Speed, strength and patience.

Track has been a large part of my life and I’ve spent a lot of hours at the track or in the gym every week. I competed for Mölndals AIK the first nine years of my career and represented Ullevi Friidrott the last three years. I ran the 100m and 200m.

Even though I’m retired from track now I decided to keep this part of the web page up, mostly as a way for myself to remember what I did and to keep track of things.

From football to athletics.

I played football for the club Kållered SK until I was about to turn 18. That year circumstances and my physical education teacher made me try out tack. 18 is usually seen upon as an old age to start doing a completely new sport, but I guess it all turned out pretty good…

Representing Sweden for the first time in 2001.

When I decided to put my time and effort into athletics instead of football I got pretty good results right away. After two years I did my first appearance in the junior national team. In 2001 I got to represent Sweden in the European Cup running the 100m and the 4×100m. I ran a 10.51 and even if I was close a couple of times, that result is actually my best time in the 100m if you do not count wind assisted times.

After this, I had the opportunity to combine my studies with a career in athletics for several years. I had great help from a couple of sponsors were Reebok and Fysiken supported me throughout my entire career.

Ambitions.

I’ve been writing about my athletics career here at this web page during more or less all the years. In 2006 I wrote the following here on my website;

It is the summer of 2006 and the European Championships is taking place in about one month. It’s been quite some time since I updated this page on the web site. […] But this is what I wrote almost two years ago:

The summer of 2006 is two years away. For the next two years my main focus will be the European Championships here in Göteborg 2006. My ambition is to be able to perform my best during those championships and that I will experience the event from the track with 50.000 persons in the seats on Ullevi Stadium…

… and that is still my goal for this summer.

Up until now I have managed to run a 10.49w in the 100m - that is below the qualifying standards but the little ‘w’ means it was made with a too strong tail wind. We ran a pretty good 4×100m relay in the European Cup, and I think that it’s looking really good for a relay team in the Europeans. But, my main ambition is to qualify in the 200m - to do that I have to run 21.10, which is 1/10 second better that I did last year.

What happened then?

I did make it to the Europeans Championships in Göteborg 2006. Unfortunately, only as a relay runner in the Swedish 4×100m team. 10.49w was the fastest 100m time that summer and my performance in the 200m were not good enough.

I had a decent year in 2007, but after that my athletics career was more or less equal to being injured. I did manage to run a couple of competitions in 2008, and the last part of the summer was all right when taking into account the limited time I had to get in shape.

In 2009 I only ran one competition. We won the silver medal in the 2009 relays at the Swedish Championships. That also became my last competition since I injured my hamstring a couple of weeks later. I then took the decision to say “Thank you” and goodbye to my athletic career. I just found out that I was supposed to be a dad for the first time and I had a lot to do at work so it seemed like it was about time.

Thanks.

I’ve got a lot of people to say thanks to. The ones that I’ll always remember are the people who coached me during the years. Stefan Rönnäs helped me out the first year, and then Annika Dahlgren somehow managed to endure working together for a lot of years until we both felt we needed some new ideas. That’s when Peter Karlsson, the Swedish record holder in the 100m, teamed up with us for a year before moving to China. Finally, I had the pleasure to train with Anders “Palmas” Palmqvist the last four years.

There are a lot of other people that helped me out during parts of my career. You really need a good team around to be able to keep the body in good enough shape to be able to do all sessions week after week. I’d especially like to mention the physiotherapists Sixten Grönberg and Göran Johansson, osteopath Börje Andersson and Dr. Sverker Nilsson for helping me out during the years.

I won’t go into listing all my friends, competitors and teammates from all those years but I like to say thanks to Håkan Andersson for dragging me up to Sundsvall when I was a rookie and then letting me tag along to Formia a couple of times (even if I did manage to injure myself on all those occasions in Italy…). And, finally, to Torbjörn Erikson who I had the pleasure of living with on my first training camp with the national team.

Personal bests and other merits

Swedish senior national team

• Finnkampen 2008 in Helsinki, Finland. 100m and 4×100m

• Finnkampen 2007 in Göteborg. 100m and 4×100m

• European Cup in Vaasa, Finland 2007. 4×100m

• Finnkampen 2006 in Helsinki, Finland. 4×100m stand-in

• European Championships, Göteborg 2006, 4×100m

• European Cup in Prague, Chech Republic 2006. 4×100m

• Finnkampen 2005 in Göteborg. 100m, 200m, and 4×100m

• European Cup in Gävle, Sweden 2005. 100m and 4×100m

• European Cup in Bydgoszcz, Polen 2004. 100m and 4×100m

• Finnkampen 2001 in Göteborg. 4×100m

• European Cup in Vaasa, Finland 2001. 100m and 4×100m

• Inomhuslandskampen Sverige-Finland-Baltikum, Umeå 2001. 4×200m

Swedish junior national team

• European Championships U’23, Amsterdam 2001. 100m and 4×100m

• Nordic Championships, Göteborg 2001. 1st 4×100m (Nunez, Sandin, Åhlén, Ahl) (40.69) 2nd 100m (10.69) 2nd 200m (21.76)

• Nordic Championships, Espoo 2000 1st 4×100m (Bergström, Sandin, Ahl, Wahn) (40,82) 2nd 100m (10,71)

• European Championships U’23, Göteborg 1999. 4×100m stand-in

Swedish Championships

• 2nd 4×100m, Karlstad 2009

• 3rd Swedish Championships for Clubs (Lag-SM), Göteborg 2008

• 3rd Swedish Championships for Clubs (Lag-SM), Stockholm 2007

• 2nd 4×100m, Huddinge 2007

• 3rd 60m indoors, Göteborg 2007

• 3rd 200m indoors, Göteborg 2007

• 2nd 4×200m indoors, Göteborg 2007

• 1st 200m, Helsingborg 2005

• 3rd 200m indoors, Göteborg 2001

• 3rd 4×100m

Swedish Junior Championships

• 2nd 100m (10.53), Borås 2001

• 2nd 200m, Borås 2001

• 1 additional silver medal and 5 bronze medals in Junior Championships

Best results, year by year

Below is a table with the best results every year since I started running, that was in 1997 and the results from that summer are what I did without any track training what so ever.

I injured my back (got a slipped disc) just before the 2002 season. I managed to do a few competitions despite the injury that summer but afterward I had to spend the entire year doing rehab, and that shows in the results from 2003…