Note
(injured) (rest day)
The leg had improved somewhat today but still wasn't good enough to run on (in terrain anyway). Suspect it's probably one or two days away. Instead I picked up a map at the start and walked a few controls.
This was a beautiful area, 1800 metres up in the mountains at Bretaye (the views looking south from the assembly area were especially stunning). It would, though, have been a brutally tough area to race on - the forest, where it existed, was thick and rough, and heavy spring growth meant there was a lot of grass and other low vegetation in the yellow, too. When I left, no-one over the age of 14 had broken 10 minutes/km on any course (81 was leading M40, which was 7.6km). There will be a lot of DNFs today, and a lot more exceeding the maximum time (2.30), if they enforce it.
(After I got back I saw Markus Hotz, a Swiss M40 who's a bit better than me and who was staying next to me at WMOC, and commented to him - he hadn't started yet - that anyone under 10s would be doing well; he said he was hoping to do 7s. My immediate thought was "he's dreamin' ". He ended up doing about 90 for 7.6, a pretty respectable result).
And perhaps the Lausanne police read my log (or alternatively Constable Frogga read it and tipped off Interpol), because this afternoon the drug dealers had been replaced by cops in gear not far short of full SWAT team level.
Update: as far as I can tell one person got under 10 min/km, just - Martin Hubmann did 113.46 for 11.4 in M21E. They drew the cut at 3 hours so 54 out of 85 made it (had they stuck to their original plan of 2.30, it would have been 32). Also some respect points for Alison Crocker (11.3 min/km in W21E), who I think was trying to show us what we were missing out on through her non-qualification (in the heat that Lizzie and Vanessa also missed out from) for the long final.