La Playa

As expected, I could not stay away from running for long. With my legs feeling surprisingly fresh, I was even able to set a long sought-after CR on Nydala Beach (in 2:54 min/km pace) while taking my total running volume for the week up to 100 km. The feeling this time around is completely different from back in July 2019 when I did my first ever 100 km week. Not only do I have one day to spare (which I probably should use to get some rest, heard that one before?) but I still feel a lot of pop in my stride. Were it not for those exams waiting to be marked, I would even have considered going for a long run.

Instead of doomscrolling US election news at night, I have decided that I should read Matt Fitzgerald’s “80/20 running” to help planning my training leading up to Tjörnarparen 100k. But first, time for my new favourite pan-fried salmon dish with raviolini and some Grüner Veltliner.

Comprehension

When designing exams, I like questions that really test comprehension rather than merely the ability to paraphrase the literature. Often however, students perceive such questions as “unfair” as they feel that they have studied hard yet find themselves graded down “because of one word”. Still, when that word is the difference between “explaining” (Erklären) and “understanding” (Verstehen) as it was for my political science students back in September, it matters a great deal. 

This time around with the social work students, I have a question about possible alternatives to New Public Management and what limitations these alternatives in turn may have. Despite that I discuss this at length in one of my pre-recorded lectures, it seems that many students have struggled with this question and I fear there will be quite a backlash from the student collective. At the same time, being a university teacher cannot be a popularity contest.

Cyprus

Yesterday, reality finally caught up with me. With Campania in a state of semi-lockdown and all public sport events cancelled, my dream of racing between Sorrento and Positano finally fell through. Even if it would still be technically possible for me to travel to Italy in early December, I do not fancy paying 2,000 SEK for a brain swab only to find myself confined to a hotel room. So now I am one of many waiting for a refund from the Lufthansa group.

With Italy cancelled, my next scheduled flight is on the 13th of February when I hope to go down to the south of Sweden to run Tjörnarparen 100k. After that, I have my (complimentary) marathon registration for the Cyprus Marathon in March but I will hold off the booking of flights for now.

Results

After taking a rest day yesterday, I was back at USM this morning for some indoor rowing, treadmill running and strength training. Slowly I am beginning to see results and so is Anna who is again staying at a hotel downtown to work on her PhD while I am hanging out with the kids back home.

Meanwhile, my social work students are busy writing their exam so tomorrow at noon I will get a massive batch of 120+ exams to mark before I can go back to recording new lectures for the spring semester. Right now, the university vice-chancellor has decided that we will be able to continue with online teaching through the first half of the spring but, given current trends, I expect that to be extended to the rest of the semester fairly soon. 

Ist heute schon morgen?

Finding Ivan Krastev’s latest book in the mail had me thinking again about the times we are living in. What he calls “stay-at-home nationalism” has somehow made our memories even more valuable, how we can travel back in time to the coast in Croatia or New Jersey even as those lands remain inaccessible to an extent that not even the most fervent isolationist would have dreamt of.

When flying back to Umeå on Sunday night, I could somehow tell that it would be my last flight for a long time. While I still have not cancelled my tickets to Italy in December, it seems increasingly unlikely that the trip will happen as new curfews and lockdowns are being announced throughout the continent. Even as the prospects for a vaccine look brighter by the day, we are probably in for a long and dark winter. 

The stars came out

For my last two ultra intervals, the stars and the moon came out as I kept running in circles around the lake. Just as I was about to finish, I felt a sharp pain in my left foot which forced me to walk the last few hundred meters. Fortunately, everything seems to be back to normal today although I have to admit that my muscles feel pretty sore.

This being the second time that I did the Ultra Interval Challenge, I had less to prove which somehow made the mental monotony worse. Afterwards, I promised myself to take a longer break from the running but I guess that promise will soon be forgotten. Not only do I still have 20k to run for the "Thailand by UTMB-challenge" but, in November, Strava has a “Favourite Way 400k” challenge which I guess means that another crazy month of endurance sports is coming up.

Last of the light

Taking advantage of the fact that her mother is here for a week, Anna and I decided that we wanted to run our own Ultra Interval Challenge together while there is still some daylight left. Starting off at midnight, we were able to complete four 10 km intervals before Anna’s right hip screamed in protest, leaving me to run the remaining four on my own. Like last year, the feeling is completely different from running a normal ultra marathon as you get those two hours of rest between every interval. Still, running 8 x 10 km over 24 hours is never easy, especially as the rain kept pouring down all morning.

Now, time for a quick lunch before I head out again.

Deer and canals

With a heady headache from last night (to quote Frida), it was time to wrap up both the Valle d’Aosta UTMB Challenge and the one-hour version of STHLM Loop before having breakfast with Ally at Magnus Johansson Bageri & Konditori.

For the first 3k, I ran through Nackareservatet where I got to say a morning hello to a handful of roe deer. Next time around, I will definitely take my trail shoes along and explore more of this green expanse in south Stockholm. For now, I turned back into Hammarby Sjöstad with its London-style canals and distinctively upper middle-class habitats. In a few hours, I will meet up with my sister before taking an evening flight back north where all the leaves have already fallen. Even if only 500 km separates Umeå and Stockholm, this time of the year the difference in terms of climates feels almost like being at the Mediterranean.

Skallagrim

With its name taken from an old seafaring saga, a SAS Airbus 320neo is taking me down to Stockholm this morning. Just walking across the apron in the freezing autumn air made me feel very grateful for not having to cross the North Sea in a longship. Instead, I got to relax with a good book and look down on the brackish waters Gulf of Bothnia glowing away thousands of meters below.

Even if the onboard service remains suspended, flying has not lost its magic. Still, all the border closings have clearly deprived the world of a transcendental element, a connection to a future in which we see the best in each other rather than remain trapped in old prejudices and solitary identities. Hopefully, the pandemic will not last forever and the world will soon bounce back, maybe even having understood that isolation does not make us stronger.

Friday Triathlon Sprint

After replying to untold numbers of student e-mails and reading William MacAskill's piece "Are we living at the hinge of history?" in which he comes to a different conclusion than I do, I went down to Navet for a Triathlon Sprint to kick off the weekend. As last time around, biking is really the hard part for me.

Tomorrow morning, I will fly down to Stockholm to see Ally and my sister. After all the cancelled flights this year, it feels strange to finally have a boarding pass waiting in my phone.

The hope that is you

With the return of Star Trek Discovery season 3, I thought I should once again resume the habit of naming blog posts after episode titles. However, instead of being thrown 930 years into the future, I am back with the Italian renaissance and a glass of red wine as I am taking a moment away from all the planning and grading to “think” for a change.

To my relief, I do not feel particularly beaten up after my 3:35 marathon effort yesterday. Looking back, I remember that it took me three whole days of utter pain until I could even go for a gentle jog after my first marathon in Amsterdam two years ago. For every marathon that I run, my body seems to become better and better at absorbing the training.

Before I return to “Machiavelli in Tumult: The Discourses on Livy and the Origins of Political Conflictualism” as the snow falls outside, I am happy to report that I keep receiving positive feedback on the book chapter that I published earlier in the fall. In the past, my feeling has been that chapters in edited volumes tend to just disappear into the void but thanks to the possibility of publishing “accepted manuscripts” on Academia, ResearchGate etc, that is clearly changing.

Bridges and dreams

With a real feel temperature of -8 degrees, Elin and I set off to run the TCS New York City Marathon in under 3 hours and 30 minutes. As many times before, I was slightly ahead for the first half of the race and about 18 km into the race we had a projected finishing time of 3 hours and 15 minutes. Then, slowly, Elin began pacing ahead whereas I had a harder and harder time keeping up. At the 32 km mark, I was still within the 3:30 window but soon after I realized that this was not going to be my day as I started to fall further behind. In the end, Elin finished with an incredible time of 3 hours and 29 minutes whereas I needed another six minutes to cross the finishing line.

Though obviously disappointing, this still amounts to an improvement of ten minutes over my time in Stockholm last year. Considering that I did this with basically no tapering and in my VJ Sarva Xante shoes with carbide steel studs (rather than my Rincons as originally planned), I think there is room for improvement. Having said that, I do not think I could have run a sub 3:30 marathon today regardless of the circumstances as I am simply not there fitness-wise (yet).

Proof of concept

When training for the Pikes Peak Marathon, Seth James DeMoor had a sled that he put weights on and pushed across the gym floor. Along similar lines, I put both boys inside the new Thule Cougar this morning and set off into the snowstorm. To my great relief, the concept worked and I was able to deliver the boys to the school in Innertavle 2.6 km and 16 minutes later. Now I just have to repeat the same feat again this afternoon and twice per day for the coming six months...

If successful, I plan to get much of my base training this way and only add one or maybe two long runs per week, which should be sufficient to get me to 100 km of running per week. Throw in some pool time on top of that and I think I will be ready for anything next summer.

Curiosum

Inspired by Anna’s heroic effort earlier today, I was eager to take my headlamp and Icebug shoes out for a first winter run and also pass by the new university science centre “Curiosum”. Seeing its LED-illuminated dome glowing in the night, I cannot wait to return with the kids for some immersive travel through space and time.

First snow

The first snow came just as Anna was wrapping up her incredible effort of running the New York City Marathon all on her own. Having only run about 12 km per week and never longer than 16 km in one single run, completing a full marathon in 5 hours and 52 minutes is simply beyond impressive. Not only does this mean that we are now two marathon runners in the family but it again bears witness to Eliud Kipchoge’s words that “no human is limited” :-)

Building fitness

Guess the fact that I have written three posts on Rawls & Me today shows that I am procrastinating and should really be constructing exam questions for my social work students. With that rather obvious observation out of the way, I have been thinking again about macro-level endurance development and how I should train for Tjörnarparen 100k in February, especially now when my 54 km Sorrento to Positano race in December almost certainly will be cancelled.

On Strava, I keep getting these weekly assurances that I am “building fitness nicely” but still I am uncertain how I should think in terms of volume and recovery going forward. Ignoring for a moment that it may be difficult to find the time, one part of me is tempted to simply ramp up my volume by 10 km per week until I hit say 120 km of slow running every week. Another part of me is saying that I am already running too much at 70 km per week and that I should rather be taking more rest days or perhaps adding one more swim session per week. What do you guys think?

Pumpkin soup

Before taking “Hjulius” the German bike trailer to its final resting place at the recycling centre, I made a warming pumpkin soup with ginger. After six years of faithful service and thousands of kilometres, it was sadly no longer possible to repair Hjulius so instead we are now going to use a Thule Cougar for the winter months as a jogging stroller until spring comes and the boys can bike once again. While not optimal by any means, it still beats having to buy a car.

Älvlöpning

As much as I love writing and thinking in English, there are words that are simply lost in translation. “Älvlöpning” is one and over the year that I have been running with Elin, it has become the 20-part of my 80/20-running to speak with Matt Fitzgerald. Yesterday, with ice accumulating on the wooden decks along the river, Elin and I took it slower though as we followed the river upstream and finalized our plans for the NYC Marathon on Tuesday. The plan is to pace around 4:50 min/km on average, something that I know will become increasingly hard as the kilometres add up.

Otherwise, I had a very productive meeting with my PhD student yesterday, following up on his dissertation plan seminar on Thursday before picking up the boys in Innertavle. I also discovered that my friend Marcel Wissenburg has cited me in a new paper on rewilding in which he uses the Tolkien universe to illustrate different ideal types of landscape management, including Lothlórien and Mordor.

Planks and medals

With snow in the weather forecast, I thought I would make one last attempt to run 5k in under 20 minutes at Campus Arena but, sadly, the gates turned out to be locked once I got up there. Instead, I decided to race the most elusive of all Tomtebo bike path segments, and voilà, I got the CR! Running in my Hoka Rincons, I was able to sustain a 2:36 min/km pace for 300 meters, something that would have been completely unthinkable only a year ago, again proving the value of consistency and patience when it comes to running.

As for external motivation, I received a massive Soviet-style medal from Tallinn Marathon yesterday, making the effort even more worthwhile. Regrettably, I will not get any medal when racing the virtual edition of New York Marathon next week but the thought of setting a new road marathon PR (almost a year after Beirut Marathon got cancelled) is definitely motivation in itself. While tapering for New York, I am happy to finally have a yoga mat of my own so I can do strength and flexibility exercises whenever I like.

Marcona

Ally: “unless one glass of wine and a few marcona almonds are considered a wild night out? What actually happened? And when did it happen?”

On the theme of 40+ existence, I felt like I too had to open a jar of marcona almonds to celebrate the fact that I survived today's guest lecture with the graduate students (after talking to myself in front of a green screen for months it felt almost surreal to meet real students again). However, with the number of Covid-cases rapidly increasing on campus, I fear that we may all be back to online teaching only before we know it.

After winning a pair of New Balance 1080 V10 shoes when taking part in the virtual seeding race to Göteborgsvarvet a year ago, I just won another €50 with the “Doctors without borders” charity races to be spent towards registration fees for future marathons. Since I love making quick and stupid decisions, I immediately registered for a marathon on Cyprus in late March (luckily with full insurance coverage if/when it gets cancelled).

Road running

After a week of heavy rain, the sky cleared this morning to reveal a United 787 on its way from Newark to Mumbai. It is hard to imagine what it must feel like to be on such a long flight in the middle of a pandemic. Once Anna got back from her PhD writing session at Hotel Winn, I seized the moment and the blue skies, heading out for 32 km of road running around the Ume River delta. Feeling strong for the first 25k of the run, the last bit from the airport was utterly awful and reminded me that I have been doing way too many hard efforts recently. If I want to have a realistic chance of running the virtual New York City Marathon in under 3:30, it is clear that I need some serious rest.

Cancellations

With everything going on in the US right now, I was not surprised to learn that the ISA convention that was scheduled for April in Las Vegas has been cancelled and turned into an entirely virtual event. Still, I feel a bit sad about this, especially as I had hoped to combine the conference with some canyon trail running.

As for other cancellations, Kullamannen will not happen in two weeks from now. Instead, the race has been moved to March even as I have my doubts about that as well. This means that I will not travel to Skåne but only to Stockholm for an evening with Ally.

On a day like this with pouring rain, it feels good to make some Veranda blend drip coffee before escaping to USM for some strength training and a quick treadmill run.

Lights

With the rainstorm still swirling around the house, I was very happy for my new studio lights as I went about recording another lecture. Transitioning into the darker season, I figured there would not be enough natural light inside to enable my new life as a youtuber of sorts. Otherwise, the last week has been almost all about marking, first political philosophy exams and now public administration exams with the police students.

Afterwards, I took my dark blue Salomon Bonatti waterproof jacket and went for 17 km right into the rain, passing by Innertavle on my way home to pick up Eddie. Considering that we have received over 30 mm of rainfall in the last two days, it was not surprising that the dirt roads had fully turned into mud by now. At least the forecast looks promising with plenty of sunshine towards the weekend.

On Monday, I look forward to being a pace bunny for Johanna as she is aiming to run the virtual version of Jönköping Half Marathon in under two hours. With this in mind, I tried to pace as close to 5:38 min/km as I could when doing my afternoon run which was actually bit challenging in the headwind when the perceived exertion went up.

High-risk red

Ok, I have to admit that I am somewhat in love with my Salomon Speedcross 5 “high-risk red”. While they may not be up to the task of running 100k in February, they were definitely the right choice yesterday on Tvåälvsleden, offering grippy traction while clearly standing out in the crowd. Here I am racing towards the finish in Granö.

Tvåälvsloppet

Yesterday, I again got to race the scenic trails from Vindeln to Granö surrounded by red and yellow leaves. Walking across the many slippery wooden bridges, I was really careful not to repeat the drama of my previous two races, and instead prioritized to arrive injury-free in Granö where the hot tub was waiting for me down at the river.

Like last year, I travelled to the race with my colleagues Johanna and Elisabeth who both were able to improve their times compared to last year, in Johanna’s case with an impressive 24 minutes! In my case, I only improved my time with two minutes compared to 2019, probably due to a combination of being more risk-averse and the accumulated strain of the three marathons that I have done in the last month. Ultimately, I finished as number 13 out of 34 men with an official time of 2:32:26. And at last, I found good use for my “post run” flannel shirt from Territory Run.

Chest press

Around lunch time, the gym was filled with people which had me briefly questioning how wise it really is to go there in the midst of a pandemic. Anyhow, I did my 3k of indoor rowing followed by 5k on the treadmill before discovering that I am again able to do chest press exercises after my injury. However, to avoid any risk of overstretching, I only put on 40 kg but I am optimistic that everything will soon be back to normal.

Weather-wise, all is looking very good for Saturday and Tvåälvsloppet. Last year was truly magical as the sky cleared up with golden foliage after a cold and misty morning in Granö. Back then, I was able to keep an average pace of 5:26 min/km and it will be interesting to compare and see how much my running has improved over the last twelve months.