Testing of willpower in new ways: detoxing

When racing, competing,  and training hard, your willpower and self discipline are put to the test all the time. You reach a point where all muscles of your body scream at you to stop or slow down, but you still push yourself to continue. Two months ago, I tested out something quite different that also puts your willpower and self discipline to the test: body cleansing, or detoxing. During three days, I only drank freshly pressed juices, herbal tea, and water. I ate or drank nothing else! Although the experience was totally different from competing and training, the feeling of accomplishment at the end of it was quite comparable to the feeling after a successful race.

During our personal training sessions, Ketil and I regularly discuss nutrition and weight control issues. When I learned that he had tried out a three day cleansing and was quite happy about the experience, I immediately wanted to try it as well! There are probably many producers that offer these types of products, but I tried the same as Ketil, delivered by essentially.no which is situated in Oslo. Essentially offers three day cleansing products for those who live in Bergen. The juices are freshly cold pressed just before you receive them, and they have to be consumed within three days. When I ordered, the next delivery in Bergen was at the end of September, the day after I was coming home from a five day trip to Italy. I thought this was perfect; I knew that I would be eating and drinking a lot during the trip, and a cleansing right afterwards seemed to be well timed.

We arrived home from Italy late evening on a Monday, and already at 8 am Tuesday morning I was at the pick up point and got my juice package. The idea is that you pick it up early in the morning and start immediately the same day. My package consisted of 3 x the daily 6 juice bottles which you can see in the picture above.  I was to drink them with about 2 hours in between every bottle: three green juices (mainly containing cucumber), two fruit juices, and a cashew nut milk. The pickup point, to my surprise, turned out to be Barry's Bootcamp Bergen, and I learned that one of the instructors, Annelin, was also going to do the cleansing at the same time as me. This turned out to be really useful for me, and I think it helped Annelin as well. At the start and end of each day, we would send each other messages and share our experiences about the day to come or the day that passed. Here is how it went:

Tuesday: I picked up my juice package and went back home. At that time I was writing a big project proposal, and I was working at home several days a week to be able to concentrate without being disturbed. Working at home and being alone on the first day of the cleansing was quite perfect, as I think I would find talking to people quite hard at this point. As soon as I got home, I drank my green juice. Not too bad, but not very good either. I sat down to work. After a couple of hours, I was really happy that it was time for the second juice, this time a fruit juice. Oh, this tasted so much better than the green juice; happy happy! In the meanwhile, I was getting a serious headache and I was feeling really tired, both of which I think were due to lack of coffee. Still I found it surprisingly easy to concentrate on work. Actually, as the day progressed, I felt more and more "sedated" by fatigue, hunger and headache, which made me very uninterested in many things, like checking emails. So I found it easier and easier to concentrate on my main work. Surprising consequence! During this first day I drank a lot of herbal tea, because I felt cold all the time. In the afternoon I went for my weekly personal training session. The cashew milk was supposed to be saved until the end of the day, because it is the most nutritious, but since I was going to train, I took half of it before the workout and half of it after. Oh heaven! The cashew milk was delicious! I felt so full and happy, and the workout went surprisingly well. When I got back home, all I had left was a green juice, which did not feel that good at all at that time. I figured out it was a good idea to go to bed early,  to stay away from all temptations. I was very happy to have completed day one without a single thing outside of the cleansing schedule.

Wednesday: I went on the bathroom scale, and I could register that my weight was back to where it was before Italy. Very happy! I drank my green juice in the morning, took three juice bottles with me, and went to work. The summary of day two was that I felt less tired, more awake but also more hungry than the first day, and I had less headache. The day went surprisingly well. I could work and talk to my colleagues normally, and I could concentrate on all things as usual. I only had a slight feeling of having a thin veil in front of my eyes, and was slightly distanced from everything. I was also much calmer and more neutral than normal, which was an interesting experience for me, as I am normally quite energetic and enthusiastic. I managed also this day to avoid eating or drinking anything else than my juices, water and a lot of herbal tea. And most importantly, I managed to avoid taking headache pills. We are, after all, being cleansed, right?! No workout this day, and after exchanging experiences with Annelin and Ketil, I went to bed early. Simple life.

Thursday: One more kilo gone on the bathroom scale; yeay!! Same procedure as yesterday, I took my green juice in the morning, and brought my other juices to work. The headache was almost gone this day; I was slowly getting rid of my coffee addiction, and I felt almost no hunger. This day I went for the regular Thursday Stoltzekleiven and Rundemanen workout with Melkesyre, and I did the same trick as Tuesday, with the cashew milk before and after the workout. At this point, I was really fed up with the green juices, and felt that their taste got worse and worse for every bottle. The other juices, though, tasted better and better, so I had always something to look forward to. Knowing that this was the last day of the cleansing made it really easy to get through the day, and towards the end of the day I started feeling really really happy that I would be able to eat and drink normally the day after.

Friday: It's over!!! I woke up with this thought (and no headache!), feeling intensively happy. Bathroom scale showed yet another kilo off, which made my spirit even higher, and I was so much looking forward to my cup of coffee and my bowl of oat meal. It was great, but in the end I could not even finish my normal portion of oat meal. The intense feeling of happiness and being high lasted throughout the whole day. Surprisingly, I could eat only very moderate amounts of food this day. My stomach shrank quite a bit during these days. In the morning, before I had my breakfast I took this picture and sent it to Annelin and Ketil with the note: "my tightest jeans" :-)

All in all I was quite happy about this cleansing experience. Mainly because I managed to complete it without resorting to anything outside of the plan, which resulted in a feeling of success. The loss of two extra kilos, in addition to losing the excess from Italy, was also great, but one of the lost kilos came back over the next two days. When it comes to cleansing, I did not really feel any effect like being more energized than before. I think, since my regular diet was anyway pretty healthy, maybe there was not much to be cleansed from. I did shrink a quite bit during these days, though, and the shrinking effect has stayed on. The above jeans are still loose and require a belt :-) If you are eating healthy most of the time, I think you do not need such an experiment. However, it could be a nice boost at the start of a diet, or after a holiday with lots of food and drinks, or perhaps after the Christmas celebrations?

The first delivery to Bergen after Christmas is January 6 :-)

Long time dream come true: Skåla Opp 2014

Climbing the Skåla Mountain in Loen, Norway, had been a dream for me for many years. I made several concrete plans with different groups of friends over the years, but every time something came up and I could not go. To make sure that I would actually do it in 2014, I got good help from one of my dearest friends, Filiz. Already early this year, we agreed that we would spend a weekend in their family cabin in Stryn (which is 10 min drive from Loen) in August, and climb this amazing mountain which goes up 1848 meters straight from the fjord on a path of length 8 km.

During the summer holidays this year, I learned that the annual Skåla Opp race was on one of the weekends we had reserved for this event. As soon as I realized this I wanted to do the race! Filiz was hesitant. Her tradition for this mountain is enjoying a full day hike in nice weather and silence without hundreds of racers around. But I managed to convince her, and we both signed up for the race. The competition class was full, so we would have to time our run ourselves.

After coming back from the summer holidays and resuming my PT sessions with Ketil, I learned that he would do the race as well. In fact this would be his seventh time, and he had lots of detailed information about the course and instructions about where to go fast and where to take it easy. During the couple of weeks before the race, he prepared me for it mentally, so well that I could picture the whole course in my head, although I had never been there. He estimated that I should be able to finish the race in less than 2h 30 min. I myself calculated that Skåla approximately equals 8 times Stoltzekleiven, both in elevation and in distance. My best Stoltzekleiven time at that point times 8 would give 2h 8min. However, hoping for this seemed too optimistic. I decided that I would be very happy with a time around 2h 15min.

The race was on Saturday August 16, starting early in the morning. We left Bergen early enough on Friday so that we arrived in Stryn in the afternoon. We had a decent dinner with lots of proteins and carbohydrates (as before all long races, we had been carbohydrate loading for a few days, which is one of the best things about participating in a race ;-), and we even found time to do a slow hike in the Stryn mountains in beautiful sunny weather. On the day of the race, however, the weather was unfortunately not so nice. Rain at fjord level, and fog and light snow on top!

We arrived in Loen early enough to get a parking spot at Hotel Alexandra, and after using the bathrooms there, we took the free shuttle from the hotel to the start area. Perfect plan! We got our start numbers, and Filiz started immediately, whereas I wanted to warm up a bit and find the correct start spot for the competition class. I started there and timed my race from that point. The most important thing was to start not too fast, according to Ketil. I kept it at a pace which I felt was around my limit but did not push it above that until I reached about half way. The distance and elevation markers were very helpful, and I was surprised about how well and fast I was doing according to my schedule. Some parts that were described to me as tough climbing passed more quickly than I had hoped for, and finally only 1 km was left! But the last km was also the hardest. At this point, it was really foggy so I had no idea how close to the top I was or how steep the last part was. As I was running out of all energy, I heard the loud speakers from the top announcing that the finish was close. I increased my speed towards the end, and I was so exhausted when I finished that I ended up giving a hug to the person who put a medal around my neck, and just hanging there for a while. I finished the race in 2h 13min, and I was extremely happy about it.

As with all races where there is the option of starting before the elites, it was great fun to be on the top and greet the winners as they arrived. I was also very happy to find Ketil at the top, and that was the point when I met several people for the first time who later became my Melkesyre friends. These people were so extremely nice and kind; they included me in the pictures they were taking, which gave me wonderful memories to look back to. Many of them did extremely well at the race, and several of them had personal records this year, with Jeanette winning her class being the highlight. I also had the pleasure of walking down with them, and witnessing all the fun that they were having. I think perhaps that was the point I decided that I wanted to join Melkesyre.

Both Filiz and I were so happy with this experience that we agreed to sign up for the competition class for Skåla Opp 2015. This turned out to be easier said than done. The registration opened already September 1 this year, but the interest was so massive and the organizers were so unprepared for this, that the system went down and stayed down for several hours. Fortunately we managed to sign up before the competition class was full. I am really looking forward to the race, but I would have liked the option of starting before the elites and still having my time recorded. Most mountain races offer this option but not Skåla Opp. I hope they will change their strategy in the future, so that we can start earlier than the elites and still compete with registered times. It is just so much fun to be on top when the winners arrive!

I will of course be wearing my Melkesyre t-shirt at Skåla Opp 2015 :-)

All good things go by three: Blåmanen Opp 3

Yesterday I ended up having one of my best race experiences. Again! The last one of the three races up to Mount Blåmanen in Bergen, Blåmansløpene, took place yesterday. These are three races with two weeks in between, starting from the same spot at Fjellveien and ending at the same spot on Blåmanen, but following three different courses, 6-7 km each. These races were on my B list, and they ended up gradually "growing on me". I could not participate in the first one because I was on travel,  I took it easy on the second one, and finally I really raced in the last one!

Already Saturday a week ago, during the uphill interval training with Melkesyre, I felt that my racing form was back, and I decided at that point to really go for it at the last Blåmanen race. Monday afternoon I went for an easy pace trial run to see the course, and I was simply amazed by how beautiful, interesting, and exciting the part of this course from Fløyen to Blåmanen is! I have been hiking in Bergen mountains for more than 25 years, but there are so many incredibly pretty paths that I have never been to earlier. And it is not only me! Many of my hiking/running friends who are born and raised in Bergen are also surprised to discover these paths. I am extremely grateful to Varegg and Viking sports clubs for placing the courses of the Blåmanen races and Bergen Fjellmaraton via these incredibly nice, less known paths on the city mountains!

Although I always print and take with me instructions and maps, I never manage to find the exact course when I am on a trial run. The same happened on Monday, and I decided to do another trial run on Wednesday. However, I was a bit hesitant to do it alone; the path is indeed incredibly pretty, but it is quite far off the main path. I was extremely lucky that one of my Melkesyre friends Hans Erik was also planning a trial run on Wednesday and could join me. We had the perfect trial run: the beginning of the course was clear to me after checking the map again, and Hans Erik had been to the last part of the course with other Melkesyre friends, so we had the whole course more or less under control. We had a quite faster run than my first one, as we were pushing each other in the first part up to Fløyen, which is the toughest part for me: uphill but not steep enough to walk, and one has to keep running to cover the distance in reasonable time.

Of course when the race came, we discovered that we had not found the exact correct course! But pretty close. (In fact I consider it a lucky charm that I don't have the whole course fully under control before a race.) On the race day the weather was warm for November in Bergen. Partly cloudy and 12 degrees C, but quite windy, at least at the top. This time quite a larger group of my Melkesyre friends gathered to start together, about half an hour before the elites. This turned out to be a great experience for all of us. In the previous race, many of us ended up running alone, but this time we could see each other almost throughout the whole course, which was very motivating. I was in particular helped a lot by Erik, who passed me on the way to Fløyen and I could follow him all the way up there, and by Hans Erik who ran with me all the way from Fløyen to Fjellhytten. After that I could again see the backs of some of the faster ones, and I got closer and closer to them towards the end, which gave even more motivation. I had an amazing race experience, and I was very very happy with my finish time, which was better than my most optimistic estimates.

The great fun of starting together half an hour before the elites was that we all arrived within minutes of each other, and could cheer each other into the finish. I could hear my friends shout my name as I was approaching the finish, and it really made me make an extra effort towards the very end. After a few minutes, the best runners started arriving, and above is a picture of us together with the winner Thorbjørn to the left. It was marvelous to cheer the winners, the elites, and the rest of our friends into finish, as they arrived. I was cheering and clapping and jumping so much that I might have given the impression of being high on something. The wonderful thing about a good race experience it gives a high that can hardly be matched by anything else.

The Blåmanen races are organized by Varegg in a very low cost way, with tiny participation fee, just by volunteers. In fact several of my Melkesyre friends participated in the organization rather than the race, and I want to thank them all and Varegg for giving us all these wonderful experiences! And as I thought I was done uphill racing for a while, I was reminded yesterday that new races up to Fløyen are coming up in January....

I can see my B list growing!

Bergen Fjellmaraton

This is one of the best race experiences I have had so far! Bergen Fjellmaraton took place in the beginning of June this year; it is a half marathon, 21 km. The first 3 km up Mount Ulriken have an elevation gain of around 450 m, after which it is mainly slightly downhill, except for some steep uphills every now and then. My friend Benedicte, my husband Frank, and I decided to join this race during the National Day (May 17) breakfast together. This did not give us much time to practice, but we still got to do parts of the track a few times before the race.

First, Frank and I did the whole track backwards (from Fløyen to Ulriken, instead of the other way round). This was just the morning after I came back from a trip and had landed late the night before, and it turned out to be quite tougher than I had imagined. The slight uphill all the way after the ascent to Rundemanen took all the energy I had and more, and I thought I would never reach mount Ulriken! I was totally exhausted after this practice run, which took us about 3h 30min. I cannot describe how encouraging and patient poor Frank was, as I was complaining practically all the way. I was so slow that the whole thing became just an easy slow tempo run for him, and this made me even more worried about my shape and how I would do at the race. We did not manage to find the exact path, and ended up doing 25 km instead of 21, and this is how I looked at the end:

 

Later Benedicte and I did a part of the track together, about 12 km, and I did on my own about 10 km a few days before the race, at easy pace, mainly to try to find the right path. On the race day, I realized that we had not found the right path during practices. In fact none of the participants I know managed to find the entire correct path before the race, but luckily the track was extremely well marked, and it was very easy to find the right way during the race. 

For the race day, I had got very precise instructions from my trainer Ketil: don't go out too hard; keep the tempo just below the threshold for the first 3 km up, and then GO! The strategy worked perfectly. Many people were fast in the beginning, but I managed to keep calm and follow the plan, and in fact I caught many of them later when they had burnt out all their energy. I had a good feeling the whole way, I walked most of the uphills, and ran all of the downhills and flat parts, and finished in 2h 53min, a time which I was extremely happy about. Frank was of course faster than me, and due to the experience from our practice run together, he was not expecting me that early at the finish. He wanted to take pictures of me as I arrived, but he was enjoying his free hamburger when he spotted me entering the stadium, long before he was ready with the camera. That's why the following picture turned out so blurry, but it still shows how extremely exhausted and extremely happy I was as I reached the finish:

I stretched out on the ground, which turned to be a slight mistake, as it was incredibly difficult to get up, but after 5-10 minutes I started to regain strength, was able to get up, so that we could take a celebration selfie with the whole team:

The rest of the story you know: as I was waiting for the rest of the elites to arrive, I had the pleasure of making the most amazing acquaintance and interesting conversation with Sverre Slethaug. This really wiped out all my exhaustion, and I was so excited and even happier than at finish. Then one by one, several people I know started to arrive, and it was great fun to greet them at the finish and chat with them about their performances. Soon, the main person I was waiting for came to finish as well: my trainer, mentor, idol, and friend Ketil Ola Skjelvan. Although he is too modest to agree, I believe I owe him all of these wonderful experiences I have been writing about, and I am grateful to him in particular for introducing me to Team Melkesyre. He is a person whom I really look up to, learn from all the time, and try to follow the example of as best as I can. 

The wonderful experience of this race lasted for many days. I kept going thorough the whole thing in my mind over and over again, and was happy to realize that I would not do anything any differently. A few days later, the pictures from the race became available online, and then I relived the whole thing once again. I studied every picture closely, found the numbers of people I could recognize from the race, and looked up their finish times to compare with mine. I think definitely this is the race that has so far given me the most excitement altogether.

If I manage to get rid of the pain in my knees, I definitely want to do it in 2015 as well!

Champs rule

 

Well of course they do; they are the winners. But many of them rule in so many other ways than just being the best. I am always amazed when famous athletes turn out to be incredibly kind and nice people. I tend to think that you have to be very competitive and quite egoistic to become a champion, but surprisingly many super good athletes are also super sweet people. I think, for example, the alpine king Aksel Lund Svindal is simply unbelievably nice, although I have never met him (I might be a tiny bit biased since my youngest son is called Aksel). It is just incredible how kind and encouraging he is when he talks about his competitors and team mates, and how he can keep an unbelievably positive attitude even when he is seriously injured just at the start of a season. After I started participating in races, I have had the pleasure of meeting several winners. And I must admit that I was quite surprised to see how humble, kind, and encouraging these people are. I already told you about my meeting with Kirsten Marathon Melkevik, and how incredibly encouraging and complimenting she was about my achievements, as well as my leg muscles, balance, etc. Well, there are many sweet champs out there.

In June this year, I participated in Bergen Fjellmaraton. I will write about that experience in the next post, but for now let me just write about the finish of that race. As with many mountain races, we had the option of starting earlier than the elites, and I had started early enough so that I could be already in the finish area when some of my friends participating in the elite class would arrive. I was sitting down on a roll of material at the side of the stadium and waiting for the others, when a person came and asked whether he could sit next to me. He was enjoying a hamburger, and wanted to sit down while eating (I was feeling too sick of exhaustion to take the offer of free hamburgers at the finish). We started chatting and he asked me about how I had done. I told him my finish time, and he seemed very impressed. I also told him that I was a fresh runner, and went ahead and told him about my Bergen half marathon adventure as well. He was really encouraging and gave me lots of compliments on the "incredibly good" times that I had achieved in these races. Finally, I asked him whether he was happy about his race performance and his finishing time. Yes, he was indeed quite pleased, he said. When I asked him about his time, he replied 1:35 (1 h 35 min). At that point my jaw dropped; I had managed to hear over the loudspeakers that the winner finished in 1:35. I asked him: are you the winner??? Yes, he replied shyly... O-M-G! Those who know me can perhaps imagine how excited I got at that point. First of all, how could it be that the winner was simply sitting there and enjoying a hamburger all by himself? (Well with me, but I am nobody in this context.) Where were the cameras, where were all the admirers? Alright, so things are pretty low key in Norway, but still I would expect the winner to get some special treatment, at least be inside in a warm room... Then I started asking him millions of questions. He could not have been kinder and nicer when he explained how he became so fast: he has simply been doing this since he was a little kid, he said. I asked him how fast he can run on a flat road, and he said he did not really do flat roads and was not very good at them. Of course by now I know better. He is in fact amazing in all sorts of running races, flat, steep, long, short, he simply wins almost everything. He also does some ultra races of incredible lengths in incredible short times. I was new and ignorant at that point and had never heard of him, but by now I am a big fan of Sverre Slethaug! He is an incredible athlete, and he is indeed very famous, both in Norway and internationally. Since then I have had the pleasure of meeting him at several races, and he is just as sweet every singe time. When I congratulated him on winning a 10 km race last week, he replied by congratulating me and all other participants... As we were all winners!

Several examples of incredibly sweet champions are among my team mates in Team Melkesyre. In August this year I participated in the Skåla Opp race (I will write about that very soon), and the winner in my class was Jeanette Amundsen. Later I learned that she is a Melkesyre Team member, and the first time I joined a Melkesyre training, I had the pleasure of talking to her. I was telling her how impressed I was with her achievement, while she kept going on asking me about my finishing time and my experience of the run, and all the time telling me how incredibly well I had done at the race. She also told me that there is no reason I cannot be at least as good as her, and that I should just keep training to get there. So incredibly sweet! Of course I don't believe I can ever beat Jeanette, but winning my class in some competition at some race some time is indeed one of my goals. Other champs in Melkesyre are Gro Svendal and Eva Quivey, and they are equally humble and sweet about their achievements compared to other people's. I also want to mention my friend Cathrine Haugstvedt in Melkesyre. She came number 2 in her class at a 5 km race last week, and she can do both short and very long distances very fast. I am so incredibly inspired by her; she is quite new to running, and just unbelievably humble about her achievements. I could have mentioned so many more of course, but somehow women around my age are most impressive to me, as I consciously or unconsciously compare myself to them. Guys, I am very very impressed by you, too!!

Talk to a champ; you will find it super rewarding!

Super easy, life saving recipes

Alright, "life saving" is perhaps an exaggeration, but when you want to watch what you eat and you are hungry, you need something very simple and very quick to prepare so that you won't need to resort to foods outside of your diet plan. I will share some incredibly simple dishes that are filling, low on calories and carbohydrates, and high on protein.

First of all, here are some ingredients that I always keep in the house, so that they are available in times of need: Plain yoghurt, eggs, chopped tomatoes in carton, bananas, nuts, frozen finely chopped spinach, and frozen clams and scampi (some brands of these can be quite expensive, but they are very reasonable at Rema 1000 supermarkets).

Lunch

For the last 10 years I was used to eating crisp bread for lunch every day. I got this habit during the Grete Roede courses and I kept it, since it is easy, nutritious, filling, low on calories, and fits perfectly with the Norwegian lunch tradition. This has worked perfectly for me for losing and watching weight. However, since I started to train harder in the spring of this year, in terms of both more running and more strength training, my trainer Ketil advised me that I needed more proteins. Since more proteins means more calories, something had to be cut out. So we decided to go down on carbohydrates on one of the meals of the day: the lunch. Hence, for the last 6 months, I have been eating salad with added protein (chicken or tuna or ham) for lunch. It is actually much more filling than crisp bread; the calorie count is the same, but I get more proteins and less carbs. This works perfectly when I am at work and can buy salad in the cafeteria, but when I am at home I am sometimes too lazy to make a salad. Or perhaps I am just back from a run and too hungry to take the time to start cutting salad ingredients. Of course you can keep ready cut salad in your fridge, but if you end up not using it, it will quickly get soggy. That's why I find the frozen alternatives more convenient.

Spinach and tomato soup: Pour a carton of chopped tomatoes into a saucer pan and add half a bag of (or as much as you'd like) frozen spinach cubes and bring to boil; turn down the heat and simmer until the spinach is warm (doesn't take long at all). Season with salt and pepper, and add extra heat if you'd like. Your soup is done! It has practically no calories, so you can have as much as you'd like, and it's quite filling. I sometimes make this before going to a dinner party, to avoid being too hungry and not being able to control how much I eat.

Spinach omelet: Spinach soup is fine but it does not have enough proteins to be a proper meal in my opinion. Add less of the chopped tomatoes (or leave them out completely), and add instead two eggs, which you simply scramble in the pan together with the spinach. If you have more time, you can start with frying in just a little bit oil some chopped scallions and bell peppers, before you add the spinach, and then the eggs at the end when the spinach is warm. You can also add some cottage cheese for more texture and even more proteins. Season with salt and pepper, and add cayenne or Tabasco for some heat if you'd like to.  This is delicious when served with fresh tomatoes. It is surprisingly filling, and it keeps you full for many hours!

Spinach with sea food: This can actually go for dinner as well, because it is even more filling. To the spinach soup, add frozen clams and scampi, as much as you wish or as much as your calorie count allows. Sea food is very high on protein and low on calories and fat, so you get to eat quite a lot. For seasoning in this, I like to use some Tom Yum paste, Thai fish sauce, and the juice of half a lemon, in addition to pepper and some heat. If you don't have those ingredients, it's fine to use salt and pepper, or whatever other seasoning you'd like. If you use fish sauce, be careful because it is very salty, so don't use additional salt. You can also add some tomato paste, or bell pepper paste to get a thicker consistency, and then add some more water so that you get more on your plate.

Dessert and snack

Sometimes you just want something sweet, and then it's nice to be able to make a quick dessert or snack without sugar and too much calories. The recipes below are very much inspired by Ketil and one of the sweetest Barry's Bootcamp instructors and personal trainers, Petra Malmqvist. Petra is studying to become a nutritional physiologist, and she generously shares amazingly tasty and simple recipes.

Ketil's ice cream: The original recipe is with already sweetened yoghurt, for example vanilla yoghurt, and just a little bit normal unsweetened cocoa powder. Here is my variant: Take plain yoghurt into a bowl and simply add either light instant cocoa drink powder (for example Toro rett-i-koppen instant cocoa drink light), or a few spoons of diet protein powder with chocolate taste. Stir well to get the powder nicely integrated into the yoghurt. You can now either eat it just like that, or put it in the freezer for a few hours and then eat it as an ice cream.

Petra's pancakes: Mash a banana and add two eggs and plenty of cinnamon. Stir until it is smooth. Now you can make one big, or two or three small pancakes out of this. Just lightly oil a pan, and fry them just as normal pancakes. Be careful when turning, as the consistency is a bit loose. Surprisingly sweet!

Banana and yoghurt treat: Roast a few chopped nuts (I like to use walnuts and almonds) in a small pan, and then add a sliced banana. Stir until the banana slices are warm and soft, and add cinnamon. Now add this hot mixture to a bowl of plain yoghurt. It is fresh and sweet, warm and cold, at the same time. Surprisingly filling and really tasty.

Whatever-you-have-in-the-fridge smoothie: This is very much inspired by Petra. She put her variant on Instagram one Sunday, and 5 minutes later I had mine ready with the ingredients I found in the fridge and freezer. You can really use almost anything you want, as long as the tastes go together. I used: A little bit mango sorbet that I found in my freezer, half a banana, a few frozen cloud berries (multer), one cup of no-fat no-sugar (Yoplait double 0%) blueberry yoghurt, and a little bit fat free chocolate milk (Tine Styrk). Add all these (or similar) ingredients into your blender and pulse for a few minutes, and its ready!

Enjoy!

Keeping up the motivation - Blåmanen

Yesterday morning, as I was getting ready for Blåmanen race 2, I asked myself: "Why am I doing this?" The weather was not exactly inviting; it was rainy, foggy, and windy. My injuries (left knee and right buttock), although slowly getting better, were acting up a bit, and I had a slight cold. The answer to the question was easy: "Because I want to!" But why did I want to do it? I did not have a simple answer to this question. In fact just a little more than a week ago, I was sure I would not do this race...

After Oslo half marathon and Stoltzekleiven, I had the feeling that I would not want to participate in races in a long while. I was enjoying having reached my initial goals and going back to my normal training sessions. On the other hand, for the first time since I started my serious running adventure, I did not have a planned race ahead, and this gave me a feeling of limbo. While we were evaluating the reached goals and discussing new goals, my trainer Ketil came up with the ingenious concept of A and B lists of races. The A list contains the races which I know for sure that I want to participate in, like Bergen City half marathon, Bergen Fjellmaraton, Skåla Opp, and Stoltzekleiven, all in 2015. The B list is for upcoming races that can be fun but are not as important as the ones on the A list. The B list, he suggested, could contain the three Blåmann races and the Fana winter carousel of races, to start with. I could do them at an easier pace, more like regular training sessions rather than races, and I could decide on the go which ones I wanted to join and which ones I felt for doing fast. It sure sounded like a good plan, but I did not understand the full impact of it until later.

The genius of the B list is that while you think you're not ready for the things on it, your mind slowly starts preparing for them. And since they are not that important, you don't get stressed about them. A week ago on Saturday, out of nowhere, I woke up thinking "I want to do Blåmanen race number 2!" I have no idea why the wish to do it came exactly then. A week earlier I had signed up for the third race which will take place November 15, and at that point I was sure that I did not want to do the second race. Suddenly I felt ready. I cannot describe how happy I am for this decision, and how grateful I am to Ketil for paving the way for this. Yesterday ended up being one of the most incredibly fun days in a long while!

Of course many of my team mates from Melkesyre would participate, and I was very lucky to have especially Cathrine and Tina with me. We decided that we wanted to start about half an hour before the fastest racers, so that we would be at the top just before they would arrive. The plan worked amazingly well! We started together, and finished within few minutes of each other. Great to know that one is not completely alone on the track, and wonderful to cheer on the faster people who were on the way up while we were going back down. I had decided before the race that I would take it easy so that I would not risk worsening my injuries. For the first time ever I was only watching my heart rate and not the time. I knew that Ketil did this sometimes, and he had instructed me not to push too hard, so I wanted to try this out. I set the goal of keeping more or less constant 162 in HR, which is my threshold value, and this worked really well. I was feeling very good, no pain from the injuries, enjoying the track, and in the end I was pretty pleased with my finishing time. A wonderful new experience! Now I have the answer to the question why I wanted to do the race: it's because of this feeling of accomplishment and success at the end. Every time a race works this way, it gives motivation for new races.

Yesterday evening there was the Blåmanen races celebration dinner and party, and almost all of Melkesyre was there. I had so much fun, and I kept getting reminded over and over again how incredibly nice all these people are, and how unbelievably lucky I am to know them and to have joined this group. Every single time I am with them I get inspired in so many different ways. They all have their very interesting stories, and there is so much to be learned from each one of them. At the same time, they are all so funny and entertaining. The more I get to know them the more enthusiastic I become. What an amazing group!

Needless to say, I have by now also signed up for the Fana winter carousel races...