Autumn fog

With Arlanda covered in dense autumn fog, we had to wait for over an hour on the tarmac in Tallinn before our CRJ-900 was finally given permission to start up the engines and head out over the grey Baltic. But now, as I am eating breakfast high above the clouds and look at my medal, I feel no regrets about my race strategy yesterday even if it led to failure. Though I would probably have been able to run 3:45 without difficulties had I gone out less aggressively, that would still have been 25 minutes short of the Boston qualifier limit and no faster than my previous marathon efforts. At the end of the day, dreams are far more important than results.

Looking back at the last year, the difference between my races is quite striking. In April, I finished Diablo Trails 50k as number 45 out of 110 runners despite 2,000+ meters of elevation gain. Similarly, in early July, I was ahead of all women at Trailövik with 836 meters of climb. Compared to my marathon result yesterday, this tells me that I really should focus on doing mountain ultras where I can make full use of my leg strength so I am quite happy about being registered for Transgrancanaria in February 2024, especially I still have five months to train in the hills of Skatås.