All the right excuses: Bergen Fjellmaraton 2018

A good race is all about the good excuses...

Many "unfortunate" things can happen before and during a 21 km terrain race with 1080 meters of elevation gain. But don't despair! Each of those things can be used as an explanation of not reaching your goal, or to make reaching your goal appear even more impressive. :-)

Bergen is bathing in sunshine and warm weather since the beginning of May. During my 31 years in this city, I cannot remember such a long and continuous period of warm, dry and sunny weather. The winter was unusually cold with excessive amounts of snow, and in early spring I was wondering whether all that snow would disappear early enough to start training for Bergen Fjellmaraton, which took place last Thursday evening. The snow did indeed disappear impressively fast, and the mountains of Bergen have been free of snow and during the entire month of May. So no good excuse there for not being able to train for the race.

In fact, I did get a lot of opportunity to train for the race. The nice and hot weather inspired for mountain running much more than street running. Except for asphalt intervals once a week, all my training was in the terrain involving a lot of uphill during May. But I did of course also have a lot of good excuses all the way! :-)

The sudden loss of form in April: You might remember that I had to take it really really easy during the the whole month of April, after training a bit too intensively in the early spring. But May has been pretty good, although my heart rate has been higher and my speed lower than usual. Concentrating on simply having fun, and never pushing too hard, I ended up doing 250 km distance and 9500 m elevation gain during the month of May, according to Strava.

No previous races in 2018: Last year, when I achieved my PB in Bergen Fjellmaraton, I had already participated in two half marathons earlier that year, in addition to a couple of 10k races, with pretty good results. This year, all I have had so far is my worst 5k and my worst 10k ever, plus a half marathon which I quit after 9k in the beginning of April. All my training since then has been pretty easy, except the intervals, and I was thinking that pushing hard would feel very unfamiliar after such a long time.

My mind elsewhere: Perhaps enjoying life is closely related to mastering challenges all the time, and when new challenges emerge, old ones might loose their importance a little bit. I started a new job on the 1st of May, with responsibility for 150 colleagues and 500 students. I am enjoying it immensely; not a single day is like the previous day, with endless challenges, opportunities, duties and tasks. I notice that my mind is occupied with work related things most of the time, and training and competitions have perhaps come somewhat in the background.

With all these wonderful excuses, I was prepared to take it easy and just have a great time over the mountains on Thursday. In fact, after my PB last year, I was so eager to do an even better time that I had signed up in the race class for this year's race. But thanks to my excuses, I changed to an earlier start so that I could go with most of my friends who have comparable finish times as myself. When, in morning of the race, Annbjørg wrote to me suggesting that we should aim for a really enjoyable experience with 3:30 as the finish time, I felt wonderfully uplifted, and let my shoulders even further down, expecting nothing else than a great hike in the sunshine.

The race day itself had room for even more excuses, and actually some good ones, too!

Lack of sleep: Working long hours, sleeping too little, having been to a party the night before the race, where I was standing the whole evening, blah blah blah, yeah, the usual stuff. 

The heat: Despite what most of my friends think (since I am from "the south"), I actually don't take hot weather that well. I was pretty worried about the sunny and warm evening of the race. But in the end this didn't turn out that bad. And there was a wonderful breeze in the right direction once on top of Ulriken.

Almost drowned at 4 km: Wanted to take a sip of water, while breathing heavily, and got it in the wrong tube. Coughing heavily, I had to stop completely and in fact ask for help from my fellow competitors to hit me on the back. I definitely lost a minute there! Yeah, at least! :-)

Fell and got badly bruised at 16 km:  So happy to have managed to run pretty fast down all the technical parts, just in front of Brushytten, where it is completely flat and on gravel ground I fell badly with high speed. Cramps got my legs immediately, blood started pouring out of my both knees and hands, and many kind people stopped to get me back on my feet. After a quick assessment of the situation and wondering whether I would be able to continue, I decided to try. To my surprise, I was able to get back at normal speed and did not feel any discomfort from the wounds (until after the finish line). I lost at least another minute there. Yeah, right! :-)

Despite all these wonderful excuses, it actually went pretty well the whole thing! It was my most enjoyable Fjellmaraton ever. I felt like I was taking it easy, but the speed was good, and my times at various milestones kept surprising me. And it all went very quickly. I was like, "Oh, already 8 km!?", "Oh, already Rundemanen!?" all the time. I think the low shoulders and the easy start helped a lot for the rest.

Also a lot of fortunate things can happen in a race, and they did. In fact, the reason for the good experience was vastly thanks to wonderful friends! It was as always great to gather at the start line and give each other inspiration, and then gather again at the finish and celebrate together. But the help I got from some of them during the race was just invaluable!

Jan-Tore, Linda, Annbjørg, Vibeke, Cathrine, Ove, Leif, Mette, Solveig: Jan-Tore, the kindest and most enthusiastic guy on earth, is usually a lot faster than me (similar speed to that of Frank). But these days he is struggling with a groin strain and has to take it easy especially downhill. Still I was expecting him to be some 10-15 minutes faster than me, I was really surprised to catch him around half way. After that we kept more or less together all the way to finish, Jan-Tore taking pictures and talking to everybody and entertaining all the time. I cannot describe how uplifting it was to just once in my life be able compete with him. I wish you quick recovery Jan-Tore, but until then let's race together as much as possible! :-D Then there was Linda, also normally faster than me, and as expected she came from behind and passed me around 4-5 km, stopping to take pictures, shouting encouraging words and smiling her dazzling big smile. But then quite unexpectedly, I caught her after a few more km, and then she caught me, and then I caught her, and we went like that all the way to finish. Such surprises gave a sudden surge of energy and instantly everything felt a lot easier. And then the cheering gang: Vibeke at Vikinghytten half way, got an energizing hug, Cathrine and Ove just before the ascent to Rundemanen, got high fives and good pep talk, and then Leif, Mette and Solveig on top of Rundemanen, with cheering words and big smiles. After that only the easy part left!

I finished only two minutes behind my PR from last year. One minute penalty for each of the kilos I have more now than this time last year. There! Yet another excuse which I forgot to mention! :-) And just imagine how it could have gone without the fall, the drinking incident and all the other wonderful excuses! :-D

Another terrain race next Thursday. Jan-Tore, are you in? 

(Photos courtesy of Jan-Tore and Cathrine.)

What are cramps and how to avoid them

Cramps be gone!

I wrote last week that I learned a lot from Bergen Fjellmaraton due to interesting new experiences, like cramps. In fact, I learned even more afterwards, thanks to many useful comments from friends upon publishing the post. And I got so intrigued by what cramps are and how to avoid or get rid of them, that I read a lot about them this week.

Interestingly there seems to be no common agreement among doctors, scientists and trainers about what actually causes cramps during a race. However, many athletes swear that they are helped by immediately taking tablets containing minerals, especially salt, when the cramps occur. When we sweat a lot, in addition to losing water we also lose a lot of salt. Water and salt are essential for the signals from the brain to reach the muscles. So, it seems to be an easy explanation that if you lose a lot of water and salt, cramps might happen.

And boy did I lose a lot of water and salt during that race! I drank about 2.5 liters during the race, and I kept drinking the whole evening. I even got up during the night twice and drank half a liter each time. Still, when I got on the scale the morning after, I was 3 kg lighter than I was on the morning of the day before. So I must have sweated like 6 liters during the race! Is that at all possible? It turns out that it is; under hot and strenuous conditions a person can sweat 2-3 liters per hour. Since the race lasted about 3 hours, the math adds up.

It seems to depend from person to person how much salt you lose when you sweat, and an easy test is to taste your sweat. If it is salty and you get a crust of salt on your face afterwards,  then you lose a lot of salt when you sweat. Exactly what happens to me! So I was happy to have found the answer. I simply lost too much water and salt. I was also extremely happy to have received advice from friends about the remedy: it turns out that there are a lot of tablets and mixtures you can take before and during a race to prevent cramps! You can even take them as soon as the cramps start coming, and they will go away, as several friends experienced during Bergen Fjellmaraton.

Still, I kept searching for more explanations. Some experts do not agree that loss of salt is the (single) explanation of muscle cramps during a race. A study on all athletes participating in an ultra-triathlon showed no significant differences in salt levels between athletes who experienced cramps and those who did not. This study concluded that muscle fatigue is the main reason for cramps. But how do you measure that? The problem about finding out what causes cramps is that they happen at a time when several things happen in the body simultaneously; muscles get tired, you lose water and salt, and even your brain gets tired. So it is not easy to know which of these things cause the cramps. For almost all athletes cramps seem to come during long races, and in the second half of such a race. This supports the muscle fatigue theory. I think common sense and my own experience, as well as most experts, suggest that it is a combination of both.

Recall that I had almost no terrain or mountain training in the months prior to the race. So my muscles were not prepared for that kind of race. All experts seem to agree that you should train in similar conditions of the race that you will participate in. What all experts also seem to agree on is the importance of plyometrics, or jump training, for runners. In Bergen I used to do quite a lot of jump training, both during my personal training sessions and also during our Monday sessions with Fjellgeitene, jumping a lot on stairs with both legs, single leg, several steps at a time, etc. I am definitely going back to this kind of training! To start preparing for my return to Norway, I have also taken up forest runs here in Istanbul.

And no matter how well I train and how prepared I might feel, I know what I will have in my pocket during Amsterdam Marathon: Crampfix!

Stay strong, stay hydrated, stay cramp-free.