Monday 31 March 2008

Can I ask you for some help?

When Ben sponsored me he wrote "60k is in your legs, 60k is in your head!"; and I think that he actually might be right. I have considered what thoughts I should keep with me during the run. I have thought of writing down some of my friends thoughts sent to me. Below I have summarised some of the thoughts that you have sent through.

I would like to have some more though, could I ask for you to send through some more? Either on the comment field below, or to my email. Hopefully it could keep me going a few extra steps when needed!

6 days, 8 hours and 30 minutes to race start *smile*

--- RUN Joakim Run! WW Khoo
--- Courage is the most beautiful kind of madness - Paul Murray
--- 60k is in your legs, 60k is in your head! Ben
--- 60k is in your legs, 60k is in your bed! Tom
--- Nar det borjar svartna for ogonen: Tank pa att man alltid kan ge lite till.... Pana & Peter
--- "It always seems impossible until its done." -Nelson Mandela (and Asa)
--- Each step is one less to endure and brings you closer to the finish line! Caro and Andy

Less then a week to go. I am feeling scared!

This time next week I will have been running for about 9hours. The race starts at 9am local time, which is 8am GMT. It is a very daunting thought, and I must admit that I am a little bit apprehensive. But at the same time, very very excited!

I had a call with Anna, the lifestyle / nutrition coach that has helped me to plan my race from an energy intake point of view. It turns out to be quite a science, and I am happy that I had the 90km cross-country ski race (Vasaloppet) behind me, where I took some of her ideas into practise.

This is what I am trying to do:

Stage one – empty energy reserves in my muscles
7 – 5 days ahead of the race I am going more then normal exercise. I will not be doing anything too crazy and nothing strenuous, just longer then normal. Today I will run home from work and then do 1h or so on the bike, and the same tomorrow. At the same time I am not eating lots, so my body will have to use up the inbuilt energy reserves in the muscles.

Stage two - fill up with new energy
4 – 2 days ahead of the race I am will not do any exercise. Instead I will try to eat as many complex carbohydrates as possible. I will eat at least double the amount I would normally eat. At this point I will have no energy stored in the muscles, so I will be able to put new energy into the “muscle’s storage”. The result will be that I will feel heavy, but this is part of the process.

Stage three - final preparations
2 – 1 day ahead of the event I will go back to eat normal amount of food again. I’ll focus on complex carbohydrates (brown rice, brown pasta etc), but I don’t want to eat more then normal, since then my body will end up feeling sluggish and heavy.

Hopefully this method will land me on Monday morning, 7 April, feeling very energised and ready for the race.

What do you think, could this be a winning strategy *smile*.

Not many days left to go!!!

Wednesday 26 March 2008

Men (boys) and our toys…

One thing about the race in Namibia is that it has given me the opportunity to justify buying all kinds of equipment that I might (or most probably – might not) need. For those of you who know me well know that I like my gear and equipment… No matter if it is for climbing, downhill mountain biking, photography etc. I always like to look into and then buy the latest equipment available *smile*

So far, this is the kit list for Namibia :
Anti-venom pump – great for making interesting round patterns on your skin *smile*
Compass – it was a very long time ago I got lost during our orienteering course in school
GPS – much more to my liking, extra plus for being very gadgetry
Signalling mirror – kind of cool, low tech, but certainly has a high “adventure ratio”
Buff – not that fun and almost a bit girly; but the thought of being without one if a sandstorm comes in is not really pleasant
Desert hat – white with neck protection, legion d’etrange!
Raidlight backpack – heaven for a bag collector like me. Only weigh 690grams!
Skin-tight running top – Under Armour is just great!
Fleece for the night – sleeveless, but with arm protection in the collar (got to be seen to be understood)
Therma-rest – to lie on
Dry-freeze food rations – plan to properly cook food twice during the run
Tin – for heating water and cooking
Pocket camera – Leica, gorgeous and one of the few pocket cameras that can take Raw images
Fold-up spoon/knife/fork – camping, here I come!

I thought I should try to rate the kit I have bought, so I looked at three parameters:
Adventure ratio, ie how much will the piece of kit make me feel like I am on my way to an adventure.
Technical ratio, ie how technically advanced a product is, and just for the records, a backpack can be incredibly technical in the innovations in design
Usability after the event, ie how likely it is for me to ever use this piece of kit again.

As you can see by the table above, here is the rated kit list:
GPS
Raidlight backpack
Dry sack
Pocket camera
Therma-rest
Anti-venom pump
Compass
Fleece for the night
Desert hat
Fold-up spoon/knife/fork
Signalling mirror
Skin-tight running top
Dry-freeze food rations
Tin
Buff

I am a little bit surprised that the Anti-venom pump is scoring so high, but I guess it does make me feel like a true adventurer! The GPS and the backpack is understandably high up on the list. Other surprises are that the dry sack beats off the camera, don’t know how that happened.

What do you think, do you agree with my rating of the kit list, and maybe more importantly, have I forgotten anything do you think?

The race day is coming at me at a phenomenal pace… It is just around the corner!!!

Monday 24 March 2008

Easter action (lack of...)

Easter has been fairly slow on the exercise front. I have only been out running twice. A slow 10km on Friday and another 15km on Saturday with a slightly higher pace. The GPS I bought came in handy and I now know exactly what pace I am going in and how far.

When I wear a backpack a pace around 5min 30sec per km is a very comfortable pace that I know I can hold for several hours. Without backpack 4min30sec seems to be my natural pace.

However how much that will help me in Namibia I dont know :-)


It is less then two weeks to the race now and I must say that I start to feel a little bit nervous and maybe even scared! 120km start to seem like a very very long way to go. The work I have done to prepare myself for the race I have done now, and what is left is to try to stay healthy and avoid injuries.

Time for the normal week to start and for me to do my last minutes preparations. On Friday I got my new backpack that I will be using for the race. 690grams, is all it weigh, you have got to love Raidlight's Evolution2

Sunday 16 March 2008

Just a gentle Sunday session

I have officially started to let the running take over my life a bit. Yesterday I turned down to go and watch rugby and have drinks at Twickenham so I instead could stay in, eat lots of pasta and go to bed at about 10pm on a Saturday!

Well, to my defense I can say that I was due to go up at 5.15am, and so I did. Ben and his brother Will came to my house at 6am and we went out running together. Full Namibia gear on with the backpack, the bottle belt and the pouch loaded with energy gels I headed out. It was perfect running weather, 10-15 degrees and a light rain. We ran to the river and then followed the Thames to Richmond park. Rather then turning back and running in the same tracks we crossed the park and ran through Wimbledon common, back to Wandsworth town and then up to Wandsworth Common and home.

In total we were out for about 3h 30min or so. Unfortunately the batteries of my newly purchased GPS died on the way, so we never got an exact distance, but it should we somewhere around 40km or so, just short of a marathon.

Once home I had an "ice-bath" to try to reduce the impact of the run on my legs. The ice-bath is one thing that I cannot really get used to, and I got out after a couple of minutes when my body was shaking uncontrollably. I dont think there will be any ice-baths at the end of the run in Namiba *smile*

An interesting thing with the run was Will's idea of how to keep energy levels up by eating jelly babies throughout the run. Not sure it is the best way of giving the body the energy it needs to run for hours on end, and he will have to carry many bags to keep himself going for the Fellsman. The Fellsman is a race we are doing in Yorkshire in May. 100km through mountains, with an expected finishing time of about the same as in Namibia ( Click here to learn more about the Fellsman) . During the run we climb more then 11,000 feet in total, so that will be a very very tough race.

But lets not get ahead of oneself. First I have Namiba to do.

Today it is exactly 20 days left to the race!

Friday 14 March 2008

GBP £452!!

Thank you so much... Thank you Anna for arranging the drinks, thank you all that came, and thank you Franco, Vasco and Anouk for your kind contribution through you different companies.

In total we managed to almost use a whole deck of cards. I have 8 cards left, and we managed to raise GBP £452 (I know that doesnt add up, but I think there were some extra contributions last night). That is a fantastic sum and I am really really happy that you all helped. I will make sure I keep my blog up to date, and as I promised some of you tonight, there will be a follow up session when I have (hopefully) completed the race in Namibia in April.

I have added the £452 to the money raised, and it will be listed on my fund raising website in a day or two (have a look at the link to the right).

Once again, thank you all so much for turning up in such great numbers tonight!!

Also, please take some time to think if you could use either (or all) of our sponsors:
Vasco from Fruitful Office ( Click here to visit Fruitful office’s website) if you want your office to have a healthier snacks then your ordinary bag of crisps.

Anouk and the Biostarlight ( Click here to visit Biostarlight’s website) if you want to have a healing session where you help you body to heal itself from stress, asthma artheritis any many more things that seems to affect us these days.

Franco and Natoora ( Click here to visit Natoora’s website ) if you want to have really fresh, good produce when you cook at home. Natoora can deliver to your doorstep.

Sunday 9 March 2008

7kg of extra body fat between now and Namibia??

I took a few days off to recover from Vasaloppet. I am surprised how well I have been coping with the race. It feels almost wrong to say that the only evidence I have that I actually did the race are a couple of blisters in my right hand!

On Saturday morning Ben and I had planned to go running. Being a newborn dad and having little time on his hands meant an early start on Saturday morning was our only choice. I went up at 5.30am and ten to six i was out of the door on my bike on my way to Ben.

We had set out to do a two hour run, Ben (being week and from up North) didnt carry anything extra, but I had my full running pack on. It starts to be comfortable to run with now, and through the run it felt good to reach back for the bottle behind my back or down front for energy gels. I guess the downside is the fact that I do wear a pouch (or fanny-pack for the americans out there *smile*), but I dont think there will be anyone in Namibia that will take notice.

After the run I rode back on my bike, had a quick bite and Martin and I run 4km to Anna's tennis club where we did an hour of tennis the three of us. It was a nice to relax a bit in the sauna afterwards before we headed back home.

Today I cancelled my run with Paul since I could feel my run from yesterday in the tendons of my right foot. A bit worrying that my right foot still occasionally gives me some pain. I might try to go to a foot specialist to see if I move my foot the wrong way whilst running, if not, I will just have to push through the pain in Namibia.

I saw a great program on Discovery channel tonight on the human body, covering how the body can get incredible strength in special situations. Part of the program was a guy who swam the English Channel who had purposely gained 7kg in body fat prior to the race. I guess I should be doing the same for Namibia, but I might be too vain for that! *laughing*

Thursday 6 March 2008

Vasaloppet summed up

The images below sums up our days in Salen, in northern Sweden. We had 3 days to prepare for the race (and for all Swedes reading this, remember I am from Skane, so appologise for calling Salen northern Sweden *smile*).


On Thursday and Friday we had great weather and great snow. We enjoyed being back on our skis and we very much enjoyed our lesson with Gunnar that I mentioned in previous posts. Having said that, it was not all about cross country skiing. We had time for a night out and also enjoy afterski on the Saturday (it is your guess who had the beer and who had the hot chocolate).

The day of the Vasaloppet we went up at 4.20am, had breakfast and was at the start at about 5.30 in the morning. Thousands and thousands of people lined up and as the sun went up we started to realise the magnitude of the task ahead. We were in the last start group of about 15,500 participants. Aerobic teachers helped us to warm up and soon were were on our way. Snow kept falling down and according to the commentators on TV this years race was amongst the toughest races ever recorded.

Martin took an early lead in the very first uphill section. The angel of the slope was worthy any downhill race. However as we started to ski properly I caught up with him and never looked back after that point. 9h and 2 min later, at 5.02pm in the afternoon I passed the finishing line. With me from the event I take the following experiences:

- I can do a solid 9 hour hard workout.
- I was ok with only eating energy gel and drinking the carb drink from Vitargo. I didnt feel the need to have any food with more substance.
- I need to improve my technique if I am ever going to do Vasaloppet again! I cant stand that women and men in my parents' age flew past me in the uphill section (since I had no grip on my skis).

The last few photos on the image above you can see a beautiful Swedish winter landscape. I can see why people love this part of the year and want to spend time up North in Sweden.

All in all, we have had a fantastic long weekend up in Salen, and I would definitely do the Vasaloppet again! Anyone out there that want to sign up for next year?

Tuesday 4 March 2008

I made it! (in9h 2min)

I'll write a longer race report in the next couple of days, but I had some photos I wanted put up here straight away.

Both Martin and I managed to finish the Vasaloppet yesterday. 90 very hard kilometers on cross-country skis. The weather was described as "one of the worst for the Vasalopp race in history", and today we certainly are aware of that, with muscles aching badly.

With the circumstances we are very happy to just finish the race. I finished the race in 9 hours and 2 minutes and Martin in 10 hours 18 minutes. Here is a photo just after I passed the finish line.

The Vasaloppet is a great Swedish tradition. The story says that it was the Swedish to-be king Gustav Vasa who was up in Dalarna (Swedish county) and tried to gather support to throw out the Danes that ruled Sweden at the time. He came to Mora but was turned away. When he had left the people in Mora changed their mind. They sent out their two fastest skiers to catch Vasa. In the end they caught up with him in Salen and from there he went on to throw out the Danes and become King of Sweden. The race traces the 90km between Mora and Salen.

Thank you very much for all of you who sent text messages during the race. I heard the messages beeping when they came through and it surely helped with motivation and to keep pushing harder!

You can see my progress report over the race here:

Click here for Joakim's race report

and Martin's here:
Click here for Martin's race report

On our way home we stayed on Malugn, a small, beautiful village not too far from where Vasaloppet finish in the town of Mora. The stream along the village was absolutely stunning and as you can see we were two very happy guys having finished the race with such deep tradition in the Swedish history.

Meeting Gunnar - what a hero!

We woke up to a sunny day in the Swedish mountains, we couldn't have asked for more. We even managed to book a training session last minute. We booked a two-hour session with a personal instructor. We met Gunnar and it was instantly clear that we had struck gold. Gunnar was 70 years old and had completed 16 Vasalopp! He started with talking about some general tactics, some of which I of course forgot to take usage of during the race, and that in hindsight would have helped me to improve my time significantly.

Gunnar's 70 years could not be seen when we were skiing with him. He flew away from us and it was a bit worrying thinking about the race when someone of his age was so much faster than us. He focused the training on a couple of technical aspects of the basic techniques. Quite quickly it became apparent that me and Martin had different strengths (which I guess we already knew); Martin is better at skiing "diagonally" and I am better when we just training on pushing ourself forward with brute force. I guess that it says something about our two personalities *smile*


We spent the evening in the local bar (best way to relax and take our mind off what was ahead). The next day we took it very easy and only went out for a brief check that our professionally waxed skis were OK, we had left them with the local ski shop to be prepared for the race. We were a bit worried that we seemed to have lost all grip, but put it down to the fact that on the race day it would be different weather then on the Saturday. We didnt do anything about our concerns and didnt go back to the shop - something that we later had to pay the price for. I put it down to pure inexperience and not really knowing what it should feel like to ski cross country.

Monday 3 March 2008

Vasaloppet - Training day 1 (Thursday 28 Feb)

After a night's pit-stop at Martin's brother in Stockholm we drove up to Salen. We were a bit worried when there were no snow and we only had about 50km to go to the finish line of the race (Mora), but once in Salen there was plenty of snow. We stayed at "Gammelgarden", an old cottage more then 400 years old. A very cosy timber cottage – exactly what Martin and I needed for our race preparations *smile*.

We went out and tried our skis the first day. It felt good to be back in the tracks and with the sun settling behind the mountains we felt prepared for the days to come. Here are some photos from the first day.