National Team Gathering, and small race next weekend

From Friday until Sunday we had one of the major team gatherings at the Top Athletics Center here in Oslo (only 500 meters from my appartment) It is one of few times a year when about “everyone” in Norwegian Athletics are at the same place at the…

same time.

It is the fifth year I am attending those on a Senior level. And it has changed dramatically. First, in 99 and 2000 we had Olympic Champs Rodal and Hattestad plus lots of other stars attending. You could feel professionalism from the athletes. I was only 21 years old and those happenings were BIG events for me. It helped me realize what kind of attitude you need to get to the top level. Then from 2001 up until 2003 about nothing happened. Most of the stars resigned and the atmosphere changed totally. Until last fall – when the new team chief Tømmernes started bringing things back again. You can say alot about the influence of a team chief who is not coaching – or daily involved. But when you have taken part of this through three different phases you know what you see and what has changed. It is great to see. On top of that Thorkildsen won the Olympics in the Javelin, giving Norwegian Athletics a huge lift 🙂

Then next weekend I will travel to a small place north-east in Norway for a small road race there. Trine Pilskog, who did 4.05 1500 meter this summer and was in Athens asked me if I would attend a local race there plus speak for a group of younger athletes having a regional team weekend. So that will be a fun experience. To test the shape a bit and see other parts of Norway than Oslo.. Hopefully I can get into a good float. A good aerobic float – what you really want when you are running anything over the 1500 meter(for some also the 800). But to achieve this you need lots of planning, carefully taking the right daily decisions and never settle for the second best. It is a string of priorities and either you must have the confidence to make those yourself the hard way or you must have someone really good there to do it based on the daily signals you send. I have never seen a top class distance runner get there through nothing but a clear set of choices and patterns based on top class (and clear) running knowledge 🙂 So hopefully those things will pay off for me even in the fall when just trying to get gradually better..

From Oslo,
Marius