Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Woke up to a stellar view of Vancouver and its backing mountains, not a common occurence in winter. I've been here once before in winter and the cloud base didn't rise above 200 metres in two days. (That visit also demonstrated how many Australians there were travelling in that part of the world; it was the day of the Newcastle earthquake and it was standing room only in the TV room of the Vancouver youth hostel when the TV news was on).

I'd posted on Pat's log about the possibility of getting some maps from last week's sprint camp, thinking I might get out for a run on a couple of the maps closer to the city, but it ended up turning into a full-on training day thanks to Thomas Nipen and Louise Oram, taking us down to the South Surrey area for three different sessions. It turns out Thomas is also in the meteorology game so we had plenty to talk about other than orienteering...

The first one was a route-choice exercise. Did this at jogging speed as a warm-up, testing different route choices in parallel with Louise. There was a certain amount of randomness to this as a major element in route choice wasn't reflected on the map - the difficulty of the various flights of stairs on the walking tracks - but still enjoyable - and I learned fairly quickly that the local forest was only to be entered in small doses.

Achilles was fine today for no obvious reason. It was fairly uncomfortable on the flight over but I think that's because of the angle you sit at on a plane. Apart from that the only real negative of the flight was that it was an hour late which meant missing out on all the Greenland and Arctic Canada views (instead of flying with the sunset we were an hour behind it).

C • Most liveable city 4

Next step was running the WRE sprint course from last weekend - Thomas had even put some flags out for Louise and I (I definitely wasn't expecting this), as hard as I reasonably could at the moment.

The bulk of the course is in a mountain bike terrain park with tracks going everywhere (and not always linking together in a logical matter). The forest was a bit less thick than the last area and doable in small doses (to link tracks together).

Didn't hit any of the first three cleanly as I struggled to get used to reading the tracks and how quickly things came up in the forest at 1:4000; probably lost a minute or so over that section. Settled down after that but never felt totally in control in the forest sections. Running respectably well without being quite as aggressive as I'd like, but not feeling as hopelessly uncompetitive as I was at Christmas, which is at least some progress. Also good to get a hard-run sprint under my belt in advance of a couple of sprint races at home in the next three weeks.

C • Cool 2

O-intervals after lunch. More open forest than the other two (i.e. straight options were actually viable once in a while), and an older map which meant some of the small tracks weren't as accurate as they were on the other maps, but still an enjoyable session on the whole. Also discovered that mud is a lot less muddy when it's frozen (but not all of it was frozen, so I'll have some shoe-scrubbing to do before going home).

Didn't feel as good in this session as in the other two. This may have been because I'd eaten a bit too much for lunch or because jet lag was starting to catch up with (or all of the above).

On the whole a good day's work, and definitely a good experience to have. Thanks to Thomas and Louise for setting this up. (It's also a fine example of how connected we are in the orienteering world).

Finished off this stint in Geneva with a long run, a little later in the morning (i.e. it actually started in daylight) because my flight wasn't leaving until 1.20. Took the opportunity to explore to the north, a direction I hadn't really been in (partly because getting there required negotiating a couple of awkward road junctions which I thought might be a problem during the week).

As with my first run here, this one took me into France for a while. Last time I found Geneva's Queanbeyan but this time round it was a charming small town setting up for its Saturday market, before moving on to the closest proper forest to Geneva (which looked unexciting for orienteering - flat and probably pretty green in summer - but nice for a track run). Dropped down to the lake after that, via a nice section along a forested river, and back to base.

The far end also gave a sighting of a high school wall with a mural presumably of 1960s vintage given who was pictured on it (the ones I recognised were Martin Luther King, Marilyn Monroe and Che Guevera), and one of Switzerland's many fallout shelters. Melbourne also apparently has these - we found out a while back thanks to a Herald-Sun FOI request that the old Bureau building has one in its basement, but nobody has the responsibility for telling people of their existence in the event of their being required, or stocking them with supplies. It was difficult to argue with their headline 'N-PLAN IN A MUDDLE'.

This run was a good solid effort from the endurance point of view, but the Achilles continues to be at nuisance level, and also had my worst chafing for a while.

Now in Heathrow en route to Vancouver, where I'll be for a couple of days before moving on my next official engagement in Victoria on Wednesday. Planning to run some of last weekend's Vancouver sprint maps tomorrow, all being well.

C • Enjoy Vancouver 1

Went the distance this time without any equipment failures (once I'd worked out how to stop the new goggles digging into a sore spot on my nose). Once again it was hard to enjoy this because it was a bit too crowded, especially the person who was doing backstroke at twice my speed - and I know it was twice my speed because he whacked me at the same point of every lap. (What he was doing in the slow lane was not immediately obvious).

They don't seem to tire of voting in this part of the world - last week's referendum posters were replaced almost immediately by ones for Geneva's next date with democracy, local council elections next month.

A little bit out of sorts this morning and not entirely comfortable on the run - the Achilles continues to be at nuisance level and a few other bits of me felt like they were starting to seize up on the later part of this run - not sure if this is a response to going out twice yesterday or not. Still managed to battle through for the duration, on a run which was at its best on a scenic, albeit slow, section along a creekside path in the middle, as well as the agricultural section which immediately preceded it.

Can't say I was particularly surprised to find out that the 'Gillard government is only giving $1M to the flood appeal while hundreds of millions of your money goes to the Indonesians' message that was doing the rounds a few weeks back was of Queensland One Nation origin. It looks like they've now acquired the political nous to know there was fertile ground for their seeds to fall on, which is a worry - smart racists are much more dangerous than dumb racists.

And those who know their Shakespeare will have appreciated a Scottish Third Division football match on Tuesday night, in which both Macbeth and Malcolm were sent off (disappointingly it wasn't for fighting each other).

C • When are you 2

Out to Bout-du-Monde and then along the river, a reasonably classic Geneva run (although the traffic at both ends was a bit less classic). Felt reasonably solid up the early hills but not really flowing well elsewhere.

The French have a way of making even the unattractive sound attractive (a 'place de reception des dechets urbains' is a rubbish tip), but I saw a couple of good ones today: a solarium which was a 'salon de bronzage', and a van offering 'depigeonnage', which might have been hard to work out if the business hadn't been called 'Stop Pigeon'.

A bit of a milestone today - the first time for the best part of 18 months that I've done what used to be a standard midweek double. It's not yet morning run plus Summer Series but it's a start: I'll be racing twice in a day in the not-too-distant future (although Bruce was making noises about 'resting' me from the sprint relay in Canberra) and it's as well to get used to being out twice in a day again.

The run itself was a fairly routine out-and-back along the Lake Geneva shoreline, quite pleasant apart from having to negotiate traffic early and late. You always feel faster than you actually are running in the dark.

10x1 minute again in the lakeside gardens, a bit slippery after overnight rain. Took a while to get going properly but came pretty good at the end, with the last three reps the best since I've been here (something I won't be putting to the test again until November).

Going to/from the intervals session. Achilles took a while to warm up and seems to be suffering from standard deterioration-because-calf-hasn't-had-a-proper-massage-for-a-while-on-overseas-trip syndrome; hopefully it will hold out for another couple of weeks.

A reasonably mundane recovery run on a loop north from my (new) temporary abode. I wondered briefly if my flight last night had landed in Naples rather than Geneva when I came too close for comfort to being cleaned up by a motorbike being ridden along the footpath at one point, but that was all the excitement for the morning. Felt somewhat warm on Geneva's first above-freezing morning for a month, something not entirely unconnected with this evening's first moisture for more than a month (although perhaps not yet enough to trouble the scorers).

The gun control referendum went down, attracting a strong yes vote in Geneva, a less strong yes vote in the other major cities, and an overwhelming no vote in the country. I gather this is a reasonably common outcome of Swiss referenda. It would probably be a reasonably common outcome of Australian referenda, too, if we had more of them on hot-button issues, with Canberra (and perhaps Melbourne) substituted for Geneva (and is also strikingly similar to the outcome of the referendum on whether Norway should join the EU, another one which was successfully framed by its opponents as a battle between the elites and the people).

And it looks like I'm not the only person who's had issues with vehicles which don't float:

http://theage.drive.com.au/motor-news/joyces-drive...