Getting ready for Oslo (half) Marathon. When I first started running again I got a pair of Mizuno Wave Runner. They felt fast, unfortunately they gave me huge blisters. They also felt quite hard when running, so wanted some softer shoes.

For the last year I've been running in my Asics Kayano XII. I'm very satisfied with these shoes. They fit my feet perfectly, and they are as soft as I like them to be. But they are also quite heavy (355 gr). In cycling the weight at the wheels is quite important. What about the weight at your feet? Again, Google is your friend. By searching I found out that:

"The common rule of thumb is that you can expect to drop 1 second per mile, for every ounce you shed on your feet."

So I went to my friend Martin at Intersport and grabbed a pair of Asics DS Trainer 12. The DS Trainer is about 255 grams. This means that I will save 200 grams in total. So how much time should I be able to save? 200 grams is 7 ounces. Half marathon is 13.1 miles. Doing the math tells me I should be able to save about 1 minute and 32 seconds. Not much, but at least that should help me get below 1:40. Well in a few days we will know the answer.

Cycling seasons over, and I've packed my race bike away for now. Ended up with about 2500 km of cycling this season. I will now focus on running and swimming for the next months. But I must say that I'm very happy seasons results this year:

• Tour de Lax, was sick but tried anyway. Not a good race for me. Lets just forget about it.
  
• Tromsørittet, 2:45:00. New personal best with 5 min 06 secs. Great fun, but expected better results. Stayed to far back in the main field, and lost them when it got splintered before Brennsholmen.
  
• Tour de Andørja, 1:40:35. New personal best with 9 min and 53 secs. Things getting better in the hills, but got a hard time in the last hill.
  
• Lavka, 2:48:54. New personal best with 26 min 47 secs. A bit sick that day, but that didn't stop me.
  
• Tromskraftprøven, 4:14:09. New personal best with 21 min 01 secs. Managed to stay with the best.
  

Didn't notice much difference in the start of the season, but after the summer holidays, things changed quite a lot. Don't know what happened, but in just a few weeks I suddenly got a whole lot better. Much better in the hills this year, but still struggle a bit on the flats at high speed. Must do something with that for next season.

Two weeks until Oslo Marathon, where I plan to run half marathon. Haven't done much running this summer, so it's about time to get some distance in the legs. Two weeks before a race is a good time to run the full distance, so today I ran around the Tromsø island. It's about 23 km and quite flat.

I started out easy in fat-burning pace at about 6 min/km and slowly increased to about 5:45 min/km for the rest of the run. Was a good exercise with a bit of suffering in the end. I always start to feel it after about 17 km, and today I had to switch the music to Sepultura in order to keep up the pace. Their Roots album is great to listen to while suffering. Anyway things feels quite good before Oslo, so now I will concentrate on speed intervals next week.

My personal best for half marathon is 1:41:15 (MSM 2007) and in order to beat the time I will have to run at a pace of 4:45/km or better.

When I started cycling in 2003, my weight was over 100 kg (1/10 of a metric ton). I still think I did quite well (relatively) in my first races. But how was that possible with such a high weight? The short answer is that cycling on flats does not involve gravity:

"On the flats, resistance (which slows you down) is primarily related to the resistance created by a rider's bike and body as they move through the air. Big riders, in a low racing position, have a frontal surface area that is quite similar to that of smaller riders. But big riders tend to generate more power thanks to their larger muscle mass. That's why time trials and sprints on flat or rolling terrain favor the bigger, muscular riders." (cycling performance tips)

When I attended races with more hills, the result was a very different story. Climbing is a power-to-weight activity. Kraftprøven this year was the first hilly race where I managed to keep up with the best. It took me 4 years with over 300 hours of exercise per year, and over 20 kg weight reduction in order to make it. But how much better did I perform this year at 79 kg compared to my 86 kg last time I did the race in 2005?

At the race I noticed that a lot of riders received food and bottles along the road. As for myself, I rode unsupported and brought all the food and bottles with me from start. How much easier would I be able to ride in the hills if I had also received support along the track? The total weight of the food and bottles were 2-3 kg. How much difference would it be?

And when you start to think about it, more questions arrive. How much easier would it be if my bike was 1 kg lighter? What if I was a few kg lighter myself? In 1994 at the age of 25 I was only 70 kg, so you could say that I still have 9 kg to go. How much better would I be if I was able to get back in 1994 shape?

To find the answer I started playing around with a nice tool called "Bicycle Speed and Power Calculator". I extracted the data from the major hills of the race. I also compared the results to 2005. In 2005 I was 86 kg, had a bike that were 9.4 kg. Now in 2007 I'm 79 kg and my bike 8.3 kg. For both bikes I add 300 gr. for pedals, 300 grams for accessories. I also add 2 kg for food and drink and 2 more kg for clothes, shoes, helmet etc. Totals for 2005: 10 kg for bike, 90 kg for rider. Totals for 2007: 8.9 kg for bike, 83 for rider.

Buktamoen/Olsborg:
The first hill of the race. It's about 60 meters climb, 1.8 km and average grade of 3.5%.

• In 2005 the hill took me 4:00 to climb, avg/max hr: 160/176 bpm, speed 27 km/h, estimated 442 watts (5.1 watts/kg)
  
• In 2007 the hill took me 3:39 to climb, avg/max hr: 165/174 bpm, speeed 30.1 km/h, estimated 494 watts (6.3 watts/kg)
  

Before Heia:
In 2005 I lost the pack in these hills. It's a 107 meters ascent over 5.4 km with an average grade of 2%. The first 2 kilometers are about grade 3.8%. For me it's the worst hill of the whole race.

• In 2005 the hill took me 10:45 to climb. avg/max hr: 165/175 bpm, speed 30.0 km/h, estimated 398 watts (4.6 watts/kg)
  
• In 2007 the hill took me 9:48 to climb. avg/max hr: 155/173 bpm, speed 31.1 km/h, estimated 402 watts (5.1 watts/kg)

Calculating wattage for the first two kilometers only, gives 407 watts (4.7 watts/kg) and 409 watts (5.2 watts/kg) respectively, which is still very consistent with the result above.

After Heia:
The third hill is a 90 meters ascent over 2.6 km with an average grade of 3.6%.

• In 2005 the hill took me 7:15 to climb. avg/max hr: 163/170 bpm, speed 21.1 km/h, estimated 311 watts (3.6 watts/kg)
  
• In 2007 the hill took me 5:37 to climb. avg/max hr: 155/171 bpm, speed 26.4 km/h, estimated 404 watts (5.1 watts/kg)
  

Hundbergan:
Kavlebakken, Hundbergan. A 64 meters climb, 2.3 km with an average grade of 2.1%.

• In 2005 the hill took me 6:00 to climb, avg/max hr: 159/166 bpm, 23.1 km/t, estimated 251 watts (3 watts/kg)
  
• In 2007 the hill took me 3:57 to climb, avg/max hr: 160/174, 27,6 km/h, estimated 320 watts (4.1 watts/kg)
  

Even if the absolute wattage estimation may be to high because of coasting/pacing behind other riders, the relative performance between the hills should tell something about the performance during the race. One can see that the wattage drops quite a lot from one hill to the other. In such a race it's simply not enough to perform well in one hill. You have to perform over and over again. It should also be realistic to compare the result from one year with another. In 2005 the wattage dropped from 5.1 to 3 watts/kg. In 2007 it dropped from 6.3 to 4.1 watts/kg.

In each of these hills one can estimate that 2 kg of bottles and food costs you 4-5 seconds extra time for each hill (except for the last where you don't have any food/drink left). The same goes for a lighter bike that will save you about 2 seconds for every kilo in each hill. You will also have to generate 4 more watts for every extra kg of weight you carry in order to maintain the speed in any of these hills.

Thus if you have problems keeping up with the rest in these hills, then having some friends give you food and bottles along the way in addition to a lighter bike, may be the difference between "to be or not to be". And even if you already manage to keep up with the best, then the effort you save by having less weight may be the difference you need in order to win the race in the end. For many it's really unfair to compete with people that have a bike that is 2 kg lighter and costs 5-10 times more than your own. Especially for young people that have limited income. If they also receive food/drink along the way, then one might say that they are actually competing in a different race/class than you are. With pro-tour teams is the same for everybody. They have equal bikes, they all receive support. So what can you do about it? Well you should save weight where you get the most out of it. If you are overweight like I was in 2005, then there is no bike in the world what will save you. If I had received bottles and food in 2005, I would probably have been able to keep up with the rest in the second hill, but I would definitely have been dropped in the next.

As for my 1994 shape. With equal cycling fitness, I should have been able to climb each hill between 10-20 seconds faster. That's a big difference, but will still not make me a world class rider :-) But I'm happy to see the improvement. The absolute wattage looks to have improved with about 50 watts over the last 2 years. According to Knut Anders Fostervold, an increase of 25 watts per year is regarded as very good for cyclists. 25 watts is equivalent to about 6 kilos of weight reduction (if you have any places you can save). Also the watt reduction over the 4 hours of the race has also gone down, which shows that the power lasts a bit longer than before.

Looks like I've been 2 days in a row in Folkebladet", which is a local newspaper for middle-Troms county.

On monday there was an article about Kjell Harald Horn and I. The title is very wrong since "Styrkeprøven" is very different race. Anyway, Kjell Harald and I got to know each other after we lost the lead group in the same hill during Tromskraftprøven in 2005. I guess we had exactly the same ml/min/kg at that time. We had to work together for a long time to catch up the remains of the lead group. He's had good progress over the last years, and I'm happy to see that he and others have now started a bike club called "Senja Sykkelklubb".

We got the same result back in 2005 and we also got the same result last saturday. I'm sure I'll meet him next year as well.

Tuesday the newspaper had an article about a woman that was furious about the bike race, since she had been driving a car behind all the riders for a long time without being able to get past.

I had commented on this, telling that the car drivers have to accept that the bikes owned the road for one single day in the year, and that there's no point in driving behind a bike race. Better to stop and take a cup of coffee. I would agree however that we could have announced the bike race better in the media telling car drivers to stay away from the roads at the particular time of the race. That might be a good idea for next year.

The highlight of the this years cycling season is the Tromskraftprøven ("Troms Power Test"). With 165 km to go, the race is by far the longest and hardest in the region (map). I was really psyched down after the earlier record attempt where I had to step off half-way. But I knew things would be easier this time. I decided to try and keep up with the best even if that would mean that I had to race too hard in the hills.

Again the weather cleared up and I decided to leave the winter clothes behind. Even if the temperature was only 9 degrees Celsius, and would probably be about 6 degrees Celsius at the highest point of the route. I loaded the bike (and myself) with 2.5 liters of sports drink (600 kcal), 2 energy bars (440 kcal) and 2 gels (278 kcal). Thats a total of 1318 kcal. However I would estimate the enegry consumption for such a race to be about 5000 kcal.

We were 120 riders starting from Finnsnes. The pace was easy in the start, but it was a nervous atmosphere. I was terrified by all the inexperienced riders that were fighting for positions in the front of the pack, and after the first little hill, we had a crash and 3-4 riders went down. Luckily I was on the other side of the road when it happend. After the first major hill, the pack was reduced to half, and things got more quiet. I actually struggled with the first hill after Buktamoen, and got nervous. The legs didn't feel right. We had 2 more and even worse hills to get over the mountain, so I grabbed a Gel and hoped things would get better. The next hills went OK, and I was happy be be in the lead group when we reached Nordkjosbotn. In Lavangsdalen a group of riders were pulling extremely hard in order to bring back a break away. I was suffering quite hard, but managed to stay with the group through the final hills. Finished together with about 35 other riders in the lead group. Got 8th in my class at 4:14:09, only 3 seconds behind the winner. For me that's a new personal best by 21 minutes.

So I'm very happy with the result, the weather and the race. Espen Amundsen from our cycling team won the race, so we're really proud of him and the rest of the team that helped him.

(picture taken by Roy Sørensen. It's me on the right. Not daring to look up to see how far and steep the hill really is)