Pieksämäki Osmon Super Hölkkä
That's the name of the competition I was competing today (October, 14th). It was the 3rd time I ran 10K in that race but this time the course was changed a bit compared to the last 2 years. Nevertheless, the 32:36 I was running this year (2006: 34.26, 2005: 32.51) means a personal course record. I took "only" 3rd place, but considering the last week with a lot of tough training I am really satisfied. My aim was to run around 33mins, so I am indeed glad I did it. In fact it's the fastest time I was running in a road race in Finland. If the legs would have been fresher I could have been more competitive for the first 2 places, because after 8 km I was lying in second place and only 20meters behind the leader Mikko. However, I couldn't hold on and the tank was empty, so I lost around 1oometers and one place (to my teammate Marko) during the last 2 kilometres.
After all it was a good end of the training week. I was running around 150-160km in 13 running sessions, including 3 fast sessions (18x100m sprints on tuesday, 14K crescendo on thursday and race today) and one long run (~27K on saturday). Furthermore, 2 cross-training sessions took place this week. One on the spinning bike and one combined session in the gym/swimming pool with Minna, a tough girl making her way towards a professional race cycling team. It was really nice having her company and time went by so fast.

The last and the following week are not too busy, so I work on my plans for next years. I'll let you know when they are ready. So much can be said: If everything runs normal Erik will give a debut.