Paul Rosenquist

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Friday after work David picked us up at home. We threw our skis and two mammoth bags into the little Alfa and headed of. 6 hours of driving through fog, darkness, ice, snow and forest brought us to Idre. This place is just like any other small town in Sweden. 2 petrol pumps, a pizza place, and not much more. However the surroundings are awesome. Wide open vieuws with the fjells looming around.
Louise went on an adventure and toured in the back country around some bigg fjell. the second day she also cimbed one. Being all alone she really enjoyed the feeling of beeing outdoors and having a bit of an adventure. Dave and I kept to the prepared skiing tracks and basically skied untill we dropped. I managed to squeeze in the odd 130km’s I guess. Weather was perfect.
Shot some pictures. Klick here to see them

Fed up with this bloody dark, wet, windy and warm winter.
This week I felt something has to change. Sitting on ergs after work is just to depressing. So, more running and paddling.
Been running to work this week. A nice route along the lake and over Hagabacken. I nice little hill. Yesterday I thought I should test paddling home as well. I perhaps picked a bit of an dumb day to do this. I rant to work in the morning (10km). Than, rushed around town with a trailer to pick up our new sofa. Back to work, helped my new collegue out at the warehouse with filling a truck with 24 kayaks and the racking system that they lay on. Than back at the office struggling to install my new Macbook.

Between all this I ate something, but not a lot. At 19:00 I chucked a Kevlar XP into the water, put my head light on and pushed of from work. Its a nice paddle. The XP is a fast Sea Kayak and I’am actually pretty fast in that stable craft. In pitch blackness I paddled into the city along Karlbergs kanal. Mirror flat water. Than to the old town that is slightly more eery. The lock between the salt and sweet water was open…this means water is flushing through it in grade 2 or 3 white water style. It beeing 2° o so in the water and beeing alone I made the mature decision to lift the boat around the lock instead of flush through it like a turd in a toilet bowl. People (tourists) looked slightly confused seeing me tiptoe along with a kayak on my shoulder. 5minutes later I was on my way again. Along the nationialn museum and into the so well know training waters of Djugården. After a total of 60 minutes of paddling I passed the rowing club. 11kms to go. 2 km’s later I was really tired. Shoulders were just dying. I always have the ambition to keep the XP on its sort of maximum cruizing speed. Not be used to paddling, and probably not having eaten well, totally finished me off after 75 minutes of paddling. DAMN; a very long 10km’s lay ahead of me. In the harbour I met a small tanker ship. Cosy. When FINALLY I glided into the narrow channel connecting the lake we live at with the sea I felt nearly ready to faint. So freeking hungry and cold.
I found a great little grassy beack and quickly jumped out. Stepping into the water with my five finger shoes
I could not really care about the freezing water. Like a ninja I strapped the wheels under my boat and jogged home. Our neighbours just stood outside and was wondering what the hell I was up to jogging home with a kayak. Dont ask I said and fell into our kitchen were Louise had a steaming home made union soup ready.
This is going to be great, paddling to work every now and then! Just make sure I have more energy in me and perhaps do it in daylight next time. Damn country.
This weekend we are heading of to Idre for 3 days of XC skiing….YEAH! David, Louise and me. Look forward to some snow, sun and fun.

Can’t really help to be really taken by what is happening at the other side of the world. While I am just training mostly easy long distance stuff, Lassi probably is skiing through the forest, Olaf Tufte is skiing in the Alps, and probably everybody else is also doing like that, the main man, Mahe Drysdale (3x World champ) is suddenly up to his neck in a cat fight for his so much desired spot in the singles in Bejing. Don’t really know why I find this so interesting. Must be a combination of things. Firts, Mahe, is a extremely friendly dude, really easy and good fun to have to be around with. I admire his qualities as a rower. Read the rest of this entry »

Last eavening we gathered a happy bunch to go running on Haga backen. A 70 meter high slope at the other side of the lake where we live. Louise, Ruairi, Roland, Britta, Nick and I wobbled of from our front door at 18:45. 20 minute jog later we were at the foot of the hill.

Over excited I pointed out the three paths availble. One long and steep, one slightly shorter and steeper, and one ridicilously steep…but short. Somehow I thought we should try 5 ascents on each and take the shortest way down to get a nice ‘work-rest’ ratio.

So of we went. In the dark, and unfortunately it stopped freezing the night before and the lighte drizzling rain turned hard packed mountainside into mudslide. The long trail up is awesome. Than thundering down the steepes slope I quickly found out that more caution hade to be taken here. On my ass I slid 20 odd meters through the mud. 70 minutes later…we decided that we only had 10 descents in us and that the 5 left on the super steep one would have to wait. It was also only Ruari and me left as the others wisely jogged back to the apartment after 5 runs. A good 2 hours later we came home. Shaking legs, mud clad faces…cant be better.

We quickly threw a huge Bolognese together and had a cosy eavening.

Though training hard, it can still be a lot of fun!

Keep it going all, and good work on that slope!