Spring of 2022

With WOC coming up, I will try to summarize the spring season of 2022 briefly. During the winter, I focused a lot on improving my running on flat, hard surfaces, with the aim of getting in the Swedish team for Sprint WOC in Denmark, and more specifically getting a place in the sprint relay team. That being my main goal, I of course had the ambition of running an individual discipline as well, but for me, that has always been my secondary focus. The training did go really well, and with good competition and training company from the other guys in the Swedish national team, I felt confident going into the season.

However, my fast sessions in the forest from November to March could be counted on one hand, so I was a little bit anxious about my shape on middle and long distance when standing on the start line for the first Swedish League races in April. I would not have needed to worry, because I didn’t feel lika the focus on sprint had affected my forest shape negatively in any way. As usual, I thoroughly enjoyed the Swedish League racing during the spring, and felt like I performed well.

Sprintwise, I feel like I have taken a step up, especially in my capacity on more straight forward sprints, and I am happy with the way I have performed. 2nd place on Swedish champs (1s behind Ruslan), 4th place on the individual World Cup sprint in Borås (1s from 3rd), with some good knock out sprint performances mixed in as well. For WOC, I am selected for sprint relay and individual sprint, which was pretty much exactly what I had hoped for, so I am really looking forward to that!

The highlights of the season so far have, without doubt, been the club relays. I have always loved running relay, and 10mila and Jukola has always been one of my main motivations to keep training hard, and I have been really excited to see the development and steady climb towards top positions that we have had in OK Ravinen during my years as an elite runner. The journey from being around 40-50, to establishing ourselves as a steady top 20 team, and now being a strong contender for winning. It has gone really fast! I remember our 10th place at Jukola 2017, with us being overwhelmed with excitement over that result, and last years 5th place at Jukola being another giant milestone for us. Only last year, imagining that we in 2022 would fight for the win in both 10mila and Jukola, and ending up with double 2nd places was almost unfathomable – yet here we are. I am really impressed with the team and the confidence that we have raced with – especially Edvin and Hannes, who – coming out of the covid break at 18 and 17 respectively – never had run neither 10mila nor Jukola before. I am extremely proud to be a part of this team, to be a part of this club. With 6 out of 7 runners at Jukola being born and raised in OK Ravinen says something about what possibilities the club gives to the runners. To be a part of the environment created to help us runners both develop and perform – that is what OK Ravinen always has given me, and continue to give throughout my elite career.