Personal Best at a 5 km race

Thursday was race day. Blodomloppet. I entered the 5 km race with a goal to run it in less than 25. Since I ran my first race 6 years ago, I haven't trained for a 5 km. I have always had my focus on increasing miles and never on getting faster. Until this year. I took a break from running when we moved to Sweden, mainly because of lack of time. So, when I started running again in March, I had this idea, that maybe I should train to run faster instead of farther. My previous best 5 km time was 26:46:56. I set my goal at 25 minutes. Running a 4.3 km run during lunch breaks my time improved from over 24 minutes to 22:20 to 21:59:58. But then it was very hard to get under 22 minutes again. I missed it by 7 seconds, 15 seconds, 45 seconds... Then finally, I ran the route in opposite direction (less head wind) and finished in 21:26. 8 days before race day I ran 5 km in 24:59:58, so I knew I could do it. However, the race route was supposedly hilly. During the actual race, I stayed focused and on pace. First mile was mostly uphill, but not too much of a climb. The second mile began uphill, then changed into a descent. After 2 miles I was on pace to finish just under 25 minutes and I was feeling good. I just kept going, putting one foot infront of the other. It wasn't until after 4km that I checked the total time and it was 21 minutes. I had fallen behind. I had almost 1 km left and had to do it in less than 4 minutes. I still had lots of strength, so I sped up, determined to make my goal. My watch stopped at 24:31. Official result was 24:33, finishing 108th out of 3108 women. I beat 3000 women, and finished strong in under 25 minutes!!!

I felt good, but finishing a half marathon sure feels like more of an accomplishment. Next race is Tjejmilen (10 km women's race) in Stockholm in September and then I plan to run Göteborgsvarvet (half-marathon in Gothenburg) next May together with my Swedish interns and some of our Arkansas colleagues.

Au-pair reunion - we made it happen!

William and I took the train from Linköping to Copenhagen where we met up with Irina and Maja who flew in from Münich. There we rented a car and drove down together to Nykøbing, Falster. Grit and Milo took a 6 hour bus ride from Berlin and Mette drove down with Sebastian and Nicoline from Copenhagen. So there we were, almost 10 years after our last get-together. My totally awesome friends! And now with their really cool kids!

 

We spent 4 nights together in a beautiful house on the Danish country side. We hung out, played, went to the beach, cooked and spent the evenings, after the kids were asleep, catching up over wine. These girls are great! Hanging out with them makes me so happy! And now they are all wonderful moms!

Now that I am back in Europe I hope to make this in to an annual get together. I also plan to visit each one of them. I love traveling in Europe, and William is a great travel partner!

Living in Sweden Observation #18

When my male coworkers go on paternity leave it is "See you in 6 months!" (or sometimes more).

My new year's resolution - part 2

Coffee drinking habits was the first thing I wanted to change. The other, was my clothes and accessories shopping habits. It's not that I buy a lot of clothes. It's not that I spend too much money on clothes either. However, after having to go through my closet when moving, and ending up donating half of my wardrobe and still feeling like I have a lot of clothes, I decided I should not buy more.

The beauty of this resolution is threefold:

1. Less stuff - Less clutter. We have less closet space here in our rental house than we did in Arkansas. Plus, knowing our housing situation is not permanent, it will be less to move.
2. Money saving - Considering the move was expensive, the saving money aspect of the resolution is a bonus.
3. The challenge - Challenges trigger me, so I am in!

So, how am I doing on this challenge? Now it is May (so I am a third of the way through) and I have not bought any clothes for myself, other than socks, that I was in desperate need of. I will need to get some rain pants, but other than that I should have everything I need. Summer will be the most difficult season to stick to the challenge, cause it is so much fun to shop for summer clothes. When I go downtown, I need to remind myself to not look at clothes. There is nothing I need. I actually just unpacked my summer clothes and jewelry, so I should be good for a while.

I was debating whether to say I couldn't buy any clothes for the entire year, or if I should set a limit, like 5 pieces of clothing or something like that. I do think allowing myself 5 pieces of clothing is the way to go. Then I need to be very conscious and selective about what I buy. A necklush is currently high on my list.

My New Year's resolutions - Part 1

I don't normally make new year's resolutions, but for this year, I was thinking about two things I wanted to change. My coffee drinking habits was one of them.

My relationship with Coffee is fairly new. It wasn't until William was almost one, that I became a daily drinker. Until then, I would have a cup (usually something fu-fu with whipped cream) when going out to a cafe or visiting friends. My actual addiction started when my team at work started making french press coffee in the mornings. For the first month or so, I could still go without coffee on non-workdays. But after a while we started having coffee in the afternoons too, and I was hooked.

Now, I know 2 cups of coffee a day is not the end of the world. What I didn't like about it, was that I was addicted. If I skipped my coffee, I would get a head ache, and usually by the time the head ache had set in, drinking coffee didn't kill it. Most of the time, it is not difficult to get my coffee fix, but when traveling or being too busy with house projects (or whatever else we were doing during the 3 month haze leading up to our move), it's not always convenient to make/get coffee.

The thing about me and coffee is that I don't drink it for the caffeine. I actually don't think the caffeine has any affect on me. I drink it because it tastes oh-so-good! Another thing about me and coffee is that I have to have something sweet with it. A piece of chocolate. A slice of pie. A cookie. Something sweet. I don't like coffee with breakfast really, since I don't eat sweet breakfast. Coffee and oatmeal doesn't really work. However, a bagel with cream cheese and a good cup of dark roast is wonderful!

Moving to Sweden, where the majority drink a lot of coffee, I found myself drinking coffee on both of our daily fika breaks at work. Having fika is a way of socializing, and it always involves a cup of coffee or tea and usually some pastries to go with it.  However, coffee is more often "enjoyed" in Sweden, than "downed" like it often is in the US. 

So, my new year's resolution regarding my coffee habits was to skip my morning coffee. If not every day,  then often enough to where I didn't depend on it. It didn't take long to get over the withdrawals, and now I only have my afternoon coffee on most days. I can have a morning coffee when I want to, but not have to have it. I will have to call this a success.


    

Living in Sweden observation #17

There is a line outside systembolaget (Swedish government run liquor store) before they open at 10 on a Saturday.

Replacing what was left behind

As I already mentioned, we didn't bring a whole lot of stuff with us when we moved. Other than clothes, books, personal items and some home decor, we really didn't bring much else. We left all our small kitchen appliances behind. There were especially 3 kitchen appliances that I LOVED and would have wanted to bring:

1. Green Apple Kitchen Aid Artisan mixer, that I bought myself only one year before the move
2. AllClad Waffle Maker that Chris had gotten me for my birthday a few years ago
3. GE blender with a glass jar, that provided us an endless supply of smoothies

Almost 6 months after the move, we still had not bought a single kitchen appliance. Our rental house came with a microwave, we've used our manual whisk when whipping cream, or mixing cake batter and our hands to knead pizza dough and we've even done without a toaster. Finally today, after some research, we went out and bought an Åviken 905 double waffle maker and a Wilfa BL1200 blender and so we had waffles and smoothies for lunch.  Yummie!

I wish I could get a new Kitchen Aid mixer, but it will have to wait. They are so much more expensive here. If it wasn't for the fact that you either needed a converter the size of a shoe box weighing a ton or replacing the motor of it to make it work in Europe, I would have brought it.

Next purchase on my list, is something I did not have in the US. A bike. We bought Chris a bike 2 weeks after getting here, that I've been riding all winter, but now I need one too, so we can go on bike rides together.