Working on the uphill form

The Blåman races showed that my uphill form had declined a lot since last year. OK, so I was still in post marathon recovery period, but come on: for the last 11 months I had mainly been street running, most of it flat. When I resumed strength training after a break of about 6 weeks, it became also evident that I had lost quite a bit of strength in my legs.

But all that is going to be fixed now! First of all, fortunately the post marathon fatigue is finally gone and my energy is back! The Blåmann races inspired me to move most of my training to uphill running and walking. During the long training period towards Amsterdam, there were several spectacular mountain hikes during beautiful weekends that I could not join due to the 30+ km runs in our training schedule. I now realize how badly I had really missed the mountains. It feels wonderful to be in the low season and not to have to train towards a particular goal (yet!), so I simply pick the training sessions that I feel like participating, and these days the offered menu contains mainly uphills. 

One of the things I've been wanting to try all the way since last year is the long uphill intervals of Fjellgeitene on Thursdays. They are as long as 8 minutes! And there are six of them! Scary enough just the thought of it. It took me more than a year, and many conversations with and encouragement from Lars the chief goat,  to mentally get ready for these. Finally I tried them this week! Yey! And it was not even that scary! Between the 8 minute intervals are 2 minute breaks. In the breaks, the group jogs downwards. To compensate my slowness compared to the rest, I rather walked uphill during the breaks. In the end this worked out a bit too well; I got further than everybody, and followed Jonathan Albon (!!!) all the way to the top of Rundemanen. Next time, I think I can allow myself to either stop during the breaks or perhaps even slowly walk down.

Fjellgeitene also inspires in a very fun way when it comes to leg strength and plyometric training. I think we can call it the annual winter challenge. Last year, there was the daily toe raises challenge. How many toe raises can you do without a break? You stand on a step with your heels hanging on the outside. You lower yourself slowly, then raise yourself on your toes slowly, and repeat. This year's challenge is rope jumping. How many seconds can you rope jump without a break? It has to be done in a speed of about 100-120 jumps a minute, and the rope has to pass under your feet between every single jump (no double jumping). It is surprisingly tiring! So far my record is 60 seconds, but fortunately the challenge continues until February, so there is still time to improve.

All this is of course not enough to get my leg strength back. As promised, I have returned to my weekly personal training sessions with Ketil, and my goodness it was about time! After the first session I could neither sit down nor get up for several days; my legs were incredibly sore. The good news is that strength comes back pretty quickly. Also the running form is coming back. The best indicator for this is the Hordnes forest runs of Melkesyre every Monday. This course is pretty hilly, with a lot of ups and downs, so even the prescribed easy pace of 6:30 can feel challenging. At least it did two weeks after Amsterdam. It felt like a race. Since then it got better and better, and last Monday it was finally as easy as it should be.

But don't think that I have forgotten all about flat running. I have something new to test out. I will tell you next week :-)