I did not do any rollerskiing for the first eight days of our Norway vacation. That changed dramatically to three sessions in a row after I had made arrangements to get together on August 1st for some rollerski workouts with FIS marathon cup skier and leading authority on double-poling, Fredrik Aukland. Since I live and train at 2000 meters (6500 feet) in the Utah mountains, I felt I should do some fast double-poling for a few sessions in a row just to get used to rollerskiing at sea-level, and to prepare for the expected pace with Aukland. I have no illusion that I will be able to keep up with him for a long time, but the goal is to hang on as long as possible. I’ll report in on that later.
A nice thing about training in summer is that it is daylight until about 11 pm in Norway. We are after all in the “Land of the Midnight Sunâ€. Yesterday I went for quick little bike ride at 10:30 at night — no problem seeing and being seen. It was kind of funny though to be out training at the same time that I came across “Norway’s future adults†— a group of boisterous, singing, shouting young crowd on their way to the downtown for music and drinks. Did I do that at that age? (Probably).
I met part of the same group this morning when I went rollerskiing. They were on their way home — some still singing, the rest dragging. They looked pretty haggard and sounded a lot more like Rod Stewart than Elton John today.
