In January, I wrote a post called “The Road Back”. I had a cautious plan: rebuild slowly, target 12–13 hours for Vätternrundan, and use the race as a benchmark for my rebuilt endurance. Five months later, I crossed the finish line in 14 hours and 30 minutes — and felt nothing but relief.

The Setback

The backstory is short but significant. Late November last year, a bad flu spiraled into heart irritation. Two months of forced rest — no cycling, no running, nothing. My resting heart rate sat 15–20 bpm above normal. By the time I was cleared to train in late January, my CTL had cratered to 3.6 and my body was sending mixed signals about how much it could actually handle.

The plan I laid out in January was careful: volume before intensity, HRV and resting heart rate as guardrails, and a revised Vätternrundan goal of 12–13 hours — a finishing focus rather than a performance target. It looked reasonable on paper. Reality had other ideas.

The Rebuild That Wasn’t

What followed from February through April wasn’t the steady climb I’d mapped out. Instead, it was a series of fits and starts. Heart rate variability would trend upward for a week, then spike downward — 25 ms one day, 74 ms the next. My resting heart rate averaged 61 bpm across the entire period, stubbornly refusing to settle back below 55. Every time I strung together a couple of good weeks, my body would send a signal to back off, and I’d lose another 7–10 days.

By mid-March, my CTL had crept up to 9.5 — progress, but barely. Then came the real disruption: a new work role that put me on the road far more than I’d anticipated. From February through June, I had exactly four full weeks of uninterrupted training at home. Four. The rest of my calendar was a patchwork of flights, hotels, and destinations where bringing a bike wasn’t an option.

The travel didn’t just steal riding days — it stacked a second layer of stress on top. Long travel days meant poor sleep and elevated resting heart rate, which meant sessions that looked fine on the calendar needed to be scaled back or skipped entirely for recovery reasons. When I could train, I was often lacing up running shoes in an unfamiliar city, guessing at routes and hoping the effort translated. The structured cycling build I’d planned in January assumed consistency I simply didn’t have.

A late-April hiking week — the last extended pause — marked the bottom. From May onward, something finally clicked. My heart started responding more naturally. The recovery metrics began to stabilize. And with the race deadline creating its own motivation, I strung together the most consistent block I’d had all year. I wrote a training update in February and a pre-race reflection in June documenting the ups and downs along the way.

It wasn’t enough — not by the numbers I’d set in January. My CTL topped out at 31.7 against a target of 50–55. FTP sat around 190–200W, a long way from the 240–250W I’d revised down to. But when I lined up in Motala on June 13th, I wasn’t thinking about what I hadn’t done. I was thinking about what it took just to get there.

Building PacePartner: Adapting to Survive

Sometime in March, staring at another week where my Intervals calendar looked nothing like my plan, I stopped trying to force the issue and started building something instead. I wrote about the full story behind building PacePartner and how I used it to prepare for Vätternrundan, but the short version is this: PacePartner wasn’t born from ambition — it was born from friction. I needed a way to ask simple questions against my own data: “I only have 45 minutes and a pair of running shoes — what do I do?” or “I missed two days. How do I rebalance without overloading?”

The tool didn’t make me fitter. It made me adaptable. When a travel day killed my long ride, PacePartner would suggest a run targeting a comparable load. When HRV dropped, it would flag the risk and recommend dialing back. I stayed in control of the plan, but the decision layer — the mental math of translating data into adjustments — got lighter.

That shift from rigid planning to flexible adaptation was, in hindsight, the reason I made it to the start line at all. Without it, the travel disruptions and the inconsistent recovery would have derailed me completely. With it, I could keep moving forward, even when forward meant sideways.

Race Day: 316 Kilometers at 190 Watts

The first half of the ride felt genuinely good. The pace was comfortable, the legs were cooperating, and for a stretch there I almost forgot how little base I’d actually built. That feeling lasted until somewhere after Karlsborg, when the wheels came off — not dramatically, but unmistakably. I’d underfueled and overreached, and my body was making sure I knew it.

A handful of gels later, things stabilized. The second wind carried me through the middle section, but by the final 40 kilometers my legs were done. Every climb became a negotiation, every kilometer marker a small victory. When I finally crossed the finish line at 14 hours and 30 minutes, the dominant feeling wasn’t exhaustion — it was something closer to okay. My knees were angry, but the rest of me felt surprisingly intact.

By the numbers, it was my slowest Vätternrundan. By every other measure, it was the one that meant the most. I’d gone into the race with an FTP roughly 50 watts below where I’d hoped to be, a CTL that barely touched 30, and a body that had spent the first four months of the year telling me to stop. And yet — I finished. Not just finished, but finished with the clear sense that this wasn’t an endpoint. It was a checkpoint on a longer road back. A sense of accomplishment that, given everything since last November, felt earned in a way raw pace never could.

What Comes Next

The UCI Gran Fondo World Championship goals I’d been aiming for? They’re not gone — just moved further down the road. What feels right for now is something simpler: get faster, get stronger, and prove that the trajectory is real before I start chasing qualification numbers again.

The plan for the next chapter is concrete. Two Gran Fondo races next spring — not to win, but to be in the mix, to race rather than just survive. And a fast finish at Halvvättern, using the shorter distance as a benchmark for how much speed I’ve actually rebuilt.

If Vätternrundan 2026 taught me anything, it’s that progress doesn’t need to look impressive on paper to feel meaningful in your legs. I crossed that finish line with 190 watts, a CTL of 31, and a body that had spent half the year telling me no. Next year, the numbers will be different. But the feeling — that quiet satisfaction of moving forward — that’s the part I plan to keep.