The Aspö Marathon

It was a wonderful day! I managed to last all 12 laps (14.6 miles) as I had hoped. Each lap around the island is about 2 kilometres (the official measure is 1960 meters. My Apple Watch pegged it at about 2150.)

We had a great turnout. Annica Bergman did a super job setting everything up. The race was held to raise money for a children's cancer charity. Her partner, Anders, (our resident priest), finished the full marathon distance. We saw lots of new people from neighbouring islands who joined in. It was quite the crowd!

Even more impressive, Sooz managed 7 laps herself. (I say "more impressive", as I run regularly, and Sooz doesn't.) We are both feeling fairly sore and worn-out this evening. But we wouldn't have missed a minute of today.

Annica and her fellow Aspö residents should be rightfully proud today. Photos have been posted, of course.

A Sunny Saturday

The rain of the past few days seems to have passed at last. By midday, the sun started to shine, and it's turned out to be a beautiful afternoon. Thankfully, the forecast looks decent as well.

Today was the graduation day for the sailing school. The learning sailors all received a diploma. The day ended with a race by a few grown-ups, which was great fun.

We had a great dinner with Annika and Olle last night. Sooz made lemon chicken, and four hours passed effortlessly. They brought me a few boating gifts for my birthday; two lovely cushions and a waterproof pouch for my iPhone and iPad. All of those will be put to good use!

Tomorrow, we're going to the church at Nämdö, as our neighbor Anders will be conducting a service there. It's a beautiful little church, and it will be fun to see Anders "in action", so to speak.

We'll have pasta tomorrow night, as Monday is the day of the second Aspö Marathon, 24 laps of the island. I am going to try to do a half-marathon, myself. I do a few laps most mornings, and I think I can do a dozen! Stay tuned to see if I manage it....

PS on the Stockholm Marathon

I was amazed to learn how many of my fellow Aspö residents followed my race on the internet. (Not to mention Tony, who actually found me somehow!)

My favorite bit of trivia about that miserable day was this: it was actually colder in Stockholm on the day of the race than it was on Christmas Eve. Amazing.

Settling back in Texas

People suffer from jet lag when flying transatlantically, I think I'm suffering from temp lag. From being absolutely frozen on Saturday evening in Stockholm, we deplaned in Dallas into an evening 50 degrees warmer. Sheesh.

Ollie was thrilled to see us, and he forgave us for missing his 9th birthday. Now it's just a matter of unpacking- and preparing for our next trip, only a bit more than 6 weeks from now!

I will have a few things to post about; painting, cable lights, deck lights, furnishing the little house, logistics once again. For now, though, I plan to rest my tired legs.

The Marathon is finished

I'm back at Marcia & Rutger's after a pretty darned miserable day. It was 5°C/41°F at the start of the race, with a 23mph (37 km/h) wind, and rain with a teeny bit of sleet to boot. Just horrible.

I finished in 4:11. I was hoping to be just under 4 hours; in fact I finished the first half in 1:57:30, but the cold got to me and I slowed down a great deal in the second half.

My favorite part around the 30km mark was when I saw Tony! He and Ann-Catrin were following me online, and Tony ran out to find me, and he did. I ran over and gave him a big hug. That was a special moment.

Here's me just after the finish; I look a lot better than I felt. In fact, I was shivering so hard 10 minutes later, Grant had to help me into a dry jacket.

But I am proud of running pretty fast at my age and in such tough conditions. I was 4th out of 11 Americans in the 50+ age group, and 563rd out of 1842 oldsters who finished. Overall, I was in 6982nd place, out of 14687 finishers, so I made the top half at least!

Now I plan to run it again in 2020, when I'm 60. We'll see...

Back in Stockholm!

I'm writing this on Friday evening from the cozy kitchen of Marcia and Rutger's house. We left Aspö, picked up my race packet at the stadium, and made our way through the Friday afternoon traffic to the cozy kitchen without much fuss. However, the weather turned sour today just as forecast, low 40's and rainy, pretty damned miserable. The worst part is that tomorrow's race gets more of the same. I've gone from roasting hot pre-dawn training runs in Texas, to a frigid race in Sweden!

I didn't pack for such cold weather, although I did have the foresight to add my running jacket to my carry-on, so I have that at least. And I found in my closet on Aspö an old long-sleeved t-shirt from a race in Manasquan, New Jersey, in 1996, which will be pressed into service.

We're going to relax tonight; tomorrow's race isn't until noon, which is a civilized time. Sooz and Grant are making pasta primavera for my carbo-loading.

There are a number of blog-worthy topics about our past week at our little house, but those can keep for me to parcel out over the next few weeks. For now, I'm focusing on my 42 kilometers tomorrow!

Getting chilly on Wednesday

When the sun is behind clouds, it is pretty cool indeed, the low 50's (Fahrenheit; single digits in Centigrade). I've been trying to lay off my handyman routine, trying to rest up before the big race in just a couple of days. It is hard, though; the are lots of small projects I'd like to do (let alone the big ones!)

Sooz has been busy painting the little house. I've been cutting moldings for the floor and ceiling. But I need to stop running up and down ladders and scrambling over the rocks...just relax and give the legs a rest. We have a few episodes of the UK version of the Apprentice to catch up on. All three of us like to watch that show!

It will be interesting to see if I can actually spend a whole day on Aspö without putting on my work trousers...! In the meantime, there are lots of photos on the web gallery.

Marathon Training, part 2

I am exactly halfway through my training regimen; 9 weeks down and nine to go. The first half is probably easiest; I've run 180 miles so far, and the next nine weeks calls for an increase to 250. On the other hand, I spent a lot of the early weeks getting back into the groove and building up a bit of stamina. So, I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I am better prepared to do it.

I'm starting to be more confident that I can beat my 1990 time of 4:23. To be honest, I like the idea of funning faster at age 52 than 30! I'll know better about that goal when I give my next monthly update.

Marathon training

I am 4½ weeks into an 18 week schedule for the Stockholm Marathon. It is 93 days until the race, and so far, things are going well.

My last full marathon was in 2004, so I am easing back into my training. I am once again using Hal Higdon's running calendar to schedule my runs. I am using the novice calendar, although in my heyday fifteen years ago, I followed the expert. It's hard to imagine doing that now.

My knees were worringly creaky at the start but everything has settled down. I am a bit concerned about it getting warm too quickly down here in Texas. Marathons are typically held here in the December-February period. I think I may well have some hot May mornings to deal with!

I am automatically posting my runs on my twitter page now (thanks to a really great little app) so if you're curious, you can see my progress in great detail there.

Stockholm Marathon

I mentioned a couple of months ago that I planned to run the Stockholm Marathon this year. I've run it twice before, in 1990 and 2000. I have the finishers medals in my office even today. I used to run quite a lot a decade ago; in fact, I was running at least one marathon a year. Recently, though, I've just been running half-marathons, and since I came back to Texas, I haven't been running much at all. (I use the heat as my excuse.)

The 2012 Stockholm Marathon is on June 2, and the timing is perfect as we were planning to change our calendar for visiting Aspö this year. We're going to visit in late May and then again in late July. Typically, we visit over my birthday in midsummer, but we're changing for two reasons. First, we'll be able to link up in July with Ann and Dave, as we've always missed them with our earlier visits. Secondly, we can avoid the awful Texas heat.

I start training in earnest next month. I'd like to beat my 1990 time of 4:23, but we'll see how my legs have held up in the intervening 22 years. I'll update on occasion over the coming months, but don't worry, this won't become a running blog!