Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Event: WMOC 2012
 

This was a day for doing the necessary, which I did - just (although still waiting for official confirmation that I've scraped in - have had enough near-misses before not to take anything for granted).

Significantly improved on yesterday, probably at least in part through sleeping well last night - so well that I failed to notice the thunderstorms which went through at 2am (incidentally, these were predicted to the hour on yr.no 48 hours in advance). Certainly still a long way from being fully fit, something which was particularly noticeable on the only hill, but, after being 20% on Friday and 30% yesterday, I was perhaps 60% today. I won't be 100% tomorrow but hopefully won't be too far away from it.

As expected the course was a mix of town streets and school grounds/parks (some with an impressive control density - walking home I found one spot with eight controls within sight). Lost a bit of time on 2 through misreading some vegetation - maybe 20 seconds or so. Continued to plod on. Yuri Omelchenko caught me two minutes at 7 (and promptly made a small mistake but soon blew past me again). Clean for the rest, although one hairy moment with a head-on collision coming into 17 (no serious damage to either party).

I was a bit surprised it was such a close-run thing - the other heat also ran our course and did it before us, and their cut looks like being almost two minutes slower than ours. On the last results I've seen I'm 35th (37 make it) with four unaccounted for, but the printout time was late enough that I'm fairly certain none of those four can displace me (I expect all four will in fact be DNSs).

Tomorrow should be much more technical. Assuming I have made it through, I'll be almost first starter, but with a course that suits me better and an extra day of recovery I'll be hoping for something a fair bit better tomorrow, and perhaps posting a time for the big guns, of whom our field has a few, to chase. (That said, midfield in the A final would still be a decent result).

And perhaps I should be hoping that history repeats itself from 2009 - I also went into that week sick (although that time the cause was having eaten Australia's northernmost dodgy chook on a pre-event work trip to the Torres Strait Islands), narrowly got through sprint qualifying, and by the end of the week got close to a medal.

C • results 3

Looks like 35th (and a place in the final) is confirmed, ending (at least for now) visions of becoming the first person to narrowly miss a JWOC final, a WOC final and a WMOC final in the same country. (I suspect, but am not sure, that I may be the first person to contest a JWOC, a WOC and a WMOC in the same country - the only other possibility would be someone born in 1972 who did JWOC 1992, WOC 2001 and WMOC 2007 in Finland).

Over the last couple of days I've seen a bit of a WMOC official who is a Lizzie Ingham lookalike. Thought I'd seen her again this afternoon but this one was the real Lizzie (visiting for the day from her current Bremerhaven base). Speaking of lookalikes, is ALJ able to confirm that she wasn't off moonlighting at my climate conference in Edinburgh last week?

C • I wish!! 2

The good news was that I was able to get out to run today, for a limited definition of the term 'run'. (Actually, there was one other bit of good news - the knee was fine after the first few minutes). Jogged about 10 minutes from where I'm staying to the model event map and then plodded around (most of) the model controls.

That was about the limit of the good news, though - I'm struggling to remember a time when I've felt weaker on a run from the start (there have been some where I've felt worse after hitting the wall). My health does seem to be improving but very, very slowly, and I've just about accepted that making the final is the limit of my sprint ambitions now. One other worry is that it took a couple of hours for my body temperature to cool down post-run, although I don't expect to have anything as warm as today's 26 on any competition day. As an indicator of how I was feeling, I decided that trying to do the steady uphill run back home wouldn't achieve anything other than get me back 15 minutes earlier, and walked it instead.

As for the model, if it's any indication of what we'll face on the day, there will be some more OOB controversies - there were quite a few cases where private driveways which were outwardly identical to OOB ones were legal, so that controls could be put down them. Most oddly, one control was on someone's front doorstep, which had three apparently identical paths leading to it - only one of which was legal on the map. The model suggested that tomorrow's going to be, in essence, a running race involving a couple of parks and German suburbia, but the final includes Goslar's historic centre and should be challenging.

Had improved today to the point of at least being able to think about doing some training, which is still a bit short of actually doing some. Encouraging me in this decision-making (apart from it being hot) was that the only available forest training area is steep and not particularly relevant (Bad Harzburg is at the foot of the escarpment but the WMOC long distance maps are on top of the plateau). Should be up to going out on the sprint model tomorrow.

The Harz Mountains have a reputation for something of an elderly visitor clientele - I first heard them referred to as "Rentnergebirge" (literally "pensioner mountains") when here in 1989. Getting the bus into town I was starting to wonder if there was anyone else here under 70 (other than the bus driver and the hotel staff), but the centre does have a slightly younger crowd. The local vibe reminds me a bit of Hervey Bay, although I haven't (yet) seen any mobility scooter processions.

(On the 1989 trip I spent three days walking across the range from north to south, including most of a day tracking along the old West/East German border fortifications - at that stage it was just starting to appear possible that the border had a limited life expectancy and a certain amount of local anticipation was starting to build, but I can't imagine that even the most optimistic locals thought that the Berlin Wall had less than three months to live).

I was never planning to run today, it being a drawn-out travel day - starting a bit before 7 in Glasgow, and finishing up a bit before 7 in Bad Harzburg (with a 25-minute uphill walk because the town buses had stopped running and I was too stubborn to get a taxi). However, even had it not been a planned rest day it would have been an unplanned one - I would have really struggled to run today, although I did feel a bit less weak by the evening.

The trip was a bit more drawn-out than it could have been because I needed to leave some leeway in the train booking in case of a late flight, but there are worse places to have to kill a couple of hours than downtown Berlin - even if the Brandenburg Gate was rendered non-photogenic by a giant screen set up for tonight's European Championships semi-final. (The airport, incidentally, is the old East Berlin airport and looks like it - it was supposed to be closed by now but its replacement is running late).

Seem to have found a reasonable place to stay in Bad Harzburg, although it's on the opposite side of town to the event centre which will mean a bit of walking.

OK, so this cold is a bit worse than I thought it was going to be. Didn't feel too bad first thing in the morning, although still changed my planned faster run to something slow. Got through this more or less OK, but then felt pretty terrible for the rest of the day - I know all is not well when I don't really feel like eating. Got to the end of the conference at lunchtime, then slept most of the way on the bus to Glasgow, then flaked out on the bed in front of Wimbledon. Knee also iffy for a long time, although it settled down eventually.

I fly out to Germany tomorrow (suspect my ears won't appreciate this). Glad I've got four days until the sprint qualification, and five until the final. Would quite like to be able to fast-forward the next 48 hours or so.

What was a bit of a sniffle yesterday turned into one of the annoying not-too-serious-but-enough-to-be-a-nuisance colds that I've had several of this year (including for both the Ballarat and Newcastle NOL weekends). Wasn't too ambitious today and worked out more or less OK, although climbing was a struggle (none of yesterday's lower back soreness, though). Had a sharp but short-lived knee twinge on one steep downhill section. Got into some farmland at the far end - nice to have this less than 5km from the central city.

I've still got five days to the WMOC sprint qualifer, so should have plenty of time.

Didn't sleep well last night and woke up for good sometime not long after 4, but took advantage of this to head out around 6.30 into a very pleasant morning - cool and dry. Not a bad run early on but suffered a bit from lower back tightness on the climb up the Royal Observatory hill (and again later in the day). Did a bit of exploring coming off the south side of the hill and was wondering if I might find myself in a spot where there was no way out (other than returning the way I'd come) but found a way through. Finished OK, and before there was any significant traffic.

Second stage of the Monday session (not the Monday triathlon as I'm not riding anywhere) - the Commonwealth Games pool (which refers to itself as "the Commie" - evidently unaware that this term has different connotations in some other English-speaking countries) is near where I'm staying, and is open again after being closed for three years for renovations. A fairly normal swim session for the most part but had trouble with foot cramps towards the end.

One minor surprise: one swims on the right here, as in Switzerland (I'd assumed it would follow the rules of the road).

C • On the right 3