Back on my bike again

After eight consecutive rest days I was finally back in the saddle today! I expected to be out of shape but it actually was a nice ride. When I got home I had been out for three hours and fifteen minutes with an average speed of 25 km/h and a average heart rate of 149. It was -10C at the start of the ride and -4C when I got home, but 30 kilometers north of Falun, where I live, it was as cold as -14.5C ( that is 5.9F ). We had to increase the intensity so that we wouldn't become ice scupltures and after a while we got to some climbes that lowered the speed and got our heart rates up a bit. When we got to the top it was only -10C and from then on it got warmer. Because of all the rest days I had planned to be wheel sucking all day long but after about an hour, when it got that cold, my legs where going numb so I had to go to the front to get that heart rate up.
If we ignore that it was so cold today, it actually was a beautiful day! I took some pictures for you:

I really love this proper Swedish winter, it's so beautiful. I feel really blessed to live in a place where we have  these seasons that differ so greatly.

Rapha Festive 500 - day 9

I did it!

All 500 of them. Thanks to the 6 hours in the saddle this friday I only had to do 70.63 kilometers on New Year's Eve to complete the Rapha Festive 500. I decided on a route with mostly gravel roads to have a really nice ending to this challenge. No traffic, beautiful scenery and just enjoy the accomplishment. That what was my plan anyway..

When I planned this I was thinking frozen gravel roads with a surface like sandpaper but I ended up with pure ice. In the beginning the ice was smooth and everything was going great. It was -5 C outside giving the surroundings a frozen look.

After a while the ice got all rough on me and my fender mount. This part was good balance training but not really the enjoyable ride I had planned on. Having promised my wife that I was going to complete the ride in less then three hours this was destroying that plan. 

During the first 45 minutes of the ride I had spent 35 of them on pure ice and it was therefore nice to get back out on more attackable roads where I could pick up some speed again. The ice on the lakes looked great for ice skating and a lot of people was enjoying this winter day out on the ice.

After a few kilometers I suddely found a winter landscape, this is how it should look this time of the year. It was very beautiful and it gave me some extra energy.

Here I am climbing one of the two longer climbs of the day, gaining about 150 meters of altitude. Up on the top I saw a moose! I tried to take a picture of it but with my smart phone in a plastic bag in my back pocket and with a vest over my jersey it took to long and the moose was in the forest before I could press the shutter button. In 2010 I was a bit faster with the camera and took this picture of a moose.

More icy roads, but smooth ice this time

One week ago the storm Dagmar passed Sweden and there is still about 1000 people that had to celebrate New Years Eve without electricity. 

Todays numbers. Complete Garmin data for day 9 is here and below is my data for this Rapha Festive 500:

Thank you Rapha for this challenge! I started after eleven days of resting due to a cold and didn't know how my body would respond but it has gone great and I am now much stronger. This has been good for me and given me a good foundation for a great 2012. I had a goal of making this without using valuable family time and it was actually only this last ride that effected the family. But on the other hand I had a planned ride today wich I am not attending. So I think it breaks even.. 

I hope you all have a Happy New Year! 

Sundays are my favourite day of the week

Sundays = long ride with company!
Today it was pouring rain so It was only one guy who showed up at the gathering place, Gamla Postenparkeringen. Considering it is November it was very warm with nine degrees Celcius. I had planned a route about 90 km long with about 50-55 km of gravel roads. Those gravel roads was very soft today due to the heavy rain, so it was hard work all the day. My friend didn't have his best day and was suffering for the plus four hours he was in the saddle today. Unfortunatly I forgot my smart phone at home so no pictures from todays ride, but here are two pics from when I had arrived home.

It felt good most of the time today and I'm happy that my winter training has started so well. It's only november but it feels like I'm getting stronger and I also think that I have more in my legs to bring out in spring. I will try to do these long rides on sundays, combine them with some bike commuting and hard sessions on the Monark. Consistency is the key for a great 2012. I ended my elite-ambitions at the end of 2009 but it's allways nice to feel strong, and great fun to race!

That's me on the all new Monark LC7. Thanks to my cooperation with Monark/Bianchi here in Sweden I got the chance to be model for a day. This picture is now traveling around the world on the LC7-folder.

Todays Garmin-data:

Snowmobile trail and icy roads

Studded vs. normal tires on Swedish roads...

This sunday I was out with three of my friends for a ride on some snowmobile trails. It was a bit to warm and fresh snow made it tough. But we where tougher!

I'm the guy with a camera on my head... Photo: Jens Westergren

Really nice and hard ride. Need more of those! The last two days I have been getting up at 5:30 a.m. just to get some training done on the Monark before work. Feeling a bit to tired today so I will skip that tomorrow and maybe go for some skiing in the evening.

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

Ice cold

Today was probably the coldest day of this winter and I celebrated that with a long ride on my bike. I did not do much asphalt today but tried to stay on the smaller dirt roads instead. Less cars, more nature and slower speed (less wind cooling...). I started with a moderate intensity, trying to save some energy for later on. This was going to be my longest ride for a while and I did not know how my body would react to the distance. That, and I did not want to risk going out of energy at this cold temperature. When your body runs out of energy it stops warming itself, nothing you want to experience when it's ice cold outside.

-13.5º C  ( 7.7º F ) at the start of todays ride. Tried the thermo jacket for the first time in a very long time. Felt great and even kept my arms warm. Fingers and toes where more of a problem today though.

Five minutes from home and already out in the countryside.

A Swedish Cyclist

I the beginning I was going so slow that I actually laughed at myself, after a while the speed had increased a bit and when I was getting closer to home I increased the tempo slightly and pushed my self to go faster. It felt great, but I know that it is easy to feel great when riding alone.