Recent Happenings (incl. Blodslitet)

Hey hey!
I haven't been up to too much lately, not exactly by choice either. I had a small rest after WOC and then decided to run a half marathon. It didn't go too well, I felt really sick and ended up puking at about the half way point. I managed to finish the race in a pretty lazy time (77.01 - I was hoping to do below 73min). The next day I could hardly walk!! Apparently I had tried to squeeze too much life out of my racing flats. They had worn a bit thin at the front and had become compressed, so I had nearly no cushioning in my forefoot.
I tried to train after a couple of days rest when it didn't hurt to walk any more but soon realised that I was far from healed! My injury put me out for 2 weeks. I did manage some light jogging but just returned home as soon as it began to hurt.
I managed to make good use of my down-time. I organised some cool club trainings around Odense (I am now one of the 4 senior coaches, including Maja and 2 others).
After easing back into training for a week I headed to Fredrikstad in Norway with Maja and her parents for a short holiday. We did a training near Halden on the way up, and another couple of trainings around Fredrikstad. The trainings all went really well except for 2 controls on each where I made huge mistakes :P
There was an ulterior motive deciding our holiday destination. We were going to run Blodslitet. I wasn't sure if it was a good idea after my recent injury, but I really just wanted to see if I could last the whole race.
For those of you who don't know, Blodslitet (est. 1968) is a mass start race consisting of 3 loops with forkings and a longer common final loop. Oh... and it's long. Really long (not to mention in tricky nordic terrain aswell!).
The elite mens race this year was 26.2km. I started off quite well, but then made a 3 minute mistake near the end of the second loop. After that I was mostly on my own. I was quite happy to make it as far as I did before the inevitable cramping started (between 6-7 on the last loop) and I even managed to finish without completely locking up :)
It was very satisfying to finish the race, and with no trouble from my foot! :) After two hours, fifty-six minutes and thirty-one seconds I ended up in 23rd place, 27:31 behind the winner Øystein Kvaal Østerbø.
You can see the maps below :P