Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Felt a bit out of sorts this morning but went out for a run anyway, and it went all right - not particularly sharp but then I'm not usually out this early on a Saturday. Started out on Aranda Hill and the west side of Black Mountain before finishing off around Aranda and Cook.

Ended up being a busy, but long, day - three talks in a day is a bit (even if it was basically the same talk). We had about 1000 people through during the course of the day which certainly exceeded expectations. Plenty of familiar faces to be seen (some from a long time back, like Marie Plunkett-Cole, one of my "colleagues" when I did Year 10 work experience at the ABS, and the head of the ANU Geography department when I did honours there). Managed not to get too distracted first time round by the restless toddler in the back row (will have to give ALJ a personal presentation of the last five minutes of the talk that she missed when I get a chance).

Some testing of things for the Australian Sprint at Grammar - not quite as things will be on the day because a critical gap was blocked off (it won't be on the day), but still a nice trial run. Felt more lively than in the last couple of days, although still a bit short of a top gear.

Heard a name from the past this morning: Klaus Pinkas, who was a few years above me in early 1980s ACT junior ranks. These days he's an official with whichever union is responsible for ACT garbos (and has been in the news because they've been on strike).

C • Must be quick 4

At a rather crowded CISAC after a rather hectic day. Couldn't really relax properly but did the necessary for the most part.

Not a run which gave me a lot of confidence for the weekend. The first two-thirds were a moving-along-OK-but-never-felt-comfortable session through UC and around the north side of Lake Ginninderra (where, for the first time I can remember, there were cattle grazing on the peninsula), then it became a real struggle for the last half-hour, with quads and calves both fatiguing significantly. Felt a lot better after stopping for a couple of minutes to talk with Hanny (also in the closing stages of a run, in the opposite direction), but who's to know if it would have fallen apart again given another kilometre or two?

The Canberra Raiders are doing their best to knock Essendon off the back pages (at least here), although as someone remarked, it's a bit harsh to suggest that Blake Ferguson has done the full Todd Carney trifecta - he may have been speeding while disqualified but as far as is known he was not drunk.

In Canberra the election campaign technique of choice is the roadside sign. Most prominent are the Greens and their 'Abbott-Proof the Senate' (I'm told that down in Tuggeranong a local eating establishment has posters alongside with 'Hunger-Proof Your Stomach'), but numerous parties feature. Liberals v Greens for the second Senate seat is the only genuine contest in the ACT - it's one the Greens have long hoped for but never quite got, but with more-than-usually-intense rhetoric about public service cuts, and a messy Liberal preselection where the incumbent was dumped (in legally dubious circumstances) because he wasn't right-wing enough (probably not something which will play well in Canberra), it might be closer this time. A Greens win here would just about ensure that an incoming Abbott government wouldn't have control or effective control of the Senate, regardless of results elsewhere.

Was looking at Tasmanian rainfall figures today. Diddleum was not particularly dry underfoot when used in early autumn for Easter 2009, so I'd be interested to know what it looks like at the moment - the nearest gauge has 499.6 millimetres so far this month.

Back to an old stamping ground - a circuit in Cook I used for fartlek sessions in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I'm not sure I've remembered exactly where the sprints were, but think I was reasonably close. One immediate discovery - 5 minutes is not enough to warm up for such a session these days.

As is often the way when I run at the end of a long day which has involved some travel, I felt ordinary at the start. Often it comes good. Today it didn't. At times I was wondering whether I was really doing anything useful but it's now in the book.

A very lively start to a run which didn't ultimately quite live up to that promise, though still not the worst I've had this year by any means. Once again not great up the hills. A nice crisp springlike morning; by this time next week we may well be counting the records broken by what is shaping up as a heatwave of historic proportions for the time of year. (It's still unclear whether the hottest air will get as far south as southern Victoria, but if it does, there are possibilities for Melbourne to get close to 30 on Sunday and again in the middle of next week; could make for a tough day's work in the Victorian Long Championships).

My next move, tomorrow, will be to Canberra in preparation for a presentation I'm doing on Saturday as part of the Canberra centenary celebrations. Best score so far has been tracking down a photo of John Curtin holding a snowball in August 1929 (would have been better still if he had been in the process of throwing it, but you can't have anything). Something I was looking at today was trying to find out whether Canberra's coldest day (2.1, 25 June 1949) was snow or persistent low cloud/fog. It was a Saturday so there was no paper the next day, and I eventually found myself going to the football reports from Monday's paper, which failed to mention any snow so I'm assuming there wasn't any. The scores were also implausibly high for it to have been snowing, although Manuka did their best to kick themselves out of it - the quarter-time score against Queanbeyan was 5.15 to 5.1. (They eventually got 24.35).

Monday night's run was in a different part of town to usual, so the swim was also in a different place to usual, the Brunswick Baths (inside, rather than outside as on my one previous visit there because the outdoor pool was being renovated). Fairly short pool (20 metres) and glad that no-one else was in the lane until the very end. Also quite warm in the water. I must go faster pushing off the ends of the pool than actually swimming because the time was quite fast.

There was quite a media scrum outside AFL House when I went past on the way to work (it was bigger still on the way home - the biggest crowd I've seen there since the Sydney Swans supporters' vigil outside Barry Hall's tribunal case in Grand Final week 2005). I was tempted to do a bit of mischief-making, and wander across and see if any of the journos would ask me for comment. (Could really have some fun with this - could truthfully say things like 'I don't accept that the AFL Commission is the appropriate body to hear any matters relating to me' and 'I'm not aware of any use of banned drugs or supplements in the sporting bodies I'm responsible for').

Monday night from Clare's place on the west(ish) side of Coburg, though once again we went east, ending up at Merri Creek and on up to Coburg Lake before returning through the old Pentridge site. A pleasant if undemanding run, which was more than I expected after some back soreness on the bike after work. With 3/4 of the run involved in the climate game in some form or other, there was a certain amount of work talk.

I've occasionally remarked on the quirks of the minor parties contesting the election. The latest one I've noticed is that the Outdoor Recreation (Stop The Greens) Party haven't put the Greens last on their Senate ticket - they're ahead of the Trots and a few independents. (In ALP parlance, all of the various fragments which have emerged from the myriad splits in Australian communism are referred to as "Trots", whether they're Trotskyists, Marxist-Leninists, Stalinists, Maoists, Eurocommunists, or even followers of Kim Jong-Un if there are any).

2-hour park/street event at Maribyrnong Parklands. Felt so-so for a lot of this before fading alarmingly in the last 15 minutes - not a good sign for next week (assuming the course is long enough to keep me out for more than 105 minutes). Took a route different to most (at least I assume I did because I barely saw anyone until the later stages), doing the north side of the course in Essendon first, then down the west side of the river - a rather awkward route through the south-western quarter but I'm not sure there were any nice options there. At this point I realised that I had some work to do to get all the controls in time (having thought I had a bit in hand when I went through 20 controls - out of 40 - in 54 minutes), and wouldn't have made it but for being able to "get" two of the last three from a distance (multiple-choice Q+A format again) - though that perhaps makes up for wasting a minute on 46 when I was at the correct feature but didn't look high enough for the date on front of the building (which was the question there).

Pretty tired through the rest of the day again - I don't think everything is quite right with my body at the moment, given this and the cramping issues from Friday.

A rare weekend at home (although I'm still a bit away from the first half of September when I will actually spend a complete fortnight without leaving Victoria). This was a regular Saturday run, starting on the Yarra Flats. A good first half but started to tail away a bit in the hillier second half. No injury issues, but felt unusually tired this afternoon despite having slept properly last night.

Did my first bit of election campaigning after this - providing support to a street stall at the Rosanna shops (my main job was to distract any Liberal campaigners who turned up, but none did - they were at Heidelberg - so instead most of the time was spent discussing ideas on transport policy and swapping stories of minor-party-candidate idiocy with the local state MP and Jenny Macklin's electorate officer.

Just when I thought I had my body clock under control, I woke up around 4.15 this morning and couldn't get back to sleep.

This morning was a standard if somewhat nondescript session, on a showery morning, until about halfway through when I got a nasty cramp in my left calf - the worst I can remember having since 2009 (when there was the rather more obvious explanation of attempting to do a long run in the midst of a history-making heatwave), and I'm not sure why. Eventually settled enough to be able to restart, but felt like it was about to go again when the metaphorical final siren sounded.

An unusual Friday lunchtime run (I've already had my rest day this week). Calf was still feeling after-effects of the morning cramp before I started, as well as the mysterious thigh soreness which has been surfacing at what's known in our trade as 02Z (= 0200 GMT, or 4am in Norway and noon here). Both disappeared as soon as I started running and this was a reasonable session on the Tan.

Encountered Bruce at the start of the Tan and had a brief discussion on matters Essendon (now that it looks like we are going to get the boot from the finals, Adelaide supporters need to hope we beat Carlton this week and then for Port to do likewise next week - the latter, in particular, is a case of the last round making for strange bedfellows). Making less sense was the preaching Islamaphobe on Southbank whom I heard saying "you don't see Christians killing each other". Clearly he's never heard of the IRA or assorted Protestant paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland, or the Lord's Resistance Army.

Latest nomination in the bizarre candidate stakes: one Paul Lewis, Capricornia candidate for the Rise Up Australia Party, who thinks that the UN conspired to cause the 2010-11 floods in Central Queensland (http://www.gladstoneobserver.com.au/news/un-caused...). At least he was honest enough to admit: "Rise Up Australia Party's Paul Lewis yesterday expressed concern his views might not get him elected".

That last spot on my Senate ballot paper is going to be especially hotly contested this year...

An unusual evening long(ish) run, after a lengthy and fraught body corporate annual meeting (suffice it to say that all of the skills I've learned in a couple of decades of occasionally refereeing ALP factional brawls had to be called on to prevent things from getting completely out of control between the other two owners present, who were at loggerheads). Wanted to take out some frustrations on the roads and tracks on a damp night, and essentially did so. Going along steadily and without too many of the niggles which have been a feature of late, although rhythm was broken by a required pitstop after 11k (one aspect of my body clock which is not yet back on Australian time) and I wasn't quite the same after that. Rather slow at the end, although I think darkness may have been a contributing factor there. Planning something longer on Sunday.

I set an alarm for 5.57 in full expectation that it would be unnecessary, which it was (I was more or less awake from about 4.30). This set the stage for a strange sort of run - on the one hand my legs felt quite lively, on the other hand my head felt as if it wanted to fall asleep at any moment. Really hit my stride in the later stages - flowing as well in the last 2k as I have for a while.

I then had a flat spot through the first half of the morning, but surprisingly good thereafter - belying my prediction at the start of the day that the probability of my falling asleep in a 2pm meeting (something I have a bit of a reputation for even without assistance from long-distance travel) was on a par with the probability of Australia's 2013 temperatures being above the long-term average. (We are running far enough above average for the first eight months of the year that September-December would need to be the coolest on record, by some margin, for the annual value to be below average).

Had a few extremes to dig my teeth into on my first day back - Timber Creek set an NT August record yesterday with 39.7 (0.3 short of the Australian record, and the highest which wasn't in the last week of August), while Hobart (-0.4) had its coldest August night since 1962 and its first minus in any month since 2007. Also sent 69 e-mails, at least two-thirds of which were related to work....

(And the 5.57? It allows me time to get out of bed, get rid of surplus fluids accumulated overnight, go downstairs and turn the radio on in time for the 6am ABC news).

A pretty straightforward trip home - especially at the Melbourne Airport end, where there was no queue at immigration, my bag was in the first 10 off, quarantine decided they weren't interested in my shoes and the taxi got an almost clear run - from aircraft at gate to front door of home in 45 minutes (one of few PBs I'm likely to set this year). Slept pretty well on the second leg too - perhaps too well as I didn't wake up until 3pm Australian time (which then caused issues later). Most impressive aerial sight - the maze of watercourses in the area inland from the Pilbara coast (southeast of Exmouth, northeast of Carnarvon) - this isn't an area one usually flies over in daylight.

Had some athletic company on the terminal bus in Doha (and briefly at the carousel in Melbourne), in the form of Alex Rowe on his way home from Moscow. He's one of the numerous first-timers in this year's Australian team who, without doing anything that the media would notice, got further into the competition than he was expected to (the 800 semi-finals in this case), and is one of those people whom it was apparent was going to become a friend inside the first two sentences.

Final run before leaving for home, after seeing Max off to the barnehage ('childcare' is a loose translation but doesn't seem to quite capture it) - he's still enthusiastic about it but not quite as enthusiastic as he apparently was this time last week (first day at the new place), when Cassie said they were going at 9 and he was ready to dash out the door as soon as a '9' appeared on the clock (in the form of '8.09').

Took a fairly unexciting route, in which a significant consideration was not wanting to get any mud on the shoes which had been cleaned - something which ruled out any of the forest tracks, as almost all Oslo forest track runs involve mud somewhere. An out-and-back north through the suburbs, missing a couple of turns picking my way through one section on the way back. School must start at 10 (at least today) because a lot of kids (mostly of lower-middle high school age) were walking in the vague general direction of the local school - it's the first day back after the holidays.

Similar to a lot of my recent runs, fair without being anything to get too excited about, but managed the big climb back without too much trouble (there aren't too many runs from Cassie and Jim's place which don't involve a big climb at some stage, usually at the end). A crisp morning with a first-day-of-autumn feel to it, especially in shaded valleys. Woke up with soreness in my left thigh in the middle of the night (presumably through sleeping in an awkward position) but it was nowhere to be found this morning, or on the run.

Now on the way home - hopefully without a bonus day in Qatar (on time at this stage so should be OK). Get in Tuesday evening.

Had originally had thoughts before the start of this weekend of doing something at some stage on the map which Jim's family property is located on (haven't had the chance on my two previous visits, one because it was winter, one because we were passing through after a tough World Cup and I was carrying an injury anyway). The logistics didn't work out, though (and Jim was coming off the Norwegian ultralong champs yesterday - not sure if the map is online but if so the first leg is worth a look) so instead this was another run from the town in Kongsvinger, this time a couple of kilometres of grinding up the hill to the south of town, then across the top as far as a lake. Fairly hard work (and slow) up the hill but not painful; once on top a steady run without much sparkle.

That then set things up for the rest of the day's festivities in Lunderseter, the old home village, where the extended families - one of Esten's cousins was also being christened today - was a very different crowd to the usual Sunday morning in the local church (what I took to be the normal congregation, up the back, numbered in single figures, all of them north of 60). I'm sure some deep and meaningful words were spoken but I couldn't understand many of them. Definitely a significant celebration, though, and the first time for a while that I've had the chance to meet up with most of the Norwegian side of the family, of whom there are plenty (Jim is one of five siblings, and his older sister has four children).

The post-event lunch was then in the hall of Lunderseter IL (the local sports club), which could easily have been its Australian country equivalent except that about two-thirds of the trophies and plaques on display related to orienteering, with the winning team from the relay at the 1956 Norwegian Championships (and the map from same - a rogaine-standard 1:25000) having pride of place. One interesting feature was that the relay changeovers weren't at the start/finish - I wonder how long this was standard practice? It must once have been a much larger place than it is now - these days it's just a collection of houses strung out along the road, population probably struggling to reach three figures. The most recent loot on display was from O-Festival in 1991, which I remember well as my first attempt at Norwegian orienteering (successful beyond any expectations on the first two days, then got overwhelmed by starting third, between two podium finishers from that year's JWOC, in the chasing start and blew up on the last day; with hindsight, part of the reason why the first two days went well was that the terrain was atypical for Norway).

C • Norwegian Ultralong 2

C • Weather 7

Spending time in the hot waters of the Blue Lagoon was a nice experience and also seems to have done my back some good, but there was one consequence I didn't think about - you lose a lot of fluids when you spend significant periods in 40-degree water, and I was sufficiently dehydrated to need to get up to drink water twice during the night. This contributed to an atrocious night's sleep.

It proved to be a drawn-out travelling day - the plane was supposed to be leaving at 7.50 and I was at the airport by 6, but got the word there that it was delayed, with a rescheduled time of 10.10. It ended up being another hour later than that because the scanners at the gate failed and everybody's details had to be entered manually. With the time difference, it was nearly 4 by the time I got into Oslo, over three hours late.

With the afternoon disappeared, once we'd arrived in Kongsvinger and checked out our not-big-enough-to-swing-a-cat room, I decided to head out as soon as I could. I expected to feel awful and the first couple of kilometres weren't great, but once that was out of the way it wasn't too bad - mostly on a track along the river which I guess turns into a ski track in winter. Back was OK. Went past Kongsvinger's weather station - they can't have vandals in Norway because there was no fence of any kind around it (ditto for Iceland).

After some of the swimming pools described in earlier sections it seemed a pity to do my weekly proper swim session in a reasonably conventional Reykjavik pool. The one clear bit of evidence that one was in Iceland were the several outdoor hot tubs alongside the pool. Apparently quite a bit of Iceland's business is transacted in these hot tubs (I was reading an account of someone who got their money out of the Icelandic banks in the nick of time in 2008 on the advice of somebody they met in the hot tub). A slow and slightly awkward-feeling swim on a drizzly morning. Back wasn't great today and I was glad I wasn't running (although sometimes when it feels bad walking it's OK running).

The swimming pool had a sign for karate, which grabbed my attention by being one of very few familiar words on a sign. Icelandic is closely related to the other Nordic languages (apart from Finnish) and if you know a reasonable number of Norwegian words you'll recognise a lot of Icelandic ones, but Iceland has been diligent in devising local words rather than importing new foreign words, so words (or recognisable variations thereof) which are found in most European languages, like "telephone", "bus" and 'police", look very different here. However, some graffiti demonstrated that a certain word beginning with F which exists in every other European language is also found in Icelandic.

Reykjavik, like a lot of places, is not flattered by its entrances/exits (various monuments to the boom, and more DFO/Bunnings equivalents than I would have thought a city of 200,000 could possibly support), but once out of town there were plenty of interesting sights to be seen. This is very much on the tourist track, but only at Geysir (with its geyser performing every few minutes) did the tour-bus crowds even approach the overwhelming. The attractions were also a set where it didn't matter that the weather was a bit patchy. I even almost broke a long-standing rule of not buying anything in a souvenir shop attached to a tourist attraction - the 2000-piece map-of-Iceland jigsaw was seriously tempting....

(Over lunch I saw another map of Iceland on the wall, a road map from 1990. In 1990 there was barely a paved road in the eastern half of the country except in the immediate vicinity of the towns, and even the main road between Reykjavik and Akureyri had unpaved sections - although the map wasn't at a large enough scale to determine whether there were any unbridged rivers).

Finished the day with the climax of the tourist-itinerary day - a session at the Blue Lagoon thermal pool (although I passed up the silica mud facial treatments and the in-pool bar).

C • Lögreglan 2

Had thought of doing something en route today but there didn't seem to be any particularly obvious destinations for it (as in, something 10km or so off the main road that wouldn't be easily accessible by vehicle but wasn't totally mountain-goat stuff), and the weather had the potential to get nasty, so decided on another up-the-valley-that-extends-from-the-head-of-the-fjord run, longer this time. This valley (its floor at least) was reasonably agricultural (at one point the local cows decided to run alongside me for a few hundred metres, on the other side of a fence), with the slight oddity of a golf course - surprisingly numerous in Iceland - in its upper reaches. The cloud was a bit low for really expansive views but still plenty to be seen.

The actual running route, gently undulating through farmland (getting a bit steeper at the far end), was a bit reminiscent of Warwick at the end of June, and the run was a bit reminiscent of it too, although not as good. Still, after early niggles worked their way out, it was a run I was enjoying for long stretches. Starting to feel like I was hanging on a bit in the last third with a few areas of muscle fatigue, although the 19th kilometre was the fastest of the day so there can't have been too much wrong.

Today's theme could have been tunnels - five of them amounting to 25km or so, the first four around the mountainous coastline. The first was the most hair-raising (3km of single lane with occasional passing places), and the next two (completed in 2010) were testimony to Iceland's decision to bail out its people rather than its banks - which seems to have worked but a country any larger probably couldn't have got away with it. Later in the day was probably the least spectacular section of the trip, back to Reykjavik, so it wasn't such a bad thing that this section also had the first serious rain of the week (which just added to the atmosphere of bleakness crossing the fells).

One Icelandic feature is the vast number of swimming pools (all geothermally heated) - almost every settlement with a population bigger than a couple of hundred seems to have one. Today I saw a particularly spectacular one at Hofsos, right on a coastal point and looking as if it almost fell away into the sea. Not sure I'd fancy it so much in February at minus 4 and a snow-laden northerly coming in off the Arctic Ocean, but maybe if it was accompanied by the spectacle in the bottom photo of this set it wouldn't matter how cold it was. Seeing an impressive-looking church dated 1960 in those parts also reminded me that you don't see many historic buildings here - with no usable timber, houses were built with stone, turf and whatever else could be scavenged until around 1900. (You don't see many historic buildings in the Norwegian or Finnish Arctic either, but that's because the Nazis burned them all - hoping to deprive the advancing Allies of shelter - as they retreated in 1944).

C • Iceland Topography 4

As mooted last night, a morning run up the road which runs up the valley from the head of the fjord, past the airstrip (no doubt a lifeline here in winter) and what's become a familiar sight, the 'Malbik Endar' sign which marks the end of the bitumen (although on Highway 1 the 'Gravel Road Ahead' signs are at least five times the size of the ones in Icelandic). The fohn wind was in, making it quite warm (around 16-17, in a country where it's by no means unusual for places to go through the whole year without reaching 20), and it was fairly hard work to push into during the first half. I thought it might be a run which caught alight on turning around, with a slight downhill as well, but it didn't really happen - in fact I was fading in the last kilometre or two. Going out before breakfast may have counted for something, and I don't think I've been drinking enough either.

Fairly cosmopolitan crowd at breakfast, including a couple of Texans (I'm struggling to imagine too many places which are less like Texas). The main tourist attraction seems to be walking - there are numerous good day and multi-day walks from here. It's not really on the backpacker circuit, probably because of its remoteness from any form of public transport.

The morning was then spent on the road. Apparently, back in the day, the done thing before traversing the scree slope mentioned yesterday was to make an offering to the relevant gods (there's a monument to that effect). I'm not sure if anyone still does this; the last I heard of Viking traditions carrying through to modern times was in the early 2000s when supporters of Tromso's football team sacrificed a goat on the pitch before the last home game of the season in the hope it would save their team from relegation - it didn't. (Presumably sacrificing virgins is illegal these days in both Iceland and Norway). Took some back roads to get out to the highway, with one hair-raising moment in a section which was being rebuilt (i.e. big rocks everywhere) and a truck came in the opposite direction which could have thrown up who-knows-what, but this truck driver clearly didn't come from the I'm-bigger-than-you-so-get-out-of-the-f***ing-way school and we edged past each other at 20. After that it was up onto the plateau, a place of surreal bleakness - on the higher parts there isn't even any grass. It's a long way from anywhere (there was a 'next petrol 268' sign, albeit on a side road which also had a sign warning of unbridged rivers), so it was a bit of a surprise to see a group of four runners going along the highway, one of them pushing a stroller. (I went past too quickly to determine whether the stroller was being used as a conveyance for a small child, for supplies or both).

That set things up for the main features of the day - Europe's largest waterfall (by volume) at Dettifoss, then the volcanic areas around Myvatn - lots of bubbling mud pools and steaming vents, a crater lake, old lava flow formations which would be amazing on a map, and not-so-old lava flows (there was a big one which lasted intermittently from 1977 to 1984). The actual features will, mostly, be familiar to those who've been to Rotorua but the tourist infrastructure's much lower-key here, just walking tracks and ropes in places where it's a good idea to stay behind them unless you fancy falling into boiling mud.

After encountering my first traffic light for three days in Akureyri, Iceland's second-largest city (a relative term - its population is 17,000 and it took me five minutes to drive through it), I've ended up at Dalvik, about 40km to the north. It's a fishing town and appears to be totally off the tourist track, although perhaps not last week when the annual fishing festival was in town. The landscape leaves you in no doubt that you're in the sub-Arctic; even in the height of summer, there are snow patches down as low as 200 metres in sheltered areas, and fairly solid cover above 600.

Saw a car with Faeroe Islands number plates - and then a second, and then a third. (It was at this point that I remembered that the weekly ferry from a port in eastern Iceland to Scandinavia via the Faeroes leaves on Thursday morning). Among other things, the Faeroes gave us one of those classic British tabloid headlines, 'Faeroes 1 Fairies 1' after Scotland made a mess of what should have been a straightforward World Cup qualifier (others in the same genre, both referring to English misfortunes, include 'Swedes 2 Turnips 1' and 'Yanks 3 Planks 1').

C • Terrain 4

New uses for modern technology: the cooking instructions for the packet of stuff I'd bought for tonight were in a number of languages (although not English or, oddly enough, Icelandic), so I put the Swedish instructions into Google Translate. Maybe the translation wasn't that good because it didn't work that well.

An intervals session on the Hofn waterfront, 10x1 minute. There's a certain purity about doing a session like this on a windswept shoreline (although it could have been a lot more windswept than it was today). The views across the fjord to the glaciers weren't exactly bad either.

The rest of today was mostly about fjords, making my way around the east coast of the country - a bit more settlement than the south coast but still very sparsely populated (and what population there is mostly clings to the coast until you get to Egilsstadir). It's sufficiently out of the way that even a few stretches of Highway 1 are gravel (fortunately Icelandic car rental companies aren't as anal about this as those in some other countries, recognising that it is impossible to circle the country 100% on bitumen - and it also means the Swiss and German 4WDs actually get the chance to go off bitumen for the first time in their lives). In the afternoon the towns got a bit larger (i.e. some of them had populations reaching four figures), some of it associated with an aluminium smelter which I gather was controversial at the time, but if you're going to smelt aluminium anywhere I can think of worse places to do it than regions with abundant hydroelectric and geothermal energy. (The towns haven't moved too far up the sophistication ladder, though - I was looking in an outdoor shop in one of them for some suitably good Icelandic gear for my father, whose birthday is tomorrow, but most of the stock seemed to be guns or accessories for same. Didn't look to see if reindeer-shooting DVDs occupied a prominent place in the local video shop).

My original thoughts involved staying in Egilsstadir but such places as can be booked online were booked out when I checked this morning, so I decided to go for something more remote and have ended up at Borgarfjordur - at the end of a 70km road from Egilsstadir, much of it gravel and involving a steep mountain pass and a section across a scree slope which feels like it could disappear into the ocean at any moment. It has a real end-of-the-line feeling (although that must be true several times over in winter) and definitely feels like my sort of place much more than Egilsstadir would have - the latter being a nondescript inland town whose main distinction is that it has more "forest" around it than anywhere else in Iceland (let's not get too excited here - a tree more than 5 metres tall is still a rarity).

Back was fine running today but wasn't great in the last couple of hours of driving (which simply gave me an excuse for more photo stops).

Warm-up and down. As always these days, grinding the gears in the first kilometre.

It occurred to me, being in southeast Iceland, that 'Southeast Iceland' is a name I associated mostly with a year of waking up to the BBC shipping forecast on the radio just before 6am. Those who know the lingo won't be surprised to hear that 'gale 8', 'severe gale 9', 'storm 10' and occasionally 'violent storm 11' were regular features. I'd say today was probably 4-5.

(I'm assuming it didn't survive the 2003 fires, but if it did, the April 1986 part of the logbook at the Rendezvous Creek hut contains a number of entries from fellow members of my Year 10 camp group taking the mickey out of something I'd said on the subject of what force the wind was).

C • Iceland 1

The first of what will probably be a few 'tourist runs' this week, from the Skaftafell visitors center at the Vatnajokull National Park, near the endpoint of a couple of glaciers which originate from the Vatnajokull icecap. I'd actually intended to take a flattish route up one of the valleys but one of the signs was a bit misleading, and by the time I realised that the path was a proper climb and not just getting above the valley floor to avoid some obstacle or other, I was reasonably committed. It was definitely worth the work, though - some very nice waterfalls and great views from the top (on a day when great views weren't in short supply). Most of the climbing was done in the first 2km and from there the run became steadily better, although not as good as an alleged split of 3.08 for the 6th kilometre suggests - I've adjusted the distance estimate. (I think the last time I ran a 3.08 kilometre anywhere was probably the last kilometre of my Tan PB in 1997). Not for the last time this week, there were quite a few photo stops.

This was part of a long day - wanting to make the best of today's good weather on the day when it matters most from the scenery point of view (after today it's less about high mountains and more about fjords and waterfalls, or so I'm led to believe), plus the southern coast of Iceland is very sparsely populated - strangely, people don't want to live in places where a volcano or associated phenomena might wipe them out at any moment - and there is a stretch of over 200km between towns, so I pushed on later than I might otherwise have done. (It's a novelty in Europe to see a road sign which has only three-digit numbers on it). As you would expect the scenery is stunning - a few lunar landscapes and lava plains to start, then later on mountains and glaciers - I think I saw at least 20 glaciers from the road, the best of them being the one which calves into an iceberg-filled coastal lagoon. Only negative was that most of the mountain tops were in cloud, so I haven't got any pictures of the Eyjafjallajokull summit to show off to our volcanic ash forecasting guru...T

Finished the day up in Hofn, a slightly-rough-around-the-edges fishing town whose population of 1600 or thereabouts makes it very much the regional centre (as far as I can tell, there's no town with a population exceeding 2500 in the entire eastern half of Iceland). Today was very much on the tourist track, from here on it will mostly be a bit less so.

First time not specifically in the terrain since I arrived in Norway. I say "specifically" because at one point we did spend a few hundred metres in the terrain to get between tracks, and in any case tracks in Norwegian forests, especially those principally designed as ski tracks, have a habit of becoming somewhat gnarly or muddy when they encounter rocks and marshes respectively - I've learned my lesson from previous visits and wore my trail shoes for this (although they're not much good on damp rock).

Jim said this route was fairly flat but I suspected we'd find a way to get into rougher stuff, and so it turned out (we never did get to the lake we were vaguely aiming for). Didn't always find things easy on the longer climbs but managed to hold myself together, and a few very nice patches on the higher ground - including one particularly lovely stretch on a dry singletrack through classic Nordic forest and rock knolls on either side.

Heading to Iceland tonight. I seem to be gradually getting things back together, but still think attempting to run to the Eyjafjallajokull saddle tomorrow might be a bit beyond my capabilities at the moment.

I knew before the start that the extent of my ambitions would be to keep the team out of the final leg mass start - to do this, our legs 5-6-7 runners (me being 7) needed to do a combined time under 3 hours on courses with a projected winning time of 2.23. I thought this would be pushing it and it became no chance when the mass start was brought forward half an hour. As it turned out, our leg 6 runner had a shocker and not only did I not get in inside the mass start time, I started in the mass start.

The good news was that my body was in better shape than it has been for the last three days with the back holding out, more or less (maybe it has been big early climbs, absent today, which have been causing it problems?). The bad news was that it took me until a third of the way through the course to get my navigation sorted out, missing a minute at 1 and 4, then running off the map at 5. This wasn't actually quite as catastrophic an error as it sounds - I'd always intended to go within ~50 metres of the map edge and, once I realised what I'd done, was pretty confident I'd hit a track which would bring me back onto the map nearish to the control. Probably dropped 2-3 minutes at a guess. Was wondering if I'd ever get things right after 30-seconders on the next two, but that was pretty much it apart from a small miss at 14. Also starting to run with more confidence in the terrain in the second half. Had been hoping to break the hour and/or beat my leg 8 runner (the Norway-based North Korean Kyong Ri Sa), and might have done with a better technical run, but this wasn't it. Was still definitely an improvement on the last three days (in the physical sense at least), so perhaps it's a pity I won't be orienteering here again for at least a couple of years....

Major disappointment of the day was that by the time I finished, Cassie's blueberry cake at the event cake stall (her club was organising) had run out. Fortunately she'd saved some at home :-).

Event: Night Hawk - formerly known as Krokskogstafetten
 

This time closer to "home", mainly in an attempt to build at least a little bit of confidence in the terrain prior to tomorrow (I'm running the second-last leg for a Baekkelagets team - the format is 4 runners go out together on a mass start tonight, then their total time sets up a chasing start for the last four legs tomorrow). It was a bit of a mixed bag - on the one hand I did feel a little bit more confident in the terrain (helped by the fact that this area had less fallen timber), on the other hand my back was no better - since big climbs on soft ground tend to set it off and all three runs so far have involved big climbs early, I'm hoping tomorrow (where we will start on top) might be better for it. Lost quite a bit of time on one control - which I thought might be in the wrong place but Jim thinks it's the mapping which is the issue. Still not really flowing in the sense of navigating ahead, but being in race mode should help there.

I hadn't realised until today that I've actually been on tomorrow's area before - it was used for the World Cup events in 1996. My own performances there were so-so and my recollection was that the terrain was also so-so, but that may have been my inexperience in that type of country showing. It was an event which also sticks in my mind for two other reasons - trawling for anyone present, willing and eligible to fill the last spots in the relay after a sequence of injuries (Kirsty Bruce, an early 1990s JWOCer who'd largely drifted away from the elite scene, filled one of the holes), and the bizarre decision to schedule the event against the second week of the Atlanta Olympics - not only did this ensure that the event got zero media coverage, but on relays day most of the competitors disappeared before the presentations to go and watch the Olympic marathon on TV. This experience has something to do with one of the roles I now fill on the Foot O Commission, that of identifying clashes between planned dates for our major events and other significant dates on the sporting calendar, although we can't always do much about them - WOC next year will be in the final week of the football World Cup. (At least it's in Brazil which means all the games will be late at night in Europe).

We have an early nomination for most ignorant candidate of this campaign (you won't be surprised that she's running for One Nation):

"Stephanie Banister, a 27-year-old mother of two, is facing criminal charges after allegedly placing anti-Muslim stickers, like "Halal food funds terrorism", on Nestle products in a supermarket.

Never mind that though. Ms Banister has bigger problems.

In an interview with Channel Seven, which aired last night, Ms Banister revealed her dearth of knowledge on, well, everything.

"I don't oppose Islam as a country, but I do feel that their laws should not be welcome here in Australia," she said, apparently oblivious to the fact that Islam is a religion, not a country.

Arguing for a ban on Halal food last night, Ms Banister said "less than two per cent of Australians follow Haram."

In any case, Ms Banister doesn't have a problem with Jewish Kosher food.

"Jews aren't under Haram, they have their own religion which follows Jesus Christ," she said."

Woke up to the sound of thunder (in truth, I was already sort of awake); a long-lived thunderstorm hovered over us for the best part of 90 minutes from 6am, before turning into most of a day of steady rain - 52mm worth last time I looked. It would have been a different story 1500km or so further south; today was the day of the first-ever Austrian 40 (after a near-miss with 39.9 last week).

For the second day in a row I headed out in the evening - running after dinner (albeit a Norway-when-small-kids-are-involved dinner - i.e. it was at 4.45) is something I did reasonably regularly during my year in Winchester but have barely done since. Back once again wasn't great, particularly on the long initial climb to the top of the ridge, but not quite as bad as yesterday. No fluency running in the terrain still, especially in the sections with fallen timber; as you'd expect with the day's weather, although it had finally stopped raining, the forest was very wet. One mistake of some size, a couple of minutes coming in too low on a vague slope; otherwise finding the controls but still navigating a bit too much from point to point.

This course (of which I ran the second half) had a celebrity course-setter - Thierry Gueorgiou. I was somewhat heartened when Jim told me the stories afterwards of how some pretty good local elites had struggled to break 10 minutes/km here - it's pretty tough terrain. I'm led to believe that the relay will be easier but I'll still want to improve a bit to be less than a total embarrassment.

The trip went pretty smoothly except for the very last bit - the Oslo airport train pulled up two stops short of where I wanted to go because of signal failures (and you thought that sort of thing only happened in Melbourne or Sydney?). However, the 20 metres between bus door and terminal door in Doha was more than enough to provide convincing evidence of why holding the 2022 World Cup in a Qatar summer is a Very Bad Idea (let alone the Olympics, which they've also bid for - you might be able to aircondition a stadium but you can't aircondition a marathon course). 6am conditions - temperature 32, dewpoint 30.

(My previous personal best in the dewpoint department, which I somehow managed to run in, was 29 in Beijing in August 2005; at least this gave me some good stories to scare aspiring Olympic marathoners with).

The dewpoint certainly wasn't anywhere near 30 in Oslo - it was a very pleasant summer evening. I'd originally thought that an easy shake-out-the-cobwebs run was in order but Jim was organising a training session at 6.30, which I joined while knowing that the mass start would be a pretty theoretical concept from my point of view. Not surprisingly, my back wasn't in great shape after a day on the plane (and being limited in generating power uphill and in soft ground encompasses quite a bit of the terrain in these parts). Still, it gave me the chance to reacquaint myself with Nordic terrain and Nordic mapping, a crash course I'll need before the weekend. Hopefully the back settles down by then. Probably dropped 1-2 minutes on 2 but other mistakes were small ones in the circle.

That was a pretty foul note to leave Australia on. Started out as a newsletter delivery run, never came to terms with the earlier hills and never got going once I was out of the steeper hills. Struggling throughout (in a muscular sense at least).

Leaving for Oslo tonight. Hopefully I'll be in better form once I get there.

Did this on a Monday morning because I don't think it will be that easy to find a pool (let alone a running belt) in Oslo. A fairly standard session, overlapping with the regular company at the start and end, which gave me ample opportunity to relate tales of the previous evening.

The return of the MFR Monday nights after a hiatus of a few months, with a reasonable turnout for winter (six), starting from Jas's in Northcote and out to Merri Creek and northwards. As usual for a Monday night, not severely tested but reasonably comfortable (something I hadn't been entirely confident of because my back had been playing up a bit on the bike).

Saw a white flash to the northwest just as we were coming in and scurried straight to the phone to check the radar - nothing there, but it turned out that that was because the radar was on the blink.

You don't judge trail runs in Sydney by the speed standards one might set in Melbourne - this is definitely a place where one tracks training by time rather than by distance. It's a lot of fun, though, and I think the variation - from flat, to up, to down, to scrambling across rocks - probably did me good; I didn't fade in a muscular sense in the way that I have on several recent runs, although still lacked power on the steeper hills at the end.

This was unexplored territory for me, going south rather than north along the Lane Cove River. With Tracy for the first half-hour (containing most of the challenging navigation) before she cut back - seeing in the process a proposed site for a 30-storey tower (as I said to Tracy, if it wasn't for NSW property developers, the Independent Commission Against Corruption wouldn't have anything to do). Went down as far as the Fig Tree Bridge and then back along the west side, doing a bit of an extra loop through the suburbs at the end to get the time out to where I wanted it to be.

I was on a flight which, if everything went right, might have got me back in time for the start of the Essendon-Collingwood game (perhaps I shouldn't have bothered). As it was I got there about 15 minutes after the start, although it was another 10 minutes before I sat down because I had to get security to move the person, who appeared to be making a bid for the record for the oldest person to go home from the MCG in the back of a divvy van, who was sitting in my seat and not budging. (Not every day you get told to f**k off - with a few pertinent gestures just to make sure you get the message - by a 70-something granny). Even apart from that, it was one of the more unpleasant atmospheres I've experienced at an AFL match (Football Park in Adelaide included), not helped by the fact that the Collingwood supporters were booing Jobe Watson at every opportunity and the Essendon supporters retaliated by booing Harry O'Brien. (Didn't seem to do either of them any harm - they got 60-odd possessions between them).

I passed a lot of Collingwood supporters walking north along Wellington Street afterwards. It would be totally unfair and stereotypical to draw any connection between this and the fact that the Sheriff was patrolling the MCG carpark and clamping cars whose owners had outstanding fines.

C • I'd boo 5

Staying at Tracy and Paul's in Lane Cover and headed out early ahead of a long day of conferencing (and post-conferencing). Wasn't terribly awake at the start - not an unusual event, but most of my runs don't plunge me straight into Sydney sandstone singletrack with sometimes awkward footing - a bit trickier than Cape Street. A reasonably nice run once that was dealt with; didn't take a map out with me so did a fairly straightforward out and back up to Fullers Bridge and along the river (staying out of the way of the Sydney Striders who were in action). A bit tight on the final climb.

At Richmond because that worked better with the rest of the morning's logistics. A fairly standard session, nothing to get too excited about, but not as stiff as I thought I might have been given the way I was feeling yesterday.

Up to Sydney in the afternoon, where I am for the weekend.

Down around Fishermens Bend, St. Kilda and Albert Park Lake before dropping my car off for a service. Felt fairly ordinary throughout, although not moving too badly for the first two-thirds. Quads fatigued very sharply, though, as soon as they were asked to do something other than dead flat - it's probably as well that the sum total of the "hills" on this route are one bridge over the freeway, the one-contour bump on Fitzroy Street which feels a lot bigger when you hit it at the 37k mark of the Melbourne Marathon, and a spiral pedestrian overpass across the street from the Espy. Last half-hour a struggle, and not a day I'm happy with in general.

A sign that relative peace has been around for a while now in Northern Ireland: the Economist (in a piece about the trial of a Boston gangster whose large number of alleged misdeeds include channeling ill-gotten gains in their direction) felt it necessary to explain that the Irish Republican Army was a terrorist group.