Sunday, 22 December 2019

First place in Last Race of the Year - Chiang Mai MTB Epic 2019

Today was the Chiang Mai MTB Epic. A three stage race, all in one day.


Stage 1: Flat on roads
Stage 2: In the jungle
Stage 3: Hill climb

The setup was that you had to race in teams of two so I teamed up with Johnny Hård, a Swedish ex-pat. All the teams started time-trial style with 20 second intervals

Stage 1, being mostly on roads, is where we won the race. There's this Strava section on flat asphalt that I'm particularly happy with:



We ended up winning the race. Good stuff!

Here are the results. We are team B-02 (we actually were the fastest team, all categories)


Here's a video that Johnny shot of stage 1 (that's my ass you see)




Start of the race was early in the morning: 07:00 AM

Start/finish area of all the three stages

The race had the max number of allowed teams entered

Stage 2: Te

Last climb of stage 3

At the top of stage 3

At the end of stage 3

From left to right: Johnny, Miko, Jonathan and I

My Trek Top Fuel 9.9 performed excellently, as always



Thursday, 19 December 2019

Winter Training 2019/2020

The first part of part of this Winter's training period is coming to an end.

I started out by eating a lot and enjoying chocolate and life in general and managed to reach a maximum weight of 78.9kg on the 11th of November


My big weakness is my homemade granola:

And chocolate:

Then I took charge of my eating habits and by December 18th I was down to 74.2


October was my "resting" month... With not all that much recovery actually. I really like to train :)

I didn't have any real cold but one there was one week I was feeling a bit under the weather and so that week passed without any high intensive training. I also skipped the race I was supposed to do that weekend.

By November I was hitting my exercise bike seriously. The bulk of my training consisted of intervals on my Monark exercise bike mixed with races in the weekends.

My training sessions from October 1st and to present date (December 19th):

Sessions  Type        Normal Power    Best Power
12        9 x 9 min   310W - 325W     332W
4         12 x 9 min  310W - 320W     324W
1         3 x 20 min  330W            330W
2         4 x 8 min   350W            362W
7 (+1)    Race

9 x 9 min is my staple session and my favorite. It gives me a very good Training Stress Score while still letting me recover quickly. I actually, for the first time, managed to do back-to-back sessions with only 48 hours of rest in between.  I only aborted two attempts at 9 x 9 (just doing 6 repetitions instead of 9)

Doing 12 repetitions of 9 min interval is a new one for me and this Autumn was the first time I tried it. It's really tough and you had better be well rested before you do it.

I'll do more of these shorter intervals the next half of winter training season (compared to 9x9)

With the very restricted type of LONG intervals that I do it's absolutely vital that I get out and do a more varied form of high intensity training, which is what the races give me. Without the races I'd be doing more shorter intervals.

So what happens now? I'm going to Chiang Mai to do my yearly training camp in the mountains there. I think that this will be my sixth year in a row that I make this trip with my mountain bike. I'm really looking forward to it!

This is what the weather is like there right now:



Sunday, 1 December 2019

Mountain Biking in Slovenia's Coastal Area

Mountain Biking around Korte and Izola / Slovenia


December is here! Let's look back on this summer's mountain biking adventure in Slovenia

In June, after Beskidy Trophy, we headed south for a vacation in Slovenia.

This year, instead of the Alps, we chose the coastal region close to Izola.

 Map of area around Korte / Slovenia

I got the idea after watching some videos of the downhill track in the area:




Kmetija Medijan


We decided on booking an apartment in Tourist Farm Medijan (or in Slovenian: Kmetija Medijan)




A traditional meat burek

Mountain biking around Korte / Izola / Portoroz







Korte MTB rack

The village of Korte



Izola Coastal Area





Three Countries Bike Ride

I went for an adventure ride that included three countries in one day: Slovenia, Croatia and Italy



Slovenian Croatian border
Slovenian Croatian border


Just across the Croatian border looking back into Slovenia

Nice Benzes in Croatia

Lucia / Slovenia

Italian Border

Italian Border