Tag Archives: #millionmetrechallenge

1,000,000m Swimming & WaterAid

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I did it and nearly a full month faster than 2020. Last year it took me until Sept 30th to reach 1,000,000m. This year I had a chance to reach this mark on August 31st, but willing took a rest day on the 30th, so I would swim past the million meter mark on Sept 1st during our first Lane 1 distance workout of the fall.

Last year I lost a lot of motivation after reaching one million, but this year I am even trying to raise money for WaterAid. I am hoping this keeps me swimming, at least through October. It would be great if my friends could help me with this charity event.

https://wateraid.enthuse.com/pf/swimrykno

We have not had a Swedish nationals for Masters since 2019, and there are currently plans for holding them the first week in December. This would be another motivator to keep me swimming through out 2021. Last year I finished with 1221 km, so only 221 km over the last three months. With four months remaining this year, who knows this year I could reach over 1320 km. My dad asked last year, what’s next? I jokingly replied I am not sure from 1000 km to maybe 1000 miles. However, that is a huge jump from 1220 to 1609 km. if I am going to be able to race in a pool again I am not going to be able to swim just for the sake of swimming to get meters. I am going to have to focus more on speed, technique and recovery. All of those things have been neglected for the past 16-18 months. I can almost say for sure I will again try for a million meters next year, but I will most likely focus on the 800m pool race and attempt go sub 10. At the same time I have not given up hope on a sub 19 1500m either.

Winter Break or “Sport break” as it is called in Sweden

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In the area of Sweden I live, week 8 is our winter break, or a direct translation from swedish is sport break A large portion of the people in sweden use week 7,8 or 9 to go skiiing every year. The country splits up this week off so that only 33% of the country try to go up north skiing each week during the winter break.


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2020 OW Virtual Grand Slam

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Back in April as the world was shutting down I was contacted by Mark Johnston about an online event that he was putting together. It didn’t take more than a day or two and then the event was online, and I was registered and started to recruit others in Sweden and the US to join in.

The idea of being able to compete in a time when all IRL races were being postponed or canceled felt like a really good idea. Nothing beats the heat of the moment, but knowing someone somewhere else was trying to swim faster than me was going to have to be enough this summer.


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Karl-Oskarsimmet 2020

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Saturday the 13th of June was the first time in the history of our local OW race that I actually was able to participate. In 2016, it was a very very small race with two distances; 925m and 1850m. I spent all morning helping to get the race area set-up, then all afternoon on a boat keeping an eye on the swimmers. The distance 1850 came from the year that Karl-Oskar and Kristina left Sweden on their way to the US. A masters swimmer and local artist helped up create our logo from a photo of the two. I really like the way it turned out.

Logo made by Mona B Klöfver
http://www.mbkartist.com/

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Beyond Expectations, the month of May

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So I recently wrote about missing lots of swimming because of a business trip. But it looks like I was able to bounce back nicely, thanks in part to the start of Open Water swimming and my teammates that show up day after day to swim with me. In the graph below you can see the plateau when I missed 3+ swims. I managed to build back up my buffer by the end of the month.

Progress against the 1,000km target pace

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Rough start to May

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My first business trip since the start of the Covid-19 outbreak. I knew that I would eventually have to travel again, and I has 100% aware that it was not going to be easy from being at home for the past five months working out on average 12 hours a week to nothing for upwards of six days. But having the last 3 trips cancelled or postponed I was kind of hoping that this one would be push up too.

Due to the limited access to public transportation and the roughly 1300km distance I had to travel to get to site, I wound up traveling by car for nearly 13 hours on Sunday the 3rd of May with two colleagues headed in the same direction. Everything in the town I was visiting had shortened hours. Most things closed between 1600 and 1800 daily. This limited my options for food and the hotel we stayed at had no fitness room.

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100km in April

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I was not expecting this, but thanks to the Million Meter Challenge I have just had my best indoor swim month since I stopped swimming back in 1996. It didn’t hurt that I was able to get in a good 10 day swim streak either. One other time in the last 12 years I have managed over 80km in one month in a pool was back in Jan 2012. I have now had 4 months in a row with over 84km. And now in April thanks to an extra 3km OW swim when putting out the buoys in the lake I landed at 108,560m in April

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1/4 of the way to 1,000,000m

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So we have made it through the first 3 months of the year. Feb-Mar 2020 will not soon be forgotten. Everywhere you look there is something about the Coronavirus. Luckily for me Sweden is taking a more scientific approach and leaving politics out of the decision making. So while many of you are on lockdown and not allowed to go to your local pool or gym, I am coming off one of my best swimming weeks since moving back into the pool in September 2019.

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