Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Event: WMOC 2010 - Pays de Neuchatel - Switzerland
 

Did the necessary in a pretty technically straightforward sprint qualifier, with a few route choice problems but no real fine navigation challenges - although a few people who hadn't read the program came to grief by misunderstanding a high bridge. Felt reasonable running without being brilliant, and handled the stairs OK - not that a qualifier is the place you want to have a flyer physically. (I did have a scare in the sprint qualifiers last year, although one big advantage this year is that I'd actually eaten in the 48 hours prior to the race this time). Achilles still a little touchy.

I was expecting Christoph Plattner (whom I'd regarded as the pre-event favourite) to come through me from two minutes back, but he didn't. Ended up in 15th place but only just over a minute down (although there were three significantly faster times in the other heat, on the same course). Realistically I'd be happy with a top-20 in the sprint and a top-10 in the long - the field is deeper than the last two years and I'm not in quite the same shape. On qualifying times I'm 28th combining the two heats, but the final should be a bit more technical which will suit me better; this was really a running race.

We were reminded after finishing that Swiss event organisation is not always as flawless as the country's reputation would lead you to believe (no-one who was at the 1996 World Cup will need much reminding of this) - someone had clearly neglected to work out how many download stations would be needed to handle the flow of competitors. The queue was around 20 minutes when I finished but blew out to an hour later on.

The opening ceremony was also a bit shambolic, but Switzerland hardly has a monopoly on that; it was somewhat unhelpful that the ceremony venue was a block away from the designated municipal firework-exploding place. For those not from the Territories who have forgotten what a good old-fashioned cracker night looks like, this weekend is it (Swiss National Day is tomorrow). Fireworks were being set off in other places too, including next to the fifth control while I was the process of punching it.

(I thought the fireworks might also make for a very disturbed night's sleep, but as it turned out more disturbing were the loud and continuous church bells at 6am - the Church obviously being an exception in a country where noise pollution is taken so seriously that using a washing machine on a Sunday is deeply frowned on in many quarters. Australia clearly has had a different attitude for some time as I found a 1910 newspaper article about an upheld noise complaint in Melbourne involving church bells).

WMOC model event at Le Prevoux. This is supposed to be the model event which represents the 'hard Jura' (long qualifier 2 and final), as opposed to the 'fas Jura' (qualifier 1). It was still easier going, I think, than France (to some extent this was expected because of the higher altitude). Not as many sinkholes as there were in France, but lots of small features in sometimes vague country. As always, model event day is about seeing what the map interpretations are like, and my scoreboard is:

Green/yellow: excellent, and unusually for central Europe, mapped to summer standard so if it's yellow it really is yellow, not yellow with medium green stripe.
Tracks: some of them are small, and a lot of them are muddy. Wouldn't count on seeing them when crossing - old walls are better for that.
Brown dots: tiny!
Black dots: also very hard to see at times - most of the boulders aren't very big and a lot are covered with moss.

The one concern of the day is that the ground is soft and my Achilles wasn't particularly comfortable pushing uphill on it. Hopefully that's a function of most of the climbing being early on a day when the first few controls were the warm-up.

The racing starts tomorrow: sprint qualifying in the evening, then the final the following day. The town where qualifying is looks pretty bland and I suspect it will largely be a running race, which would be a worry if qualifying in M35 was as brutal as it is in say, M60 (six heats, 14 qualifiers from each).

The public transport system is, unsurprisingly, working pretty well. I'm staying in Biel because I left it too late to get anything reasonable in La Chaux-de-Fonds or Neuchatel, but the way the program has turned out, apart from not having a sprint day at "home", it's almost as convenient a location as either of those two.

C • It's official ..... 6

Travelled to Wengen in the Jungfrau region yesterday. The forecast was not particularly brilliant but it ended up not being too bad - the cloud base was around 3500m, hiding the summits but still allowing plenty of impressive views from the train at Kleine Scheidegg, not least various waterfalls and glaciers and the north wall of the Eiger. The heavy rain started almost as soon as I left town (and proceeded to comprehensively soak me in Zurich).

We were in this part of the world, on the Grindelwald side, in 1981. This was where I first attempted to ski but remember the visit more for two other reasons - the boy who was running around the campground with a broken ski pole making a nuisance of himself to all and sundry and being referred to as the 'Grindelwald terrorist' (terrorism, of the Irish Republican and Italian Red Brigade variety, was much in the news at the time), and Cassie, who was four, reacting rather strongly to what was presumably the wine content of some fondue and treating us to much merriment for the rest of the evening.

Speaking of Cassie, now that it's out there in certain quarters I can mention in public something I've been sitting on for a couple of weeks - I'll be an uncle early next year.

As expected I was pretty stiff this morning, but this eased quickly and it turned into a better run than I was expecting - certainly more strength on the hills than I was expecting (and more than yesterday), not that the hills were as long as yesterday's were.

Zermatt is a place where one could burn a lot of money at a very fast rate (I saw a chalet for sale for roughly A$20 million), but I got a stellar Matterhorn view out my window for $85 a night. It was particularly stunning early this morning, which was completely clear, with the mountain in sunlight and the valley still in shadow.

Really tough mountain runs are not in short supply at Zermatt. I wasn't looking for a really tough mountain run but simply heading up the valley was enough of a challenge, with about 300m climb in 2km once past the end of the village. Levelled off a bit after that. Struggled at times on the steeper parts of the climb, reasonable after that, but didn't have a lot left in the final flattish section in the village coming back. The scenery was as good as you would expect, although there was still a bit of cloud around, which I expected would clear (and it did).

Part of the way along there was a policemen and various other people in fluoro vests above the river - I don't know if that means someone went into the river (it's the sort of river where going in is usually a one-way journey; do I recall correctly that somebody died this way during the multi-day event up here a few years back?). The "mountains toll" seems to occupy a similar place in the Swiss media during the summer to that which the road toll occupies in Australia (and seems to tick over at a similar pace). Among those who have not been added to it over the years were the two Germans who turned up in running gear with the apparent intention of running up the Matterhorn (they ended up finishing their trip in a helicopter) and the Slovenian snowboarder who tried to snowboard down the side and somehow survived a 700-metre fall after parting company with his snowboard halfway down.

The run was really only the prelude for the day, the main activity being walking the Hohbalmen Hohenweg - which takes you up to 2750m (with 1000+m climb in the first 4km) and provides a truly spectacular view of all the mountains. Definitely well worth doing on a day which had just about perfect conditions; the only negative was that my discomfort with heights meant I didn't make the most of the panorama on the highest part of the traverse, looking mostly at the path in front of me and not off to the side. (It is a well-trodden hiking path, but it's only a single-track, across a 60-degree slope with 800 metres to the valley below...).

This ended up being a hard day, perhaps too hard for four days out from WMOC (1800m of climbing, and perhaps more relevantly 1800m of descending). Don't seem to have destroyed my quads (although tomorrow morning may tell me more), but definitely pretty knackered. Somewhat to my surprise, my toe caused me no significant grief, either running or walking.

C • Wow 1

Used this run to clear a minor logistical hurdle, starting it from dropping the hire car off and thus saving myself a 25-minute walk back to the hotel. Dropped down initially to the river and then an out-and-back along it, with the 'back' section taking in the stretch where the later part of Friday's course was. A few niggles, most notably that my about-to-fall-off-for-the-last-month toenail now has an edge which digs into the flesh occasionally on downhills (more so walking than running, which may be an annoyance tomorrow), but not moving too badly. Steady light rain through the run, but it didn't persist through the day as I thought it might.

The rest of the day was devoted to travel, five trains' worth of it (all connections functioned smoothly, as you'd expect given that three of the four connections were Swiss). Now in Zermatt; I don't exactly have the place to myself but then it's popular for a reason. The top of the Matterhorn is in cloud tonight, but the forecast for tomorrow is excellent.

Final day of the 3-day in France. An easier area physically than yesterday - not as many brambles or as much loose rock - and more limestone depressions on a basically flat plateau - an enjoyable area to orienteer in, although still a little on the green side. More errors than yesterday but with one exception they were small ones (the largest was 1.5 minutes at 17). Was struggling a bit for concentration towards the end, and having some difficulty holding a straight line in flat terrain at times (a problem that's afflicted me in Europe before). Probably a bit better than yesterday physically. Not quite as far down as yesterday, but still 7 minutes behind the lead.

The gaps on both sides of me grew so I ended up staying third - the first time I've placed in a European event of any description (apart from a couple of days placings once in a Norwegian multi-day) since winning M18 at the (British) November Classic in 1989. This meant my first exposure to the prizes on offer at European events. I'd heard rumours that a couple of kilos of cheese was involved which might have made things tricky, but it turned out to be a bag of items, all of which are either edible (biscuits), drinkable (mineral water) or potentially useful and not too heavy (car warning triangle and reflective vest, T-shirt and cap).

Even though the result wasn't my main priority here, it was still nice to get one - although if I'm to have any realistic chance of a top-10 result next week then a placing in this company is the minimum standard.

If I was chasing a result the start draw hasn't done me any favours this weekend: in the storm yesterday and early both today and tomorrow, which means no tracking, and this morning also meant fog (not something I'm used to seeing in Europe in July). This weekend, though, isn't really about the result (although I won't complain if I get one), so getting the chance to prepare for WMOC in the most difficult conditions possible is a plus rather than a minus.

Except for one control my fine navigation was functioning very well today. Unfortunately, that one control (#15) cost me a fair bit of time, probably 4-4.5 minutes. It was a textbook Continental terrain mistake - small boulder on a vague slope in green - and was all the more frustrating because I'd successfully made it through the limestone section (which I read reasonably well, but the rock underfoot was hard going). Only other time losses were route choices, most notably 1-2 where I probably cost myself a minute or two by trying to go straight across the slope rather than dropping to a track, not yet appreciating how slow the forest was. Not especially happy with my uphill strength in soft ground, but then I never am when I first arrive.

Two European orienteering features I haven't missed: charcoal burning grounds (the only way I recognised any of them was by the orange and white flags) and yellow that turns into green in summer.

I was surprised how slow this was - even on rock-free legs I wasn't getting much under 7-8 minutes/km. There was a fair bit of undergrowth which slowed things down, but at least I now have a better indication of just how wide it's worth going to use tracks here. (That said, at WMOC's altitude I don't think there will be as much undergrowth as there is here). When you finish with a kilometre rate not much into single figures you worry that you might be totally off the pace, but in fact I was fifth on the day and moved into third overall. There's a bit of space on either side of me so unless either I or someone in front of me screws up I should stay there. Glad I didn't run 21E - I would have been looking at 95-100 (and probably the same tomorrow) which wouldn't have done me any favours at this stage.

Unusually for Europe, I had to hire a car to get to the event areas, so took advantage of this mobility for some afternoon exploring. I was a bit sceptical when one of the main tourist attractions was labelled as the 'source of the Loue' (the local river) - I'm not used to river sources being exciting, but this one was a full-blown river emerging from a cave (limestone country). There were also a few other interesting features, including a narrow-slit gorge of a kind I've previously only seen in Karijini. A few of the features of this landscape (especially the underground rivers) featured fairly prominently in the fantasy worlds I was creating when I was ten, probably influenced fairly significantly by what I was reading at that stage.

I'm planning to be in Zermatt Tuesday/Wednesday. Anyone got good advice for the best runs to do there whilst not destroying myself a few days out from the World Masters? (Runs done with the police in hot pursuit don't count).

First race of this trip, a sprint-style event (but longer) in Besancon - starting in the citadel then moving down into the old town before an easier finish through riverside parks. There was a fair bit of rust early on, both physically and mentally (although I don't think the multi-level 1, where I lost a bit of time, was really mappable); also missed a little at 8 going up a ramp I didn't need to, and was rather tentative on wet steps and pavement, in a run which coincided neatly with a thunderstorm (it wasn't ultimately a race which counted for that much, after all, and I have a somewhat unfortunate history with sprints in the wet). This manifested itself most on the leg down the city wall staircase at 15. Started to stretch out better in the second half and got back the people who'd gone through me from 1 and 3 minutes behind. (I'm running 35s here, but the 21Es had the same course tonight).

Fastest time up when I left was 31, although that was done in the dry which might count for a minute or two. Didn't see what Olivier Coupat (eligible for 35s but running 21s) did. As always with European old town orienteering, it was a lot of fun even if I wasn't especially hapy with my performance.

On another subject, my last reflection from London is on how difficult it is to get a profile in a small sport. One of the people I saw there was an old school friend I hadn't seen since then (in other words 22 years). I knew he'd been active in fencing at a junior level at school, but it turned out he'd had an elite career probably on a par with, say, Shep (captain of Australia, in the world top 50 for a time, narrowly missed out on making the top-32-of-rankings cut for the 2000 and 2004 Olympics) - something I had absolutely no idea of.

Travel day from London to Besancon - my first taste of the Channel Tunnel and associated high-speed trains. It was also my first experience on this trip of an obligatory experience on all my European trips, the tight connection (even with having to cross central Paris it shouldn't have been desperately tight, but in one of a few minor annoyances on the day I didn't have enough euro coins for the metro ticket machines, they wouldn't take my card and for a time all the ticket windows were shut). Made it with five minutes to spare (and without having to run the length of any platforms with full pack).

As noted yesterday I've spent the last couple of days mixing in generally more affluent company than is usually the case, which reached a slightly incongruous height yesterday in the form of being dropped back to the London Central YHA in a Porsche. (OK, so it was a second-hand Porsche picked up for a bargain price in the middle of the GFC - there were a lot of luxury cars going cheap in London circa November 2008).

First foray onto the orienteering scene in Europe tomorrow. It's a 3-day, town sprint tomorrow, Jura limestone terrain the next two days. Saw Eddie Wymer (whose home area this is) at registration.

Swapped sessions around between yesterday and today because I thought that the Lake District was more suited to a long run and central(ish) London to an intervals session. Regent's Park was the venue, being the one bit of greenery reasonably close to where I was staying, and I even found a bit of a slope (so half the reps were up and half down). A rather patchy session but had its moments.

Mega-cities aren't really my style so the principal purpose of my visit here is social, involving catching up with various people I haven't seen for between six months and 22 years. Last night was interesting on a number of levels, partly for its insight into possible alternative trajectories my life might have taken. My companion was a school friend who was the smartest person in the year two years below me. Like me, he did a PhD (physics in his case), and like me, he got offers from investment banks towards the end of it, and decided to go down that route. He's certainly making a success of that in the terms that success is defined there (i.e. he almost certainly makes more money per month than I do per year), and seems to have at least something resembling a life as well (unusual in that industry), but I still don't think I'd trade places; I doubt he would either. I do things that, perhaps, three other people in the world can do at the same level, and that kind of job satisfaction doesn't have a price.

My lunch company today was Jamie Potter, who is well settled in the law in London - I doubt we'll be seeing him back in Australia (except on short visits) any time soon. He's moved into public law (reviews of government decisions and the like) rather than commercial law, which seems much closer to what I thought he really wanted to be doing. I won't be surprised to see him end up as a judge.

C • Yep 2

Going to/from Regents Park, with fewer traffic interruptions than might have been expected - although this was partly because I did as London pedestrians (and cyclists) do and ignored all traffic lights.

It stopped raining briefly around dawn but had started again by the time I headed out, but only very lightly. The cloud base was a bit higher which was enough to encourage me onto a run which is apparently on a well-trodden Lake District runners' list (or at least that's what I read in Bilbo's Cafe yesterday), the crossing of Loughrigg Fell, before going north as far as Grasmere and returning along the ominously-named Coffin Track.

Loughrigg is a long way from being the highest fell in the Lake District and the track doesn't go particularly close to its top, but it was still a fairly solid 150 metres of climbing to get above the treeline. Looks like nice orienteering country when it doesn't have bracken, and nice running country too, which may explain why this was my best session since the Cairngorms. Lots of gate opening and closing which was a bit of an annoyance. The ground is quite hard underfoot so mud wasn't really a factor, but some tracks were almost streams and I had fairly wet feet by the end of it.

The rest of the day was spent travelling to London (the first sunny break appeared just as I was leaving). Now here for a couple of nights in pursuit of a hectic social calendar before moving on to France.

C • France 2

Today wasn't any more amenable to going up on the fells than yesterday was (in fact the cloud base was even lower - 250 metres or so - and the rain was hevier). This run stayed at low elevation and was sort of reasonable once early Achilles tightness (which has come back a little in the last couple of days) eased. The rain has obviously been very heavy at higher elevations and the rivers are running very strongly indeed, which at least meant it was a good day for looking at waterfalls, but not much else. (At least this meant I didn't feel bad about losing an hour of potential sightseeing time in the process of doing an international teleconference out of an Ambleside phone box).

The forecast for tomorrow morning is better which may provide a final opportunity to get up onto the lower fells, but I'll believe it when I see it. Off to London after that.

Original plan was to travel to the Lake District yesterday but I was having trouble finding accommodation there on a Saturday night, so instead headed for Penrith on its eastern edge. This run was a chance to check out Ullswater, within range on a long run. It was an earlier run than I would have liked, driven by bus and hotel breakfast times, but that may not have been a bad thing as some of the back roads I ran on would have been uncomfortable with any more traffic.

The run was pretty dismal for the first 20 minutes and only gradually improved, with climbing always a bit of a struggle, but developed into something reasonable from about 45 minutes onwards. The views of Ullswater weren't as imposing as I'd hoped, partly because of trees, partly because of cloud (which was to turn into rain for much of the rest of the day). This shore was also lined by campgrounds, most of which I wouldn't have been welcome at because they were signposted 'families and couples only', which was slightly jarring even though I had no intention of staying there; middle-class white males don't have a lot of experience of being on the receiving end of discrimination.

After spending a damp day, largely on buses, I felt somewhat inadequate at the Ambleside YHA, because many of the others there are coming off a 24-peaks-in-24-hours challenge. It's getting harder to find crappy food in Britain than it once was, but the (otherwise excellent) Ambleside YHA has managed it; I think I'll self-cater tomorrow.

Finally got around to taking on Arthurs Seat proper on my last day in Edinburgh, now that its summit is actually below the cloud base. As one might expect this involves some reasonably steep climbing (especially as I went up both major summits), which seemed to go OK. Lacked confidence, however, descending on damp grass, and the flat last 20 minutes were rather lacking in inspiration. I'm still not 100% well, although getting a little closer to it each day (and did manage to get through my talk without my voice giving out, just).

As noted earlier there have been a few throwbacks on this trip to my last visit to these parts in 1989 (in particular one of the conference rooms could have been a classroom at Winchester), so it was fitting that the place I went for dinner last night was playing what was fairly obviously a best-of-1989 CD (most of it songs that never got to the Southern Hemisphere). Some things have changed since then, though, because one of the forthcoming events of the (Protestant) church next to where I've been staying is afternoon tea with their 'friends' from a local Catholic church - in 1989 the big news story was that one of the Scottish churches had expelled one of its senior elders (also, if I recall correctly, either a judge or a government minister) for going to a Catholic funeral - or maybe those attitudes only exist in Glasgow. (I've heard it said that Rangers supporters are not going to stop shouting 'F**k the Pope' at Celtic matches just because they no longer believe in God).

And geographically clueless tourist of the day goes to the person at Edinburgh Castle who thought the small island in the Firth of Forth off Leith was the Isle of Skye. I leave guessing the nationality as an exercise for the reader.

Was hoping to get out into the lower part of the Pentlands but they were a bit too far away, and in the end I decided it wasn't worth crossing the main bypass road for the sake of a kilometre or two, instead looping through the suburbs (must have come very close to the Godders residence) to get the distance I wanted. At its nicest in a 10-minute stretch along a forested valley south of the Royal Observatory (and a European evergreen forest on a grey day can be a very dark place indeed). It rained for quite a lot of this run (on top of 35mm in the last 48 hours) and mud was much in evidence on the unsurfaced patches.

The run itself was a bit more consistent with what I would have expected with post-illness recovery, lacking a bit of energy, especially on uphill sections in the last 30 minutes. At least I've got a voice back now though (just in time for my talk).

Very Edinburgh: standing on one of the bridges yesterday evening waiting for a bus, with the sound of an open-air Rod Stewart concert drifting across from outside Edinburgh Castle.

And I found out the reason why I saw so many police near Holyrood Palace on my run yesterday: the Queen's in town. I didn't see her, but some of the other conference attendees did, and so did Lilian (who's in town too).

C • Bombers 7

I've got a bit more of a voice today (although by no means a full one) and was feeling a bit better otherwise so decided to venture out on a scenic exploration of Edinburgh, which would have been a more scenic exploration of Edinburgh had the city not been swathed in dense fog - into town initially from where I'm staying (about 3km south of the city), down the Royal Mile, then a circuit of Arthurs Seat (or rather where I was guessing Arthurs Seat was). Pleasantly surprised with how well the run went - it was rather slow but felt quite strong, especially on the solid climb around the back of Arthurs Seat (I didn't go to the top - will save that for a day when I can actually see something once I get there - but still got a bit of uphill).

Quite a bit of extracurricular excitement at the conference yesterday afternoon - in the space of 90 minutes we had two fire alarms (in different buildings) and an epileptic seizure.

Having a Rod Stewart concert on the embankment outside Edinburgh Castle was a nice idea but the elements didn't exactly cooperate ('Do Ya Think I'm Soaking?' was the 'Scotsman's take on it).

Still not feeling great today so decided to bring my weekly rest day forward and hope things are better tomorrow (the steady rain encouraged me a bit in this decision).

I was hoping before the start of the week that it might have been a weekly swim rather than a weekly rest day, when I discovered that the conference was next door to the Commonwealth Games pool, but (perhaps inevitably) it is closed for renovations. In Melbourne the nearest equivalent facility would be a couple of kilometres away at worst. In Edinburgh the nearest equivalent facility is probably in England. (It's probably improved a bit since then, but at the time of the 2000 Olympics there were seven 50-metre pools in the entire UK).

I'm at the stage now of sounding very croaky (just as well my talk's on Friday) but feeling better than I did yesterday. Wasn't quite sure how this would work but it wasn't too bad, not the sharpest interval session I'll ever do in my life but quite acceptable. This was a fairly standard travelling workout, 10x 1 min with 1 min recovery, in the Meadows (a park south of Edinburgh). Very pleasant morning for it, cool with a cloudless sky (the forecast for tomorrow is not so pleasant).

A bit of soreness was noticeable at the front of my right ankle when pushing off. I first noticed this on Sunday and attributed it to its usual cause, too much time on the accelerator, but it's taking a bit longer to ease off than it usually does.

Last time I did this session was on the beach at Jervis Bay in August; a few months later the rock I used as a distance marker was used by a friend as a place to get married. I imagine the Edinburgh Meadows get used a bit for this purpose, too, but probably not anyone I know.

Going to/from the Meadows. Definitely grinding the gears in the first couple of minutes.

A pre-conference morning session, a lot of which was devoted to exploring the neighbourhood and discovering what was where (and getting onto the hills as far as the Royal Observatory). That mission was accomplished, but as a run this was pretty poor; I've had a hint of a cold for several days now and it seems a little worse today than it has been.

Conference random thought 1: is a potential non-football application of the vuvuzela to draw the attention of conference speakers to the fact that they have run over time?
Conference random thought 2: given the problems caused by lack of ship observations in the northwest Indian Ocean, is there potential for offering Somali pirates a chance to make an honest living by taking ocean observations rather than nicking other people's boats? (Given how lucrative nicking other people's boats is, probably not).

This was a run done in the name of exploration (not for the first time in my travels), into the Cairngorms from the eastern side. I'd been sort of in the area in 1989, but as I didn't have my own transport then, was starting from Braemar and went about as far as the end of the road at Inverey. This time I started more or less where I left off in 1989, and headed west up the upper Dee valley and into Glen Geldie. After the first few minutes this is remote alpine valley country. Again the peaks were in cloud, but the remote starkness of the scenery was still something of beauty.

I was working hard at times on the first half, which was gently uphill and into the wind. Ended up turning around a bit early after hitting a river crossing (which would have been manageable, but there didn't seem much point when I was turning around in a few minutes anyway), and then hit my best spell of the run - the next 20 minutes went very quickly. Made up some distance (and saw some good scenery) with a side trip up a side valley. Hard work at times in the last 20 minutes, but had something to chase because a man and his two young sons (on mountain bikes) were going the same speed as I was 100 metres ahead. (I was to come perilously close to squashing the youngest of them on my way out of the car park, when he ran across the road without looking).

Got back to Edinburgh in the evening, in time to settle into my place of residence for the next week, and watch the World Cup final.

I'm not sure this really qualifies as a 'run' as I wasn't running for very much of it. My destination was the Trossachs, home of a WRE in March, running some controls from a course Godders gave me. I'd been warned it was hard going, and it was, but I don't think I can blame jet lag for my slow progress (although I may be able to blame seasonal vegetation, of which more below).

It's a steep area, fearsomely so in places, with a fair number of knolls and associated gully formations and a fair number of cliffs on the sides of the knolls (which are not as prominently mapped as one might anticipate). Reminds me a bit of some pre-alpine terrain I've run on in Switzerland and Austria. The thing which made it really difficult, though, was that a lot of the less steep areas (which would otherwise have been the optimal route choice) were overgrown with bracken which was anything from waist-high to head-high. I gather not much of this bracken is there in winter or early spring, but would be interested to hear more from those who know better. Glad to see what this terrain looks like (and also that I don't have to run on it every week).

The rest of the day was spent on the west side of the ranges as far north as Inverness (taking advantage of my knowledge that the weather was likely to be best on the west side today, and the east side tomorrow). Nice country although the peaks were under cloud. Also rather on the tourist track with plenty of buses, and foreign-plated cars, in evidence (although the latter is not always an indicator of being on the tourist track - I spotted a campervan with Austrian plates in Kalumburu last year).

My attention was also grabbed by a one-paragraph news item in the Guardian to the effect that Westminster trading standards officers had closed down an impotence clinic in London after undercover officers found they recommended treatments without medical examination and failed to produce any evidence for the theraputic claims made for their nasal spray. The offending business, was, of course, none other than our very own AMI: Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oi Oi Oi! (The fact that the Westminster local council has apparently succeeded where the ACCC and sundry state authorities have failed for years also suggests that Australia's consumer-protection laws could use improving).

C • Trossachs 1

The streets of Heidelberg were lined with posters, both 'Ja' and 'Nein', for a forthcoming referendum on 25 July. Not sure what the issue was but I think it's something to do with redevelopment of the town hall.

It took 33 hours to get from Heidelberg to Heidelberg. (In case you're wondering how I came to be in the German one when I said I was heading for Scotland, the answer is that I had 10.5 hours between flights in Frankfurt and the idea of spending that in the airport, or even in Frankfurt, was not particularly appealing). Past experience has told me that it's good to have a hit-out early in the day when you arrive (plus the forecast of 34 degrees was an incentive to get out early), so I dropped my gear in a locker at the station and headed out more or less along the river. Felt very ordinary for the first 5 minutes, then reasonable through the middle, but tired a bit at the end. This then set the scene for a few hours walking around the town (or its tourist bits at least).

The flight wasn't too bad. The Melbourne-Bangkok leg was only a quarter full, so it was a pity that it was a leg I didn't really want to sleep on. Got some sleep on the next leg, but not as much as I would like, and today has been hard going (especially the trip back from Heidelberg to Frankfurt, 90 minutes on a very hot day on a train without air conditioning). Have made it to Scotland now.

Last hit-out before departure. It will also be the last time for a while that I run in the dark (indeed it will probably be the last time for a couple of weeks that I even see the dark). A reasonable session up north as far as the bush at the back of Macleod, coming back through Springthorpe, although again a little slow. Definitely felt better for having actually slept last night.

Noticed on the last bit that the redevelopment of the public housing further up Darebin Street has started. We're a fairly broad-minded bunch on Darebin Street so, unlike the public housing plans at Hodgson Street (a km or so to the east), there have been no resident complaints that I know of. Naturally, as with the Islamic school at Camden and the mosque at Baulkham Hills a few years back, the complainants are only concerned about the traffic.

Out to the airport in a couple of hours (I couldn't stay in the country for my entire birthday!). I've got just about everything done that I wanted to get done which makes me a bit more relaxed.

C • Elongated birthday 2

Caffeine abuse in the AFL has been much in the news this week. It was also caffeine that brought me unstuck last night - at least I'm assuming that a rare post-dinner coffee was the reason why I wasn't able to get to sleep until something like 3.30. As I was getting up at 4.30 this didn't exactly make for the best night's sleep.

Frankly I expected this run to be terrible. A lot of the time it didn't actually feel too bad, and flowed nicely at times (particularly down hills), although it was a bit slower than I would have liked (newsletter delivery would have contributed to this). Felt a bit tired, and a bit sleepy, in the last 20 minutes, but all in all as good as I could reasonably have expected in the circumstances.

I'm slowly whittling down my before-departure to-do list, which is just as well because today is my last full day at home before five weeks away. I fly out tomorrow afternoon. Edinburgh is forecast to be a whole 1 degree warmer than Melbourne was today (but 32 in Frankfurt, where I will spend a day in transit, will be a shock to the system).

A couple of nice pre-departure bonuses though. My application for funding for the conference week had disappeared into a black hole, and I assumed it had been knocked back and nobody had told me, so it was quite a surprise to find out today that it had gone through. Last year's tax refund also turned up in the mail. Between those two I've got about $3K more to play with than I thought I did.

On the Tan, for reasons to do with later-in-the-day logistics - 250 on/250 off. Never really got going this morning and I don't think I can use the cold as much of an excuse. Back also rather tight, although didn't really flow through to the hamstring.

Only 17 items left on my to-do-before-departure list....

It sounds like the sort of thing you'd expect to find on the front page of the NT News after Territory Day, but this particular genius actually hails from Sunderland:

"A man suffered internal burns when he tried to launch a rocket from his bottom on Bonfire Night.

Paramedics found the 22-year-old bleeding, with a Black Cat Thunderbolt Rocket lodged inside him, when they attended the scene in Sunderland.

He suffered a scorched colon and is now recovering in hospital, where his condition is described as stable.

A spokesman for the North East Ambulance Service (NEAS) said the prank could have been fatal.

Douglas McDougal, from the NEAS, said: "We received a call stating there was a male who had a firework in his bottom and it was bleeding."

C • What a blast! 3

The Northcote pool is exceedingly warm and good for trying to send you to sleep, which may explain the sedate pace of today's session. The principal mission was accomplished, though - to loosen some of the stiffness from yesterday's unexpectedly long session.

Monday night run from Bruce's place - not as common an occurrence as it once was, now that it only happens during school holidays. A bigger crowd than has recently been the case for Monday nights (i.e. you needed both hands to count them).

Pretty stiff at the beginning but got going better once the early soreness was shaken out. Thought I had a bit of a quad twinge on cooling down but it seems to have disappeared again now. No sign of hamstring soreness tonight.

3-hour street/park event at Werribee. I was thinking that something like 2.15 was about what I was wanting to do today and this event gave a good purpose to such an undertaking. Needless to say, once I actually got running, the idea of pulling up at 2.15 with 35 out of 40 controls done became less attractive as an option, and I ended up doing one of my longest runs for some time - hopefully I won't end up regretting this. Hamstring a bit more touchy than it has been in the last few days, but didn't get any worse as it went on (if anything it probably improved a little).

As a long run it was a pretty good one, settling down nicely in the early stages and going nicely for most of the rest of the way, only really tiring in the last 20 minutes. Also a faster pace than most long runs in recent months (especially when you factor in, say, 5 seconds per control for punching), which suggests that the competitive juices may have subconsciously penetrated me to some extent. One careless error when I ran up the wrong street and lost 90 seconds or so, and a few other time losses when I planned route choices through gaps which no longer existed (or, in one case, had become part of a gated community - something I will ban when I become dictator of Australia, after I finish with suspending the broadcasting licences of any media outlet caught referring to "mini-tornadoes"). Apart from these misadventures route choice seemed reasonable.

Werribee is a fairly easy place to do a long run - there certainly aren't too many hills to get in the way. Events like this are also a chance to do some suburban exploration, which at the south end of the map involved a lot of boganmobiles parked on nature strips (no sign of the owners - 10.30 on a Sunday morning is too early for them).

And one of life's little mysteries - my right big toe was hurting a bit on the run, but when I took my shoe off to reveal a very photogenic red stain on my socks, it was being generated by toes three and four.

Bendigo Saturday event at Mandurang, with a weaker field than is sometimes the case for these (no Toph, Evan, Jim or Keelys). My last hit-out in the terrain before leaving, as well as being my first run in terrain since the hamstring injury - the good news on that front is that there was no sign of trouble (and indeed hasn't been all week).

My main objective here was to get my navigation as clean as I possibly could, a mission which was accomplished. Not super-fast but felt reasonably strong uphill (albeit on hills which were mostly fairly short). Found a bit of pace at the end in pursuit of a target of cracking 40, which I did - just. A bit over a minute up on James Robertson.

My (bright orange) 2005 NT Championships T-shirt may need to be used this week for purposes other than making myself visible on a bicycle. (In the days before Australia qualified, my World Cup support was generally directed towards Ireland, Holland and whichever Scandinavian countries qualified). As I think I've noted earlier, I expect to be watching the final in an Edinburgh pub and would imagine that Holland (assuming they make it) will be reasonably popular in those parts too. (I'm also led to believe that, had England made the final, the locals would have been supporting whoever England was playing against).

Somehow, I don't think I'll be going sub-6 minutes/km on the Trossachs this time next week.

Pool running at Fitzroy. I've been talking a bit about lack of light lately but this was something a bit different; this session was a bit earlier than usual and I started it in darkness, which feels a bit odd in an outdoor pool. The session itself was pretty good; working reasonably hard.

I'm also working hard outside the pool, being in the usual pre-overseas mode of having three weeks' worth of stuff to do and only one week to do it in. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy long-haul flights - once you go through Customs you can relax.

Not one of my better Thursday mornings - perhaps I can blame it on not having any soccer to watch at 5.30 for the first time in a while. (It also had the feel of a day when I was about to get sick, but no signs of that, yet). A pretty sluggish session, out through Balwyn initially and then back via the Chandler bridge.

Being out when the light begins to glimmer and the city awakens is a nice feeling, but it will still be good when it happens a bit earlier.