Two long rides in two snowy days

My wife took our children and went to her mothers place in Stockholm this wednesday so I'm having a training camp light while they are gone. They will be back on monday so I have three more days to focus on training. Yesterday we got 10-20 cm (4-8 inches) of snow, but that did not stop me. For the first two hours I was accompanied by Jens Westergren. He is a good friend and also a really good cyclist, with several medals from swedish championships in cross country, Mountainbike Marathon and cyclocross. After about two hours he had to go to work, so I continued by my self for another three hours and got home with five hours and nine minutes on my watch.

We have lots of small roads in the forests around Falun, so in this blog you will see plenty of trees.

This is Sundbornsån, or The Sundborn river. Sundborn is a village about 10 k from Falun.

A smaller dirt road covered in fresh snow.

Plenty of snow and trees in those pictures. Hope you don't mind. This is what I see during my training rides, and I really like it.

On this asphalt road there was enough snow on the road for me to place my bike in it and take a picture without the bike falling. 

And this is me during yesterdays ride.

Today I got to ride with four of my friends from Falun. They where out for about three hours and I kept on going until I had five hours and eleven minutes on my watch today. We hade some snow today as well but not as much as yesterday. I was a bit worried that they might be to strong for me but I managed to follow them all the way. Great feeling and I think that I am much stronger on my bike than last winter. My average heart rate today was 146 and my maximum heart rate was 186. After eating I took a nap in the bathtub for an hour! Temperature was about -2 C (28 F) today and about - 4 C (25 F) yesterday. Perfect temperatures for winter training in Sweden. Only took a few photos today, this is one of them:

Picture taken in Solarvet, a very small village on the top of a mountain about 25-30 k from Falun