Figureskating

Just can't get enough of this! Out both yesterday and today skating the whole lake on fantastic ice. About 15 cm with a thin cover of water yesterday, reflections giving an illusion of skating on the sky. this layer was frozen today forming a hard dance floor. Alot of real skaters laugh at our Drevviken and skate mainly on Mälaren or in the Skärgården. But for me its close, safe and on days like this quite magical.

Skyskating

Walking on water

Strangely enough alot less people out when it's this fantastic and open, than when it's all snowy with just a restricted (although long) ploughed track. A bit of a sheep mentality; if there are lots of people out there then lots of people dare to. Skated with my Garmin for the first time today and this track ends up being 23.4 km, with a bit more shorehugging it could maybe be close to 25 km. Cool! And I skate about 20km/h, which I had no idea about before today :-)

Figureskating

I started the day off with 3x8 Monark intervalls, so cycling isn't being ignored. But while I can play winter games I'll prioritise that for training variation. Plus intervals and rides to work. And maybe the odd longlong ride...

/Toni

Winter games

Feeling pretty balanced at the moment. Work is demanding but stimulating and I've had a good couple of weeks training with a highlight on variation. And my family is like always a fantastic haven. A few good gym passes now concentrating on squats and learning how to do them technically correct, a few good Monark intervals at home, where I am starting to diverge a bit from my standard 4x4 or 2x20 intervals with more intense 6x30 s and in-between 3x8 intervals; makes it a bit more fun.

Virtual winter

I've spent lots of time on the lake skating. They have cleared the snow on a 20 km route, which I've skated a few times. It ook me 45 minutes today, which I have no Idea how good it is, but it felt like a really "flowy" skate with a nice consistent exertion level throughout. Great fun!

Autobahn Drevviken

I have also fitted in a couple of runs and of course been riding to and from work almost every day. Which is sometimes more technical thena endurance training this time of year but quite fun when hands don't freeze even though it's -13 in the mornings... My bike is getting a bit punished in the slush and salt though, so a few good sessions of love and attention are always good in winter!

Sparkling and shiny and ready for Monday

To finish off a great week of activity I went proper skiing in Flottsbro with our children all day today. Felt like a little kid playing on the slope, dreaming of the alps and not at all bothered that half of Stockholm was there, but I completely forgot to take photos. Luckily children have their phones out all the time!

Family fun. Selfie courtesy of Johanna.

Life is pretty good sometimes :-)

/Toni

Mountain biking

Lots of friends have for a long time been riding something called Jotunheimen Rundt (http://jotunheimenrundt.no/) in Norway since I've started cycling in Sweden. Like Ari (the sour Finn) about 100 times, Jonas who took it as a sight seeing tour, Johan (bigmollo) a few times and then Calle (mollo's brother, but also my brother in arms in two PBP's) who rode it once and broke the Swedish record while he was at it. And apparently I've just registered for it...

It's a 430+ km ride over lots of spectacular mountains on the 1st July this year and fits in perfectly as a final hard ride before Sverigetempot for me: I need the mountain part so that I can get rid of the uphills in Sverigetempot without wasting all my energy, which was my feeling last time. The ride looks like this:

Messy 4x4 intervals? Or a couple of mountains?

It's a huge otivation to have a completely new ride to look forward to! Riding epic rides together with the two Mölleborn brothers is always a highlight.

Norway, here I come!

/Toni

Steady state

I've had a good holiday with a training load I'm happy with, although not quite the 1000 km I was dreaming of. Sometimes life just doesn't intend for us to be on a bike all the time. Now back to work which is good, challenging and fun although trying to avoid stress situations has already knocked off a few vaguely planned training sessions. But that doesn't actually matter because my tactic is to just fill every single gap in my calander the next few weeks with a training session so that in the end a pretty good proportion actually eventuate :-)

I am in a bit of a steady state phase of training in between adventurous, really long rides, which I will try and do at least once a month during winter. I have continued to get to know by Bianchi Zurigo CX and am getting more and more comfortable with it even in the last few days' pretty tough winter commuting conditions.

Adventure commuting

A really exciting factor in my motivation bank is that I registered for Sverigetempot again and have been almost shaking with anticipation since then. Even though it's only January!

Mum, that's not really very far, is it?

But there's work to be done before then and, apart from about 2 hours commuting a day in tough conditions, I seem to manage to get in a gym session or two every week, concentrating on legs and trunk/stability while trying to avoid easy muscles in my upper body, although they just seem to pop up anyway... And intervals inside on the Monark hopefully 3 times a week while normal distance rides are a bit hairy.

Standard indoor fun instead of four mountain climbs

So basically a good training period with no major highlights. Although tomorrow night we are having an Ötzi get-together and those sort of events have a tendency of pulling silly long-winter-ride ideas out of me so we'll see what happens!

Until then I'm happy plodding along and am enjoying the variation this hard winter provides in cycling.

Good Morning World! -8 this morning with down to -20 forecast the next few days

Cheers!

/Toni

Ice age

After a few weeks of cold weather Drevviken is frozen and I have tried it out on skates a couple of times. Today Liam wanted to try crosscountry skiing and after digging out all the stuff from way way back in the attic, we trudged down to the lake together for an afternoon adventure. The sole of his skiing shoe came off before he even started, but luckily we had his skates with us as well. He did surprisingly well through 10 cm, quite heavy snow.Good effort mate!

I had it easier and after a few shaky minutes really loved the beautiful flowing movement of skiing. Well that's what it felt like anyway. It probably looked more like Magnus Samuelsson using all his strongest man on earth muscles to pull one of those really big tyres, heaving and huffing and puffing to get a few centimeters further...

First tracks

Toasty warm hands not only when riding

MAMOD: middle aged man on Drevviken

After a random tour across the lake to Tyresö, Badudden and back again, we returned to Mattis' place in the forest to a surprise welcome reception with Matti and a big warm fire in fromt of his winter hut.

Aprés ski, Matti-style

It was so much fun that I hope I find a longer slot tomorrow for a longer ski. I was even more stimulating than the nausea accompanied 4x4 intervals on the Monark early this morning... Feel like I'm worth that beer in the bath now.

Let the Ice age continue!


/Toni

Baby Ötzi

Sooooo excited! Missing the Vintervättern last week made the wait between the Ötzi XL and this shorter Ötzi-version seem like it lasted forever. The cold and snowy weather the last few days has contributed to the childish anticipation of this one. It's a classic ride of 200 km around Mälaren, but with a shortcut from Strängnäs over the bridge towards Enköping. KBCK has had this ride for years (premiere 2006?) and still arranges it from Barkarby, but now under the auspices of the real club Randonneur Stockholm. The day beforehand we heard that 30 people had registered!

 

Rise and shine!

Slightly less package, slightly extended rear mudflap, slightly more snow

It was great meeting lots of well known and some new faces in Barkarby; I think about 25 started. I was a bit disappointed that I was the only KBCK representative with both Johan and Anders getting far too old and lazy and restricting their activity to sitting in warm sofas and looking like secretaries. After cheerily saying goodbye to them we immediately divided up into two groups and rode disciplined and well in the first to get out of the citycycling part that continues to make me a bit nervous.

We rode hard but even to Strängnäs in about -6 degrees and pretty good wind. I was trying to take 10 minute turns at the front and keep the pulse at just over 80% and it was fun to look down at the Garmin sometimes and see that we were riding over 40 km/h. In the snow and with studded tyres. After Strängnäs the first group not surprisingly was getting tired and we took it easier after that. Well, except for Mats "pilen" Pihlström who didn't get tired. Due to the cold, more or less perpetual light snowfall and strong wind, I didn't once take my gloves off during riding to take any actual cycling pictures, so you need to trust me that I actually sat on a bike :-) Others on happymtb.org were better at this.

It was the first long test of my new Zaniers heated gloves and they were perfect. On the lowest heating level of three the whole time, no problems with battery time for 8.30 hours. I'm so happy! I recently decided that I would try one more new pair of gloves or else stop winter cycling due to very easily frozen fingers. I can now confidently keep riding!

 

Glow in the dark gloves

Gurra was as dependable as ever and after a few kilometers of following our group came into the Bålsta station with us with a bag of endless Jägermeister to replenish exhausted riders with new energy. Johan had shaken off his morning old-age tiredness and met us at Bålsta, which meant we had a fresher brain and fresher legs to guide us the last, slippery, snowy kilometers to Barkarby. I missed the sprint for the sign again, this time consciously resisting the urge to sprint when I felt how deceptively slippery it was around the final round-about. But that didn't matter. It's always nice to get to the finish and feel the exhaltation and streams of endorphines flowing through the body and talking complete rubbish with the other companions of the whole day. We came in in an unusually fast 8.30 hours for these conditions.

A spritely looking bunch at a traditional afterbike in Barkarby

I felt surprisingly comfortable with the whole day. Despite of course getting tired during the harder riding parts and getting cold, it was all within easily managed zones, which makes me confident of upcoming long rides.

There are no planned rides in the next weeks though, so many have discussed that we need an extra one slotted in the calender soon. I'll see what I can think of...

/Toni

Like a child at Christmas

After the dark, snowstormy ride last night (well afternoon, well no lunchish actually, but still dark) the countryside has turned beautifully crispy, cold, white and has ignited some sort of primeval childish Christmassy playing in the snow urges. I couldn't resist another ride today and even felt like I'd won the lottery of which hour or two might be sunny!

Playtime!

Despite studded tyres it was pretty treacherous out there somtimes so I shortened down my ride a bit to avoid roads with lots of traffic, and that was well worth it.

Give me roads like this any day

The temperature, tyres and conditions all contributed to an embarrasingly slow speed, but lots of fun and beautiful scenery.

But it was cold, about -8 most of the time, so I wasn't too sad to get home and jump into a warm bath with a well-deserved beer!

/Toni