10 am in the morning and time for the 20km. If it was hot yesterday, that was nothing compared to today. Sweltering weather without clouds. During the competiton, the temperature rose to almost record hot 31 degrees. It was truly painfull out there today.
After a bad race yesterday, I felt directly when I woke up that my body was feeling much better than in a long time and knew that I could do a good race. For the last month, I've had a virus and not being able to do training at maximum effort. That was the case yesterday at the 10 000m. As soon as I tried to walk a little bit faster, my breath was super heavy and I really had to push myself to hold off a strong walking Anders in the last km of the race.
I started off alongside Ato and Håvard (extra) in the early stages of the race, but it didn't take long before he lost meter after meter and me and Håvard continued to keep and push the pace. Since it was really tough out there, I was sure it was a tactical move. Going easy for the first half and then finish really strong in the second half. When I passed 10k, 44.12, Ato was more than a minute behind and I actually started to feel stronger. By then, I knew that I only had to keep the pace to walk to my third straight 20km gold. Around 12k, I also realized that Ato wasn't playing a tactical move, but more or less was out of energy and couldn't take the tough weather this day.
I could comfortably (or really painfully) cross the finish line in 1.28.44! Checking the temperature shortly after finish, the thermometer showed over 36 degrees...!
Regarding the tough weather and my last month, I couldn't be more satisfied and happy and this was a huge boost for me leading up to the European championships in Zürich in 5 weeks.
Train hard!
Train smart!
/Persy
After a bad race yesterday, I felt directly when I woke up that my body was feeling much better than in a long time and knew that I could do a good race. For the last month, I've had a virus and not being able to do training at maximum effort. That was the case yesterday at the 10 000m. As soon as I tried to walk a little bit faster, my breath was super heavy and I really had to push myself to hold off a strong walking Anders in the last km of the race.
I started off alongside Ato and Håvard (extra) in the early stages of the race, but it didn't take long before he lost meter after meter and me and Håvard continued to keep and push the pace. Since it was really tough out there, I was sure it was a tactical move. Going easy for the first half and then finish really strong in the second half. When I passed 10k, 44.12, Ato was more than a minute behind and I actually started to feel stronger. By then, I knew that I only had to keep the pace to walk to my third straight 20km gold. Around 12k, I also realized that Ato wasn't playing a tactical move, but more or less was out of energy and couldn't take the tough weather this day.
I could comfortably (or really painfully) cross the finish line in 1.28.44! Checking the temperature shortly after finish, the thermometer showed over 36 degrees...!
Regarding the tough weather and my last month, I couldn't be more satisfied and happy and this was a huge boost for me leading up to the European championships in Zürich in 5 weeks.
Train hard!
Train smart!
/Persy