 Alright, so it's 11.13am and I am about to embark on, you know, something that could be called a race, really, a time trial, if you will. We're here at the cabin, the woods, we're on an island in Norway, and for 20 years or so, my dad and his friend has been running a route here on the island that we called, well, Directly translated is actually the Long Island Mile. It's not a mile, it's 8.5km and it's a course that I've been doing countless times as well, mostly as an easy effort, but today I'm going to try and crush the course record and I'm going to run hard. So it's supposed to be a threshold session, I might go a little harder. If I'm able to do the time that I hope while staying at threshold effort, then I'm very happy, but if I have to go harder, then I will. My Achilles tendon isn't really feeling super, so I'm a little worried about that, but I'm also worried it will rain. We'll see. First I'm doing the warm-up, which is just half an hour easy, which I'm going to do now, and then here I have my run plan. And so basically it's 8.5km, it's really hilly, I think it's almost about 200m of elevation over those 8.5km. And so if I'm going to beat the course record, the course record is set by a friend of my dad, and it's 44.15, which is a great time, but I'm pretty certain I'm going to crush that one. So that's like my lower limit of my goals today. Then my own personal best is actually 46-43, so even slower, but that's like before I really started running training systematically. And then because it's so close to 40 minutes, of course I have like an arbitrary goal of going sub-40, 39 something. And that's going to be an average pace of 4-42 per kilometer. That's going to be a tough goal, I think. I've done some calculations, I'm not going to go into them now, but I'm thinking that sub-40 might be possible, but I'm not sure, it's very difficult to predict. At least I'd like to see 40 something. If I have to say 41 or 42 something, that's okay as well. As long as I go faster than 44, 14. I have the splits here on my hand for where I need to be at different points, at different times. And yeah, I'm just going to go hard. That's my plan. Alright, so I'm back from the warm-up. Of course I'm all kinds of nervous and my heart rate is high and whatever, but feeling pretty good. Mads and my mom, they're out on the course to do some filming while they're out for a walk. My dad is behind the camera. I'm going to go shirtless and the heart rate monitor is out of battery, so no heart rate reading, which is unfamiliar for me, but probably just good actually. My dad is going to be timing me. How's that? Is that okay? Oh, it's not easy, but I shall do my best, pushing that button. And again, when you are returning, pushing that button. That's right. Quite complicated. And this is your course really, the route. You've run it many times. Yes, for 24 years. Wow. It's summer and autumn. Is it a tough route? It's really a tough one. It's like this all the way. Very hilly. Very hilly and very steep. Three hills that are tough. Yeah, really tough ones. And it's gravel. First here it's like trail-ish. And then gravel afterwards. So yeah, it'll be tough. Ready? Ready? Go! We are running and I'm giving you a little bit of a commentary along the way. So it starts out here at the cabin and then gets pretty steep pretty quickly. So the first kilometer is only going up. Pretty tough start. Eventually I'm making my way through the forest and you can see me there. Coming around the corner, this is around like 1.1 kilometer in. So I'm just fresh starting off. Mads and my mom are filming me here on one of the straight parts of the course. Feeling epic. Let's see if I feel as fresh as I do now when I'm coming back. That's what I told them. Making sure I'm running conservative. It is a 40-minute type effort yet still pushing pretty hard. Running at around the lactate threshold. That type of effort anyway. Mads and my mom are making funny faces. Here we are coming down the hill towards the end here going down. This is a pretty steep way going down actually. All the way down to the ocean and back up again. This hill is tough as I said around the corner there really steep. I actually walked for like 10 seconds or something and then it's just 2 kilometers all out almost going back to the cabin. And here I am coming back to the cabin. Coming out of the forest and into the light. Last little kick. And that's it. That was tough. So 38.01 on the watch. Above expectations although if you remember my dad, I'm talking to my dad behind the camera. If you remember the calculations I actually wrote down that I think I might be able to do 38.5. And I was pretty close to that. So good estimation. It was very tough but short enough so that it wasn't extremely painful extending wise. I didn't have to endure it for too long. 40 minutes that's a good short effort. But it was a lot of fun and I'm happy that I beat the record 44.15 and my own personal best from like 2015 before I started training. 46 something that was completely demolished obviously. I felt in control the whole way. It was a lot of fun. I passed Mads and my mom 3 times. So they got some good footage here that you've probably already seen. I don't know my heart rate. I took it manually a few times going up hills when I was walking slowly. And I think probably was around 185 or something. So it was probably around the threshold type effort. Could I keep this up for another 20 minutes? I think so. Which means that it was a decent threshold type effort. Yeah a lot of hills. A lot of running fast and just very fun. Must have scared all the birds of the island with my grunts and moans and coughs and all kinds of weird sounds. As I was painfully making my way through the hilly gravel roads of Lange. But by now they probably know me since I've been running this course for so many years. But very happy with today's effort. Personal best and it shows that my fitness is pretty good I'd say. It's difficult to extrapolate this to a 10k on the road. But I would go ahead and guess that I could probably run a 10k in around 39 minutes. Possibly even faster I don't know. So can I do sub 3 hours for the marathon in November? Still a tall order but not impossible. And now I'm gonna do a cool down. Just like 2-3 km of easy running. And then I'm gonna call it a day.