and peaceful. I did parts of the run with Karl Johan only as Björnar and got out a bit later. Easy and comfortable, just for recovery.
Had an interesting talk with race-walker Trond Nymark yesterday. I have respect for the kind of work the world class 50km walkers are doing, both in terms of total volume (250+ km weeks..) and intensity (long, 20-30 km threshold trainings). It gives you perspective of what is needed in general to reach top level. One things that re-occur time after time when you speak to top endurance athletes like him, regardless of sport ; the ability to to a very, very high training load over time – while at the same time having incredible focus on resititution. It is not a matter of how much you wish to be training, it is only a matter of how many hours you have a day and how much training you optimize within that time frame. This double focus – realizing that training is merely a matter of breaking down (training) and building up (resting) is so simple in theory but very hard to to practically. It is a double edge sword. Do one too much of one of them and you will not achieve the results you wish. While at the same time small adjustments in one of the two can trigger massive improvement in the other. So interestingly, speaking to others at elite level – you spend more time discussion restitution than one would think, as oppose to pure training talk.
Speaking of rest between trainings, right before I left Norway I incidentally bumped into Eirik Hansen, a Norwegian runner who has in the 13.30s 5k and 7.40s 3k in the 1980s. I have met almost all of the 13.20-40 Norwegian runners but with him I have only seen his name in the record books. There again, you get the balance ; how he managed to balance the rest and the training ; while doing “160-180 km weekly, all easy runs at 3.20-30/km plus hard intervalls” – and how his running career really ended once he could not keep up that balance anymore because of other commitments. Good to have these things in mind when you spend the days resting through long morning at the training camps 😉
Another long run this evening. Maybe a bit progressive, depending of how my legs are feeling.
I have linked to some more pictures from here (link should be activated later today). The first pics, up the the “Dullstrom sign” is from Potch the rest from here.
All well from here,
Marius