Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Early morning through the northern suburbs of Zagreb, out mostly along a ridgeline (which is clearly a posh part of town judging by the number of embassies sighted), then back along a valley. Some pretty solid climbing in the first half. Started out with Jenny but she was struggling a bit today and turned around after 20 minutes, so I was on my own from there; feeling pretty good at this point but faded away quite badly in the last 15 minutes, by which stage it was starting to get quite warm.

Up to the Plitvice Lakes in the afternoon.

The morning after the day before, and it was ugly. It was already 30 degrees by 8.30 am when I headed out, and the thought did come to mind that I've taken in probably 5 litres of fluid since finishing yesterday, and very little of it has yet come out the other end (just as well there was no drug testing yesterday). It showed. The first half was generally uphill to the northwest, finding the shady side of the street where I could, then downhill and back into town. Had been planning 40 minutes but couldn't really be bothered, and this was really about loosening up (maybe it would have been better done in the pool).

Having had a collective lousy night's sleep, Pecs didn't seem to have much collective energy on display this morning. You get the same sort of feeling in Melbourne when it's been a 28-degree night.

I think I'll have trouble convincing Jenny that European travel normally works smoothly. Pecs-Zagreb should have been a reasonably straightforward trip with one change. Instead it had four. The first was when the conductor told us we should get off and get the fast train behind. When we did get off I was a bit worried because there was no trace of said train on the timetable, but it turned out to be an earlier one running two hours late. Then on the Croatian leg we had to do one section by bus because of trackwork. All of this was done on a 37-degree day and in vehicles which ranged from very warm to hot-enough-to-melt-toddlers-in-parked-cars.

And it's as well that I have company on this leg: my credit card has been problematical in European ATMs over the last year (because of incompatibility of different generations of chips), but in Croatia it doesn't work at all as far as I can tell, as either an ATM or credit card.

Things you don't get at an Australian event: the local fire brigade deploying their hoses to cool people down after their runs.

You can't ask for much more in a race than giving it everything you have, and today was a day when that happened. 13th in the long final was the absolute best I could have achieved and it's what I got.

We were sort of expecting a train to form around our start time, with Liggo 2 minutes ahead, and behind at 2 and 4 minutes the fast but erratic Russian Nikolay Sytov (who was in Australia a while back) and Bulgarian Ivaylo Ivanov, whom I considered a good top-five prospect who had run a bad first qualifier. I wasn't, though, expecting it to start so early when I saw Liggo halfway between 1 and 2, looking as if he wasn't quite sure what he was doing. We were sort of together for the next three legs; I got a bit of a lead on the long climb into 3, but he got ahead again when I took a drink on the way to 4 - early in the course, but water opportunities couldn't be passed up today (34 degrees, probably the hottest I've run a long race in).

5-6 was the big route choice leg, 2+ km across the width of the map. I thought the right route, missing most of the climb, was obvious, but it wasn't so obvious to Liggo and Nikolay (who had almost caught us by then) because they went different ways. I never saw Liggo again (he ended up blowing up and had to walk most of the last third), and Nikolay got enough of a jump on me to get clear. Ivaylo also caught me at 6 (which was close to half-distance) and was going faster than I could really handle.

By 40 minutes I had the feeling I was in a bit of trouble. In conditions like these you can lose a lot of time very quickly if you blow up, so I dropped back a gear, walking some of the steepest hills (although we were through the worst of them by then) and concentrating on making sure I hit every control, exactly. I seemed to find a pace that I could maintain; it wasn't easy but I didn't get any worse, and was continuing to hit control after control. By 17 I was starting to go through some of the early starters (and thought I'd seen Ivaylo behind me but was obviously mistaken from the splits), realising that I was on the verge of achieving the rare feat of an effectively technically perfect run, and switching into 'don't stuff this up now' mode. I wasn't that quick at the end but it didn't cost me anything.

I got pretty much everything out of myself that was possible today, both physically and technically. Obviously there have been times in the past when I would have been able to do much more physically - although the clock would, I think, need to have been turned back quite a few years to find the six-minute gap to the top ten - but there's no point in agonising over that. Perhaps I'll get back to an earlier level, most likely I won't, but for now this is a result to be satisfied with.

We leave Hungary tomorrow. Susanne (who, as most of you will know by now, won silver) and Lachlan go back to Budapest and on to Norway, Jenny will be joining me in Croatia for a few days before heading home. My next competitive stop is the Croatia Open, starting Wednesday.

C • Congrats! 7

Spent my last day as a thirtysomething doing not terribly much with the pre-final rest day, but did find the time to take to the water in the local pool, which was unsurprisingly well-patronised on a 32-degree day (although the wave pool had more crowds than the still pool where I was). Felt like the session went for a long time but smooth enough and will hopefully have relaxed some muscles. Time is a guess.

WMOC 2nd long qualifier. A better run technically today with no errors of any significance (a couple of 10-second hesitations was as bad as it got), but still lack the strength needed for the soft ground - every contour was hard-won today. Not pushing extra-hard in terrain where you need to be aggressive in the terrain. Not sure how much of an extra gear I'll have for the final but I guess we'll find out on Friday. (With 34 degrees forecast, Friday will be an endurance test too; having managed to dodge all the significant heat of the Melbourne summer, it will be the hottest day I've experienced since early last year). Stayed 11th, gaining one place and losing one (I thought I might have moved up a bit as it was a better run than yesterday, but it didn't happen).

This was a nice technical area - lots of depressions and not huge amounts of track running. There was a steep descent through green over the last few controls but to no-one's great surprise a big elephant track had developed by the time I got there (one wonders what it would have been like for the later starters).

Managed to outsprint a Swedish M70 in the chute (just), although Sus and Jenny still had faster splits than I did...

Liggo also qualified 11th from the other heat, which could make for an interesting battle on Friday. I think I get to chase him (by virtue of being in heat 2) but won't know for sure until the start lists come out.

First WMOC long qualifier, in what was essentially gully-spur terrain with some intensely eroded gullies - a bit like some Victorian mining areas, but perhaps more like the JWOC 1996 terrain in Romania, or the 2000 World Cup on Mount Fuji.

This didn't get off to a good start when I blew two minutes on the first control, not quite sure where I was alongside an erosion gully and overshooting. Took a couple of controls to settle myself down after that but eventually did, at least technically speaking, and didn't have any more significant problems other than a 15-seconder at 9 and a possibly suboptimal route choice at 8. Not happy, though, with the run physically - I shouldn't be tiring in a qualifier, although it was hilly (hillier, and probably greener, than the final will be) and quite warm. Particularly unhappy with the last 10 minutes.

Ended up 11th in the heat today, although our heat seems stronger than the other one (run on the same course) - would have been 7th there. This won't make any difference to me other than giving me a slightly earlier start for the final (no bad thing given Friday's forecast), but you wouldn't be too pleased if you were a marginal qualifier in my heat - the cut is currently 90 in ours, 102 in the other.

Today's assembly area was on top of a rehabilitated uranium mine, so if you see lots of older Australian orienteers glowing in the dark at the Oceania Championships this year you'll know the reason why.

Resy day between the sprint and the long qualifiers, most of which was spent at an IOF Event Adviser's workshop. Seemed to do more talking than all of the other workshop participants put together (although that may have been partially due to English not being the first langauge for anyone else other than Jenny).

C • Rest 2

C • climate change 2