Sueco Guatemalteco

My knee is still in bad shape and it's now been 17 days since the first time I felt pain. I am doing strength and stretching but I can't see any progress. I have rested for several days with zero effect. Going to a physio therapist in two days. I met one last week who gave me excercises to do at home. I think I will stay off the bike totally for the whole week :(. Fitness is plummeting bringing confidence and happiness to the bottom. 

This weekend will host the first race of the season on the Guatemalan calendar. I won't be at the start line for the "Presentacion por el equipos" which is translated into Team Presentation. It's a criterium of 45 minutes or so in the central parts of Guatemala City with a team presentation after the race. Last year I finished in the top group (20-30 left of over 120 starters) which was very unexpected but fun. I will miss out on the first races, including Tour la Paz which has 10 foreign teams coming this year, and the first qualification race for the Olympics in Tokyo as well as a "Clasica" (national elite stage race). I might be back in Guatemala for the second Olympic qualification and the second Clasica but if they are going to be raced on high altitude it will be very, very, very hard since I won't be acclimatised. I have no main goals with the season really because I don’t know when I will be in Guatemala or in Sweden. I have scrat...

A week ago, I got some pain in the outside of my right knee after a 3-hour ride. I increased the volume during the last week up to normal hours and most of them were done out on the roads. A typical overload. I tried to ride again on Saturday, but I had more or less pain all the way and after two hours it hurts so bad, I couldn’t turn the pedals any longer. I took Sunday completely off the bike and the knee felt good again. Since I have had this pain before, and it has disappeared quickly I didn’t want to give it to much time, so I did a short easy ride on Monday. I could sense something and felt some discomfort the last 15 minutes. Way better than Saturday but not good. The same feelings have kept going on through Tuesday - Thursday with some pain so I am now taking 3 days off the bike and calling this a rest week. I was supposed to increase training load and volume this week, so this was a big setback for my pre-season progress. I have made some minor changes to saddle position...

It's not cancelled, just postponed a bit :). Stay tuned, and until next time; here's some pictures of me blocking the view of waterbodies.          Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, July 2019 Valje Bay, Sweden, December 2019

At the moment I am in Sweden and trying to ride through the autumn and winter: It’s late November and it’s closing in on December; winter cycling is here.  Every cyclist and every place in the world have different views on winter and winter riding. When is it winter, how cold, damp and dark it must be to be called winter etcetera etcetera. I can almost get offended when people from warmer places talking about winter riding in sun and 12 ° (54F) but I guess people living in northern Scandinavia, Canada, Russia are thinking the same about me. I will ramble on and discuss a bit about how I tackle riding in the winter months of southern Sweden, which I am doing now, with clothing, gear, training, nutrition and so on. I don’t ride if it’s under 5° (40F), mostly because there is a chance of ice on the roads but also because I have problems keeping my hands and feet warm. I hope I can get over this in the future by getting a gravel bike or mountain bike and ride slower in the...

In my first ever blog post I told you about the overall “plot” of this blog. I think it’s in order to tell you a little bit about the background story. I will try to keep it short, so I don’t lose you on the way: In January 2017 I moved to Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. I brought a suitcase of clothes and my road bike. I had been cycling since the summer of 2016 and started to see some glimpses of my fitness from my teen years when I played football and floorball. Anyway, I started to ride on the roads around the city of Quetzaltenango and realized quickly that the infrastructure hasn’t really come that far as in the south of Sweden. But on my second or third ride I met another road cyclist who happened to speak English and I had made my first Guatemalan friend, a cycling friend. He showed me some awesome climbs, among others the “famous” climb up to the “cumbre Alaska”, peak Alaska. I have been told it’s called Alaska because its always cold up there at just above 3000 meters ov...

Yet another cycling blog, or is it? Well, yes, in a way it’s exactly like that but with a slightly different angle. I think, I am not totally sure and honestly, I am a beginner at this, writing a blog for everyone to read. It’s a bit daunting since I am not 100% confident in myself but what can go wrong here. For starters, English is not my native tongue and I wouldn’t consider myself as fluent in the language, so expect some errors on a regular basis. My native language is Swedish, and Sweden is the country I was born and raised. This blog will not be so much about Sweden but the cycling in Guatemala where I moved a couple of years ago to be with my girlfriend, sorry, fiancé (still getting used to that). In Guatemala I got in touch with the cycling community quickly and this is the story about how I navigate on the Guatemalan cycling scene with all cultural clashes, beautiful Guatemalan climbs, drunk drivers and everything that comes with trying to stay with the Guatemalan elite...