Moving past 2020

As widely noted, this year has been a dumpster fire of sorts. Millions have lost their jobs, many have been sick and untold travel plans have been dashed. Still, if asked if I personally would want to have this year erased, I am not so sure. It has been a year of great local discoveries, in particular the mountains of the North, and a pedagogical revolution in front of the green screen that will forever change how I teach. Instead of the Amalfi Coast, I got to run along the canals of Stockholm. And while both Rio and Goa ended up being cancelled, I now have 275k+ miles in store when international travel again becomes possible.

On Strava, there is a “Move past 2020”-challenge consisting of a minimum of 60 minutes of activity. Wrapping up a year with 288 active days, I only saw it fit that I also completed the 300 km distance challenge for December by meeting Elin for a lunch run downtown for a total of 25 km.

Back home from my run, it was time to start preparing some roast carrots with gingery tomatoes, quinoa and mint as a vegan NYE dinner together with a half-bottle of the house champagne. While I may not always agree with Johan Norberg, he has a great piece in The Spectator on why 2020 may not have been such a bad year after all when looking at the aggregate numbers. Let’s now just hope that Trump does not do anything really crazy in his last days in office and that 2021 will finally mark the beginning of those roaring twenties!

Epic runs

Considering my fascination with the Vagabond city runs a few years ago, I do not know how I could have missed Lonely Planet’s “Epic Runs of the World”. While the near future of racing remains uncertain due to Covid-19, few things beat reading about Comrades or the Big Sur Marathon over a cup of black coffee after a snowy long run.

As for next year, I already have registrations for four races:

20 March: Kullamannen Svart bana 12 km

1 May: Xterra Malta 50 km

22 May: Umåker 15 km

19 June: Urskogsloppet 19 km

Beyond these races, I hope to be able to return to Kalmar for Malkars 21k in early July but also do a longer mountain ultra, perhaps the 84 km Idre Fjällmaraton at the end of August? In addition, I won a complimentary entry to Cyprus Marathon on 21 March but, like Kullamannen on the day before, I do not really expect that race to actually happen given the worsening pandemic.

San Silvestre

Considering how awful the weather has been, I decided to skip my plans for a 5k road race with “I run Kalmar”. Instead, I went for the free Strava version at USM this morning, repeating my 2019 feat of running 5 km on the treadmill in under 20 minutes. Like last time, it took all I had but now I can feel good about just playing boardgames with the boys for the coming two days while Anna is away.

Xterra Malta

With a yellow weather warning in effect due to a snowstorm mixed with freezing rain, I knew it would take something out of the ordinary to keep me running, especially now when my key race “Tjörnarparen 100k” has been cancelled.

Thus, reshuffling some of my cancelled flight vouchers, I managed to book a trip with Lufthansa to Malta at the end of April to take part in the Xterra 50k trail race around the coast of Malta’s neighbouring island Gozo. Considering that Malta has long been on my list and is also one of the few European countries that I have not been to, I am very happy to have found this race on the ITRA website. If I complete the race, I will also earn two additional ITRA points.

Night trail

This morning, I ran a 7 km trail with reflex markers in the nearby forest and it was so much fun. With the boglands half frozen, every step was an adventure and when a couple of deer jumped out from their hiding place right in front of me, I almost got a heart attack.

Back home, I am eating cantucci and can barely wait until the next time I get a chance to run this trail. Or travel the world for that matter.

Julaftonsrunda

Today, I finally made it to 4,000 kilometres this year just as the sky cleared up. Once back home, I made a kale and apple salad with pomegranate, feta cheese, kohlrabi and roasted almonds. With exactly a week to spare, I am happy to have reached this colossal target. For 2021, I am aiming for 80 km per week but will cap my yearly goal at 4,000 km.

With this behind me, I hope you are all settled in with Zoom and ready for a socially distant Christmas that we are likely to remember. Nevertheless, I wish you all the very best for the holidays!

Melty

Yesterday, I received my new signature mug from Generation Atomic with the polar bear “Melty”. Back from a morning run along the river that pushed me above 200 km this month, I am now enjoying some dark roasted coffee and pondering whether or not I should sign up for a virtual 5k “Sylvester” race organized by “I run Kalmar” to celebrate that this year is finally coming to an end.

BLT

While I try to only blog vegetarian food, today I experienced a sudden nostalgic urge to make a Cambridge/Melbourne favourite of old with extra everything.

Sun setting

With the sun already setting, I thought I would throw in a flashback to a long afternoon on Koh Samui back in 2015. Rather different colours from the melting grey slush outside.

2020 Gold List

Today is the winter solstice and I am just back from a tempo run around the lake. Though it is almost nine a.m., it is pitch black outside. With 2020 rapidly coming to an end, I realize that I still have not completed this year’s Gold List. Considering that this has been a most unusual year, it is perhaps not surprising that I ended up taking less than a dozen flights for a mere total of 3,881 miles (compared to 73,909 miles last year). Despite my best intentions, I failed to visit any new countries this year.

Best Breakfast: Magnus Johansson Bageri & Konditori, Stockholm

Best Lunch: The Newt in Somerset

Best Budget Airport Hotel: Moxy London Heathrow

Best Airport Lounge: Singapore Airlines T2, LHR

Best Cancelled Award Booking: Umeå - Rio de Janeiro with TAP

And, action!

Last night, the studio lights that I had ordered from Germany finally arrived so today I could start recording lecturers again. If not before, the living room now truly looks like a movie set and I guess I will spend much of the coming days in front of the green screen.

Outside it is utter misery with the snow melting again. Refusing to be sick any longer, I went for a super-slow run down to Love Creek and back. For the first time in a long time, I had no pain whatsoever in my left Achilles tendon so maybe four days of rest was just what my body needed.

Arab spring

Of slightly greater importance than me defending my PhD and moving to Asia, the Arab Spring also started ten years ago. I remember being in Shenzhen with Anna when the CNN broadcast at the hotel would be interrupted by a message saying “satellite connection lost” every time there was reporting on the tumultuous events going on in Tunisia and then later across all of Northern Africa.

With the possible exception of Tunisia itself, little progress has been achieved in the decade hence. Instead, with authoritarianism spreading around the world, liberal optimism has become a source of ridicule rather than inspiration. Today, few people are willing to argue for engagement over sanctions or even defend basic democratic norms at home against those calling for ever greater surveillance. The most worrying aspect of this is perhaps the loss of a long-term vision, that it has become seen as outrageous to suggest that all of the world can one day become like the Nordic countries, that people everywhere should have the right to live free from want and oppression.

Thinking back to 2011 when I was blogging under the sulphurous haze in Beijing and visited Art District 798, the repressive reign of Xi Jinping was still in the future. Dark as things have become, in particular in Xinjiang, it is strange to think how curious and tolerant Chinese society seemed at the micro-level back then. I often wonder how much of that that remains.

West Coast

Back in May I read a book about a couple travelling around the world on 80 different trains. Like Phileas Fogg they end up being saved by a mistake. I do not know why, but apparently, I was equally confused about dates last week, mistaking Thursday for Tuesday, but luckily, Rawls & Me always allows for retcons. Now with continuity restored and the kids still at home, I am finding myself absorbed by the August award winner Lydia Sandgren’s “Samlade verk” which takes place in Gothenburg.

Ten years ago this week, I defended my PhD thesis in Lund. Outside a snowstorm was raging, bringing back memories of the previous harsh winter when I had been trying to commute between Gothenburg and Lund. With the trains often being cancelled, I had spent much of my time writing away at the university library in Gothenburg, one of many familiar environments featured in Sandgren’s monumental book.

Set decades earlier yet, the book speaks of rich inner worlds, of letting one’s imagination loose, and of having the dogged perseverance to keep writing no matter what.

Black cabbage

Today I learnt that Tjörnarparen 100k has been cancelled. While definitely expected given how the situation with the pandemic has been evolving, it still felt sad somehow. So now, I guess I will have to go looking for another ultra race later in the spring when the pandemic may be under better control.

This month, the COOP magazine had a very tasty recipe for pappardelle (which I swapped for “pappardini”) with mushrooms and black cabbage which turned into a warming winter meal. After two days at home, the boys will hopefully be back to school tomorrow. As such, and with new studio lights on their way, I hope to be able to record my last lectures before the Christmas break begins on Friday.

Materiality

This summer, I made a photo book documenting the previous year of running and the different seasons around Nydalasjön. As such, I had excluded both Angel Island and South Devon, prompting me to make a sequel with all my races and the beautiful mountain vistas of the summer. In a time when so much is online, a physical album brings a certain respite and materiality to the memories.

CSWP

With a new layer of snow on the ground, I feel slightly better about confessing another shoe related sin.

Running behind the Thule Cougar, it is often hard to see where my feet will land so I have been searching for a pair of shoes with high-top gaiters to help me staying dry on my school runs. More specifically, I have been looking for a pair of Salomon Snowspike CWSP with tungsten studs. Luckily, the Finish sport store Varuste had them with a 50 EUR discount so now I am positive that I will make it through my winter commute.

Hamptjärnsstugan

Before anyone had a chance to say “Occam's Razor”, I went for a 30 km long run to revisit Hamptjärnsstugan and parts of Tavelsjöleden. Running in my Salomon Spikecross 3 CS, it was a beautiful winter run even as I had to make a few kangaroo jumps over flooded bridges.

Terra Firma

One of the coolest things with metaphysics is that there is no solid ground. Between Cartesian dreams and Fermi’s Paradox we know that Morpheus was right that “etwas nicht stimmt” with the world.

Watching the time-travelling “julkalender” but also “Terra Firma”, I came up with a possible new temporal solution to Fermi’s Paradox, assuming that it is indeed physically possible to travel backwards in time. The premise would then be that as long as civilizations remain unentangled, it is possible for later (and thus more technologically advanced) civilizations to protect earlier civilizations from destruction without simultaneously voiding their own existence. Once civilizations have become entangled, even the slightest change will change the identity of those providing the protection so they would presumably use layers of artificial intelligence and autonomous decisions-systems to isolate themselves from their own acts of benevolence, thus ensuring not only the integrity of the timeline but also that as many civilizations as possible continue to evolve towards technological maturity, possibly all the way up to the Omega Point.

This would not only explain the lack of observable civilizations but also why later civilizations have not intervened in order to accelerate or, for that part, thwart our own technological development.

Gråpäronträd

After all the grey, the world turned white again yesterday. With Anna spending two nights at a hotel downtown working on her PhD, I am playing board games with the kids and finishing the last pages in Peter Hultsberg’s Saknaden av ett gråpäronträd over a cup of mulled apple wine.

Nietzsche, in Jenseits von Gut und Böse, once wrote that “the struggle of maturity is to recover the seriousness of the child at play”. One of the many quotes in Hultsberg’s book that somehow resonates with me. Other times, I am struck by simple determinism, how hard it is to not remain captive to one’s own generation and time.

Half-jokingly, I sometimes wonder where I would be without StarTrek, as in without an emancipatory corrective to my own prejudices. Sadly, too many people today seem to have lost track of that greater narrative and have instead come to think that the future will be one of Sharia or that “feminazis” are about to take over the world (two things that do not seem to be entirely mutually compatible). I really wonder what it will take to bring back a sense of collective optimism and curiosity with regard to the future?

Throwback Thursday

Today, William is turning six. He started the day with lots of strawberries and blueberries (he is not a fan of cake) and opening his presents which included a number of board games that may come in very handy during the long winter break.

While I did get to see the sun on my flight down to Stockholm, December has been unusually bleak and gloomy with basically zero hours of sunshine here in Umeå. Adding a full day on Zoom and Teams to that, some measure of escapism may be excused. Having uploaded all my old photos to Google Photos, I found this one from Stenshuvud National Park taken in the summer of 2008 which made me smile. It is funny what difference a decade and a bit of ultra-running does...

Amalfi

While far from the Amalfi Coast, I got to run the 27 km “Panoramica” race this morning in southern Stockholm. Like last time, there was plenty of deer in the forest but this time no headache so I was able to keep a “steasy” pace of 4:56 min/km which I am very happy with considering the 372 meters of elevation gain. In keeping with tradition, I finished my run in Hammarby Sjöstad with a large cup of coffee and a saffron bun.

Now I am about to take the airport bus out to Arlanda for some lounge article writing before SK2030 takes me back to Umeå.

Above the clouds

Breaking through the dense cloud cover, our Airbus 320neo continued its climb towards its cruising attitude, prompting me to take out my sun glasses for the first time in ages. While I have been hesitating about whether or not to travel for weeks, I am happy I ended up going, as I really need a bit of a mental break right now.

With a number of promising vaccines on the horizon, the latter part of 2021 may hopefully see a return to some kind of normalcy. With that in mind, I was thrilled to discover that AirAsia India had loaded their schedules for next autumn already, allowing me to changes the dates for Anna's and my flight between Delhi and Goa to week 44. If we get to go, it will be Anna's first trip to India and my first visit to a city that long has been on my radar.

For the moment however, I am again surrounded by dark winter clouds as we are preparing to land on runway 01R/19L at Stockholm Arlanda.

Saffron scones

Waking up early on Sunday morning, I was intrigued by the idea of adding saffron to my scones. In the background, the kids are watching this year’s “julkalender” which tells the story of two girls, one living in 1920 and the other in 2020, who through some black hole magic end up in each other’s body and time.

Though staying away from time-travelling for now, I am actually taking a flight to Stockholm this afternoon to see Ally and make use of the return leg of my cancelled trip to Italy. If I find the time, I am thinking of running the now virtual version of the 27k “Panoramica” race around Nacka.

Tacos for the climate

No one in Sweden has probably been able to evade the slightly annoying commercials promoting “tacos for the climate”. In reality, the company behind those tacos, Frankful, is just another mainstream business that has bought into the idea that humans should live in “harmony” with nature, which apparently means sprawling renewable energy and extensive agriculture.

In my fantasy world, I dream of a company that would be brave enough to use 100% nuclear energy and produce food in vertical farms (while we wait for those molecular assemblers to arrive), leaving room for rewilding and a gradual restoration of the planet that we have ravaged. Yesterday, The Guardian reported on the rapid degradation of global soils. According to a new FAO report, 135 billion tons of soil have been lost since the Industrial Revolution, projecting that the world’s topsoil will be gone within 60 years if current trends continue.

After running 10 km in absolutely awful conditions, I ended up making, ehh, halloumi tacos for lunch...

Commuter update

Completing the sixth week of running back and forth to the school with the Thule Cougar, I think it has been both harder and easier than I anticipated. Generally, the morning runs have been good, although sometimes stressful as I have often been racing to make it in time to Innertavle. As for the afternoons, I have felt more resistance when heading out in the dark with the headlamp, leaving my coffee cup and comfy sofa chair behind. Compared to biking with a trailer, as I did last winter, running is in many ways preferable, especially when there is a lot of snow or ice. And for the last week, Anna has been making me company in the mornings which has made the whole routine a lot more enjoyable.

Just in time for the weekend, I received my paperback copy of Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Ministry for the Future” as per suggestion of my PhD student. Considering that I have spent much of the week writing about climate change and the far-future, it is clearly topical and I look forward to reading it over Christmas.

The Flying Dutchman

Surprisingly enough, I have never in my life flown with KLM. But, I have definitely roamed the world in the past, drifting between continents, as if doomed to keep travelling. As such, after working out at USM, I stopped by the library to pick up Frederick Marryat’s adaptation of The Flying Dutchman to read with the kids.

Weather-wise, the last days have been utterly awful with ridiculous amounts of ice and hail. Sadly, the forecast for the coming week seems to offer more of the same. While many people in Sweden may even have appreciated the “Thailando”-style summer of 2018, this kind of winter weather should be enough to remind people that something is fundamentally wrong with the climate, especially here in the Arctic. Whereas Biden is busy appointing former BlackRock people to his National Economic Council who are likely to keep pushing renewables and fossil fuels, Poland has in a very bold policy move announced that it will phase out its coal power and replace it with nuclear energy. If Poland follows through on this, despite all the bullying that can be expected from Germany and others, it may be the most promising piece of climate news of the decade.

Down in Kalmar, the local newspaper Barometern is having two full pages about my former teacher Peter Hultsberg who has just published a new book. While the specific details may be a bit off, I had to smile when he brought up renewable energy as an example of a topic that closes down conversations and replaces them with highly predictable friend-and-enemy distinctions.

Spikes

After running 42 kilometers in two days in my Icebug Newrun GTX, I was starting to get a few blisters. As such, I was very happy to be able to take out my Salomon Spikecross 3 CS from the wardrobe and throw them into the rotation.

I bought these excellent winter running shoes about a year ago when XXL had a sale and I ended up taking them to 478 km over the course of just a few months, including a memorable polar night run to Kurravaara. Hopefully, they still have some mileage left in them so, with a bit of luck, I do not need to buy another pair of shoes with studs this winter.

Otherwise, my morning school commute could not have been more beautiful with the (almost) full moon and a fresh layer of white snow. Under conditions like this, it is difficult to understand why anyone would prefer to drive around in a car.