jones saga. Opening in the port of Lisbon where the Hudson Queen is slowly being repaired after spending four years on the bottom of the Zêzere River, the book throws the reader into a forgotten world of Lusophone maritime adventures before heading north to Scotland and Glasgow, all obviously very topical for Rawls & Me, at least as I imagined what this year would be like before the pandemic struck.

Making roasted sweet potatoes with coconut fried halloumi and pomegranate salsa for dinner, I am clearly determined to bringing back the pre-pandemic world, at least on a culinary level. There is currently a lot of talk in Sweden about what good things that we can take with us from this experience, as in greater opportunities to work from home and new forms of digital collaboration replacing unnecessary travelling. Personally, I have definitely appreciated taking things slower and reflecting more but I also think it would be a tremendous loss if the global flow of people would come to a permanent halt. On the other hand, if the economic crisis becomes a catalyst for making Sweden’s economy less export-obsessed it would be a very good thing, at least as long as it is paired with broad salary increases and accelerated structural change. My fear is of course that the very opposite will happen, that there will be a renewed push towards low-paying jobs and precarisation.

FKT

Running through a fierce rain, I included a few laps around Campus Arena this morning, pushing myself to a 3:42 min/km pace for one kilometre before slowing down and continuing my usual circle around the lake. Considering the wind and everything else, I am hopeful that I will soon be able to repeat my feat of running 5k in under 20 minutes from December but this time outside.

As for speed, I am also getting ready for Elin’s and my latest adventure, namely to set a FKT (Fastest Known Time) on the 39 km long Tavelsjöleden. The current record for women is 5 hours and 57 minutes while the record time for men is 3 hours and 30 minutes. Total climb along the route seems to be about 550 meters downhill. If we chose to go downhill, we would take the bus up to Rödåsel and then run down back to Umeå.

In preparation, I was thrilled to receive the t-shirt from Territory Run in Oregon that I ordered about a month ago. Otherwise, my biggest investment for the moment has been a new bike trailer as the old one is become increasingly unsafe. The new Thule Chariot will allow me to run out to Innertavle with studs on those winter days when it is not possible to bike, thus hopefully making possible another fossil free school year.

The end of the world

The other week, I received a notification from Google Scholar that my article “Ambivalence, irony and democracy in the Anthropocene” had a couple of new citations from a recently published Routledge volume entitled “Resilience in the Anthropocene – Governance and the Politics at the End of the World”.

Since I have long have been thinking about writing about the concept of “resilience” in relation to the Anthropocene, I ordered the book. Though clearly relevant to my research, the “end of the world” framing speaks volumes about the deep pessimism and lack of imagination that have beset contemporary academia. I mean, I would totally get if people living through the Black Death would talk about the end of the world but today, unlike during the Late Middle Ages, we should have every reason for radical optimism with regard to the future.

Goals

The other week, Seth James DeMoor posted a video about macro-level endurance development and the role of long-term goals which had me thinking. Already from the last two years of active running, I can tell that this sport is really about the long haul, about consistency and understanding that improvements take time. Still, with patience, it is possible to achieve considerable gains in performance, like ten days ago when I ran a half marathon in 1 hour and 35 minutes which is a whopping 17 minutes faster than my first half marathon race two years ago.

Looking ahead, I have a number of running-related goals, some of which I have already made public here on Rawls & Me. The first, and perhaps most predictable one, is to qualify for the Boston Marathon, something that I hope to be able to do within a year or two. Beyond that, I see myself as being more focused on distance and elevation rather than speed. Right now, I am planning on doing a backyard ultra-style event in Stockholm in October but also simply going for longer runs on my own, hopefully setting a new 50k PR in the process. As always, the big obstacle is finding the time. Last week I ran 100k for the first time since mid-February and, although ideal, it is a volume that is really difficult to sustain as a full-time working parent. Nevertheless, after a day in front of the green screen, I was able to squeeze in a run up Hässningberget with Elin in the baking afternoon sun. As always, Elin was much faster than me up the mountain, even setting a new Course Record for women, but in the end I think we both got a really good workout (although I wish we had taken something to drink along).

Aflyst

Tonight, Gabriel and I were supposed to run the Warsaw Half Marathon but, like everything else this spring, it got cancelled due to the pandemic. Remaining here in Umeå, I thought it would be fun to instead revisit a section from Umåker Trail which coincidentally was also scheduled to take place today. However, my plan to run up Hässningberget with Elin fell through as well so, in the end, I only managed to do what was perhaps most overdue, namely to take a rest day.

Already at 70 km this week, my Achilles tendons in particular appreciated my decision to not go ut chasing CRs with Elin but rather cook some crispy salmon with creamy parmigiano sauce and a glass of Matua (which may not be Cloudy Bay but still very good) for dinner. Right now I am halfway through “Around the World in 80 Trains” and they have just crossed over to the US after criss-crossing through British Columbia aboard “The Canadian”. While maybe more a thing for “resentful retirees” (to borrow the expression of the author Monisha Rajes), everything cross-continental holds a certain allure for me.

Trail running

After another early morning with scones and lots of black coffee, I took my well-worn Reebok All Terrain Craze out to the “hund och pulka” trail for 18 km of trail running or rather wading through the boglands. A year ago, I had one of my best trail running experiences ever at Umåker but sadly this year’s race has been cancelled due to the pandemic. Otherwise, it is truly a race where shoes go to die so it would have been the perfect way to send off my Reebok :-)

Yesterday, Benjamin Sovacool posted on one of the environmental politics mailing lists about cultural barriers to a low-carbon future. For Sovacool, this refers to how “expectations of abundance” make people unwilling to commit to his desired future of permanent energy scarcity and thus “irrationally” oppose renewable energy. For a brief moment, I thought I would send him an e-mail and suggest that maybe his own anti-nuclear bias could be just as much a “cultural barrier” to a low-carbon future. However, I am afraid that this is one of those cases where you know beforehand that any attempt to reason will only bring more polarization.

Strangers on a train

Right now, I am reading two books about trains. Sitting on the porch with a glass of Grüner Veltliner from pretty Langenlois in Niederösterreich, it is hard to think of a better place than right here to wait out the pandemic and to think about journeys past and future. While the decadence is soon interrupted by the kids, I think about formative years and experiences, how we come to ascribe meaning to different things, like those train journeys that for others are just means of transportation.

Suunto pancakes

Pancakes have been a standing theme on Rawls & Me for more than a decade.

The latest Runner’s World had a very tempting Garmin ad with post-running pancakes. Being fiercely loyal to our Finnish friends, I thought that I nevertheless deserved some American pancakes. After all, I just completed the Strava May Running Distance Challenge with more than ten days to spare...

Kullen

Maybe it was the box of strawberries from ”Kullabygden” that I got from COOP but this morning the hail storm outside felt particularly depressing. I should know by now that is never a good idea to think too much about Skåne and what it can be like in May. Anyhow, in the afternoon, the sky suddenly cleared up and I was able to squeeze in a quick run around the neighbourhood.

Talking racing strategies with Elias yesterday, we both recognized that we would probably never make it to the podium. In my case, I can see two different possibilities, either registering for the shortest option in a race with multiple distances (like I have done with Kullamannen in November) or finding some backyard ultra where it only comes down to mental strength. Given how competitive running has become, I am doubtful that either possibility will pay off but at least it beats waiting for the day when I will win Göteborgsvarvet :-)

Extraordinary

Were it not for the empty office corridors reminding me of these extraordinary times, today would have been a day much like the ones we used to have before all of this started. After leaving Eddie in Innertavle, I biked up to work, had a coffee or two, talked a bit with our head of department before heading down to USM for a lunch run along the river with my friend Elias. Even with some "social distance", it is so good to meet people outside of the computer screen.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of loud construction work going on at campus today so I had to record my videos in my office rather than out in the big atrium where I had originally planned to be. At least, all the books made for good props.

Hail

With hail hammering down on the balcony, I finished the last pages in A Theatre for Dreamers. Only a few minutes before, I had taken a picture of the next book in line but all the death at the end of my Greek island drama has left me in need of a break.

Although very good, the book was not at all like I had expected. I do not know if it was the Cohen reference or some deep memory of turtles on Zakynthos that made me buy it in the first place after reading that review in The Guardian.

Maybe death is the only closure there is.

Tomorrow I plan to go running with my colleague Elias along the river and also record some more lectures at the university. And now the sun is out again, even if not in Greek fashion:

Sunshine stalks us. It binds us to the rocks, cast us in bronze. It sharpens shadows, blazes the mountains, strikes the white walls so they almost blind us.

Too early

I know, it is way too early to make any plans but with Italy opening its borders from the 1st of June, a faint hope of running the 54k Sorrento – Positano Ultra on 6 December was lit in my mind. After all, it is hard to think of anything that could be more motivating when it coems to running through the November ice in Umeå than the prospect of eventually being able to trade Nydalasjön for the Tyrrhenian Sea. Looking through old pictures on my computer, I found this one from the Amalfi Coast in December 2005.

Fair weather running

This morning, the trails around Nydalasjön were packed with runners of all ages. Considering the blue skies and crisp spring air, it is hard to blame them. Still, anyone can be a runner on a day like this, the challenge is to head out at 5.30 am on a windy November morning when it is raining ice or to complete those last kilometres in January when it is -20 degrees :-)

Congratulating me on yesterday’s race, Veronica at work asked if 1:30 would be my next goal. Reading her question I had to pause for a second, as 1 hour and 30 minutes have always seemed like an impossible, or at least very distant, goal for the half marathon but suddenly I find myself only five minutes away from it. I better not mention this to Elin or I will soon be in for another encounter with pain... in any case, I can report that my red Hoka Rincons performed admirably yesterday. They will definitely be my go-to shoes for any future half marathon racing. 

Breaking 1:39

In the fifth and final part of the INEOS 1:59 documentary series, Eliud Kipchoge admits that, on the morning of his race in Vienna back in October, he doubted whether or not he would actually be able to break the two-hour barrier for the marathon. I guess I felt something similar as I took my bike downtown to meet Elin and race two loops along the banks of the Ume River.

After completing the first 10k in 44 minutes, we discovered that someone had cleaned away our drinks so, with only two Maurten gels as fuel, the second half of the race was a rather dry affair until the crossing of the finishing line. However, not only did we meet our agreed goal of setting a new PR by running in under 1 hour and 39 minutes, we managed to significantly move the goal posts for the future. With Elin spurting ahead during the last kilometres of the race, she was able to finish in 1:34:50 while I was about a minute slower at 1:35:48 (which is still almost 10 minutes faster than my previous PR from Stockholm last year).

Flat tire

Thanks to a flat tire, I had to trade the green screen for a long morning walk to the bike shop and some extra strength training at USM. At least, the spring is slowly coming also to Umeå. 

Swimming challenge

At work, I have a colleague who epitomizes the concept of “pannben”. Last week, she challenged me to swim 2,000 meters, something that I have not done before. Considering that Vansbro is 3,000 meters and Ironman a brutal 3,860 meters, I know this is an area where I really need to practice so unwillingly I accepted her challenge. Thus, before returning home for another afternoon in front of Zoom, I jumped into the pool at Navet, completing those 2,000 meters in 1 hour and 9 minutes.

As for the running, I am taking two days off in preparation for Friday’s monumental challenge of running the virtual edition of Göteborgsvarvet in under 1 hour and 39 minutes. While I am still undecided, I think I will go with my Hoka Rincons and Löplabbet’s low cut double-layer socks. Right now the weather forecast for Friday morning predicts a light westerly breeze, clear skies and a real feel temperature of plus 1 degree which would be near optimal conditions.

SM

With the ice almost gone, it was again time to run the most unforgiving of trails here in Umeå, the notorious 10k SM-trail in Stadsliden. Joined by Elin and running in my Hoka Torrents, I was able to get a total vertical climb of 358 meters over 21 km which felt like an excellent way to start the week.

On Thursday, I will take part in an online workshop on our new Learning Management System “Canvas” which is scheduled to replace both Cambro and Moodle over the coming year. While we are still in limbo with regard to the fall semester, I have already started to record some key lectures, thinking that, even if we will be back to teaching on campus, these can be useful as extra online resources, for instance for students who miss a class.

Simulation

As I was reading a bedtime story the other night, William interrupted me to ask if we too are living in a fairy tale. Caught a bit off guard, I answered that it may be so but that I personally do not think so. Realizing that dissecting the simulation hypothesis may not be the best bedtime activity for a five-year-old, it is still fascinating how a young child can be so much better in asking the important questions than all those professors of “sustainability”.

Today, I again found myself tempted to comment on some LinkedIn piece. For all its apparent flaws, Michael Moore’s new film Planet of the Humans at least correctly depicts the inherent fossil fuel dependency of renewables and why any realistic 100% renewable vision of the future would have to be one of comprehensive degrowth and depopulation.

Readers familiar with this blog know that I strongly oppose such a future. Not only do I find it politically unfeasible, I also find a return to permanent agrarian poverty on a climate-ravaged planet to be such a sad ending to the human enterprise. As a species, we have within us to achieve truly marvellous things within the coming century and, while the risks may be great, they surely are worth taking if the alternative is cosmic oblivion.

Climates

Waking up to snow, I was reminded of a new study in PNAS on the “future of the human climate niche”. In the study, it is shown that humans have historically concentrated in a narrow subset of the planet’s available climates, characterized by a mean annual temperature around 13 degrees Celsius.

Having grown up in Kalmar which has an annual mean temperature of 7.7 degrees, the difference to Umeå’s 2.7 degrees is pretty stark (even if it is still more benign than Kiruna’s -2.2 degrees). But as I know first-hand from Seoul with 11.9 degrees, annual mean temperatures are exactly that. Seoul has bitterly cold and windy winters and unbearably humid summers, making the autumn the only really nice season (yellow dust blowing in from the deserts of China makes the spring less appealing). With climate change, I am afraid the winters here in Umeå will become even icier with the temperature constantly shifting between plus and minus degrees. As such, my Australian co-author has definitely drawn the longer straw, sending me this picture from his morning swim...

Panzanella

Before heading out around Grössjön for 16 km of muddy trail running in order to wrap up this week of running, I found a panzanella recipe in the latest Monocle which I just had to make to offset the sad morning news. With the world closing down, any dreams of soon running through the Scottish Highlands are obviously out of the window, and even here in Sweden the future of the High Coast Marathon seems most uncertain.

Yesterday, we were supposed to learn about the fall semester but so far nothing has leaked from the meeting with all the university vice-chancellors. Hopefully, Monday will bring some clarity. For now, I plan to take a rest day in the rain tomorrow and finish A Theatre for Dreamers.

Quarantine

For every day, I am becoming increasingly convinced about the soundness of the Swedish response to the epidemic. Rather than trying to eradicate the disease and looking on our country as being a remote island, we have realized that SARS-CoV-2 is not going away any time soon and that even if we, at immense cost through a prolonged lockdown, could stamp it out here it would soon return. In the beginning, the UK was taking a similarly sensible approach but, after that unfortunate Imperial College paper, came to adopt measures almost as far-reaching as those of Australia and New Zealand.

While this may have perhaps prevented some deaths in the near-term (the UK still has 50% more deaths per capita than Sweden), the lack of any sustainable long-term strategy became obvious today when it was announced that the UK will introduce two weeks of quarantine for all foreign travellers and those returning home from abroad, with almost unimaginable consequences for the tourism and aviation industries. Unlike New Zealand, which may have a realistic chance of actually eliminating the virus after about 20 deaths, the UK has already suffered immensely and should be quite far on the road towards achieving community immunity (even Boris Johnson himself had it right). As such, it makes absolutely no sense at this stage to impose new indefinite quarantine regimes (actually, I think that the same is true for N.Z. as well unless they plan to remain isolated for years but maybe that is in fact the plan).

Lessons

Last night, I finished Lara Spinney’s brilliant book Pale Rider about the Spanish Flu. My only regret is that I did not read it before the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic as it would have been quite helpful in navigating some of the debates that we have had over the last months. Among many things, Spinney points to the effectiveness of voluntary rather than mandatory measures as one of the lessons of the Spanish Flu. In fact, much of the book can be read as a vindication of the philosophy of Sweden’s state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell (who by the way gave a very balanced interview with Trevor Noah the other day).

As for voluntary measures, I had to smile when I received my Google Timeline update for April, telling me that I had visited exactly one city (Umeå) and that the “highlight of the month” was my visit to the contact lens optician.

In a couple of hours, I will have my annual performance review over Skype and planning for the year ahead with the head of the department. Having invested in a Sony Handycam HDR-CX405 to use with my green screen, I feel ready if the decision will be to not resume campus teaching in the fall, especially as I just received the six packages of illy that I ordered in response to any future coffee rationing :-)

Ultra

This morning, I thought it would be good for Eddie to practice biking to his school in Innertavle as he is quickly outgrowning the German trailer. Running next to him, we covered the first few kilometres together before I set off on a morning run alone along my beloved dirt roads for a total of 16 km. However, as it takes a certain kind of madness to be an ultra-runner, I decided to run the same course in reverse when picking him up in the afternoon.

Once back home, the dream of one day running really far beckons. In fact, I recently discovered that the island Öland is more or less a 100 miles from end to end. With each end being marked by a majestic white lighthouse, the thought of an epic lighthouse-to-lighthouse run immediately caught my imagination even as I realize that it is far beyond my present ability. However, with no Angel Island races for the foreseeable future, I think more and more people are going to be attracted to these kinds of monumental challenges or the setting of different FKTs (Fastest Known Times).

Sashimi

While perhaps not up to the divine standards of Yata Supermarket in Hong Kong or Costco in Korea, I was able to pick up some Norwegian sashimi salmon at ICA today. Together with a glass of white wine from South Africa, the unfolding tragedies of the pandemic become even less tangible. For now, and at least for those of us who still enjoy relatively secure forms of employment, this is all somehow Apocalypse Light. The other night I was pondering what humanity would do if we were faced with a more absolute existential threat like a wandering black hole (Trump: “No one knows black holes better than me…”). On one level, we already know what to do, at least if we had time, namely to make sufficient social investments so that we could develop technologies advanced enough to overcome the threat and, with billions of people living in poverty, there are indeed formidable untapped intellectual resources for the world to draw on.

Every time I think about these things, I am reminded of the futility of our current approach to climate change. Unsurprisingly, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have continued to set new records despite the economic crash caused by the pandemic, simply because the core of the global economy remains just as fossil as before the crisis. The question of course is, what kind of feedback signal would it take for the world to somehow “wake up” and realize the futility of fighting planetary processes involving hundreds of billions of tons of anthropogenic carbon emissions with wind mills and Malthusian misanthropy?

Time to fly

In a pair of Barbados Cherry/Plein Air Hoka Rincons, I took off shortly before 6 am, racing 5k with Doctors Without Borders for the 555 race. Named after the Californian surf spot, the Rincons have long been on my wish list and today they proved their value in the cold Umeå morning air. Even as I recognize now that I should have given my body more time to warm up before the race, I was able to run those 5k in a 4:19 min/km pace which is about 10 seconds faster per km than a year ago.

Rain run

While there is still some melting snow in the forest, the last month has been exceptionally dry here in Umeå, something that seems to have been the general trend throughout much of Europe this spring with prolonged droughts in the Czech Republic and elsewhere.

Waking up to the rain hammering down, I spent the morning hours grading Thursday’s graduate theses before heading out for a quick run in my Nike Odyssey which I have not used since that morning in Malmö four months ago. Completing my weekly running goal of 70 km, I am currently 57 km ahead of pace with regard to my goal of running 3,700 km this year so I am still on track despite all the race cancellations and being sick back in March.

Bigfoot

Reading Tintin in Tibet with Eddie the other week, I was struck by how much the Yeti was an early adopter of what we nowadays call “social distancing”. He also seemed to have been a capable runner. As such, I was excited to discover that someone had actually set up a virtual charity half marathon in the name of his American relative, Bigfoot.

Having signed up, I first had to find a suitable course. Considering that Bigfoot is not really the city type, I was fortunate to get Elin to join me for a run along my famous dirt roads to the east of Nydalasjön. Taking my Hoka Torrents out for the first time, we managed to keep a “steasy” pace of 5:03 min/km for 22 kilometres and I must say that I was really impressed by the shoes.

Unfortunately, Elin revealed that her current half marathon PR is 1 hour and 39 minutes (i.e. a 4:42 min/km pace) which means that my next half marathon race, the virtual edition of Göteborgsvarvet, will be a real challenge if we aim to beat that PR...