Highway One South

After todays activities in the exhibition area and a meeting with MySpace I joined David for a ride along Highway 1 going south. It´s probably one of the worlds more famous and spectacular roads, following the coast all the way from the north of California, through San Fransisco and all the way down to LA. We drowe for one and a half hour and reached Santa Cruz before we turned back. The surroundings were just awesome.

Career change?

Saw this ad in a newspaper in San Fransisco today...thought it was a joke at first, but obviously not...

Interesting food day

It has been a long and fruitful day in many ways. Intersting meetings and some new contacts made in the exhibition area. But what I will remember from today is not the exhibition CTIA, but rather the interesting food experiences I made during he day.

After a long morning run, I was pretty hungry, so we went to a typical american restaurant where I ordered a Lumberjack meal (only that should have scared me off, but I was so hungry ;). They played american classics like 'Rock around the clock' and other old goodies. I actually managed to finish the Lumberjack meal, which was basically one big steak of ham with fried potatoes one one of the plates, and two fried eggs with two big, thick panncakes and honey on the the other one. I was so full for several hours so I only had a smoothie for lunch.

Tonight I went to a place called Sushi Boat. The name was fitting, because you sat around a bar disc with the chefs working in the middle, putting small plates of different kinds of sushi on small boats that floated round and round. So once you saw something that looked good you just grabbed it quickly from one of the boats. I had 6 differerent small plates. That was great fun, there was just one thing missing ;( SARA!!!

400 Horse Powers through Napa Valley

My collegue David has rented a convertable Corvette during his stay in San Fransisco. When we were done in the exhibition area today he asked if I wanted to go for a ride...I thought sure why not...

...so we went over the golden gate bridge, and across to the countryside of California north of San Fran.

It was very cool to feel the warm wind and all those smells that you normally don´t feel when you are in a normal car. And acceleration was massive (400 HP), not to talk about the deep noice the engine was making when he pushed the pedal to the floor. Luckily for him, gas is very cheap here...

...We went all the way up to Napa Valley, famous for it´s big wine yards, where we had dinner at an Italian restaurant with an annoying waitress that asked us maybe 5 or 6 times during the meal if the food tasted good. Well it did, so guess that´s fine...she was just being over-polite I guess. So long...

Twin Peaks morning run

Went for a morning run earlier today "climbing" the Twin Peaks in San Fransisco, the sun had just risen and the view was magnificent. It´s is much warmer here than I had thought, today I think it is over 25 degrees and sunshine, too bad I spend most of the days inside. Well, some nice views below. Back soon!

Long run in SF

With a map, my phone, and some energy gel I went for a long run through San Fransisco. The best part of the run was to cross the Golden Gate bridge, even though I don´t want to think of the amount of exhaust fumes I inhaled in the process. I also re-discovered (more painfully this time since last time I was here I experienced the city in cable cars and a rental car) the hills of SF. Finished my sunday off with a big steak and now it´s time to get some sleep...back soon.

First day in San Fransisco

Arrived to San Fransisco after 23 hours of travelling yesterday night. After a quick shower I found something to eat, and then I got stuck in the Virgin Megastore for an hour until they closed. Even though I had been up (except for a few hours of sleep on the plane) for 27 hours I wasn´t that tired.

This morning I went for breakfast at Union square, where they obviously had had the start of a Nike Marathon earlier this morning. Unfortunately the finish was not at the same place so I never got to see any runners ;( There was a huge Niketown next to the square, 4 levels of Nike stuff, where I probably spent 1 hour, even though I didn´t buy anything.

After my Nike stroll I walked for a while over to Chinatown, where I spent a few hours walking around. Compared to Chinatown in Bangkok it felt very spacious and clean, but still the same feeling and the same strange smells :)

Later today I´m gonna go for a long run through a big park leading up to the Golden Gate bridge. More nice photos to come from that later.

My first ultra

So, finally the day had come. The day when I was going to break the 42, 195 m barrier by forcing myself to go 7805 m longer to finish Sörmlands Ultra Marathon (SUM), which also happened to be this year´s swedish championships in trail running.

My weekend in Stockholm started with a short flight from Ronneby, everything went really smooth for once, no cancelled flights, no delays and no lost bags, thanks for that SAS :) 10 pm I arrived at Stockholm central, and got picked up by two of my favourite runners and friends, Michael and Daniel, who I spent many hours with during my time in Lund forcing myself to the limit during our hard intervalls. They were basically the ones getting me into running from the start, 3 years ago. We got into bed around 1 am, and I had some problems falling asleep at first, which is not very normal for me....but what else was normal about this weekend...

With a big bowl of porridge and a mars chocholate bar filling up my stomach, I started the race at 10 am together with 63 men and 13 women in different ages. I forced myself to start off really slow and found a group of runners keeping the same pace...reaching the 10K marker after 44:30 scared me, maybe I had started too fast...my goal was to get to the finish line within 4 hours, but not at any expense, the most important thing was to finish. I slowed down a little bit, but everything felt good. Soon after that the trails got really technical and hard to run...a lot of roots and rocks and steep climbs now and then. The runners I had followed so far, were simply quicker than me on this trail, and I had to let some of them go. I told myself that patience and moderate pace was more important than trying to keep up with them, hurting myself in the process.

After 15km I tripped on a root for the first time, and hit the ground pretty hard, my left big toe started to ache after the fall, but I soon forgot about that. The surroundings were very nice, and looking at the nature was a great way to keep my mind on something else than my legs, which now began to feel heavy. I found a guy who kept a pretty good pace, and I followed him up until 30 km, passing half way (25km) after 1.53. Now my legs were really starting to protest...Michael and Daniel met me after 32km, which was great, because I needed some cheering and company. They stayed with me until 37km, and I had 4 runners in sight in front of me. Just when I was about to pass them, the trail got more technical again, which made me slow down again, loosing the good pace I had kept for the last half hour.

I lost my concentration two times during the following 20 min, resulting in pretty nasty falls, one of them leaving a big pain in my biceps...it still hurts. The tricky trail up until 45km was the hardest part of the whole race...I had to take one step at a time, keeping my eyes on the trail at all times...last water station was at 47 km, and I quickly swallowed a cup of Coke. I tried to enjoy the last 3 km as much as my extremely sore legs allowed me. Crossing the finish line in 9th place felt really great. And I had managed to get there in 3.51.43. Almost unable to walk to the shower, I was met by Micke and Daniel again. I was very glad to see them, after having been alone in the forest for 1.5 hours.

Micke and I spent the rest of the day eating Ethiopian food, which was excellent, and watching Rugby in O´Learys...I slept really good when we got home.

It was great breaking the mental barrier of marathon being the longest distance I could do. Now I know that once I decide to do something, I can do it, no matter how hard it seems from the start. 3 years ago I had never run longer than 10 km, now I have done 50 km. Who knows what I will be doing three years from now...