#29 – 50 runs in 100 days – Keep Running edition

Friday I took the night train up to Stockholm with another Coach K Runners who was going to run Lidingöloppet for the first time.

I have realized that first class in the best alternative with the compartment by myself, my own toilet and then breakfast at Royal Saturday morning which has really nice breakfast.

The train arrived 5.14 but you do not have to leave til 7.00 am so I put the alarm to 6.00 am.

Before breakfast I had to fix a few things first, get a new SL card, good to charge money on it (I could move over the money I had on my old card which had expired. When you get back from the race at Ropsten it is chaos so you could just use the card and get to the train.

Then I forgot to take out money Friday so I had to do it Saturday morning.

After that it was time to eat breakfast

I also ate one banana, youghurt and one boiled egg with caviar

When we had finished breakfast we walked to the train station to get to the Metro to take us to Ropsten. At the track I saw Marina and Emil, two other Coach K Runners. Took the train to Ropsten and then the free buses to Lidingövallen.

This year the number distribution worked much better, they had moved it inside where the sports trade show is but had moved out part of the sports trade show in a big tent so we had time to walk through the sports trade fair which wasn’t too crowded which has been the problem earlier.

I gave some tips to Liw and put linament on my legs, mu number on my bags, the bib on my t-shirt, realized I didn’t bring the magnetic race number positioning system. Decided to wear t-shirt without any long sleeve under so safety pins.

We took a walk to the finish line and I showed Liw where she would get her bags afterwards. They had put a temporary bridge over the street which we walked over and I thought this won’t be any fun after 30K tough trail running 🙂

Ate early lunch which consisted of grilled hotdog and festis.

Then I turned in my back pack, paid 40 SEK to get it to the finish line instead of have to walk back and get it afterwards, definately worth the money.

All of the sudden I saw Magnus who would run Lidingöloppet for the first time and we talked for a short moment and wished him luck.

Since it is 1.8K walking to the start I walked with Liw to it, she started 20 min earlier than me. It takes some time to get there and then you need to pee and stretch before you go to the starting group ”hem”. They had changed the way you went into the ”hem” which was very confusing and stressing, there was only one ”hem” and couldn’t get in there earlier than 10 min before.

Some warm up and then finally it was time for start 🙂

This year I had no expectations. Did commute February til May which changed my training, not as much as I usually do because I was a zoombie for 3 months, started to get back on track during the summer, on vacation I did not run as much as I have planned because it was so warm, then I got a cold so a couple of more trail runs would have been good.

In the beginning we are running on a wide open field and then after a couple of K’s you get to a narrow path and it just stops and you just running on the same spot til the chain starts moving and that continues for a while til it gets a bit more airy. I learned a new sign, if ti stops some runners are putting up their hands in the air.

The first 15K were just fine, had a time 1.38K at 15K but then I got very sore hips and tired legs even if I had compression socks. When it was 10K left my legs were tired so I was forced to walk up some hills that when I am better trained run up. Part of me wanted to through in the towel even if I wasn’t injured but lucky I have a stronger me and Lars ”the devil” in front of me which pushed me forward. The last 10K was heavy.

The worst hill is Aborrbacken which shows up when it is 5K left and I have always walked up that hill and it was no different this year.

Now it is only 5K left so K after K just gets shorter from the finish line and we try to pep each other, you could see a lot of tired runners at the end.

Finally I saw the finish line and I got up the pace.

Distance: 30.25K, time: 3.24.46 h, average heart rate: 153, average pace: 6.46 min/k, max pace: 4.46 min/k, cadence: 172, VO2 Max: 28 ml/kg/min