The meaning of life (is not Stoltzekleiven)

The Stoltzekleiven Opp race is approaching; it is on Saturday! During early spring, especially when I was trying various therapies and was advised to take it easy on running,  I walked up Stoltzekleiven frequently to keep up my conditioning and get enough cardio training. I reached my best recording ever in February when I managed to do it in 14 minutes and 25 seconds with the help of my friend Mats, who was with me and motivated and pushed me all the way. Although my injury worsened from then on, and I could not run at all after some time, my leg strength improved thanks to HSR exercises three times a week, in addition to strength training twice a week. Just before he summer holidays I was able to do 14:50 at Stoltzekleiven all by myself.

Unfortunately, the three weeks of summer holidays worsened my Stoltzekleiven form much more than I was expecting. After the summer holidays, walking up to Stolzekleiven was one of the first things I did, and for several weeks it was impossible to get below 16 minutes. I must admit that I got quite a lot stressed by this. After all, Stoltzekleiven was the only thing remaining on my A list, and during early spring I was pretty sure that I would manage to go below 14 at this year's race. Now however, even going below 15 seems to be tough...

After the summer holidays I did quite a bit of steep mountain fast walking, in Jotunheimen, at Gullfjellet, at Skåla, and at Storehesten, and I thought that would be good training for Stoltzekleiven. I also did some biking and swimming in connection with training for my first triathlon, and although this meant less training at Stoltzekleiven itself, I was hoping that it would give good varied improvement of my general form that would also be of help at Stoltzekleiven. This is exactly what happened last year. I was mainly training for Oslo half marathon through August and September, and not at all training at Stolzekleiven, except for participating at trial races. Still I improved my time by 48 seconds last year compared to the year before. So the half marathon training helped my Stoltzekleiven form a lot. Unfortunately the same side effect did not come this year from triathlon training and participating in uphill races.

While I was feeling quite depressed about the whole Stoltzekleiven thing, last week I received the very sad news that a very good and old friend of mine died. This news really took me off guard and shook me more than I could have imagined. Until now I have been blessed to be able to say that I have never regretted anything that I have done in life. But for the first time I regret something I have not done. I am so sorry that I did not have more contact with my friend during the past couple of years. We used to be very close, but our contact recently limited itself to email and message exchanges, and I regret so much not having called more often and not having asked more often how he was. His illness progressed suddenly very quickly at the end, so perhaps I would anyway not be able to catch him to say a final goodbye, but the bare thought that I was worried about running injuries and Stoltzekleiven while he was fighting for his life is quite unbearable. This is also why I am a few days late with last week's blog post. For a while none of the stuff I have been writing about seemed important or worth writing about anymore.

On the other hand, being reminded about how short and unpredictable life is made me appreciate even more how important it is to make the best of every single day of life. Being passionate about something, no matter what it is, makes us experience all the emotions that human beings are capable of. I decided to continue with my blog and to try harder at Stoltzekleiven for the memory of my friend, who loved running. At the same time, I was discussing my lacking improvement at Stoltzekleiven with my trainer Ketil, and he warned me that my negative and stressed attitude could be affecting my performance. I decided to let my shoulders down and not get stressed about the resulting time. Just try harder and do my best. With this background, on Thursday, I came closer to 15 minutes than in a long while, with 15:11.

Yesterday I participated in the last trial run of this year's Stoltzekleiven race, and my time worsened to 15:25. But I was just back from a wonderful weekend at Kjerag and Preikestolen (where the first and the last pictures are from), and I comforted myself that perhaps my legs were tired from the hikes of the weekend. This year, I have been so lucky to be able to do several of the most spectacular mountain hikes of Norway, like Trolltunga and Besseggen, and now Preikestolen. With the sudden loss of a dear friend reminding me how fragile life is, it feels good to have grabbed the opportunities of these adventures when they showed up. No matter how Stoltzekleiven 2015 goes, I will always have the wonderful memories of these trips. And there will hopefully be many more Stoltzekleiven races for me in the future.

“Life is short. Break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably. And never regret anything that made you smile.” (Mark Twain)