Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Morning jaunt around Stanthorpe with Jenny, including a trip to the lookout with the broadcast towers above town (about 120 metres above town level). I probably wouldn't have chosen something quite so hilly but was glad that I did, because I felt rather stronger on the climbs than I have at any time in the last fortnight - somewhat relative, but still gives me a little more confidence for tomorrow (not that big climbs will be a major feature of tomorrow).

Did some exploring in the rest of the day, including the Bald Rock climb - picked a good day for it (despite the chilly wind) with very clear air, and the view extending all the way to Mount Warning.

Did a brief wander around at the model without doing anything worth logging (except perhaps for getting sprayed with mud helping to extricate a bogged campervan). Brickbats on the way home to the aggressive, light-flashing and horn-blowing tailgater on the highway; I hope he did something productive with the nine seconds by which he ultimately beat us to the edge of Stanthorpe.

Thinking that tomorrow, 4th/5th will be a par result with anything higher being a bonus; I can't see myself beating Steve or Jock unless they strike trouble, although Eric (who hasn't had a great preparation) might be closer to the pack. Got to get round the course cleanly myself, of course.

C • Clean? 1

A brief jaunt to turn some SI units on before the start of the relay. Not as physical as yesterday (and better running conditions too), but definitely felt better, with more strength on such hills as there were.

This was the prelude to an excellent day's racing (including an epic final leg battle in the junior boys). The ACT ended up on top - not sure if this is a prelude to a 1990s-style dynasty, although the fact that the strength of the team is at the young end suggests it might be. I suspect more will be heard of the third-placed SA team too, although it might not be heard back in SA until the power is back on there.

(The reaction to that event suggests that Donald Trump's America is not the only place in the world where post-truth politics is becoming a reality).

Schools individual day. This rarely offers ideal circumstances for a good run - I've often been working on the commentary until shortly before starting. There was a bit more time today but I wasn't confident about it for other reasons - given my issues of the last couple of days I was happy to settle for just being able to get around and get a bit of confidence ahead of the weekend.

I was in two minds about continuing when things hurt a bit on the first hill coming out of 2, but seeing that that was the only hill of significance until after 8, I decided to keep going and see if it was better once warmed up. It was, more or less; I didn't push any of the climbs but was moving OK the rest of the time, though feeling a bit tired later on on a warm day. Nice area with some interesting rock lines - it's the first time I've orienteering in this part of Queensland and I enjoyed it (apart from the unidentified stinging object that paid my upper left arm a visit on the way to 16). Only a couple of minor misses - maybe 20 seconds at 8 and 10 at 19.

Haven't beaten all the kids since 2001 (oddly enough, it was Jules' time that I was chasing that day), and certainly wasn't going to today, especially after Patrick's great run. Think my time would have been just outside the top 10.

False start on a run this morning (not too surprising after yesterday), but fortuitously the local pool is just across the road from the Murwillumbah YHA (an interesting place to stay if very much of the old style, with a bit of hippiness mixed in). I expected I'd be swimming, but they had a pile of flotation belts so I was able to water-run instead, which went more or less OK. Probably timed this well as I got the impression from setting-up activities that this particular bit of water was about to be taken over by the time I finished.

Spent the rest of the day meandering through the far northeastern corner of New South Wales, viewing some impressive countryside (some of it paths previously trodden, some not). Plenty of evidence of local non-enthusiasm about coal seam gas exploration, most notably the huge banner over the road at the entrance to The Channon (which usually rivals Nimbin for Australia's highest Greens vote) - 'No CSG Not Now Not Ever'. (It was also in these parts where I saw an ad for a Sea Shepherd fundraiser). Later you pass the demarcation line between hippies and rednecks (indicated by the appearance of bullet holes in road signs) before going back into Queensland via the Lions Road from Casino.

There's not much at Rathdowney and there's even less where I'm headed for the next couple of days, so I may not be heard of much between now and Thursday night.

Post-Schools sprint. Felt OK on the warm-up and good in the first couple of controls. This was good while it lasted but it didn't last long - this race was Gone in 60 Seconds, because that's about how long it took for a back spasm to occur (unusual for a flat race). This one was at the nasty end of usual experience and slowed me right down - was very tempted to stop but thought failing to finish a sprint at a national carnival would be somewhat humiliating - perhaps best indicated by the leg where I was having trouble getting away from John Robinson (an outstanding runner in his day, but closer to 80 than 70). Did start to ease up a bit towards the end which is vaguely encouraging, but the time was suitably humiliating - barely beat any of the kids other than the reserves.

Maybe on the weekend all parts of my body will finally cooperate simultaneously. (The throat infection that's plagued me for the last week finally seems to be easing properly now).

A great day for South Australia, with three wins out of four. Angus Haines was particularly surprising - he's certainly fast and I thought he might be a top-six shot with a good run, but I definitely didn't see him as a potential winner.

I'm now spending the time between now and the end of tomorrow exploring the northernmost corner of NSW, having this afternoon managed to find a beach and associated settlement which the property developers haven't managed to get their hands on yet (Fingal Head).

C • Angus 1

Australian Relays at Mundoolun, running third for the second Victorian M21E team. I didn't have good memories of this part of the world, having had something of a nightmare run across the road at Collins Creek on the tail end of the Easter 2012 carnival.

Before the event I thought we would do well to stay out of the mass start, but my teammates did an excellent job, and at one stage it was even looking possible that I would take over in the lead. That didn't happen but six teams (in fact, all six of the teams that finished) were covered by about 3 minutes after two legs. Felt reasonable at the start on the climb to #1 and settled OK, missed #3 a little (and Bruce, who'd started a bit behind me, missed it a little more), and we were then together running up the long gully to #4. My plan was to turn off before what seemed on the map to be a leftward kink in the gully, but it must have been a non-obvious kink because both of us missed it and went in to search for the control on a slope which turned out to be 200-300 metres too far along (and at least partially off the map). This is the sort of mistake which is not usually noted for fast recovery and neither of us produced one. Eventually picked it up from above with about 4-5 minutes blown apiece.

Bruce ran away from me after that. Feeling somewhat disgruntled, I missed 5 a bit too (maybe 30 seconds) but then settled down through the erosion section. Up until then I was running OK but hit the wall at about 40 minutes; probably shouldn't have been too surprised by that after being sick to a greater or lesser extent all week. At least by then most of the climbing was done, but I had one more misadventurous leg to come - on #16, I (a) altercated with some lantana to reasonably spectacular visual effect, (b) took a route choice out to the road but then had a lot of trouble finding a place where I could come back across the fences (two parallel fences, one rickety, one new), and (c) while I was looking for a place to cross the fences lost track of where I was on the map and proceeded to head briefly up the wrong gully. Brain was definitely fading at this stage, and any sprint finish would have been a no-contest. (As most of you know, there were two great sprint finished, ACT-NSW for 1st and Vic-SA for 3rd).

Felt very washed-out after getting back (as evidenced by time spent sleeping in the late afternoon).

Event: Australian Orienteering Championships 2016
 

The traditional sprint controller's run around all the controls to (a) wake up such SI units as had not already been woken up and (b) check they were all in the right place and correctly numbered. This was slightly later than originally planned, (a) because I wanted to check that the new construction had been added to all the maps and (b) because there was a bit of a logistical mix-up with the arrival flags, but all worked OK in the end. A brief interruption to call back to base and advise that the boundaries of the new construction weren't quite as extensive as the map said they were and we needed some extra tape.

I think the event went well - it's a very challenging area and Anna made good use of it. As often seems to be the case on a technical sprint, there were some bits of the mapping which were at the borderline of legibility (most notably the small track around the pillar at #6 on the men's course, which I think with hindsight we probably should have stayed away from), but I don't think that took much away from the event.

Must have had a better run in July than I thought I had, because based on that run I was expecting a winning time of 14.30-15.00, and it ended up being just under 16.

Morning swim at Northcote after finishing the packing for Queensland (always something of a last-minute job). Took a bit of time to adjust the new goggles - getting their first use - to below skull-crushing tightness, but they worked well once that was done. Not a bad session once under way - fairly relaxed.

If there have been any more construction-related dramas for tomorrow's event I haven't heard about them.

We've got local council elections coming up and I was doing a letterbox drop last night for a friend who's running. Although they were on my 'patch', I didn't drop one in the Hells Angels mailbox - you never know how upset they might get about junk mail. Name recognition counts for a lot in local government elections and some candidates take the view that any publicity is good publicity, but on balance I think that getting shot would probably be a net negative for David's campaign.

Still taking it easy but not feeling as if I have a great deal more in me - will want to improve somewhat by Sunday (where my role is to run third for the second Victorian M21E team - a position which may have important NOL responsibilities if the first team encounters misadventure, which has been known to happen).

Headed out in between work and a dinner on a slightly augmented Tan loop. A struggle for the first 5-10 minutes but not too bad after that, although Achilles a bit sore at times (clearly the massage wasn't a miracle cure). Health continuing to improve but still not quite 100%.

The joys of sprint organisation: found out this afternoon that a new construction site has appeared on a key route choice, 2 hours after the maps went to the printer. Anna's red pen is going to be busy.

Had a pretty rough night (was at the stage where the throat infection of the last couple of days was clearing and I was coughing up the leftovers from it), so didn't expect a lot of this one. Didn't get an awful lot from it either, but it was at least a fairly standard run of its type after the first couple of kilometres.

Carelessly worded tweet of the day, from Channel 9 Brisbane reporting on an attempted robbery:

"Police say they went to a tavern in North Lakes and kicked a female staff member before demanding money".

The QPS quite reasonably responded that it was actually the crims which did that and not the police. (I suspect that in the pre-Fitzgerald days, it was probably reasonably common for police to go to taverns and demand money - perhaps more often in Fortitude Valley than North Lakes - although kicking female staff members probably wasn't part of the deal).

After getting through yesterday, my priority is now to get myself right for this coming weekend (and beyond), so took it pretty easy today. Pleasant enough as far as it went, and although it was a cool morning, the strength of the morning sun was a reminder of the difference between latitude 37 and 46.

It's been raining. Spent quite a bit of time today catching up on everything that's been happening while I've been away. It's already the wettest September on record averaged over the Murray-Darling basin, and NSW will probably go past its record on Wednesday or Thursday. The Stanthorpe forests are certainly going to look very different to how they did this time in 1982 or 1991 (both severe drought years, especially the latter).

Whilst checking the NRL website yesterday for surprisingly-hard-to-find information on when this weekend's finals are being played, I noted a media release for the naming of the 'NRL Academic Team of the Year'. The cynics may suggest that the qualification for this team is being able to spell "try" correctly in no more than three attempts, but in fact they managed to find 13 current NRL players undertaking, or graduates of, tertiary courses (including students of engineering and law, both at the Raiders).

C • stanthorpe forests 7

Victorian Long Championships at Chapel Flat. The cards were stacked against this one - I've run reasonably well in the past the day after returning, but this time I was sick as well (and the back was playing up a bit). Can't say I was full of enthusiasm about this one but went out after a stint working on the finish, just after what turned out to be the day's last shower.

The dynamics of this were a bit different - running M45 against a limited field with no big names, I knew that as long as I avoided disaster, if I got round I was almost certainly going to win. That took some of the pressure off. Lost maybe 45 seconds on 4 and 30 on 10 through not seeing flags tucked into small gullies, but otherwise handled the mining navigation reasonably well. Definitely started to fall away badly in the last 20 minutes, though, and that was manifested in the navigation too, not picking the start of the track on 16 and then making a significant parallel error on 17 and ending up leaving the spur to the east rather than the south - although the presence of a major track on the other side of the creek meant that this error cost me less than the extra distance would suggest.

On a better day I'd probably have wanted to go under the hour for this. Hard to compare kilometre rates as we had a much higher proportion of our course in mining detail (including two butterfly loops) than the M35/40 course did. Andrew Cameron did 77, while Ed Steenbergen, whom I haven't previously come across, dropped 20 minutes on #4 but was then only 3 minutes behind me from there to the finish - perhaps one to watch in the future. Both Andrew and Ed took a bit of time out of me on the last part of the course, which isn't surprising.

Think I'll take it easy tomorrow....

The flight home didn't start on a great note when the check-in person refused to accept the small pack on the outside of the big one (a set-up that has gone through airport of asking for years, including Geneva two weeks ago), but after that everything with the flights went smoothly - the connection at Dubai (which I was a bit worried about) proved to be the smoothest I've done there, and I got a reasonable amount of sleep on the second leg. Takes a long time to unload an A380 at the far end though...

Woke up with a few more signs of a cold and didn't have high expectations for this one, but actually felt pretty reasonable after working out Achilles tightness in the first couple of kilometres - perhaps the more invigorating conditions helped.

I'll have plenty of time to rest - about to head home, due to get home on Saturday evening (assuming things work OK with flights), then fronting up for the Victorian Long Championships on Sunday. (My one concession to the schedule is that I'm acting my age on Sunday).

Thought the conditions for this one might be interesting when a teleconference I did before the run took place to a backdrop of lightning flashes to the south, but the storm had moved away by the time I set out (to be replaced by occasional light rain).

As has often been the way in the last week or so, it took me a long time to get going even by the standards of this year - didn't really feel comfortable until about 5km in. By then I was on one of my classic Geneva routes, up the Arve to the waterworks bridge and then up through the posh, village-feel suburb of Chene-Bougeries. The run never caught alight, but was solid enough. No sign of the quad issue from yesterday, but a bit of a sore throat so I'm clearly not quite 100% well.

Feeling older moment: the discovery (thanks to a clip that's doing the rounds of the internet) that Toni Basil (of "Mickey" fame) is 72.

Wasn't finding it that easy to get myself going for this (the Achilles, as often on a long trip without a massage, is taking longer and longer to warm up), but more or less reasonable once doing the reps - until getting a twinge at the top of my right quad at the end of the 5th one. Didn't want to take any chances on this and immediately abandoned the session. It was already improving by the time I finished walking back so I don't think it will put much of a hole in future running plans (although I'll find out tomorrow).

Warm-up - no warm-down today (at least no running one).

I'm at the stage where I'm trawling a lot of national meteorological service websites in search of additional fragments of information to use in my reports. I was somewhat surprised to see that occupying pride of place on Paraguay's website was a rainfall forecast map for 12 November 2014, a somewhat familiar date (not sure why they were showing that one off because most of the forecast rain failed to materialise, at least in the places where I was). Africa has a few good ones - often from multi-country groups like the Niger Basin Authority - but also a reasonable number of countries where the national meteorological service either doesn't have a website or has a website that doesn't work (Zambia's, which last time I tried had the forecast for some date in 2006, is one of those). Nigeria's website took me to a promise to pay me US$6 million if I put my bank account details on an online form a "current" report which was four years out of date, and Burkina Faso's was blocked by the WMO firewall because they think it's a gambling site.

Bit of a nothing run this morning - slept OK but took a long time to loosen up, and lots of traffic hold-ups through the middle. The construction site for the new Eaux-Vives station (running two years later than it was the last time I was here) takes even more getting around than it did the last time I was here, which meant I ran out of time to get into the park out that way.

It's still warm in Geneva, but it's warmer elsewhere - Gravesend (Kent) got 34.4 today, a UK record for this far into autumn by more than 2 degrees, and although I haven't seen the details yet I expect there will have been more records across Europe all the way across into southern Sweden (don't think Gothenburg gets 27 in mid-September too often).

Took on the hilly route I'd passed up last Monday. Certainly hard work on the long climb through the first 2km (and my expectations weren't high after sleeping poorly on a warm night), but a fairly reasonable run in the end - no sign of injury issues on the main climb, which is worth it for getting into a semi-rural pocket only 3-4km from central Geneva. Always seems a very rapid descent at the end of this one and didn't get the sense my quads would have enjoyed much more of it.

The WHO building is even uglier than the ILO one (which I have mentioned previously in these pages), but at least its location makes it hard to see.

After having been under construction almost ever since I've started coming to Geneva, the redevelopment of the precinct which WMO is in looks to be complete. Most of those in this area are devoted in some form to reducing the number of premature deaths, whether it's through reducing armed conflict, tackling disease or - as in our case - reducing the impact of natural disasters. A jarring exception to this is the global headquarters of Japan Tobacco (which has no sign of any kind except for a very discreet 'JTI' in the lobby); I'm assuming their presence here is in the name of a cause close to the heart of any big multinational - not paying tax.

The Guardian used to have a reputation for typos (hence its nickname of the Grauniad in certain British circles). This was rekindled today when they reported that Derryn Hinch wanted to stop love exports.

Earlyish on a Sunday morning, lots of people in brightly coloured costumes were gathered outside a West End theatre. This might not seem too unusual, except that in this case the costumes bore names like "Porsgrunn O-lag", "OLC Winterthur" and "SK 24 Praha" (alongside numerous British clubs).

My expectation was that Soho/Covent Garden would be a less challenging orienteering experience than yesterday but would make up for it in the icons department, and this was basically right. A bit disappointed not to have any controls in Covent Garden (thought this might have been a permissions issue, but course 1 had some), but ran through it anyway even though it might not have been quite the optimal route choice. On the whole a reasonably straightforward course technically with some of the route choices more clear-cut than I would have expected, but still a lot of fun, with various interested onlookers and numerous signs of iconic places. (The count of Monopoly places visited on the course looks to be four - Bow Street, Coventry Street, Leicester Square and the Strand - with three other near-misses, Piccadilly, Trafalgar Square and Fleet Street). Traffic was less of a problem than I would have expected, due in no small measure to the fact that Charing Cross Road (which crosses the map from north to south) was closed to through traffic because of the Tour of Britain final stage later in the day - maybe that's why it was possible for us to run here?

As a fairly non-technical course, I expected to be further down the places than yesterday and was (about halfway; fastest was 23).

Transport to and from the event (only about 3km away from Matt Schepisi's place, where I've been staying) was by means of the city bikes, universally known as Boris bikes (and will probably still be known as Boris bikes long after most people have forgotten who Boris was).

Soho course B - Splits

Someone I was starting with yesterday, who I don't think was a terribly experienced orienteer, didn't have a compass but did have a compass app on his phone. I think I confused him spectacularly by asking him whether the app was set to magnetic or true north.

C • Says it all really! 2

London City Race, on the south side of the Thames at Rotherhithe. This part of London, perhaps more than most, has led a few different lives over the last couple of centuries, from the scene of some of the slums depicted in Oliver Twist, to a busy docks area through the mid-20th century (with some interruption thanks to the Luftwaffe), to its current incarnation as a relatively quiet and increasingly upmarket housing area, with the docks mostly filled in. The area might have been lacking in the iconic features that the London City Race sometimes provides (that will come with the Soho event tomorrow), but was an excellent area from the urban orienteering perspective.

A bit disconcerted at the start because it took me a while to find the start on the map (the alignment of the triangle was such that two of its three sides coincided almost perfectly with fences), and that might have carried on a bit further because I overshot a pathway on the way into 1 and lost 15 seconds or so. In general it took me a bit of time to get my concentration into gear, but I managed to avoid the trap at 4, and thought I'd planned to avoid it at 7 but then made a mess of my execution, and decided to cut my losses and switch to another route choice instead, which cost me probably 40 seconds or so. No further significant losses on route choice or fine navigation, on a course which featured a couple of legs which looked very long on a 1:5000 map (but were in fact just over 1km apiece), and running better than I often have been over the last couple of months. A fun day, and managed to get in before the rain started, although still very humid.

The mistake on 7 was costly; there was a bunch of 18 people within 2 minutes in my class (veteran men, M35-49), and I was 17th of them, narrowly beaten by some familiar names (Richard Baxter, Martin Ward) and plenty of unfamiliar ones. Ended up 27th, about a quarter of the way down. Fastest time was 42.

Rotherhithe course 5 - Men's Vets - Splits

Event: London City Race Weekend
 

As promised last week, this week I took to the waters of Lake Geneva for my swimming session at the Bains de Paquis - a lot quieter than they are in the evenings (as evidenced by the fact that there was no-one to collect the 2-franc entrance fee). I don't think I've done a swim training session in 'natural' waters since one at Edith Falls in the NT on the 2009 trip, and one difference with that is that Lake Geneva definitely has no crocodiles (even freshwater ones).

Felt a bit strange at the start but OK after the first few minutes - didn't quite judge the distance of my circuit around the two pontoons right and pulled up a little shorter than I normally would. In one direction I was going straight into the sun and seeing the right direction for the pontoon wasn't easy, but the tower whose shadow looks like a minaret (the construction of which was banned a few years ago in one of the less glorious moments of Swiss direct democracy) was a useful landmark.

The outside of the Hotel President Wilson was crawling with police (some heavily armed), and the slightly-more-distant outside was crawling with news cameras, which I took to be an indication that Somebody Important was in town - not infrequent in this part of the world. Some subsequent searching revealed that the Somebody Important was probably John Kerry, here to meet with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in the name of making probably limited or non-existent progress towards stopping the war in Syria.

Off to London for the weekend tonight, with a bit of adventure on the way to the airport on the number 28 bus; we had to divert because of a crash, and once off the normal route it gradually became apparent that the driver didn't have a clue where he was or where he was going. A fellow passenger came to the rescue with a map on his phone (although the map wasn't always great at identifying which streets were bus-suitable, so we went over a few gutters). Eventually made it to the airport about 20 minutes after we were supposed to.

Not terribly fast but a steady run, taking advantage of a quiet public holiday morning. Got into some nice areas in the middle part of the run, taking in some country lanes on the southeast side of the lake (as often in Switzerland, you can't go too far wrong following yellow signs). Never really flowed but no real issues with endurance. Achilles a bit sore at times, which is often an indicator that I've gone for too long without a massage. Longest run since June.

Felt a bit sleepy at times afterwards, on a day when I spent a bit of time on trains - using the day off (which I hadn't expected to have before I arrived) to go to the nearest reasonably accessible really high mountain on the Swiss side, Glacier 3000 (which, as the name implies, is a glacier on top of a range at roughly 3000 metres) east of Aigle. Unless you have plenty of time, and plenty of endurance, and more of a head for heights than I possess, you get there by cable car from Col du Pillon, at about 1500m (going north, rather than south, from there would have made for a nice run). Spectacular views as you might expect (and felt warm in the sun even at 3000m), and abundant evidence, in the form of meltwater streams and a big sinkhole, of the glacier's questionable future.

(I had been thinking of going to the Chamonix-Mont Blanc region but scrubbed that idea because of the limited public transport between Geneva and Chamonix outside the ski season. This turned out to be a good move, because I've just heard on the news of helicopters being called in to rescue people on a stuck cable car at Mont Blanc).

For some reason I'd had thoughts of doing a long run this morning, with the idea of clearing a bit of space on Thursday (which is a local public holiday, something I didn't know before I arrived) for going to the mountains. (I forgot to bring a pack I could run with, which made the logistics of going for a long run in the mountains themselves a bit too difficult - plus, as readers of Neil's log will know, mountain runs at this end of the Alps are pretty full-on - the high valleys, plateaus and tracks across slopes tend to be further east).

Anyway, sometime around 1am when I still hadn't succeeded in getting to sleep, I came to the realisation that it made no sense whatsoever not to take advantage of the holiday for a long run (not least because the roads within the inner urban area will be much quieter), and did something shorter today. Headed down to the path along the Rhone, which is a bit rough in places (even allowing for that it was a pretty slow run). OK as far as it goes, but it probably wasn't a bad thing that I wasn't trying to push out two hours today.

Definitely an improvement on yesterday - probably something to do with having slept well (in turn probably something to do with the lower humidity). Still not exactly something to get excited about, but did the necessary. Quite windy on the lakefront this morning but didn't feel especially different upwind or downwind.

Took a while to get going, and not so sharp coming back either.

Saw an ad today for a Charles Sturt University PhD project looking at the "ecological, genetic and cultural significance of taxidermied Murray cod in the pubs of the Murray-Darling Basin", requiring travel to "some of Australia's most iconic watering holes". I'm guessing they'll get a few applicants.

Felt pretty drained yesterday afternoon after the run, considering it was some way short of an elite long distance. While I hadn't noticed anything in the sickness department, Mum thought I sounded croaky when we spoke yesterday morning, and mums are always right about these things, aren't they?

Whatever the cause, I had the sense when I got up this morning that it wasn't going to be a great running morning, and settled for something on the flat (I'd originally had thoughts today of taking to the hillier country up past the UN headquarters). Was still pretty awful.

The Spanish heatwave really got down to business today - as the tweet about Seville's 44.8 (a September record by more than 2 degrees) said, "record anterior pulverizado". I'm not too upset that it's not going to find its way here, although high 20s (as it has been every day in Geneva up until today, and will be again later this week) is still warm for this time of year.

Event: 6. Nationaler Langdistanz / Jugendcup
 

I'd had a few options this weekend (particularly as Geneva is a hub for Easyjet, which means it has a lot of flights to southern European destinations). One I seriously considered, if only because I haven't orienteered in Spain before, was a weekend based in Malaga, but perhaps it's as well I gave that one a miss - away from the immediate coastal fringe it was over 40 both days of the weekend.

Swiss national event at Irchel near Winterthur, an area which I'd thought of as classic Swiss Mittelland terrain but in fact had a bit more interest to it, particularly in areas where rocks had fallen off the slopes, but it was still basically continental - a plateau on top with slopes off the side which ranged from moderate to OMG!

First leg accounted for nearly a quarter of the course (in distance at least) - seemed to be basically a transport leg which didn't seem to have much route choice (at least to me), but a good way to get into things after not always feeling great in the warm-up. Into fairly steep stuff then for a few controls before flattening out again. Then it was a plunge into the steeper stuff - I thought I'd taken a route to 11 which would miss the very worst of this, but there were still sections of it where the only way I could find down was to slide on my backside. (I think to be good at going down the really steep hills you need to start out as a fearless teenager). Unsurprisingly I lost a couple of minutes on this leg (relative to my standard % behind the fastest on the other legs). Finished off with a leg back over the hill where I at least got the route choice right.

Reasonably happy with my navigation (only two non-spikes were where I ran to another flag on the way through being not 100% sure where I was, not more than 15 seconds apiece). Couldn't run the steeper climbs but reasonable in the terrain otherwise (certainly better than Sweden), just couldn't handle the extreme stuff. A couple of former national team runners were up the top with Daniel Hotz doing 52.

Slept through my alarm this morning (first time I can remember doing this) so went out sooner after getting out of bed than I normally would. Perhaps it wasn't surprising that I wasn't very awake for this run and only in the later stages did it start to feel reasonable, although one positive was handling the climb through the old town without too much trouble. I'll have plenty of hills to handle tomorrow so it's encouraging to see some evidence of still being able to function on them.

The rest of the day was devoted to travelling to tomorrow's event area (near Winterthur) via an indirect route with the principal purpose of looking at mountains - Geneva-Brig-Andermatt-Zurich. Some of this was unexplored territory for me (Andermatt and the valley downstream from there), some of it was taking me back to the scene of the 1994 World University Championships (Fiesch, which we successfully ate out of bananas) and the notorious 1996 World Cup race (Leuk). There were plenty of paragliders out at Fiesch - I think it's a local claim to fame because the opening ceremony flag at WUOC 1994 was delivered by one. That opening ceremony had a few flag-related issues, because they gave us New Zealand's flag to march behind, and somewhat more undiplomatically, gave China Taiwan's.

I didn't take any pictures of the Rhone Glacier in 1994 so I wouldn't have been able to tell you how far it's retreated now even if I'd been able to see it from the train. I think this was the glacier which was involved in the story a couple of years ago about the village which had prayed in the 17th century or thereabouts for the then-advancing glacier not to destroy their town, and have now written to the Pope formally asking for their prayer to be rescinded.

One of the less attractive features spotted was a kilometres-long traffic jam at the entrance to the Gotthard Tunnel, something which I gather is a regular occurrence (especially on weekends). I was glad to be on the train. The Swiss transport system didn't quite live up to its clockwork reputation (five of seven legs were late, and one section was replaced by a bus because of a derailment which, if I understand the local paper correctly, involved a runaway train with no driver), but I made every connection, finishing up with a 6pm Saturday bus which you might have expected to be quiet but instead was full to bursting point with kids on their way home from what I presume was a sport event of some description (don't think it was today's orienteering, although I could be wrong).

C • Public transport 4

C • We drove thru the Gotthard 3

As long-time readers will know I've never been a particular fan of the Piscine de Varembe - too many people and too high a proportion of those people who have a substantial sense of entitlement (rather like Kew in that respect). It reached new heights (or possibly depths) this morning in the form of someone, probably one of Geneva's Masters of the Universe during the day, whose way of sending a get-out-of-the-f***ing-way message to those who were slower than he was was to go straight over the top of them. At home I'd probably have had words with those supervising, but I'm not on home turf here.

Assuming the weather's good (and it looks like it will be), the lake looks a much better option for this time next week. I went down this evening and wasn't exactly the only one there (the over-water climbing wall was a particular hit), but it should be good in the mornings.

C • Time for tood old fashioned Australian squirrel grip? 1

Never much pace in this but a reasonably solid morning's work. Headed out initially to the Le Lignon footbridge (after a couple of false starts finding my way down to it), then on tracks along the river for a while before climbing back out - nice to see the forest in its summer mode (although it wouldn't be so nice to run through). Got a bit confused coming back because I'd come out of the valley a bit earlier than I originally planned and didn't see a main road I was expecting to see (turns out it goes through a tunnel which I'd gone over the top of), but eventually relocated. By then I was running later than I'd planned and headed straight back into the city along a main road before finishing up along the lake.

Felt better starting than I have on other days this week; started to lack energy in the last 20 minutes which may have been through not drinking en route (not as easy to get water mid-run here as it is at home). Longest I've done since June.