It was soooo close....

I will get you a race report later...

Just to summarize, we where at Northen Ornö at 16:00 and had to do a 11 km run under 1 h but after 10h in to the race that was not possible and we did it in 1,5 hour and that was 30 minutes to slow and was the last team to break... But hey... We will hopefully be at the starting line next year!

From TV4: http://www.tv4play.se/aktualitet/nyhetsmorgon?videoId=1.1800276

//Pontus

Ready to go!

Jonas to the Left and Pontus to the right

Yes! We are as ready as we can be, did some last minutes test and everything feels great!

Follow the race here: http://www.otillo.se/live/index.html

//Pontus

Getting closer

Did just checked some weather forecast for the race day and it looks good! Wind North East 2-5 m/s and 15 degrees in the air. I also did a quick check regarding the water temperature and now it's 15 degrees at Landsort which is south of Utö but at the open sea (http://www.smhi.se/vadret/hav-och-kust/havsobservationer/havstemp.htm) I hope we will have more than 13 degrees in the water :-)

We did same lst minutes changes regarding the equipment.

1. The bag has been replaces by a camelback
2. On the feet I (we?) will wear Gator Neopren socks
3. On the body some sportslick

//Pontus

I can't wait...

Things are getting really close now, all this time has passed since Pontus approached me with this great idea to compete in Ö till Ö.

I feel that I have done all I can in order of physical preparation and I am so excited to start the race. Obviously this race is more about metal stamina then physical, the average time you need to do both running or swimming isn't that fast. But after 8 hours things start to change... ;)

And since there is a bit of a tradition to have goals for the race here are mine;

1. finish race
2. don't shit in wetsuit

Well, that basically it... ;)

Right now I'm in the office and looking at the great running weather outside (rain and 15 degrees C). I'm gonna try my last-minute-need-to-have shoes in my "back yard" forest and see how it goes.

See you there!

//jonas

Time schedule

We are aiming to be able to do this under 12h, we don't know if it's possible or not but I have made a time schedule for it... Feel free to copy!

OBS I am not sure if the distance and island are the correct once because the milestones are from previous year!! If you want it in Excel mail me and i will send you a copy.

Time for an update

Jonas and I did a 2 hours “Ö till Ö” in Waxholm and it felt good! We tried to keep the race speed and we where also drinking and eating what they will serve during the race. What we learned was that we have to be better to drink and eat during the race. We didn’t feel any lack of energy but this was only a 2 hours trip… We tried to do it as race like as we could and practice the switches. We find out that if the run is less than 2 -2,5 km we can keep a 5:30 pace without any problems with the wet suite on. If it’s more that 15 minutes running it’s much better to pull down the wet suite.

A friend and I were running the Stockholm Half Marathon track and the goal was to do it under 1:45 (4:55 min/km). What I can say after that training session is that I am in good shape, I have a lot more to give! :-)

On Saturday I will participate in a sprint (750 meter swimming, 20 km bike and 5 km running) Triathlon race and that will be my last “training” session where I will give 100%. Next week Jonas and I will head out on the sea for some cold water swimming. After that the focus will be to not to get sick or injured and also to charge the muscles with energy, it’s only 17 days left!

//Pontus

I´m starting to feel the nerves…

Yes, that´s right I’m starting to feel the nerves for the race! I am so focused on it that failure is NOT an option! It’s less than a month until we are at the starting line and my head is full of questions:

* Have we trained enough?
* Have we done right type of training?
* Have we chosen the right equipment?
* Have we got the mental strength?
* And so on…

Under 12 hours?
I just had a chat with Jonas and he told me that he got a crick (ryggskott)! Well, I know he got what its take to do a competition like this so I’m not worried about that. We talked about the running and swimming pace and the conclusion is if we keep a 6 min/km tempo on the running and 30 min/km on swimming we will have 1 hour for swap between running and swimming and energy refilling. If we are able to keep this we will do the race in about 12 hours.

Long or short sleeves?
We were also talking about the length on the wetsuit because it’s damn hot to run in it with long arms and legs. When I’m been training with the wetsuit on I have seen that it really affect my running negative, i.e. if I runt in tights and a linen I can keep 5 min/km without any problems but when I put the wetsuit on it drops to 5:40-6 min/km. At the same time, if the water temperature is below 12 degrees I will freeze if I go for the short arms and legs sleeves.

The nerves…
The more I am thinking about the race the more I can feel the nerves :-). I am just an ordinary man with a family and I am comparing my own training with the elite. The last 224 days (2010) I have approximately 7300 minutes of training divided on 112 days that’s 50%. Will this be enough? How much time do you put on training for the Ö till Ö?

//Pontus

3 days R&R

My body is a bit whacked, so I'm officially off training until Wednesday...

Have been doing OK in the tracks, the mental part is ok as well. But boy it's hot in the wet suite...

I'm hoping for 15 degrees and rain... ;)

(it's getting close now...)

At the starting line!

Yepp, I’m here at the starting line! I have just done 1 hour open water swimming in 13 degrees water and it felt OK.


Me, my girls, my brother and his wife at Sandhamn.

3 hours at Domarudden

Today I made my first training session in full race-gear I did a 3 hours running-swimming-running-swimming 13,3 km running and 3450 m swimming… Damn that was warm running in the wetsuit

I started with a 2400 m run then 2300 m swim, 2500 km run, 500 m swim, 5900 m run, 650 m swim and finally 2500 run. During the runs I pulled down the wetsuit and it was no problem to get it on after the run. I drank my own sport-drink and water but after about 2 hours I started to feel tired and lack of energy. I had one Snickers and one Raider for some quick energy refill, one of my fears for this race is that the stomach will crash.

How have you previous Ö till Ö competeders done during the race to be able to keep a good energy level?

//Pontus

Swimming with my greatest fan

Hi all,

Had a nice 1,4 km swim in warm weather (the little lady is my greatest fan!). I always try to train as I race but this time it was to hot. I skipped the cap, other then that it's race-gear that I'm wearing.

Seeing this picture (thanks to my wife) I'm looking a bit high in the water, need to get my chin lower (tighter to the chest)...

Still time to get that swimming form adjusted... ;)

Vacation in the Swedish archipelago

I am out with our boat and take a look at my training environment :) . Right now I am sitting in the caboose and updating the blog. I am trying to do some swimming and yesterday I did a one hour open water with hand paddles and that really increase the speed but you need to have strong upper body!




For a couple a days ago I finally reach the Island to Island goal! ;-)



Have a nice one!

amazing stuff - the feet that is

Hi all,

I just completed a 5k trail run barefoot! ;)



I can't help to smile internally when I think about it, if anybody would have told me I could/should go for a 5k trail run barefoot 1 year ago I would have called them nuts! I'm so happy my feet hurt a bit when I started training for Ö till Ö, otherwise I wouldn't have questioned my old ways.

Took a swim yesterday in the ocean, realized I need to do a lot more swimming... :(

Stay cool in the heat!

//jonas

stay cool...

I did a one and a half hour of trail running yesterday, it was very very warm... I drank 1,4 litres of water during the run and still I felt very tired and banged up afterwards.

Might have been my incredibly well poised lunch (ice cream, strawberries, cake and coffee at my parents in law)... ;)

Today I'm doing a nice calm 5k recovery run late in the evening when it's nice an cool.

//jonas

Training and midsummer

Ahhh… the midsummer is here and a nice trip with our boat out on the Swedish archipelago together with the family is planed! We will be south of Möja at Njudholmen which means in the same water as the race, I’ll bring my wetsuit for some swimming. :-)

I’ll will update the blog with some picture afterward, have a really nice midsummer everybody!

//Pontus

Getting into the groove...

Things are flowing, doing nice long runs in the forests around my house. Haven't been swimming as much as needed though, got very bored in the pool the last time.

Not to worry, I'm looking to get my S3 this week (or at the very latest next week), then I will swim outdoors instead. No risk for crowds in the open water! ;)

Oh, I almost forgot, I'm on vacation/training camp all of July and August... ;)

And I am going for Vibram KSO Trek for the race (http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/products/products_kso_trek_m.cfm).

So far I have trained in "normal" KSO's but the sole is on the thin side and I need to be a bit more robust for the race. If you are able to control your environment normal KSO's are just fine, but since I will be very tired and probably not as sharp as I need to be I'm going for more protection. I would hate to have to end the race on some stupid injury...

//jonas 'the tortoise'

Equipment

We have started the process of find the best equipment and as we have said before, less is best! What I like from your Senior Island to Island competitioners is comments on our suggestion:

1. Wetsuit – Orca S3, Equip or Sonar and full length!


2. Shoes - Pontus will probably use adidas adizero xt mens. Jonas is still investigating, will it be some “Toe Shoe” look alike!?
   
   
3. Bag and fluid – GoLite Hydroswift (http://www.addnature.com/product.aspx?dept_id=0&pf_id=GOLITEHYDROSWIFT_S09)
   
   
4. Swimming cap – Something thicker?


5. Ears – Some type of earplug to avoid water in the ear which can cause nauseas.


6. Energy – Some type of bars or gel, which is best?

Have we missed something?

//Pontus

Divide it into four

When I am doing my distance runs or swim I try to divide the session into quarters. In example yesterday I did 20 x 200 meters in a 25 meters swimming pool, that’s a total of 4000 meters or 160 turns! I divided into 5 x 200 meter with 10-15 sec rest between the sets and then 1 minutes rest before next 5 x 200 meter. In this case it was only 4 times 1000 meter and that much easier to perform :-). For Island to Island which in our case will be ongoing for 12-13 hour I think we need to aim at the next station because if we see the entire course ahead we will never make it. What do you think?

//Pontus

Intensive weeks!

Puuhh… it has been some pretty intensive weeks but is there a light at the end of the tunnel over there? The last weeks has included, work, fever, training and some shopping. :-)



My Knees
After my Italian trip I caught some type of a virus which resulted in one week without training. I really hate when that happened, it make me so stressed! I also investigated my knees with ultrasound and the result came back with “No injures on the knee tendon, but with some small irregularity on the bone.” It means that I can trainee but to mitigate the risk to get it worse in the future a couple of new custom made sole for the foot. This is just the opposite too the “Toe Shoe philosophy” but it’s too close to the race for me to change philosophy now! :-)




Premiere outdoor swimming!
Yep, I had my premiere of outdoor swimming and used my Orca S2. It was nice to overcome the mental barrier of swimming in cold water. It was somewhere between 13-15 degrees and it wasn’t that cold! When I first entered the water I thought I was going to freeze to death but after a while it felt pretty good. I was just swimming for 25 minutes but that was enough to just prove to myself it is doable.



Shopping
One of many question is what to wear and what to bring. Jonas and I had some chats regarding tactics and my believe is the less the better. Another question is what to wear on your feet. I bought “Adidas Adizero XT mens” and they feel great. I have tried them a couple of times and yesterday I did a 130 minutes trail running almost no tracks and a lot of up and down hill. It’s so nice with some charleyhorse in my calfs today.


Here is a map on my last run:
http://www.funbeat.se/tracks/index.aspx?RouteID=415544


//Pontus

8K barefoot run

Just finished an 8K barefoot run! I try to run twice a week completely barefoot to strengthen my feet and muscles.

This week will be a 50K week, finishing of on Sunday with a 20k (10k on asphalt and 10k on a forest track).

We had a quick tactics talk today, the old unix motto "less is more" seems to prevail... ;)

//jonas

The bugs are bugging me...

Training is going great! Some small obstacles on the way though. The other night when I was out on a short'n'fast 5K run I was "attacked" by bugs. Seriously I have never seen that much stuff in the air (where I live), and I had to run with my mouth closed for most of the way...

Still, I ate quite a few... (nasty)

Picking up my new shoes today, it's a pair of vibram five-fingers KSO, KSO stands for Keep Stuff Out and is basically the basic shoe with cover over the top of the foot.

My toe-shoe running adventure is continuing and I must say it is working great! Who knew that all you needed was protection from the ruff surfaces... But if you think about it it's quite obvious, 1.8 million years of evolution did a good job.

//Jonas (the tortoise)

Italia!

Last week I was in Italy on a conference and that was nice. I did some running but I was 30 degrees which made it pretty tuff! I start to feel some pain in my left knee and have an appointment for an ultrasound this week and I really hope for the best. I will take “the opportunity” to do a lot of swimming instead. It still pretty cold in the water outside but maybe in a couple of week the out-door premier will take place!

//Pontus

Intensive periods and rest periods

Intensive

The last weeks have been pretty intensive for me and I did a 30 km run to finalize it. Last week was a soft week with just two training sessions, one 12 km running and one 53 km on the bike. This week will also be a calm one and that is because I start to feel some pain in my left knee.

The importance of rest!

I quote:
“
When we are training for an endurance event (marathon, half marathon, ultra marathon) we often think the main thing we need to do for training is RUN. After all, it makes sense. We're going to be running for a very long time so we should probably focus mainly on running for our training. We often believe that more is more; the more we run, the more prepared we will be for our races.
While we definitely need to run to prepare for our races, rest is as essential a component in our training as running is. In fact, our rest days may be the most important training days in our week. Experienced runners can get away with less rest because they don't damage their muscles as much when they are running. In fact, Paula Radcliffe (world record holder, Women's Marathon), takes one full rest day every ten days. When you consider that she has a personal massage therapist, Physical Therapist, and has to focus solely on her running, it shows you how important rest is even to elite athletes.
“

It’s ok!
I just love to train but it’s hard for me to say to myself, it’s Ok to rest. I think many of you have the same problem but just remember, if you get hurt you will end up with a long period of physical therapy instead.

Train hard but train smart!

//Pontus

crazy run in toe-shoes

Wow, I just did my first run in toe-shoes (5,5k on 30 minutes)...

Toe-shoes you wonder, well I have been reading up on shoes and the facts behind different shoes. Or rather the lack of facts to support anything other then barefoot is probably the best way to run (as evolution has provided us with the tools).

And since toe-shoes are basically soles and nothing more they also have a side-effect of being very light, and they don't carry any water at all. In short the perfect shoe for the race.

Well, I will keep you posted on my toe-shoe adventure! (I'm not ready to toss my old shoes away just yet).

Here is a good article if you are interested.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1170253/The-painful-truth-trainers-Are-expensive-running-shoes-waste-money.html

//jonas

Tactics...

Jonas and I had a short discussion regarding the tactics for this competition. The questions we need to straight out is:

• Flippers?
• Paddles for your hands?
• How long should the wetsuit be?
• Running pace – 7 min/km?
• How much should we drink and eat?
• ….
  

Everything has its Pros and Cons of course the question is what’s the best. You need to save your legs for the running but to swim open-water there is a big advantage to use flippers. To be able to keep the pace the biggest challenge will be to start slow and keep that pace and not run off and hit the wall after 6 hours. Should we during the training keep a slow tempo, today I run between 4:30 and 5 minutes per km is that too fast?

What do you think?

//Pontus

the tortoise is back on track

Yeah! Back after beeing struck by lightning (or a cold actually...). Didn't do any training for almost a week so I restarted with a 5k run on friday, 10k on saterday and finished the weekend with a 4,5 easy run.

This week am back on my "normal" schedule;

mon: rest
tue: 10k run
wed: 1hour swin
thu: 7,5k run
fri: rest
sat: 1hour swim
sun: 15-25k run (doing 20k on sunday)

Jonas (aka the tortoise)

No I am not sponsored by Scott! :-)

Bought some new cycle cloth but I am not sponsored by Scott, it’s more I am sponsoring them ;). Went for two shorter bike runs but hey… The best training is the training that is performed. If you plan for 100 km on the bike but you only got time for 30 it is still better to do the 30 then nothing! Went on a 24 km on Friday and a 30 km on Saturday, have not be able to keep up the pace to over 30 km/h yet but I hope to be there soon.

You might wonder why I put time on the bike when there is no bike on Island to Island. Well, there are some Triathlon races I like to do and also it’s pretty nice to ride the bike. Training should be fun and if you like to walk, run, swim, play squash or whatever do it like Nike say, Just Do it!

Have a nice one…. Time for some running now!

//Pontus

Late run

Ahhhh.... this was a nice after rain almost summer night run... :-) I went for a 12km run and it was so nice today!

People use to ask me how I find the time for training. Well, i got a simple answer on that... What do you use to do at 21:00, watch TV?

I added one picture, PreRunning.

Training update…

Thursday March 23:th: Running 9 km - 40 minutes
Sunday March 25:th: Cyckling 63 km - 2 h 25 minutes
Monday March 26:th: Running 5,3 km - 24 minutes

Planned for today: Swimming "the Pyramid" warming-up and then 100-200-300-400-500-400-300-200-100 meter.

As you can see it's no that much time that goes to training, I think I need to crank it up :-)

//Pontus aka "The Rabbit"

The tortoise is doing a 7,5 K run tonight, it's dark, cold and wet.

No one in the tracks anyways... ;)

Team Diversify starts to blog!

Finally, now is it possible for you follow our road to the 2010 setup of island to island.

What is island to island (its real name is actually Ö till Ö) and why Team Diversify?

Well…. Let me quote from http://otillo.se/

“Ö TILL Ö is a unique race in a unique environment. Teams of two race together from island to island (Ö TILL Ö). The teams swim between the 19 islands and run on them. The total distance is 64 kilometers of which 10 km are swimming and 54 km are running.”

Why Team Diversify… our Idea is to show that even a hard working person with a family can do something different and diversify it self. We believe that 60 minutes of training gives you 120 minutes of more energy. The name Diversify is inspired from the company that Pontus (more about our self later) is working at and to hopefully inspire you to Diversify your self!