Pictures from Fuerteventura

Fantastic week at Playitas!

Last weeks stay at Playitas, Fuerteventura was fantastic. My wife Wenche runs a gym in Kongsberg, www.sensehelse.no, and invited members to join a week at Playitas resort. Playitas is brand new with great training facilities. %0m Olympic Poll, great running tracks and awsome cycling roads with litthle traffic.

We travveled with the kids, and they also had a great time playing in and around the pools. I brought my brand new Ridley Dean ofc, and got some good miles on it. And IT IS THE FASTEST BIKE IN THE WORLD. Just awsome! I love my new bike. It is faster on the flats than my old one, and it climbs way much bether. Cant wait to try it with the Fast Forward race wheels. My week looked pretty much like this, with jugles arund Wenche`s arobic and spinning classes:

Monday: Travel. Left Kongsberg 4am arrived Playitas 3pm
Tuesday: 72k bike + 3000m pull swim
Wednesday: 71k bike
Thursday: 1h morning run with 6x1400m LT intervals + 82k bike
Friday: 2000m swim + 1h 55min long run
Saturday: 81k bike
Sunday: 82k bike
Monday: Morning 3000m swim then left Playitas 10am

2512th..

Sunday March 7th Vasaloppet from Salen to Mora was an incredible experience! We traveled to Sweden on Friday, and had accomodation in a great cabin in Tåndadalen up on the Salen mountain plateu. Was tempting to go dwnhill skiing on Saturday in fantastic weather, but we stuck to the plan and got our startnumbers and tested the startarea down in Salen.

Then back to prep skiis, I opted for minumim with wax, hoping I would have faster skiis than last race.

After breakfast 5am Sunday morning we left to start. Got there at about 7am, without any big trouble. We later found that almost 3000 skiiers got stuck in traffic and did not make the 8am start!! My startgroup 4 was alredy full off skiis 7am, so I had to start with almost 3000 skiers in front of me:-)

The start gun went 8am and it was sureal! I had fantastic skies and manuvered through the tracks before the first hill. But looking up the hill i just had to laugh! It was all black, completely covered in skiiers. And looking behind was even more sureal, cause I had a black carpet of 12 000 skiers behind. In the hill I went out far left, that was not to smart. Cause it seemed everyone in the middle moved steadily up the hill, while we got stuck in the corners. but no need to stress. Just watch my brother in the middle just disapear up there.

But when it all losend up after 10-12km i still had fantastic skiis. Passed a lot of people and soon cught Truls back. And dropped him soon after:-)

After 45km it got ugly. Yes halfway, and my arms was finished. Vasaloppet is flat. Very flat. mostly just standing there using your arms. If you wanna go fast anyway. But my arm was dead, and I lost almost 100places the last 30k. At the last checkpoint I was just on shedule to get a medal (winnertime + 50% !!) Just i skied as fast as I could the last 9km. And entering the finish cute they counted it down fram 45sec. I was 200m from the line when the time was out:-) Just cruised from there.....and sat down really wasted barely crossing the line. Great workout in the worlds biggest ski race. Incredible organisation, jsut imagine getting over 15 000 over the line, on busses to get warm chlotes and shower. then food and tranportation 90k back to start. Amazing jobb by the Swedes!

I will be back. With stronger arms;-)

Vasaloppet next

Yesterday I recived a big box from www.racingdepot.no with my new Ridley Dean! I only had time to take it out of the box, and enjoy the view for some minutes. Cause I have this 90k ski race to do before I can concentrate on my new sweet bike. I has to wait until next week.

Leaving tomorrow with my brother to Sælen, Sweden and Vasaloppet. I have been looking forward to this all winter. It will be my first Vasalopp, and everybody sais its such a great event. We arrive late friday evening, and have all saturday to prepare skiis, nutrition and get to know the place. Think we need that with an 8am start on sunday with over 10.000 skiers :-)

You can follow the race at www.vasaloppet.se My startnumber is 10973. There is a SMS thing there if you want splits.

Vasaloppet and tuesdays "Kongsberg XC Ski champs" in 5k skate will end my ski "season" From there I have 21weeks to Norseman Xtreme, and its time to get into serious swim-bike-run training. I will kick it all of with 7 days at Playitas Sport Centre in Fuerteventura. Cant wait!!

Holmenkollen Ski Marathon

Saturday it was time for Holmenkollen Ski Maraton, a 42k classic from Hakadal to the famous Holmenkollen Ski Arena. Althoug this year it was going to finish at Frognerseteren cause of recontructing of the arena before next years 2011 FIS Nordic Ski World Championships. Woke up to -19C in the morning and at the start it was bellow -20C. BRRRRR! Got my startnumber and decided to stay inside as long as possible. But the 3999 other racers also wanted that, so the smal scool hall got very overcrowded. At one point I actually got scared of not getting out of there to make it to my heat 1 9am race start:-)

After a short "cold" warm up I got my warmup chlotes of and headed to start. Got well away, but it was basically just to stay in line until the first aid station at about 10k. From there it opened up and I could start racing my own pace. My skiis was not as fast as I had hoped, but guess that was the same for almost everybody in -20C. From 10k to 20k I lost some places, but thats pretty normal in easy parts of the course for me. My upper body is not big enough:-)

When the sun got out and warmed up the tracks I had some trouble in a few upphils to get the skiis to stick, but I felt strong the whole way and had some energy left for the last 10k. The course change was brutal! Instead of gliding into the Holmenkollen arena, we did a sharp right turn and the last km was steep, steep uphill. And to make it worse it was in the sun and on produced snow. That meant it was like skiing in clean sugar, and no way to get the skiis to stick. A bit frustraiting cause I had energy left to really sprint, but there was no way I could use it. Just had to run outside the tracks or pull myself up on my weak arms. But I got there in 2h 40min and 45sec. It was an ok race, and good training for the upcomming 90km Vasaloppet.

Results here:

http://www.skiforeningen.no/

Another skirace

We have spent the evening at Heistadmoen on XC ski race. Both Stine and Ida enjoyed it. Ida did a approx 400m loop, and Stine did a whole km. And dad did 4,3km classic. Got 9th and has scrimped the timeloss to the best guys severly in 4 weeks. I`m happy and really looking forward to Holmenkollen Skimaraton on saturday.

Results here:
www.ilskrim.no

My new team!

It has taken A LOT of work but we finally made it! My club BK Triathlon is setting up an elite triathlon team for 2010. The team is called Team BK Triathlon - Ridley.

We are so lucky to be sponsored by http://www.racingdepot.no/ who are importing lots of great cycling and triathlongear to Norway. They are the largest on cycling in Norway, sp we are very happy to be working with them. The team wil ride, as I have told before, Ridley Dean bikes with Fast Forward wheels and Oval aerobars. We wil use Santini chlotes in our own team design. bothe triathlon chlotes and cycling chlotes. We will use Limar helmets.

The local Volvo/Ford/Mazda dealer ar suplying us with cars to use to camps and races, http://www.bilspiten.no/

Aquaman, via norwegian distributor, http://www.trishop.no/ , wil provide us with the fastes wetsiuts in the world.

I`m really looking forward to beeing a part of a team the coming seasons! It`s going to be a very fun 2010! We have our first short camp this coming sunday. And we will soon have a website running for the team.