Triathlon at Retirement

This year started well with me winning two national championships in winter triathlon. My form was good; despite getting older, I was improving my times, especially in running where I was getting very competitive. I was feeling good and was injury free. Then I caught covid in early July, followed by a nasty bacterial infection that took me almost three weeks to throw off. Training was down to a minimum during this time, it was mostly rest and try to recover. And recover I did, after about 6 weeks I was finally ok and I ran a competitive 10k in Stockholm, Sweden (Midnattsloppet). Despite the lack of consistent training, I was faster than the year before and nailed a 5th place in this hard field of runners. A week later I ran a duathlon and came 5th overall (including all ages and men) on two very speedy runs. I was planning for a half marathon in December. It was not to be. In early September my right knee gave in without warning, for no apparent reason at all. I have been to doctors, h...

Occasionally, when the weather is bad, my bike is out of order, or I am travelling, I will use an indoor stationary bike. I don't particularly like it, it is boring and hard work. But I realize it is very efficient training as long as you can keep yourself motivated... Recently, I used an indoor bike trainer with the Zwift app. The setup was a racing bike with its back wheel on a Tacx trainer, it was an older model. Then I downloaded the Zwift app on my phone. It allows for a free ride every month, so I was able to test the app risk free. I liked it, it may be a game changer. The trainer gave a very realistic feel of the hill climbs, and the competition with other riders on the screen was fun. I have now done it several times and it is a very hard and efficient workout. I actually enjoy it. I am now looking into buying a permanent setup for my home and pay for a Zwift subscription. I regret not doing this years ago, I suspect it would have made my biking more competitive. I intend ...

Encouraged by a good run time in my last race, I thought I should try to qualify for the 2025 World Championship in Duathlon (run - bike - run). It's going to be in Spain and will fit into my travel schedule. For that I need to do races to improve my ranking, which I thought would not be a problem. I signed up for Katy (Texas) Triathlon/Duathlon September 1 and planned for some more during the fall. I had a great race. There are never many people in duathlon, so everyone started at the same time, all ages and men and women together. To my surprise, I felt that the initial run pace was slow. I had planned to start modestly, but not THAT slow. After the first run of 2.5 km, I was at 4th place of total with a 7.39/mile pace. (It was a flat course). Bike went fine too; 6th place of all with 20.9 miles/hour pace. At the second run, I was a little tired but still managed an 8.45/mile pace on 5km and a 3rd best time. Overall, I won the women's race and was number 5 in total. Only four...

Stockholm Midnight run!  Still running at midnight! A 10km road race at night around Stockholm one week after the Vasa MTB race. This is a hard, but really fun race with over 30,000 participants.  As my sister's apartment is practically on the racecourse, I had the advantage of walking to start. The evening was perfect, no rain and the right temperature around 18C (65f). The start is very festive with music, fireworks, lasers and everyone wearing the same shirts and being in a good mood. I had a fairly early start group at 10 minutes past 10 in the evening and warmup felt good. I still decided to take it slightly easy as I recently had 5 weeks break in training from illness. Last year I set a load of speed records on this race, and I ended up at 6th place in my age group which is not bad as some of the best runners participate.  I positioned myself in the middle of my start group and I felt like I was cruising all the way until I reached the hills at Katarina church aroun...

Cykelvasan (Vasa race on bicycle) is the largest MTB race in the Nordic countries, and it approximately follows the famous Vasaloppet cross country ski track with checkpoints at all the classical controls. Almost 20,000 participants were registered over several races and distances. I was in the main and the longest race called Cykelvasan 90 (it is actually 96km long) with over 5000 participants. Three days before this year's Cykelvasa August 10, I felt I was free from my cold and that I could participate. Five weeks with very little training had gone by. For this reason, I knew I had to take it easy to endure 96km (almost 60 miles) on an MTB. Fortunately, the weather was good on racing day. I noticed very few women in my start group. I have done this race and distance once before, but the track had been slightly changed. Instead of doing the initial climb on a meandering gravel road, we had a much steeper climb on the Vasaloppet cross country ski track. I could barely do it without...

There has been a long break in my blogging for two reasons: I have been travelling in the Arctic of Scandinavia and largely been without reliable internet, and I have been sick for over a month stopping any interesting training. These two events are related. In late June, I flew to Sweden where I prefer to spend the summers rather than overheating in Texas. I have a log cabin in the area called Dalecarlia (or Dalarna in Swedish) which is a rural area, hilly and a center for culture and endurance sports.  It started out great, June 29, I did the Vansbro sprint triathlon and had some very fast times for my age. Weather was great too! Then the cold fronts started to move in. This year, I had company with a good friend and triathlete from Texas, and she wanted to do the 3km Vansbroswim, which is one of the world's largest open water swimming events. We braved the cold weather and trained diligently in the local lake with our wetsuits. I also wanted to show my friend the cultural si...

Four days in Omaha of several slightly different events: triathlon, duathlon (run-bike-run), Aquabike (swim - bike), Aquathlon (Swim-run) and relays! Several competitions of National Championship status and qualifiers for world championships. For triathlon, which is my main focus, the shorter distances are covered: supersprint and draft legal sprint. But this year, I tried supersprint duathlon as well. Three hours later I did the supersprint triathlon. The distances are so short that I figured I could handle both competitions the same day. At the duathlon start 7 am, I met some friends from previous competitions and got talking. The super sprint is a time trial with people starting every 3 seconds, and I was so distracted that I almost missed my own start and lost a few seconds right there! I also forgot to start my smart watch, so I have no recording of the race I took up the chase and passed a lot of people on the first run which was abut 1 km, but I don't think I was closing in ...