The "half" North Face Ultra Trail

Good evening all!

wow - my last post was in Febuary??? I can't believe it! So much has happened. Most imoportant is that my daughter Lucy was born on July 11 - of course the sweetest baby in the world!

The Vasaloeppet was real good fun - a wonderful tour through the countryside and not as painful than I thought. Mind you I did need 8:20 hrs for the trip, but it was worth it. Should in fact have gone even slower to relish the landscape!! That's what Rudi (WEhn) my mate from work will do next time. He said he WON'T be pleased if he completes the Vasaloeppet in UNDER ten hrs. Good thinking. You pay load of starting fee, it takes you ages to get up half Sweden and then you try to get the race over with as quick as possible - stupid! :-)
Or is it?

Well on August 28 2008 I flew to Chamonix for the North Face Ultra Trail Mont Blanc, the UTMB. A race covering 165kms 9500m positive elevation (and negative as well!) in max 46hrs.

A week before I was completely knackered. I could hardly climd the stairs without feeling my legs buckling.
The doctors diagnose was overtraining! Not really because of too much training, but too one sided training! Never ever had that in 30 years sports!
Actually I had too few kms in my legs - only covering between 40 - 70 mainly flat kms a week. There were all with backpack, I had a long run with 45kms inbetween but what i neglected - and that where the overtraining came from - cycling, Squash, Gym. So i was stale a week before the event.
So I stopped running completely for the rest of the week until the race started on Friday 29th at 18:30.
An actually I didn't fold completely but I must say I never competed in a race and thought so much about how hard it was as in this one.
Eventhough time still passes. I remember contemplating at around 22 pm what I had been doing the day before and two days before and that in 2 hours time I could It would be like 4 hours passed on thinking backwards because I'm two hours closer to the finish line. Does that make sense?...
Well anyway - the next I can remember is that it's around 3am.
But it got harder and harder and my aim was to beat the time cut for as long as possible becuse, really, going for this race with my amount of preperation was just a little cocky.
I was still 2hrs ahead of the deadline by 6am but then I started to really hurt on the downhill parts. Just couldn't run them any more. And that's where your time goes. So by 12 noon I was still 30min ahead of the cut off time with my back against the wall.
And - to cut a long story short I reached a place called Arnuva after 94kms, 5400m pos elevation and 24hrs and 36 mins. Also, it was 36mins too much and the frenchies grabbed my racenumber, cut off an edge and showed me the way to the bus for my return to Chamonix!
I'm still not sure how relieved I was - but it definately was the right deciscion. My legs were completly gone, my feet though, were great. Not a sinlge blister! And hey - I did manage half the run, covered a new record distance of 94kms, ran longer than ever before - what more can I expect after such a pityful preperation? :-)

So whoever wants to finish this really gruelling run: you need to train running downhill!!!!!
Going Uphill means strong legs and you usually power walk, but it's downhill where you simply can't afford to walk. You have to run to cover the distance.
My next run, the Roentgenlauf in Remscheind on Oct 26 will provide me with my final qualification point to attemped the UTMB next year!!!

Oh by the way: Fantastic organisation, food was at the check points plenty, and the scenry, the mountains, the valleys, the Mont Blanc... a b s o l u t e l y stunning!!! Worth every penny of the 140,- or so entry fee.

No snow for the eskimo?

Good evening all!

a quick check in the weather sites shows around 1 °C Salen. That's the town where the Vasaloppet starts. But on the satellite pics you can see some snow there!, well, a bit at least.
My thumb started to hurt after the practice in Erzgebirge and hasn't really gotten any better. Since I didn't get an appointment with the doctor I just built myself a cast. It's made out of this stuff on the picture: "Powerknete" by Pattex. it says it mends anything so let's wait and see...
I'm actually waiting for it to dry right now - aaaaand...presto! I just made a picture of my "thumbcast" and uploaded it for you to see!
I want to be able to take it off until the race and then tape it on nice and tight all up to the wrist...what do you think?

Good night!

Trainingstour cross country skiing

Hello all!

the weekend before last Rudi and I decided to drive down to the Erzgebirge (380km southeast of Berlin) to do some training. Or rather I hoped that Rudi would show me the basics of cross country skiing. We set off at 6:00 a.m., and did some 35kms during the day. The weather was awful and now I know the real advantage of having wax skis (instead of no-wax ski) - you always have a great excuse! The weather changed and wasn't right for the type of wax you'd applied!!! That's the whole trick! What a clever idea - built in excuses.
But what happend afterwards is where we don't have excuses left... stopped at ARAL where they don't sell Diesel fuel, but Ultimate Diesel or Super Diesel. Spiffing. No 2 was cheaper so Rudi grabbed the super nozzle, not realizing, that it actually was the Super petrol and by the time he'd noticed there were already 15 litres in the tank!
In the end the car was towed to a garage 45min away, we had to hire a car to get back to Berlin. Then on Monday we drove the 380km back to pick up the fixed car! What an adventure! Do not try this at home!
Well I fell about 30 times but Rudi showed me the main moves (I hope) and due to lack of snow all over the place my next skiing tour will be the actual Vasaloeppet! Oh no!

That's for now - time for Bed.
Oh I started to jot my running training down into an online Training-log. I'm still filling two, as I'm not yet sure which one I prefer. One is www.trainingstagebuch.org and the other is www.lauftagebuch.eu.

Good night!
C

Vasaloppet 2008

Hello all!

long time no postings! But I am still alive. It took a while to recover from the Marathon des Sables, especially as my Dad urged me to run the Paderborner Half Marathon just 5 days later - thank you very much. Had a beer at km mark 18 and finished in 1:35:27.
After that I was completly drained. Tried to jog 4 (four) kms a week later - didn't make it!

But then everything healed well and by mid june I was able to ride the Alb Extrem roadbikemarathon, 255km in the swabian hills. Two weeks after that I joind a group of riders to Denmark for also a roadbikemarathon. 304km this time. My average was 29 km/h which pleased me very much. Also in Denmark were Rudi Wehn, Wolfgang Nagel, Bernward Rechel and Dieter Nickel. The whole trip was loads of fun. Unfortuntely Rudi had a bad day. First flat tyre after 5km. Second flat after 30km (we had checked the inner AND outer tube!) and after 45km he crashed into a guy in front of him. But as this guy had crashed half a second before into his leading bike, Rudi had the chance of a snowball in hell - so he went over the handlebars and crashed his beloved styrkeproven helmet along with his collarbone.

The Squashseason started in October, I signed up for 2. Bundesleague Team Paderborn. At the moment we're in spot 4 in the league which is ... ok.
And the Rudi had this gran idea of entering the Vasaloppet. And I was made to go as well. Just great. I've just about never skied in my life - let alone Cross country skiing - which the Vasaloppet is. So this weekend were off for a practise "run" in the Harz. As a wise man once said: If you want to try cross country skiing - start with a small country. Ok.

Bye for now!
C