The meaning of life (is not Stoltzekleiven)

The Stoltzekleiven Opp race is approaching; it is on Saturday! During early spring, especially when I was trying various therapies and was advised to take it easy on running,  I walked up Stoltzekleiven frequently to keep up my conditioning and get enough cardio training. I reached my best recording ever in February when I managed to do it in 14 minutes and 25 seconds with the help of my friend Mats, who was with me and motivated and pushed me all the way. Although my injury worsened from then on, and I could not run at all after some time, my leg strength improved thanks to HSR exercises three times a week, in addition to strength training twice a week. Just before he summer holidays I was able to do 14:50 at Stoltzekleiven all by myself.

Unfortunately, the three weeks of summer holidays worsened my Stoltzekleiven form much more than I was expecting. After the summer holidays, walking up to Stolzekleiven was one of the first things I did, and for several weeks it was impossible to get below 16 minutes. I must admit that I got quite a lot stressed by this. After all, Stoltzekleiven was the only thing remaining on my A list, and during early spring I was pretty sure that I would manage to go below 14 at this year's race. Now however, even going below 15 seems to be tough...

After the summer holidays I did quite a bit of steep mountain fast walking, in Jotunheimen, at Gullfjellet, at Skåla, and at Storehesten, and I thought that would be good training for Stoltzekleiven. I also did some biking and swimming in connection with training for my first triathlon, and although this meant less training at Stoltzekleiven itself, I was hoping that it would give good varied improvement of my general form that would also be of help at Stoltzekleiven. This is exactly what happened last year. I was mainly training for Oslo half marathon through August and September, and not at all training at Stolzekleiven, except for participating at trial races. Still I improved my time by 48 seconds last year compared to the year before. So the half marathon training helped my Stoltzekleiven form a lot. Unfortunately the same side effect did not come this year from triathlon training and participating in uphill races.

While I was feeling quite depressed about the whole Stoltzekleiven thing, last week I received the very sad news that a very good and old friend of mine died. This news really took me off guard and shook me more than I could have imagined. Until now I have been blessed to be able to say that I have never regretted anything that I have done in life. But for the first time I regret something I have not done. I am so sorry that I did not have more contact with my friend during the past couple of years. We used to be very close, but our contact recently limited itself to email and message exchanges, and I regret so much not having called more often and not having asked more often how he was. His illness progressed suddenly very quickly at the end, so perhaps I would anyway not be able to catch him to say a final goodbye, but the bare thought that I was worried about running injuries and Stoltzekleiven while he was fighting for his life is quite unbearable. This is also why I am a few days late with last week's blog post. For a while none of the stuff I have been writing about seemed important or worth writing about anymore.

On the other hand, being reminded about how short and unpredictable life is made me appreciate even more how important it is to make the best of every single day of life. Being passionate about something, no matter what it is, makes us experience all the emotions that human beings are capable of. I decided to continue with my blog and to try harder at Stoltzekleiven for the memory of my friend, who loved running. At the same time, I was discussing my lacking improvement at Stoltzekleiven with my trainer Ketil, and he warned me that my negative and stressed attitude could be affecting my performance. I decided to let my shoulders down and not get stressed about the resulting time. Just try harder and do my best. With this background, on Thursday, I came closer to 15 minutes than in a long while, with 15:11.

Yesterday I participated in the last trial run of this year's Stoltzekleiven race, and my time worsened to 15:25. But I was just back from a wonderful weekend at Kjerag and Preikestolen (where the first and the last pictures are from), and I comforted myself that perhaps my legs were tired from the hikes of the weekend. This year, I have been so lucky to be able to do several of the most spectacular mountain hikes of Norway, like Trolltunga and Besseggen, and now Preikestolen. With the sudden loss of a dear friend reminding me how fragile life is, it feels good to have grabbed the opportunities of these adventures when they showed up. No matter how Stoltzekleiven 2015 goes, I will always have the wonderful memories of these trips. And there will hopefully be many more Stoltzekleiven races for me in the future.

“Life is short. Break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably. And never regret anything that made you smile.” (Mark Twain)

Top of the world

For those determined to fly, having no wings is just a detail...

In the middle of a period mostly characterized by injury and rehab, I am having the time of my life. I can hardly believe it myself. It turns out that it is possible to get back your full enthusiasm and runners' high without being able to run and compete as normal.  Miraculously, I am enjoying myself as much now as I was when I was running everyday and competing in every race, half a year ago. Of course the fact that my injury is getting better is helping a lot, but the improvement is extremely slow. It is so slow that I now think it will still take me several months to be able to start running properly. But it's not a problem! There are so many things I can do, and I can do them in increasing intensity and length. The good news is that the fall season is full of steep mountain races, which mainly involve fast walking and not much running, and I think I can participate in them as planned!


I wrote before that I think it is important to set alternative training goals to keep up your motivation and inspiration when you are injured. In fact, anything that gives a feeling of achievement and accomplishment has the same positive effect as setting running records. This weekend I went for something I was really uncertain whether I would be able to do or not: step on and walk to the edge of Trolltunga. This is a piece of rock hanging 700 hundred meters above the lake beneath it, and it is a very famous hiking destination in Norway. The trail to Trolltunga is 11 km long, with a 750 m elevation gain, and it takes about 3 hours to drive to the trail head from Bergen. Hence, if you want to do it in one day, you have to start out early, preferably do it during one of the longest days of summer. This past week Frank and I have been watching the weather report for Saturday, which was changing all the time, and as it started to look good on Friday we decided to go for it. Lucky or us, our Melkesyre friends as impulsive as ourselves, Laila, Ove, and Cathrine, joined on short notice, and together we hit the road to Odda where the trail head is located.

I had been checking the trail reports and knew that there was still quite a lot of snow on the path, so I was not expecting so many people there. It is, after all, quite a hike. All the pictures I had seen of Trolltunga showed only very few people on the rock, so I was thinking that this is a quite deserted spot. I could not have been more wrong! So many tourists!!! We were stopped at a parking lot 10 km before the trail head and informed that the upper parking lot was full, so we had to park at this spot and take a shuttle up to the trail head. This was all fine and we had a very pleasant chat with the shuttle driver who was very happy to be able to speak Norwegian for the first time that day. The trail starts very steep, pretty much like Stoltzekleiven for the first kilometer. Then it eases a bit, but it is still uphill for the next kilometer as well. From there on, it goes slight up and slight down, all in all quite pleasant walk for the next 9 km to Trolltunga. The views are unbelievably beautiful all the way, and we were extremely lucky with the weather, which turned out much better than predicted. The ground was covered with snow for almost all of the last 9 km, and fortunately for me, nobody in our group wanted to run. We went for a fast hike, and reached the rock in 2 hours and 45 minutes from the trailhead. We only ran past long lines of slow tourists, which there were hundreds of, every now and then, and I was extremely happy to be able to keep up with my group and not slow them down.

Although I had seen millions of pictures of Trolltunga and had high expectations, the view of it punched me in the stomach as soon as we reached it. Wow! I immediately wanted to close my eyes again; it was so disturbing to watch people balance at the edge of the rock. In real the rock is more spectacular than all pictures of it I had seen. I was prepared by the many cars in the parking lots and the lines of tourists on the path that there would be a lot of people, but I was still surprised to see how crowded it was. And then I understood how the pictures were taken with only very few people on the rock. It turns out that a very nice queue system has evolved: you have a friend standing at the plateau next to the rock to take your pictures, you enter the queue and wait for your turn, and then the rock is all yours until you are done and leave the scene for the next person in line. I have a strong anxiety for heights, and I was really not sure whether I would be able to go on the rock. I made Frank promise me beforehand that would force me if I refused. I was even considering the option of taking a small bottle of wine with me and drinking it just before :-). Standing in the queue turned out to be very good mental preparation; you get to see all the people get out there do all their crazy things (naked guys, turning wheels, jumping, dancing, etc), and you get more and more convinced that you can do it. When you are finally on the rock, it feels even safer; it is tilted slightly upward and it is quite broad, so you don’t see down (unless you go all the way to the edge), and you have a feeling of being on the same plateau as your photographer friend and the rest of the crowd. I would be very happy to just go out there, but I managed even to do several jumps, and the feeling of achievement was really wonderful. How anxious I had been I could see only afterwards, as I was really shaking all over and my heart rate was 138.

We spent quite a bit of time up there. Had our lunch, and went back on the rock one more time! As we headed back, it got sunnier and hotter. We were completely sunburnt by the time we were back at the trailhead after about two and a half hours. We had left Bergen at 8 am in the morning, and at 8 pm in the evening we were down by Hardangerfjord, in Odda, to have dinner. It was such a lovely evening, nice and warm, and we sat outside by the fjord during our meal. We left Odda at around 9 pm and reached home at around midnight; exhausted and happy. I am surprised that tourists seem to appreciate this place more than the locals; it is just a day’s trip; and the part of the trail after the first steep part seems really perfect for a run. I simply don’t understand why we did not do it before.

 

You would think this kind of excitement was enough for a week, but actually the past week had more to offer. In the middle of the week, before this hike, was the fantastically informal and fun race of Fjellgeitene from the Fløyen mountain to the Ulriken mountain in Bergen. My goodness I love these guys; they are so including in all their activities. The race was organized as “take your own time and report it afterwards”;  can it be simpler and more ingenious? I decided a while ago to participate, but not run, just walk. I am so fortunate that many of my friends in Varegg and Melkesyre appreciate the easier pace these days, and in the end we were quite a big group to start at Fløyen three hours before the planned finish time at Ulriken. I walked the first half, and ran the second half as it was pretty windy at the top and one needed to keep some speed to keep warm. Due to the easy start and the long warm up, I felt really good in the second half and I ended up running pretty decently. I even caught a few of my friends who had started running earlier. Lesson learned (again!): starting out easy always pays off in the end! On top of everything, when descending from Ulriken with Fjellgeitene, I learned a completely new path! After having this mountain in my backyard for almost 20 years, and having climbed it in various paths a million times, it still manages to surprise me. What can I say?

Count your blessings... and never grow up!