Bietigheimer Silvesterlauf
I took 15th place in the last competition of this year in a top-notch field.
Race report and pics will follow tomorrow.

White Christmas
Now it's time to enjoy the Christmas time. Just the night before christmas eve we got a thin layer of snow here in my home town - I guess that's what you call a white christmas nowadays.
I visited the Zwickauer Weihnachtsmarkt (christmas market of my home town) and enjoyed the warm, christmas-like atmosphere there. They also sold finnish honey, so I could have some conversation in Finnish because the salesperson was a native Finn. You should have seen his face when I went there the first time and said "Voi helvetti".

on the christmas market: I can apply my Finnish; Finnish honey in Zwickau = amazing

On 23rd I had a small (low-key-like) competition over around 10km. The conditions were not easy, some ups and downs as well as lots of unhitched paths with quite some rocks and pure ice at some parts. Anyway, I won the competition in 34:16min - and I think it's my first victory on German soil for a quite long (too long) time. Last time I won a competition in Germany was in 2006! My mum also participated and took 2nd place in the women category over the shorter 6km round.

the first victory on German soil for a long time - short before the finish line

Yesterday, on Christmas Eve, we had the usual traditional Christmas meal with turkey. Also we were 9 people altogether - I can't remember to have a Christmas dinner with so many people. But since my brother married the family grew a lot and it was really nice spending the Christmas Eve together in a warm-hearted ambience.

Merry Christmas to all of you for the rest of Christmas.

First days home
After a save but delayed return on Tuesday I am now back home (or is it "only" my origin?) - anyway, in Zwickau. Surprisingly the temperatures are the same or even a bit lower than in Finland, that means under the freezing point. At the same time the air is not as fresh but therefore the days are longer and the sun is much stronger than in Finland.
The first days have been busy with training and some traveling (because we are going to have a new car soon, pictures will follow later). At the same time it was indeed pleasant to see all the close family members again or for the first time, as it was the case for my 3-months old nephew Lu.

the first evening home: along with my brother Lars and his son (my nephew) Lu

Today featured the first fast running training since 2 weeks. After I had the problems with the left thigh I waited quite long to let it heal. However today I wanted to make a test to check if I am prepared for a competition on the weekend. So the program was 5x2000m on the tartan-track. Times (6:30/6:31/6:28/6:26/6:21 with 2mins recovery each) were ok, but when I tried to run faster I could feel that my left thigh went tight and there was no use to force new problems. Anyway the setting for the training was quite strange just when I started the workout it became dark. Fortunately, I have a responsible coach and thus the floodlight was switched on only for me after I came from warm-up. Together with the darkness came a really dense fog + the artificial light = perfect setting for a bad horror movie. Together with the negative temperatures the fog produced a nice Erik, but see yourself:

what is it? An angel, a wig? No! A germanrunner after 5x2000m in foggy, freezing weather.

Going home for Christmas
After another busy week at university I will go home next week and will stay there for 3 weeks, celebrating Christmas and New Year with my family. I'm really looking forward for the holiday - not having any measurements, lectures, student union meetings and all the other commitments - just put my feet up and relax after training.

Last week Thursday I had the last endurance(VO2,max)-test for my master thesis. I calculated how many tests I made overall and counted exactly 100 endurance tests for my thesis; plus a lot of strength measurements for the overall-project in which I'm conducting my Thesis. Now it's all about analysing the results and starting the writing process. Anyway, this will be much easier because I can organise my time more flexible, i.e. around the training.
The first (preliminary) results are already presented and I'm lucky about it, because my supervising professor gave me a lot of input and opened my eyes to look at some correlations I was not thinking of before.
Thursday also was the last Finnish-exam for me. Let's hope I passed.

Training was once again not running so well (that's a play on words). I think I teared a muscle in my left thigh and now I'm fighting with the edema. Beginning of the week saw only one short running exercise (30-40mins in the morning) plus one bike or gym session in the evening. Last 3 days I could run twice again, covering around 20-25km per day, but everything with slow pace and completely aerobic. My legs are itching to run faster, but I want to (or better: have to) be fit when I'm going to Germany, because there I scheduled at least 2 competitions. So, just stay calm and don't do anything stupid.

The next post will probably be published from Germany, so keep updated for some pictures of a traditional German christmas-market (auf deutsch: Weihnachtmarkt) ;)

Happy Birthday Suomi
Today is the independence day here in Finland - only 90 years ago Finland became independent. Still a young country ;)

Last week was a bit too stressful and I took some things too serious. In fact I never went to bed before midnight and sometimes it was even after 2am. However, on the weekend my body showed me that it was way too little recovery. Without really urgent things to do I slept 12 hours on Saturday and more than 10 hours on Sunday. I also used the time and the exhaustion to think about general things - and I found that I will concentrate on fewer things and can't participate in every event or happening. It's time to say No.
Also the next year I want to invest more time and effort in sport, so other things will have to fall short. After checking the German Rankings for 2007 in track&field I gained some motivation. This year you have to scroll down quite a bit to find me (only on place 46 in half-marathon). I hope this will change next year and I will go way closer to the TOP10. The quality in Germany is not as high as it used to be in the past decades, there are only couple of guys runningon international level and then there is a quite big gap...
Training is going well and the foot problems disappeared, so my diagnosis of a minor inflammation was right. Anyway I will increase the cross-training (gym, cycling, aquajogging) until the end of the year because I neglected it the last weeks.
Also concerning my studies of Finnish language I got good news: I am close to pass Suomi 3 (intermediate level) and have only one test (written grammar and vocabulary) left. Ymmärtämisen ja puhetentit menivät (erittäin) hyvin.