The Engineered Boulderer

We are very fortunate with where we live. We have forests a mere stone throw away in almost all directions. Another fortunate factor, for me, is that there are mountain bike routes in several of these forests.

Yesterday, I took a ride on the blue trail in Rude Skov which really rekindled my love of cross country mountain biking.

Wipe your feet before entering.

I hope you all had a wonderful New Years Eve. We had five friends over for a nice Asian inspired fusion dinner. The night simply flew away and we ended up going to bed after 4 am. Needless to say I feel a bit tired right now.

Today marks the beginning of one of my first photography projects: A Year In My Life.

Today will also be the day of my first run of 2008. This will be my 99th run with the Nike+iPod kit. After more than two weeks of downtime due to an infection in my leg, I am now ready to get back to my training for Copenhagen Marathon in May.

I don’t know what else today will bring, but I will get out there and find out.

In 2008 I will try something new: documenting myself each day. I will do this by taking a self portrait each day and posting it to my A year in my life – 2008 set.

I have seen several people create so-called 365 day projects”. The first was Matt Haughey whose goal was simply to take a picture each day. Matt has since embarked on a much more ambitious project. On flickr I have seen several people partake in “365 day projects:http://www.flickr.com/groups/365days/ where they take a self portrait each day. However, it took my discovery of the ever awesome macaddict, who is already on his second 365 days, to get my inspirational juices flowing.

Since 2008 is a leap year, and I wanted to cronicle the year, I couldn’t really make a 365 day project. Therefore, my 366 day project is named A year in my life, and started today with the first day of 2008.

The rules I have set up for myself are very simple. I take one self portrait each day and upload it to flickr. The picture must be a self portrait, and it must be taken on the day it is uploaded. I am sure I will end up bending the rules when I forget or feel too busy, and maybe there will be some pictures in there taken with the crappy camera in my mobile phone, but the aim is to have uploaded 366 self portraits when 2008 gives way to 2009.

This entry marks the public beginning of my project.

Today is one of those days where Susan works late. Since I left work late, I thought I’d pop by and pick her up. In the train on the way home she was reading a free horse magazine, and as we were waiting to get off she showed me a picture of a Llama. Then the conversation went something like this:

Susan: Llama, llama, llama, duck
Me: You can’t have a llama
S: A duck is probably also more tasty
M: I don’t know I’ve never tasted llama
Stranger standing behind us: I have, and it is very tasty. Alpaca, however, is quite dry

So now you know.

Last week marked my first visit to Finland. Working for Nokia I – of course – expected this to happen sometime, I just had not foreseen that it would take more than two years before my first visit.

My visit was to the northern Finnish city of Oulu. Oulu is about 600 km from Helsinki, and only 200 km from the Polar Circle. This is very clear since the sun rises after 9 in the morning, and goes down already at a quarter to 3 in the afternoon.

I don’t know what my expectations were from Finland, but below are my impressions and thoughts on my few days in Oulu.

Update: Here, just two days later we got a good first dusting. It’s only a couple of centimeters, but it is covering everything:

Susan and I had been in town, and when we got off the bus at home it was snowing. It didn’t stay on the ground, but it was definitely snow. And as we were walking from the bus stop it started hailing too. The weather has really turned from the beautiful autumn days of September and October.

Recently I noticed problems with several of my shoes. The sole of the shoes I use pretty much every day suddenly started crumbling. I really haven’t seen anything like this before and couldn’t believe that the sole of a pair of shoes could disintegrate like that.

Around the same time I noticed that the heel of my climbing shoes was very loose. When I did heel hooks I sometimes pulled off the shoe, and at the very least I couldn’t pull very well with the heel.

Of course this meant that I had to get a new pair of shoes to use for everyday use, and a new pair of climbing shoes.

Today was the first day in the common traning, that Sparta holds over the winter, to let runners prepare for the Copenhagen Marathon in May.

There are 12 groups running at different paces, from 4’10” to 6’30”. My plan is to run in group 6 which corresponds to a pace of 5’00”. All paces are of course minutes per km.

Today we ran ca. 12.5 km in beautiful November weather: 5°C sunny and clear blue skies. It’ll be interesting to see if I can feel as motivated in January when the sleet is thick in the streets and the northern wind is blowing hard.

The marathon distance has always had a mythical quality to me. I have often considered the possibility of running one, but previously I had never run any great distance and have brushed it off. After I started running in the fall of 2005, however, I found that I did enjoy longer distances, and the thought of running a marathon entered my mind again.

Over the Summer I had a longish break from climbing. It all started back in the Autumn last year when I was in Fontainebleau where I ended up injuring on of my fingers. When I returned to climbing around the start of the new year (2007) I promptly got another injury. Feeling a little disillusioned, together with the stress about moving, I decided to take a longer break.

Finally, just about a month ago, I started climbing again. After moving I usually climb at PK which is located better than NKK. Although I have climbed at PK before, the feel is quite different from NKK. However, the biggest change, after returning to climbing, came this weekend when I went to Kjuge again. Although I feel safer and able to do harder problems indoors, climbing outside is for me where the real fun is at.

Incredibly enough I had a hard time finding people to come along. In the end Truls called the night before and asked if I was still going, this was totally cool for two reasons, 1. I wouldn’t be going alone, and 2. Truls is an all-round nice person and an awesome climber.

We took off in slightly overcast, but totally still, weather at 9:30 Saturday morning. As we came closer to Kjuge, however, the weather cleared up and I have to say, I have never seen Kjuge this beautiful.

I ended up climbing some nice problems. It was nice to feel the rock under my fingers again. Unfortunately, my fingers have very little skin left on them, but that will change once I have punished them enough. At least I’m going to Kjuge again next week to see if they don’t have a little more to give.