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Jakob Is Now Officially A Running Coach

I got a mail from coach Stefan the other day, asking me if I wouldn’t be interested in a course for aspiring running coaches. The Scandinavian gym chain SATS has gone into partnership with Urban Tribes (formerly Running Sweden), offering their clients a completely new concept for running group training. These classes will be held outdoors and will mostly be focused on different types of interval training in order to improve runner’s lactate threshold and thereby, hopefully, both their speed and endurance. The runners will be organized into different Tribes, depending from which centre they will be starting from, before meeting up with four other Tribes from neighbouring centres in one of Oslo’s beautiful parks. After a brief warm-up run, the runners will divide themselves into groups according to their speed, whereafter the specific interval sessions will commence; Run Tough™, Run Speedplay™ and Run Pace™.

Now, what does all of this have to do with me? Well, as it turns out, I applied for the coaching class, got accepted, and will now be one of Urban Tribe’s running coaches for the remainder of the spring! Go figure! Not only will I get to push my own training, but I’ll hopefully be able to inspire other budding ultrarunners and marathoners as well! This is going to be SO awesome!

This post is a shameless appeal for people to come and join us! Coach Stefan, myself and a handful of other coaches will be holding these classes from ten different SATS centres six days a week, running to Frognerparken and Tøyenparken. The Tribe you will want to join is the one running from SATS Vinderen on Mondays (Run Tough) and the one running from SATS Sjølyst on Wednesdays (Run Speedplay), both running their sessions in Frognerparken. But don’t worry, even though the other coaches aren’t as good-looking, they are at least (or slightly more…) competent than myself, and all of the Tribes will be awesome! The sessions start Monday 31 March. Oooh, oooh! That’s TODAY!

So tag along, and run with us!

Frognerparken in all its summer beauty.

First Race of the Season

Finding myself with time on my hands down here in Italy, I found myself wondering if there happened to be a running event in the general vicinity of where we were staying. I knew Maratona di Roma was scheduled for 23rd March, but I also knew my wife would eviscerate me with a dull knife if I suggested a trip to Rome for the weekend that wouldn’t include a romantic dinner and a babysitter. I needed something small, manageable and most important of all – nearby. Enter Google. A quick, late-night-search (while the missus was sleeping) led me to the very thing I was looking for; a relatively short (well, OK, medium-length) trail race only around a 40 km drive away! Said and done, I entered the race and waited for a couple of days before telling the love of my life of my plan. Promising to take care of the dishes for the remainder of our trip, I managed to convince her. After all, it was in fact a couple of km shorter than my planned long run for that week. What I honestly forgot to tell her was that despite the innocent-looking 25 km, the race had a climb of 1300+ m, meaning it would take me a lot longer to finish than a planned long run…

Picking up my Pettorale di Gara.

Rainy and windy start.

I love how my memory works when it comes to races. It only ever memorizes the entertaining and beautiful parts of a competition. I always sort of know that there must have been painful, agonizing and embarrassing moments, but they’re more or less remembered through a misty kind of haze, kind of like looking through frosted glass. Which is why I didn’t really dwell on the 1 300+ m of climbing I’d be doing. Big mistake. Or not, depending on how you look at it.

We had had lovely days of sunshine for three weeks straight, but standing below the orange arch of the start just outside the little hamlet of Castiglion Fiorentino on Sunday morning, I huddled closer to the runners standing closest to me and zipped up my running jacket a little tighter around my neck, trying to get warm in the chilly morning breeze. A tempestuous spring rain had pummeled the window panes of our house during the night, and I had driven to the village with my windshield wipers on the whole way. 400 runners were going to run the three distances of this, the inaugural race of Trail delle Valli Etrusche; The Etruscan Valley Trail. An ultra of 47 km (not entirely fit for one of those yet. Besides, I was on vacation…), a medium-length race of 25 km and a short 14 km for the non-masochists.

“Set, pronto, VIA!!!”, the short little race official cried through the megaphone. And for the first time this season, I was off. As far as I could see, I was the only one wearing shorts, but then again, according to the race officials, I was the only foreigner in the race. Along with the participants from Alto Adige, of course; “They are south Tyrolians, and not really Italians”, a grey-haired gentleman had confided the day before when I’d come to pick up my racing number. The first couple of kilometers of the race were flat and uneventful. Then the climb started, and boy was it a muddy climb. Annoyingly, they had us walking single file through tight vegetation during the first 45 minutes, causing a lot of frustration on my part since I was certain I could climb faster than the runners in front of me. This wasn’t an ultra, after all, and I didn’t have to worry about running for an entire day. And besides, what was a mere 1 300 vertical meters? I came to bitterly regret that hubris after only a few kilometers. The 25 km race was laid down as a simple pyramid with three climbs, basically having us climbing almost 1 000 meters in 11 km, and then running steeply downhill for the second part of the race. Regular readers of our blog know that I am not normally prone to exaggeration, but I have to say I almost died during that climb. Really, I did. My heart was pounding in my throat, my breath came in ragged starts a hundred times a minute and the rain was lashing my face. And I loved it! My poor INOV-8 Trailrocs have been singing on their last verse for quite some time now, but this was the race I finally realized that I would have to let them go. Great in dry and gravelly terrain, they could no longer cope with wet roots and muddy rocks. I never fell, but I came close several times, especially during the climbs. I pushed myself harder than I have pushed myself in a trail race before, and it was a strange feeling. Pushing yourself like this in an ultra means certain DNF, at least for myself, but here it felt appropriate. The race was run through the picturesque hills of the Castiglionese Valley, but the vistas I had been hoping for were completely whited out as you can see in the photos. The only thing I could see were fir trees shrouded in mist and wet, glistening roots and rocks underfoot.

One of the few glimpses of the Castiglionese Valley we got during the race.

Final climb with 5 km left.

Once we started downhill, I tried a technique I have seen the awesome Emelie Forsberg apply during her famous trail descents. I.e. release the brakes and just drop as fast as hell. If you click on her name, you’ll see a video on youtube of just what it looks like. The idea is to pedal and try to let your feet and legs absorb the terrain and trust your foothold when you descend, not braking with every step you take but rather let every step fly you on the next one. In order for this to work, you need to trust the grip of your shoes implicitly, which I couldn’t do under normal circumstances due to the worn out soles of my Trailrocs. Luckily, the extremely muddy trails came to my help. Normally, you try and have the same foot-strike running downhill as you would have on the flat, i.e. on the middle- or front foot in my case. Since it was so slippery, I simply sort of “glide-landed” on my heel where the mud was deep enough, and this helped me during long stretches down the hills. My new friend Alessandro, with whom I had a philosophical discussion about the beauty of the surrounding countryside while we were climbing – and whom I promptly left behind during my wild descent – accused me of having wings instead of feet when we met up after the race. I think it’s one of the nicest running compliments anyone has ever given me.

At any rate, the race was tremendous fun and I was especially glad that I managed to hold some fit-looking young fellows behind me during the 3 km long final flat stretch through the fields close to the finishing line. The goody bag did not only contain a cool, green running t-shirt with the race logo, but also – in true Italian style – a bag of pasta and an officially endorsed local olive oil.

Thanks for a fine race, Tuscany! Jakob, Jakob and Jozef will be back to Italy in June!

Olive oil recommended by the Trail delle Valli Etrusche.

New York Marathon record breaking Asics Racers to the left, muddy Trailrocs to the right. During this trip, both of them have been retired after long and faithful service. Thanks, guys.

Climbing Tuscan Hills

“Stupid, stupid, S T U P I D!!! Next time you know there’s a risk of running in the dark, bring a headlamp you imbecile…”, I cursed under my breath as I ran faster and faster down the steep and rocky slope, surrounded by black, slender trees, occasionally glimpsing the tiny golden lights of the Agriturismo Castiglionchio in the valley below. The purple disc of the sun had slipped behind the Tuscan hills to the west quicker than I expected, thus starting to drown our little valley in close to pitch black darkness at an alarming pace. Idiot.

Morning mists surround our little tower.

Leaving our little medieval tower at Montioni an hour and fifty minutes earlier, I promised the missus and Panda I’d be back before dark. “Well, shouldn’t you take your headlamp just in case?”, miss H asked me while at the same time trying to coax our feisty daughter into relinquishing her tight little grasp of a brand new – and now completely tattered and torn – movie magazine. “Nah, I’ll be fine. Besides, I’ll be carrying a water bottle in one hand and don’t want to be burdened with extra weight. It’s not like I’m afraid of the dark, Lovely”, I winked, stepping out through the door and heading down the stone stairs to the terrace.

Well, let me tell you, there’s nothing like a haunted forest, some hooting owls and the knowledge that hungry wild boars live in the woods you’re running through in order to quite vividly bring out a healthy and quite frankly paralyzing fear of the dark. Trust me. And had I brought my cell phone just in case I twisted my ankle or broke my leg in the middle of this black jungle? “It’ll just jump around in my pocket, Lovely, annyoing me no end.”

Well, I’d imagine being eaten by a flesh-eating owl would probably be pretty annoying too.

The Lion gate at Montioni.

And the afternoon had started so well. Closing the iron gate flanked by the stone lions behind me, I had turned up the gravel slope and started running uphill at a leisurely pace, carefully planning my long run in my head. When training for ultra races, I tend to switch from distance to time in my training programme, meaning that instead of scheduling today’s longrun for 25 km I was planning to run for 2 h 05 min’s, the equivalent of that distance on a flat surface during ideal conditions. Hilly terrain like these Tuscan hills would give me fabulous training for the vertical climbing during Lavaredo Ultra Trail in June, and I was – still am – planning to make the most of the topography where our little family had chosen to spend my first month of paternity leave together. It was pretty smooth going and after only a kilometre or so, I came across a middle-aged Italian wearing a beret who, at seeing me run up towards him, raised his clenched fist towards his chest, pumping the air. I smiled back with a puffy “ ’Sera! ”, crested the hill and continued along the serpentine road around a small church. After around 40 minutes, I reached the top of the highest hill in our valley. Monastero dell’Incontro, a Franciscan monastery, is perched at the very summit of the hill and according to local history, there existed a small chapel here as early as the 8^th century A.D. As you can see from the graph below, it was quite a climb to the top.

638 vertical metres in total for the run.

On the western side of the monastery, the asphalt road turned into a wide and rocky path that dove down again into the woods, and I maintained my planned counter-clockwise loop of the valley. The trail was marked along the side with white horizontal blazes sandwiched between two red stripes, like small Austrian flags, and despite the sharp and plentiful stones, I relished the feel of running through a beautiful Italian forest after so many months of snowy and icy trails (and a lot of air-conditioned and wobbly treadmills). Emerging from the trees by the half dozen or so houses of Moriano, I realized I had to make a detour of at least 40 minutes if I wanted to run for two hours without repeating myself when reaching our tower too early. Instead of running down into the valley again towards Castiglionchio due north, however, (idiot, idiot, I D I O T) during the last 30 minutes of daylight, I turned in the opposite direction and followed the trail that soon enough turned into a gravel road and after a while into an asphalt country road. At Cimitero di San Cristoforo, I clocked 20 minutes of my detour and turned back towards Moriano again. Only when I arrived, the sun had long since hid behind the hill of Monastero dell’Incontro, and I had trouble identifying the right path down into the valley. Far below me, I could see the lights of Agriturismo Castiglionchio well enough. Only problem was a black hole of an abyss between me and my goal. To cap it all off, I had drunk all of my water and eaten my last Bounty bar.

Starting at the little white square at 2 o’clock and then running counter-clockwise until around 5 o’clock and then running due south for the detour. The red part is the Haunted Forest.

It’s a funny thing, fear of darkness. It’s so real and scary when you’re a kid (My brother’s fear manifested itself as a dark and hairy gorilla living under our bunk bed. My brother slept in the lower bunk.), and you think you’ve outgrown it as you grow into a – hopefully – sensible adult. Not so. After two rounds of Hail Mary’s, I still hadn’t reached the bottom of the pit and the lights from outside the Agriturismo had long ago vanished behind spider-like branches and impenetrable bushes. I ran slightly faster, passing a completey dark and unlit ghost stone mansion and turning around the corner of the façade, I finally found a lit asphalt road leading straight towards the huge Agriturismo 300 metres further on. My bladder relaxed all of its built-up tension at once, and I suddenly understood the point of the high absorption index of my daughter’s diapers. Suffice it to say that my running shorts were quite dry, thank you very much, as I passed Castiglionchio on my right, running the final stretch towards the lion gate and sending a quiet but heartfelt thanks to Our Lady of the Mentally Slow Athletes that I hadn’t broken an extremity or knocked out a tooth.

All in all, a longrun with a little more excitement than I had bargained for.

The chapel next to Castiglionchio Agriturismo. In daylight.

“The road goes ever on and on…”