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!

Jakob & Jakob featured in Runner’s World

Jakob & Jakob are enormously proud to present the publication of our very first article in the renowned magazine Runner’s World, the biggest and best monthly magazine for runners in Sweden. Our story about this year’s Marathon des Sables is one of four adventure races featured in their September issue out in stores this week. If you weren’t keen on running before, you will be once you’ve read about these amazing adventures!

Run out and buy the latest issue!

Island Hopping

The last week has been absolutely blissful. Under normal circumstances it takes me almost a full week to wind down in order to enjoy my vacation properly. This time, though, peace and calm settled in almost immediately. My lovely cousin has lent us her family summer house for a couple of weeks and for our new little family, blessed as it is with a tiny new member, it has been paradise. The house is located on one of the many islands in the archipelago west of Sweden and doesn’t have any internet, TV or radio. Though what it lacks in 20’th century gadgets, it makes up for in spades with panoramic vistas of windswept cliffs and tumultous seas. And don’t worry, it’s not a Norwegian cabin, meaning we DO have a WC, proper kitchen and warm water. The days are growing shorter (how can something “grow” shorter, by the way?) and summer is clinging to the island by the tips of her fingers. Late summer or early fall doesn’t really matter. It is a beautiful place.

Six days in and I have already finished two books, both of them related to running and both highly recommended. First, I finished Kilian Jornet’s Run Or Die in which the hugely talented Spanish trail runner simply writes what he thinks about when he thinks about running, taking the reader on a journey through several of his record-breaking runs, including the 160 mile Tahoe Rim Trail, the fastest run up and down Kilimanjaro ever recorded and my personal favourite: his insane project where he runs the length of the Pyrenees from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. A few times overly philosophical, the tale is never less than inspiring and lets you understand that it is the love of mountains, lakes and valleys that make this fabled runner tick.

The second book Heja Heja was lighter fare with Martina Haag that in a humorous and easily read way recounts how she went from almost blacking out after a first twelve-minute run to running the Venice marathon after around 18 months of training. It took me about 20 minutes to plow through the pages but even so, the small book easily matches Jornet’s tale for inspiration, albeit it in a more light-hearted way.

OK, sports fans. Now to the big question. Have I done any running of my own during my vacation or have I simply sat in the sofa buried in books, diapers and baby drool? Of course I’ve been running, you dolts! I find a use superlatives in my blog posts more often than not, but I LOVE running on this island! It’s not for everyone but it certainly is for me. Most of the trails run over hard granite cliffs with white paint-markings every 50 metres or so, turning into a very rough gravel trail on several occasions when it bends around particularly steep cliff faces or dips down into small wooded groves. Having grown up in Gothenburg I’m used to rain and more particularly, wind. The wind’s been blowing more or less constantly since we got here and I love it! There’s nothing like the balance training you get when jumping from rock to stone on a path five metres above the foaming sea when all of a sudden a violent gust of wind tries to flatten you against a rock face. And the rain! Wohooo! My toes and the balls of my feet are constantly hurting from the effort of running on my forefoot in my INOV8 Trailrocs (good for gravel, bad for wet cliffs…). Since the island’s not that big, my 35 km longrun two days ago forced me to do six laps around it, but no matter. The trail is so much fun that if you alternate between running it clockwise and anti-clockwise every other lap, you hardly notice. At any rate, the path is poorly marked in a few places and I’ve run astray several times only to retrace my steps over slippery lichen-covered cliffs.

91 km’s in six days is the grand totalt for this week. Tomorrow we only have five weeks left to the first of two big challenges this fall: Alesia Trail in Alise Sainte-Reine in France, a 50 km (1500+) race that will hopefully secure us our seventh and final qualification point for UTMB next summer. Oh, and QAC’s newest member – my dad – will be joining us for the event, having opted for one of the shorter distances.

Well, more details on upcoming races in future posts, but a teaser includes the abovementioned Alesia Trail, the final Salomon Trail Tour of the season, the trailrun Nordmarkstravern that kicked off this blog almost a year ago, and finally Oslos Bratteste which is a totally insane race going up a alpine skiing slope in Oslo. It’s pretty steep as the name (Oslos Bratteste = Oslo’s Steepest) implies. And those are only the races booked for September! Yeah!

Inspiring Amanda

At first sight, the world of sports is overflowing with role models. Athletes in various fields whose warm and generous personalities, iron-dedication to training, impressive achievements, happiness and joy in victory and ability to suffer losses graciously inspire us to become better, faster and stronger athletes.

In earlier posts, we’ve written about fallen idols like Lance Armstrong and sadly the list of fakes got longer this summer with the exposures of among others Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay. Luckily, the list of role models is longer by far and I would like to tell you about a few of our own personal favourites, especially since some of them are not as well known as athletes in other, more media-savvy sports.

All of the following athletes are girls and there is very special reason for that. As you may have noticed, our blogposts haven’t been as regular this summer as they’ve been earlier this year. This is due to having had more pressing things on my mind, namely the birth of our lovely little baby girl Amanda. Lately I’ve found myself philosophizing about what kind of person she will turn out to be and what she will choose to become. That’s why I’ve decided to give her a little nudge by telling her about the following three cool women.

See? Always smiling!

Emelie Forsberg (1987) from Sweden has already made a name for herself as an exceptionally talented trail runner at the international circuit, her breakthrough coming last year as she became the world champion in Skyrunning. At this year’s European Championship she found herself on the podium for each of the three races: gold at Dolomites Skyrace (22 km) and Trans d’Havet (80 km, 5500+) as well as a silver at the Vertical Kilometre in Canazei. She has dominated the world of trail running almost since her debut and is currently running for the Salomon Sweden Trail Running Team. Studying biology in Tromsø gives her ample opportunity to train in the spectacular mountains of northern Norway. If you’d like to get to know her a bit more you can visit one of her two blogs; Runner’s World or at blogspot. Reading about her personal musings and race reports conjures up an image of a confident and happy person who is brutally honest with her ups and downs, vividly describing both the physical and mental battles in her races, which is why Jakob & Jakob love her. The following quote, found on the International Skyrunning Federation’s website, is perhaps the most descriptive: “Emelie cruised to a comfortable finish – 10^th overall – sliced 1h23’ off the course record [at the Ultra Trans d’Havet], and collected yet another gold medal for her country.  Incredible achievements, crowned as usual with the winning smile that has become her trademark.”

We’ve borrowed this serenely beautiful pic from Lisa’s blog.

We’ve written about the triathlete Lisa Nordén (1984) before and she still remains one of our all-time favourite role models. Last year, she won the silver medal in the London Olympics and as if this were not enough, she managed to become the ITU World Triathlon Champion later that summer when she – despite being knocked out by a nasty stomach flu – battled it out in the last race of the season in Auckland to win the world championship crown. This year she’s already racked up impressive victories in Fuerteventura, the half-Ironman in Syracuse and Boulder Peak. Just like Emelie, Lisa is an athlete who very apparently loves what she does and is always wearing a huge smile when interviewed by the press. One of my biggest regrets of last year was not walking up and congratulating her to her olympic silver medal when I accidentally stumbled upon her at Heathrow. It won’t happen again.

Climbing the highest peak in the world.

Last, but not least, we have the adventurer Annelie Pompe (1981) from Göteborg. In 2010 she set a new world record in variable weight freediving with a dive of 126 m and in 2011 she reached the summit of Mount Everest as the first Swedish woman to summit from the north side. The name of these two achievements has inspired the name of her hugely inspirational blog Deep Everest where she writes about her philosophies and adventures. Not settling for simply freediving and mountain climbing, she’s also a highly accomplished yoga instructor, writer and underwater photographer and one of her works of art currently adorns our living room wall. A couple of months ago, Annelie was set to break another world record in freediving as she reached 131 m only to succumb to a shallow water blackout just before reaching the surface. Jakob & Jakob can certainly relate from personal experience involving an anchor and a sandy sea bottom on Malta. Read more about Annelie’s world record attempt and blackout right here on her blog.

So what do all of these girls have in common? Their infectious smile, love of life and unfailing optimism in everything they do. I hope Amanda will be inspired by them and hopefully – in 10-15 years or so – join her old man for runs in the woods, mountains and hills. Maybe she’ll become an olympic champion, skyrunning world champion or climb the highest peaks of the world? Just saying…

Running with the Mayor

In running, as in life, things happen in increments. You suddenly find yourself in a situation you could not have imagined or running a race you thought impossible. It often requires a leap of faith to get to those places and races. You keep pushing because you believe you will get there, even though you have no clue how.

I can not claim that I have been pushing myself very hard lately, still quietly celebrating the completion of Marathon of the Sands. But since we have a 50k trail race in September, I though it’s time to get back on track. So I started last week by running in the footsteps of Alberto Arroyo.

Alberto Arroyo is believed to be the first man that started jogging around the reservoir in Central Park. This was in 1937. He continued this daily routine unaffected by sun, rain, snow or thunder. Read more

Toughening up

You know what? I HATE running intervals. My head always feels like it’s about to implode, my panting comes in painful ragged breaths and I feel that the amount of lactate my legs are producing could fill an Olympic swimming pool for every lap! And it HURTS!!! And you know another thing? I LOVE running intervals. I absolutely adore the feeling I get when I can hold a rapid pace and then accelerate during the last lap even though I feel like throwing up. And the glorious feeling after an interval session is absolutely awesome! I have a love/hate relationship with running. Do you? Read more

Branching Out

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, our family started spending the summers with our relatives in Slovakia. Or rather, mom and dad spent summers catching up with our grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends while my brother and I were unceremoniously dropped off at various summer camps all around the country. Since we are 14 cousins on dad’s side of the family alone (counting another four on mom’s side), we weren’t wanting for company during our forays into the Slovak wilderness. The one camp we both still remember most fondly was kayaking camp. We used to camp together with a whole posse of kids and adolescents and were the scourge of the river Dunajec bordering Poland. The wildlings on the other side of the river were naturally pelted with pine cones and pellets on sight but luckily we encountered precious few of those. Read more

So. What to do this summer?

Sometimes Jakob and I have longer periods where nothing new is happening on our running horizon and where things kind of slow down to a leisurely tempo. It’s easy to be lazy during summer when schools are closed, there’s less to do at work and the weather is absolutely lovely. That’s when it’s important not to become sloppy with our training schedule and keep to it, as usual. For the first time in five years, we have a summer in front of us with no major races. Last summer we had just finished Trail du Verdon and the summer before that the Irondistance triathlon Forestman. In 2010 we were training all summer for our first huge challenge in September, Tjörn Half Ironman and in the end of May 2009 I was battling against myself in Edinburgh Marathon. Two and a half months have already passed since we finished Marathon des Sables. Our bodies have long since recovered and our sights are firmly set beyond the horizon. Read more

Muddy, slippery and immensely fun

Panting and wheezing I tried not to slip and twist my ankle between the muddy tree roots, careening down the soft trail towards the end of the first lap. Seeing miss H, at the moment serving as my personal photographer, I tried to increase my pace to impress the missus and managed a weak smile at the camera. This particular Salomon Trail Tour was my fourth one out of a total of six races this summer. The first couple of competitions were pretty muddy and wet but the sun shone bright and warm last Monday, promising a lovely afternoon in the woods. Running these tours have not only served as high intensive training but also as a form of preparation for running races and getting accustomed to running with a number on my chest, feeling the pressure of trying to beat other runners to the finish line. I always get nervous before a race and this kind of training has been particularly beneficial for me. Also, it’s a lot easier trying to keep your pace up when you’re chasing someone. Read more

The Queen’s AC in Queens

During the last couple of months, Jakob has spent a lot of time in one of the coolest cities in the world. Since I happened to have a week off I decided to visit and join him on his own little versions of “running around the block”. My plane was late flying in to JFK and I didn’t arrive at Jakob’s place until 04.00 in the morning. This didn’t stop us from joining our friend from the Sahara, Illka, for a morning run in Central Park at 08.00. If you call yourself a runner, you’d better behave like one. Central Park is one of my favourite places in the world for running. A lap around the park is only a couple of hundred metres short of 10k and is pleasantly undulating with a few challenging slopes along the way. Later in the week we met up with an old friend of ours and spent a couple of wonderful days playing golf at Tiburón in Naples, Florida. Golf is unfortunately quickly becoming an addiction akin to running. I say unfortunately because I’ll soon run out of hours in the day to pursue everything I would like to. We truly live lives of privilege and count ourselves blessed to be able to do the things we do. Read more