gustavbergman.se

This week I have vilovecka, which is rest week in swedish. Having vilovecka is awesome: I don’t have to plan my days in detail to get all the training done and I get a lot of free time to do other stuff. During the vilovecka you can really enjoy yourself!

The last years I have been using a periodisation system of 4 weeks in my winter training (or preparatory training, since it goes on for longer than the winter…), with 3 hard weeks followed by 1 rest week.  This system suits me really well, since it enables me to train really well during the 3 weeks of hard training, and then I get 1 week to fully recover and be able to train really hard again when the next block starts, without totally breaking myself down. It is also very good psychologically to know that you get to rest at a certain point in the not too distant future – that makes me able to push harder during the 3-week-block, and I think that I get better (and more!) training done this way, than if I had just trained evenly throughout the winter.

But it is not only from a training quality point of view that this 3-1 system is good, it also really helps me to stay healthy and injury free. There is always a danger that some of all the minor injuries that you inevitably pick up as a elite orienteer develop and become something bigger than it was at first, but during the rest week you get an opportunity to lick your wounds, and really make sure that you heal properly in every way. This means that I can enjoy the luxury of being injury free every 3-week-period, and that enables me to do quite a lot of running, which I think is a big key to succes.

The resting week is not, of course, 7 days spent on the sofa. I do train, but not as much. Usually I have 2-3 complete rest days during this week, where I do absolutely no physical training whatsoever. I have 3 training sessions that I plan during this week, and those are 1 interval session, 1 long run (2h+) and one gym session. The rest of the days I only do what I feel like doing, which varies a lot. Usually, the total training amount during the rest week is somewhere between 7 and 10 hours, which is quite much less that the 13-16h I have during the hard weeks.

Now I have finished my first 3-week-block for this year, and finally get to rest. And I have only 7 of these blocks left before it is time to go into WOC-preperation-mode! 1/8 done already!

The 26-27th October I did my first ever Mountain Marathon – for those who don’t know what it is, it’s basically 2 days of mountain running (and a bit of navigation!) with all your kit (tent, sleeping bag, food, clothes etc.) in a rucksack, about 6 hours each day. The OMM, this year in Brecon Beacons i Wales, was really going to be a challange. Nick Barrable had asked me several times before to do this with him, but as it clashes with Smålandskavlen each year I haven’t said yes until now. Nick had already won 7 of the 8 classes in OMM, with only the most prestigious class left: The Elite, despite many tries. So this year he was hoping that we would be able to win it!

I had never done a competition like this, so I had no idea what to expect, but with Nicks experience we managed to prepare quite well, I think. We had good lightweight equipment, a good idea of how much food and water you need, and some handy tricks Nick had worked out over the years he has competed in the OMM.

We headed off to Wales with victory in mind, especially in Nick’s I think, but we had quite much competition, with Sander Vaher/Timo Sild, Steve Birkenshaw/Kim Collison, and Ben Abdelnoor/Oli Johnson as our greatest opponents. We started last the first day, which felt quite nice, since we then could control the field reasonably well. We started off well, taking a different route than most to the first control, which turned out to be quite good, since we almost caught Steve and Kim, who started 2 minutes in front of us, to the second control. To the third control, we had a real monster leg: 21,5 km straight line. (the longest leg I’ve ever done, and quite possible the longest one I’ll ever do!) Vi decided for a southern route, which had a nice line and some path running. Steve and Kim, however, tock a northern route, and we didn’t see them again on day 1. Our route felt quite good, but turned out to be a real tussock fest for some of way. It did cheer us up when we caught Oli and Ben 12 minutes with only 4 km to go to the 3rd control, since they were the ones we thought we really had to watch out for. It did feel quite weird to punch the 3rd control after 4h 19min. It was so long ago that we had been at the 2nd control! It was here I really started to become tired, and I was quite happy that Ben and Oli was taking it quite slow, as we sticked with them for most of the remaining course. Towards the last control, number 7, Nick grew a bit impatient, and we picked up our pace a bit breaking away from Ben and Oli. After finishing I was quite happy with our performance, but after downloading we found at that Steve and Kim had beaten us with 13½ minutes! As it turned out, the northen option were quite much faster, mostly due to the lack of tussocks there. In the end, we were 2nd on day 1, only beaten by Kim and Steve, but it was really tight in results behind us, with Hugh Aggleton and Tom Gibbs chasing us 2 minutes, and the Timo and Sander only another minute behind.

We were a bit disappointed being so far behind, and I think Nick gave up his hopes of us winning. We set up our tent just in time to avoid the rain, and I didn’t leave the tent until next morning. The night was not nearly as bad as I had anticipated, and after havning a nice meal of instant noodles, beanfeast and macaroni, some flapjacks and a protein bar, I had a quite good night’s sleep. I think this was a key succes factor. From what I heard afterwards, most people had it lots worse than we did. For instance, Jonny Crickmore had to spend the night in a portaloo since their tent got flooded, so I guess we should count ourselfs lucky.

It was raining quite heavily all through the night, and with the big storm forecast to come in during the afternoon, the organasers decided to authorise Bad Weather Courses, which meant that the courses for day to would be shortened. Nick and I were in no way upset about this, instead I really started to feel that day 2 were going to be well within my comfort zone, and I was really psyched to take up the hunt for Kim and Steve in the chasing start! I started of really hard, and in the ascend to number one, I looked back and could tell that we were going quite much faster than the chasing teams, and I continued to push hard. I was a bit confused by the fact that we couldn’t see Kim and Steve at all, the terrain was open and you could easily see 10-15 minutes ahead of you. But I just continued to go hard, and about halfway through the course I saw them, just 100 m ahead of us. Although thrilled by the fact that we had managed to catch them up, I told myself not to get hubris and go too fast, so I decided to stay with them for a few short controls, before the long leg north. Since Nick felt quite strong as well, we decided to push hard to make sure we were ahead, and have a bit of a margin for small errors. About halfway through the leg, I saw Kim and Steve taking a different line than us, going slightly right, and as the weather became more foggy, my feeling of control disappeared with the visibility. I decided that we were taking no chances, so we pushed really hard all the way up the hill, and in the descent the fog disappeared, and when we looked back we could tell that we had a few minutes lead. The rest was quite pleasant, we took it a bit easy uphill too make sure we didn’t die in the end, and even though Nick was a bit nervous and pushed quite hard on the tracks back to the finish, they never got closer than a few minutes from us, and in the end we won with 8.

And that was it! A really fun experience, and carrying all the equipment and spending the night in a small tent in the british October weather wasn’t nearly as bad as I had anticipated. Actually, I kind of enjoyed it.  I especially enjoyed sitting down in the Event Centre and having a warm meal, and being joined by elite fourthplaced Ed  Catmur and Alan Cherry, A-winners Jonny Crickmore and Jonny Malley, and B-winners Peter Hodkinson and Joseph Fisher, while waiting for the prize-giving ceremony. For me, that was the best part of the weekend. Having done 9½ h of racing, and being able to sit down and have a chat and some food with your friends – unbeatable!

Map, day 1
Map, day 2
Elite Results

But how were we able to win this? It was my first ever Mountain Marathon, and my first ever running race longer than 4 hours. I’ll try to sort out the succes factors:

• The equipment: Nicks OMM-experience was invaluable, as he sorted out all equipment and food in a perfect way. You really need the good stuff if you are going for the win in a Mountain Marathon. A good lightweight tent, lightweight sleeping bag, and bubble wrap (!) as sleeping mat were just the things you needed for a good nights sleep. I also believe that the good, hot meal we had was important for our performance the next day. You’ll need to know how much food you should bring – too much and it is unnecessary weight – too little and you don’t get enough energy. And Nick had this extremely well balanced.
• The terrain: It suited us well. Quite tough running in the tussocks and heather, which meant that we could use our forest running muscles in a good way. Also, it wasn’t too hilly, which I think was in our favour.
• The Bad Weather Courses: 6½ hours the first day was a little too long for me. But the 2nd day being significantly shorter, and also being cut even further due to the bad weather, played right into our hands. The length and winning time were getting closer to a long distance orienteering race, and that’s where we are strong. We could run day 2 with confidence, and push hard all the way.

It was good fun, I enjoyed it. But will I do it again? Probably not. I’m happy with my current 100% winning rate. But you never know what the future brings, you might see me at a Mountain Marathon again some time…

After the final round of the World Cup there were still som races in Sweden to be run, including 25manna, which is always great fun, especially since it is the big relay where OK Ravinen has the best team. This year we were really aiming for a place among the top 10, which was well within reach. After a bit weird relay for us, we found ourselfs in 14th position, which is OK i guess, but we really had chance for a lot more! We lost so much time on a few legs (6 and 7 mostly) where we shouldn’t have lost anything, and even so, we were only 2 minutes from Göteborg-Majorna in 8th place, and only 10 minutes from Hiidenkiertäjät in 4th place. 10 minutes?! We could easily have been 15 minutes faster if we had made great runs all the way. But unfortunatly we didn’t, and I can’t help to be a bit disappointed. Top 10 would have been so nice! Map. Results.

The day after 25manna there was 25mannakorten, a middle distance race that usually has got a strong starting field. And this year it was a WRE, which made the starting field even stronger than what it normally is. After last years disaster (well, 3rd – 30 seconds behind – maybe doesn’t sound like a disaster, but with 2 min mistakes it is!) I really wanted to do better this year, and prove to everyone who is the worlds best in this kind of terrain. And even though I didn’t feel too strong physically, and did some smaller mistakes, in whole I did a good race and managed to win quite clearly, which I am satisfied with! Map. Results. Splits.

I’ve also run another WRE, i.e. Blodslitet in Fredrikstad, Norway (yes, I know, not domestic – but close enough!). I didn’t really have any expectations regarding results, but as always I was hoping to do as well as possible. After a stupid mistake on the first loop, I ended up having a quite pleasant run with Flying Fred (we ran together for about 70-80% of the course), and after passing Anders Nordberg on the last loop, I ended up as 2nd and Fredrik as 3rd, a few minutes behind Olav who was too strong for us this day. I really enjoyed it (my first ever Blodslitet), and I’ll definitly be back next year! Map, part 1. Map, part 2. Results.

Going into the final World Cup weekend of 2013 I had top 6 overall as my goal, which I thought I quite easily should be able to do, since I wast 4th before the final 2 races. I was also hoping to do two top 10 performances on the individual races, and hopefully even better at the middle.

On the middle I had a good run, only making a few smaller mistakes, and (mostly) picking good routes. And even though I felt really slow going uphill, it was enough to make the podium, with a 6th place (best non-Swiss runner! The Swiss guys really show that they are fantastic in Mittelland terrain), which I am more than happy with. Map. Results. Splits.

The sprint, on the other hand, did not go as well as I had hoped for. I felt quite bad physically, and with the course (despite good routechoice legs) being pretty much a running contest, I found myself a little bit further down the result list than I wanted. However, it was still enough to make the podium in the overall World Cup, in which I ended up as 5th (again, best non-Swiss runner). Map. Results. Splits. Overall results.

With the international season coming to an end, it brings changes to the Swedish national team organization. Anneli Östberg quits after 9 years as national team coach (6 years and junior coach, and 3 years as senior coach). When I first started competing in the national sqaud I was 18, and Anneli was there. After my junior years, there could have been big changes going into the senior squad, but Anneli followed the 90-generation into the senior class, and showed confidence in us at once, selecting a lot of first year seniors in the national squad.

Ther has been a long journey from when I was 18 until now, 5 years later. I have developed a lot as an orienteer, and I have developed a lot as a person. And Anneli has been there all the way. Next year it will be the first time ever for me being in the national team and not have Anneli as a coach. I will be different, and I will surely miss having her as coach. However, I am convinced that all the good work the national team does will continue without Anneli, even if it for me (and for many others) will be a lot different on a personal level.

Thanks for everything Anneli, and good luck with everything in your future.

The cold that troubled my preparations for the long distance champs didn’t want to let go of its grip on me, so the my physical shape was exactly as hard to predict for the middle as for the long. The qualifier went very well technically, and I also took it quite easy physically, saving myself for the final. Map. Results.

For the final I was hoping for really good legs, and hope was really all I could do, since this cold has made my running form a bit of a lottery, but this time I wasn’t lucky. Frankly, my legs felt shit, from the first minute. But I just focused on my orienteering, and did a really good race, finishing 2nd (again!) 8 seconds behind Oleksandr Kratov. Despite my good run, I couldn’t help but to be a little bit disappointed. I am very happy with my silver medal, and I am really satisfied with my orienteering performance, but I am getting really pissed on the cold that never seem to release its grip from me. I know that I could have been faster, and I know that I should have been faster, which makes it a bit harder to let go… Map. Results.

Following the middle was, as always, the relay. The last 2 years Ravinen haven’t had a great team, and we’ve ended up in 28th place 2 years in a row. This year, however, my brother has become a senior, and also being in better shape than ever, and with Martin Lindskog (with enormous experience of first leg running!) in the team we had a pretty decent chance of getting a good result. While thinking it through before, I thought that a place in the top 10 was a very difficult, but realistic, goal for the team, and that was what we worked towards.

After a solid performance from Martin on the first leg, he handed out Kalle as 49th. Despite him being annoyed with a 2 min mistake in the beginning, Martin did exactly what we hoped for: A solid race, not losing too much time, and changing over in a big group.

Kalle started off great, picking 26 places (!) to the first radio control, and continuing his good race all the way to the end, handing me out as 16th, and I just couldn’t wait to get started chasing the top 10. And finally my legs felt as they should! So I just went for it, pushed really hard all the way, and orienteering pretty much perfect, which resulted in me winning the last leg with 2 minutes, and picking to an 8th place; Ravinens best SM-relay result since 2005. Since Martin is only 39 years old, he’s still got many good years ahead of him, and with me and Kalle getting better and better each year, we will soon be aiming for the medals!

After 2 weeks struggling with a cold, I was hoping for good legs in the toughest competition you run in a year: the Swedish long distance championships. With all the SM-competitions being held in Göteborg this year, I was really looking forward to it since I enjoy  the terrain very much. Before I caught the cold, I was really confident about my shape, and was definitly aiming for the gold medal. To be quite frank, I would have been really disappointed to miss out on the medals, since I know that there is where I should be, despite feeling a bit slow because of the cold.

In the qualifier i felt quite good actually, better than I could have hoped for beforehand, and even though I took it quite easy, saving myself for the final, I won my heat, after a solid technical performance. Map (coming soon). Results.

The final was not at all as stable as the qualifier. In the beginning I was feeling really bad – exactly what I was dreading after my period of sickness – and that made me become a bit defensive in my orienteering. At the 5th control I messed up, and missed just under a minute, and in my annoyance over that (in combination with my bad physical feeling), the rest of the first loop was a disaster. When punching at the spectators control, I was almost 3 minutes behind, in 11th place. But since Jonas Leandersson hadn’t yet caught me up, I started to feel slightly more positive, and I decided to take the spectators control as a new start of my race. But didn’t work out to well, and I missed the next control as well, and was really slow to the next short one, but heading out on the long leg I still hadn’t been caught up, so I thought ”fuck it, I’ll just win the long leg and show my capacity”. And so I did. I picked from 12th place to 4th, and I started to feel better and better physically. After that I actually had a really good run (apart from one very stupid 45s mistake, and that the sole of my left shoe came off), and winning most of the legs left, I continued to pick places, and finished 2nd, almost 3 minutes behind Filip Dahlgren, a bit disappointed with my run, but happily surprised that it was enough to win a medal.

Map
Results
GPS-tracking

After world champs I’ve been really busy; traveling a lot, competing a lot, and training a lot. After a few days rest after my two medal races in Vuokatti, I started a period of 12 competition races in 14 days. It started with a flight to Boden to participate in O-ringen. The terrain was really cool, and I am quite satisfied with my performances the first 3 days. The last 2, however, turned out to be a disaster physically, and I ended up in 4th place, which I guess i alright, but I was hoping for a bit more. After O-ringen I flew straight to Scotland and Inverness, to run the Scottish 6 days. I had a really nice time, and I think that I did quite good races in total, but after the 5th stage my foot started too hurt really bad, and I couldn’t run the last stage, which was a shame… Anyway, since I was staying in Scotland for another week on a national team training camp, I rented a mountainbike and had some good days exploring Inverness and Glenmore. The pain went away quite fast, and I could join the others in the forest the last days.

After 2 weeks at home I went away again, this time to Italy to prepare for next years WOC. We had a great week of training, and I really feel good for next year. I have also had time to run some ordinary Stockholm competitions (which was a real treat, since I don’t get to do it very often), win a few Stockholm district champs, enjoyed a day of adventure racing on home ground, and spent a few days in bed being sick. Now I am well, however, so the Swedish championships in Göteborg and the World Cup final in Switzerland will be really fun!

WOC ended in a really good way. After my bronze at the middle distance, I was selected to run the last leg for the swedish relay team, which was exactly what I was hoping for. Before WOC started, I felt that the relay was probably my biggest chance to win a medal, so it had been my goal before the championship to make the team. I felt really confident with our teams capacity, with Anders Holmberg on first leg and Peter Öberg on second. That is a strong team! And I was not disappointed with their performances.

I was handed at as 2nd, 40 seconds behind leading Ukraine, and 5 seconds ahead of Russia in 3rd place, and behind us there were a 1 minute gap. I started of quite fast, and only focusing on my own orienteering. Apparently all 3 of us hade the same gaffling in the beginning, and already at the 2nd control I was in the lead, with Ukraine and Russia just seconds behind. On the long leg to the 4th control we split up, and I just headed for my control. When I puched it I thought that I was first, but that was not the case. I think that my gaffling was slightly longer here, so both Russia and Ukraine were actually some 20 seconds ahead of me, despite not making a mistake. However, I understood quite quickly that I was behind, when I passed Shcherbakov on my way to the 6th control. If Tsetkov had not made a mistake, he was ahead of me.

So I just focused ion my own orienteering, hoping for a mistake from Russia, but it never came. Dmitry had a really good run, and there was nothing I could do about him. We finished as happy silver medalists, after three good performances.

Map
Results
GPS-tracking all legs
GPS-tracking last leg

”Stafettsilver för herrarna” – dn.se
”VM-succé för Bergman och Holmberg” – nvp.se
”Stafettsilver för herrarna” – svd.se

Web-TV: The whole TV-broadcast from SVT
Web-TV: ”Silver till herrarna i stafetten” – orientering.se

After a stable qualifier, I was really looking forward to my race in the middle final. It is something that only happens once each year, for 45 runners, and I am one of them! I couldn’t help but smile while standing on the startline waiting for my map. This was going to be awesome!

And it totally was. My race was really good, perfect until the arena passage and map change, after which I started to become really tired and made some smaller mistakes, but in total I am very satisfied with my race. A bronze medal! Who would have thought that before this championship? Well, at least I did. This was exactly what I was aiming at: A medal in my first nordic-terrain-WOC.

Map
GPS-tracking
Results

”Svenskt brons i Orienterings-VM” – eurosport.se
”Nya VM-medaljer” – dn.se
”VM-brons till Bergman på medeldistansen” – sr.se
”Nya VM-medaljer” – svd.se
”Bergman tog skrällbrons i medeldistans” – svt.se
”Bergman grejade bronset” – orientering.se

Web-TV: ”Bergman tog skrällbrons: ‘Jättekul’” – svt.se
Web-TV: ”Bergman: Blev väldigt nervöst på slutet” – svt.se
Web-TV:  ”Gärderud: ‘Ungdomar vi kommer ha glädje av i framtiden’”
Web-TV: The whole TV-broadcast of the men’s race – svt.se

Today I have run my first races at this World Champs, and it feels really good to have gotten started! My performances, however, haven’t been quite as good as I hoped for.

The qualifier this morning was quite okay. In my opinion a quite easy and boring course, where I managed to mess up the only control with any route choice difficulties. The course suited me quite badly as well, with a lot of monotone running on grass without any changes in direction. Dispite all this, I managed to qualify quite easily, and since the final was going to be more technical, I was really looking forward to it.

Map
Results
GPS-tracking (my GPS is barely working…)

The final was going to be great, and I thought that I had good chances  of gettin a top 6 result if I did a perfect run. But I didn’t have a perfect run… After an OK start, I made a stupid mistake to number 7. What was I thinking?! Anyway, the race continued, and I was doing alright again. But then to number 10 I again lost a lot of time, but this time more because of bad luck. The printing on the map had chaved off in a crease, when I had folded the map earlier, and I found myself looking at a small house instead of the canopy I was expecting. After some confused seconds looking for some kind of tunnel under the house I realised what  had hapened and I turned around. To this point I had lost 30 seconds in mistakes, and was trailing a bit behind. The mistake made me feel a bit drained of energy, but a still managed to perform a decent 2nd half of my race, losing only 15 seconds to Måre.

In the end I finished as number 17, which is an OK result I guess, but I’m quite disappointed. 30 seconds faster and I would have had a good run, which would have put me somewhere around 6-7th place. Fortunatly I have another chance to have a great race in the middle, and that chance I intend to take.

Map
Results
GPS-tracking (once again my GPS wasn’t working properly)

How the map should’ve looked like to number 10:

How it really looked like: