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The steepest race in town

For the second time in less than a week dad accompanied me on one of my races. Not as a spectator but as a fellow athlete! How cool is that? After last weekend’s ultra race Alesia Trail in the Burgundy region of Eastern France – where dad opted for the shorter, but still very much respectable 16k version (500+ vertical metres) – we picked up the Mountain Queen on our way to the starting line in the middle of Sørkedalen on Saturday morning. Oslo’s Bratteste is literally Oslo’s steepest uphill race with 407 vertical metres in 2,7 km. And where do you find a steep enough hill where one can accomodate so many runners (3000+ this year, breaking the record for the fifth year in a row) at once? Well, you find a ski slope of course. Arriving at the bottom around an hour before start, I caught dad squinting curiously up the gravelly slope asking me how he should pace himself and what kind of strategy would be the wisest. “The careful one”, I answered. The hill starts with a deceptively low incline before you collide face-first with Helveteskneika – The Hump From Hell – where only first-timers try to run. The rest of us normally choose an easier pace, smiling smugly when we pass the amateurs a couple of hundred metres further up.

Team Queen’s AC with Team Baris by the starting line of O.B.

I can see that I sound like a grizzled oldtimer that has run the race all of it’s previous four incarnations. Not so. In fact, this is the first race I have ever run twice. Nordmarkstravern a month ago doesn’t actually count since I’ve run two different distances (15k last year and 30k this year), arguably two very different races. But I guess the floodgates have opened. This precedent means that I can safely apply to NY Marathon next year if I like. Or maybe even Marathon des Sables? OK, maybe not that desert race. Just yet.

Dad pushing a hard sprint finish.

The organizers had divided us up into groups depending on our projected finish time as well as letting the ladies and gents start in different corrals. Dad took off like a cannonball at 12.10 p.m., hoping to finish in under 40 minutes. Say what you will about my dad, but he has guts. When I first ran the race last year I had at least three of four training runs under my belt. Dad hadn’t even laid eyes on the slope before today. He even asked if the top he could see from the bottom was far from the finish line? “Dad, you won’t even be halfway there when you get to the top you can see over there…” “Oh, OK then. Maybe I should take it easy until I can actually see the finish line?” “Good idea, dad.” Twenty minutes later I took off in a slightly more ambitious group than last year’s (when I finished in 24.00), this time opting for the “18-23 min finishers”-starting group. Surely I wouldn’t be outrun by everybody in my group? To tell you the truth, the only thing that mattered was that the Mountain Queen didn’t overtake me just before the finish line, starting as she would at 12.40, ten minutes later.

The gun went off and patting me on the back, coach Stefan – whom I always run into at the coolest races of the season – passed me by in a cloud of neon orange. I started a careful pace up the Hump from Hell, shoving aside a spindly fourteen-year-old who stepped on my foot. I had great a great grip with my newly washing-machine-washed INOV8 Trailrocs and felt I had good control over the proceedings. The good thing about being in a starting group where you can barely manage the tempo is that you get pulled along by better runners. Which is why I always do my more serious hill training with the Mountain Queen. I reached the top of Wyller in a pretty OK condition and took off down towards the next lift station around 2,1k into the race where the final elevation starts up towards Tryvannstårnet, the 118 m tall broadcasting tower standing sentinel right by the tape. Last year, if you remember, conditions were muddy like hell and I had to fight and shove with some overambitious fellow runners to stay erect, but this year I pedalled down as fast as I dared before I turned upwards again. With 200 m to go (the last 100 m are a complete bitch – you feel like you are climbing a vertical wall, but if you start walking here, they’ll literally shoot you) my calves were burning painfully, just as they were supposed to. I crossed the finish line in a new PB of 22:58, shaving 1:02 off last year’s time and feeling pretty satisfied.

Character study 2

And you know what’s funny? Dad only had a single reason to run the race. The beanie I got in my goodiebag last year. He’s been gazing at it for almost year and finally got a chance to win his own one today. Impressively enough, dad didn’t even look winded when we met up after the steepest race in Oslo, this being his first ever uphill race! Miss H and Panda were, as is their custom, waiting by the fence, taking photos and being the best support team ever!

Anyone else up for winning a cool beanie of their own next year? You’re welcome to Oslo around the last weekend of September 2014 and we’ll make a race out of it. Loser buys dinner. And what about last weekend’s ultra Alesia Trail? Don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about it and are preparing a thourough race report for your reading pleasure. But just for the record: Jakob & Jakob managed to snatch their final UTMB-point in France and are now in the possession of seven qualification points for Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc. In three months, we will be applying for UTMB 2014. We’ll know whether we have won a spot or not come January next year. So keep your fingers crossed!

The Mountain Queen in blue rounding it up!

The only runner in Norway sporting an Alesia Trail-buff. Guaranteed.

And here are the BEANIES!!!

I hate this tapering business…

Tapering refers to the training phase right before a long distance event, typically a marathon, when a runner starts to cut back on his mileage. Preparing for marathons, runners typically start to taper 2-3 weeks before the race which gives them a chance to rest and recover, not to mention to mentally prepare for the competition.

That doesn’t mean that I have to like it. This last week I was supposed to run three short sessions of 10k or less, but I only managed two of them due to an overload of night shifts at work. Which has – quite literally – resulted in a cerebral meltdown. My legs are all jittery and I’m afraid I’ll take off like Bugs Bunny once the gun goes off next Sunday.

It’s one week to go before Vercingetorix, the 51 km (1800+) race of Alesia Trail Jakob and I will be participating in. Dad will join us for the slightly shorter, but still impressively challenging Oppidum where he will run 16 km (500+) on parts of the same course.

Oppidum is marked in green while Vercingetorix is marked in red (including all of the other colours as well), the course being run counter-clockwise.

We’ll be visiting our lovely relatives Nic and Maria and their pretty toddlers M and E who live a couple of hours from the starting line. It’s always a pleasure visiting France and Jakob and I have fantastic memories from the last time we were here, in June 2012, when we completed the 108 km (6700+) Trail du Verdon. During Alesia Trail, we’ll try to keep you updated on FB and my own account on Instagram (jakobklcovansky), so stay tuned!

I’ll leave you with an awesome video of last week’s race Nordmarkstravern filmed by the race’s main sponsor Helly Hansen. Coach Stefan and our friend Peter are glimpsed for a few seconds (13 seconds in), sitting down and chatting before the start of the race. Enjoy!

30 kilometres, emergency stops and a tiny badge

“COME OOON JAKOB!!! YOU HAVE 30 MORE SECONDS TO WIN THE BADGE!!!” I heard coach Stefan’s deafening roar from the finish line. I had been steadily accelerating my pace for the last 2 kilometres and now, with only around 100 metres to go, I found some more juice in my legs to increase my pace to a jerky kind of sprint. 30 trail kilometres on mostly gravel roads and small forest trails in 2.57.10 (303’rd place out of a total of 495 in the male category). Nordmarkstravern is one of those races where – if you manage to finish with a time no more than 50% longer than the winner’s time – you get a shiny, tiny badge to show for it. So thanks Stefan, for helping me grab the last straw and winning one of the badges!

The BADGE

As usual, I had missed to prebook a starting number and consequently found myself at Sognsvann at 8.15 am on Saturday morning in order to fix one. This settled, I climbed aboard one of the multiple race buses bound for the lake Stryken in the middle of Nordmarka. In the bus I found myself sitting next to coach Stefan and his pal Peter. Stefan and I had succesfully tried the shorter Halve Nordmarkstravern (15 km) last year and had decided to give the full version a try this year. The sun greeted us by Stryken when we arrived, promising us one of those last warm late-summer days of the season. I can keep pace with my coach on a good day and so when the starting gun went off I tagged along Peter and Stefan in a comfortable run trying to avoid the snags and stones on the gravel road, zig-zagging between the other 700 (!) runners out there today. There was quite a bit of shoving and pushing going on which for me is a bit unfathomable for such a long race and I found myself memorizing a particularly enthusiastic shover’s jersey in order to give him a good strong push when I’d be passing his ass in around 10k or so. As soon as we hit the forest trails, I relaxed a bit. I have probably mentioned this a thousand times, but I simply LOVE trail running! The better I get at it the more I feel like I am flying over those roots, mudholes and rocks. More and more I feel that my ankles, knees and overall balance is beginning to find a form of equilibrium where I feel confident running up steep inclines and down slippery slopes. As soon as I start running down a forest trail I start tip-toeing in my 3 mm drop trail shoes and I find it hard to land on the middle part of my foot when I return to the gravel roads or asphalt. It was interesting how much my speed suffered while on the roads with people passing me in a frustrating manner and how I picked them off one by one while in the forest. I really need to start working on my speed on the flats again. I’ve been neglecting the interval training during our summer vacation and it needs to be rectified before New York.

I’m FLYING!!!

Unfortunately what slowed me down even more were my two extremely unfortunate toiletbreaks. My tummy’s a bit sensitive and even though I’ve tried many a time to tame it to my will, it sometimes turns me down in the most humiliating fashion. Without going into details, suffice it to say that the middle part of the race (10 to 20 km) was painful with stomach cramps and panicky searching for deep and secluded parts of the forest. Despite all of this the race was extremely enjoyable; the support personell were all friendly and helpful and the route was challengingly drawn between beautiful lakes and up and down serpentine paths. I passed a couple of unfortunate guys hobbling down the steep parts and who had clearly twisted their ankles but other than that, people seemed to be enjoying themselves. After around 20 km our trail joined the course for Halve Nordmarkstravern and suddenly I recognized the roads and paths from the previous year which gave me new momentum as I glanced down at my watch. I had been hoping to clock in at under 3 hours but had been let down by my two lengthy toiletstops, but now I saw that I could maybe, maybe manage it if I put my mind to it. The final kilometre was easily my fastest during the entire course and I greedily sucked in the atmosphere around the school where I ran my final sprint to the cheers of Stefan.

My two greatest fans miss H and Panda were waiting for me at the finish line with kisses and hugs. I mean, what better way to end a beautiful race?

Niklas, Stefan och Jakob

First Race Of The Fall

Four days ago Jakob & Jakob celebrated the one-year-anniversary of our blog! Looking over the 101 posts we’ve jointly written since then it’s safe to say that we’ve been through a lot during the last twelve months, not least the adventure of our lives (so far…): the 28th Marathon des Sables in Morocco five months ago. Even though we both started running marathons together several years ago the adventure of this blog had a more humble beginning, namely the 15 km trail run Nordmarkstravern in the forests north of Oslo. Well, we’ve come almost full circle since then with this year’s race just around the corner next Saturday morning. Only this time, I’ll be attempting the 30 km track as a final general rehearsal before the 50 km ultra race Alesia Trail in less than three weeks. Hopefully I’ll meet up with my friend and coach Stefan at the starting line of ‘Travern.

But the season actually began yesterday with the classic (every single annual trail running competition is a classic in Oslo) Sørkedalsløpet, a race I have never run before. Last week I got an sms from the Queen of Sloperunning herself, Hedda, who asked if I’d like to tag along on the 11 km trail race this week. Sørkedalsløpet is run about 40% on gravel roads, 30% on grassy meadows and 30% on tight and slippery forest trails and is advertized as not having the meanest climbs and descents of the fall races. Since Hedda is a bit quicker than me she ventured into a faster starting group than me (sub 50) while I settled for the one next one (sub 53) both of us reasoning that it’s better getting pulled along in a faster group than getting slowed down on small forest trails by a slower one. The cannon (I kid you not – they had a CANNON lined up on the meadow next to the race) suddenly went off, startling all of the ladies and kickstarting the race.

11 km is a fair distance but still not too long which is why you tend to get unwanted hubris into your head thinking that you should be able to push yourself a bit harder than is probably healthy. After 3k I felt almost like throwing up but pushed on regardless, determined not to let a 10-year old kid wearing a blue shirt pass me again. The race was pleasantly undulating and the forest trails entertainingly twisty, narrow and muddy. As soon as the runner in front of me started lagging behind the runners in front of her or him, I took a step sideways into the bush and raced past, risking the health of my ankle several times. I can tell you that I have probably never been so close to my lactate threshold for so long during a race like yesterday. My trail and uphill training the last three weeks on Marstrand payed off big time and I felt like I flew past runners on the uphill stretches tip-toeing along in a furious pace. But even though I literally ran as fast as I could downhill I always got caught up by some overweight bald guy with horribly colour-coordinated gear on my way down. Extremely annoying! Must have something to do with gravity I guess. I couldn’t wait until I could pass them all on an uphill stretch, gloating with a huge smile on my face. The last downhill 300 m was a muddy, sloppy mayhem of rocks and roots but somehow I managed to pass several middle-aged ladies irritatingly finishing just behind the little blueshirted ten-year old.

Still, I finished in 52.34, trailing Hedda by only 57 seconds and proud of not getting more thoroughly beaten than that. Don’t forget to come and cheer for us by Sognsvann on Saturday when we run Nordmarkstravern!