Lidingöloppet 2015

Thinking about the race I did last Saturday I don't think that I could have asked more. Well, I could have, but only if I were a dreamer which is not actually a thing that ties into long distance races very well.

Lidingöloppet 2015 - start

Since the first time I ran the whole course five years ago while I was training, I never stop loving it. I frankly think that it is the best course I ran. Challenging for me since I normally perform better on flat and hard terrain. Tough, but really nice! I guess it's not easy to find a 30km cross country running competition with 22.000 competitors around the globe...
And I finally got it, My goal was to run around 1h45m. I tried for two years to achieve it but I wasn't probably ready for it. This year, after four weeks where I was able to focus on training well, I finally hit the target. I must confess that on Friday right after a jogging I felt really tired and I was quite scared to have the same feelings of last year when I was never really able to push hard as I wanted in the hills from the very beginning of the race.

Lidingöloppet 2015 - Lidingövallen

I started quite careful, trying to follow the group of runners after the Africans. It was fun since many of my club mates were part of that group and it felt quite good. Before crossing the first kilometer I realized that the Africans were not keeping such a high pace as expected, so I tried to catch up a little bit, but nobody else followed me. So I thought that it wasn't probably the best idea and I waited alone for couple of kilometers until I was "swallowed" again by the pack. Some of the guys tried to increase a little bit the pace before crossing Lidingövallen, I followed them and found myself leading the group with my orienteering club mate Mårten Boström. I kept going with a stable pace until the last loop (10km to go). There I felt that I could still push in the hills, while my friend Mårten (probably not in the same amazing shape of last year) was struggling a bit. While I could run away from him, I thought it wouldn't have been wise to try to follow two Norwegian runners that overtook me; they were looking too strong in the hilly parts. I cross the finish line in 8th position, after 1h43m40s, really happy for it, also because on the last kilometer (pretty flat one - 3m06s) I was still feeling really fresh on my legs and able to speed up when I saw the finish,
Maybe I wish yesterday I were running a marathon instead, because I don't know if I'll be able to keep this shape for four more weeks; Winter is coming here! So, that is my challenge now and I honestly wouldn't trade what I did this year in Lidingöloppet with another race.