Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Event: WMOC 2015
 

Those of you who have been to O-ringen will know about the showers - two large screened areas, one for men and one for women, with people disrobing en masse.

A picture of the men's showers appeared in the weekend's Goteborgs-Posten (the local equivalent of the Age, not the Herald-Sun), featuring the men's showers including at least a dozen bare backsides in their full glory. Can't see that passing muster in an Australian newspaper, somehow (in fact the mere act of taking a picture there would probably be seen in Australia as somewhat creepy).

WMOC sprint qualification. For the third time in a row in the WMOC sprint I made it without much to spare - 13 seconds to be precise. The last two times I had been a bit surprised to get a scare (in 2012 I'd been sick, in 2014 the heats were rather lopsided and the Brazilians were faster than I expected), but this time I knew before the start I was going to need to run well to make it - the M35s had gone early, Simon Rouse (who's faster than me these days) had only just made it through with a time of 18.00 and a decent run, the word was it was a runner's course (which it was), and I thought sub-18 was going to be needed to be reasonably comfortable.

Couldn't argue with the way I tackled the course mentally - can't think of any obvious time losses, maybe at worst a few seconds here or there. (This consistency is borne out by the splits - the only legs on which I was more than 5 seconds from 25th place in either direction were the two long legs, at +9 and -8 seconds respectively). Felt like I was lacking a top gear physically and seemed to be fading a little later, but others may have been fading more as my times picked up very slightly over the closing legs. Needed some luck to make it through; I don't think I'd have got there from the other heat.

Next challenge is tomorrow's final. As third starter any advance on my starting position is a bonus; to get into the top 30 (there are 48) would be a nice target.

Palmerville remains probably the most difficult of the 17 Australian long-term temperature stations that I have yet to visit, but the perils of the trip will be reduced somewhat now that the property managers are safely in jail.

Had thoughts at various times today of doing the sprint model event, more for something to do than because it seemed particularly important or relevant (there's usually not a lot to distinguish one urban sprint model area from another), but was dissuaded by today's generally miserable weather. The day still managed to disappear regardless. Tomorrow's forecast is not much better; there may be a bit of bare rock and I'm wondering if having spikes on the rock is worth the annoyance of having them on the pavement. Will make up my mind in the morning (possibly after hearing reports from the field, as I'm a relatively late starter). Will also try to remember to pick up the map from the right course this year.

During the course of our wanderings through central Gothenburg this afternoon, we encountered what appeared to be a skinhead/fascist/neo-Nazi rally (whose numbers were as minimal as their Australian counterparts). I must look more Swedish than I thought I did because they seemed very keen to thrust literature into my hand on the subject of keeping foreigners out of Sweden.

Forgot to mention my Swedish pizza experience last night: pineapple, banana, peanuts and curry sauce.

Felt very non-energetic on the warm-up (even before the route to the start began going uphill) and decided to take this one fairly easily - after all, the main game for me is next week and there's nothing really to be gained by flattening myself here. There was also the reassurance that, barring disaster, no-one was going to catch me in the chasing start (I had a 7-minute gap behind me).

Some nice patches of forest early on but much of it was a bit junky with fallen timber in rather too many places, and again this was a bit of a slog physically - most notably around 8, a steep slope with rocks, felled stuff, thickets and general unpleasantness. 9 and 10 were then in the nicest bit of the map, though. Lost concentration a bit on the long 11th, not noticing a track I should have done, but didn't lose a lot of time.

The highlight was at the end - coming out of the last control I spotted the person who started 2 1/2 minutes in front of me. He didn't seem to be going very fast and I thought I had a shot of getting him, positioned myself well for the U-turn in the finish chute, took him on the inside and held on. It's a rare occasion when I win a sprint finish against anyone, especially someone who I was actually racing against. Mikael Persson adds his name to a fairly select list (hopefully he won't be as traumatised by the experience as the one I outsprinted in a 1988 inter-schools cross-country race in Canberra who ended up going on a shooting rampage in the Northern Territory in the early 2000s).

Headed down to Gothenburg in the afternoon, in anticipation of more competition ahead, but with the evening diversion of the Gothenburg show of the Roxette 30th anniversary tour.

More technical (and definitely rougher) than yesterday. I didn't get off to a good start, losing probably 1.00-1.15 on the first through not reading the green properly, and small wobbles also on 3 and 4. Got going a bit better after that, with conservative route choices to 7 and 8, but there was no option other than straight on the long 10th. I've made horrible messes of long legs like this before in the Nordic countries (lots of small bumps and marshes, low-vis forest, and no big features), but got this one OK, if somewhat tentatively. Thought I was finishing off all right, but once again lost time on the second-last (rather ironically, I spiked yesterday's control without recognising it, possibly slightly rattled by a recent collision with someone coming downhill). Tougher for most of the field today - my position was slightly better than yesterday. Tired at the end.

My first competition day at O-ringen. After three days which had all been pretty lousy physically, and really struggling to get into the terrain yesterday, I didn't go into this with particularly high expectations. As it happens I was reasonably pleasantly surprised - still not particularly fluent in the terrain by any means (especially when it came to marshes), but a decent run technically, spoilt at the end by going down a wrong track on the second-last and dropping 45 seconds or so. (It's never a good sign when you find yourself on your own en route to an O-ringen second last control). Found some hitherto missing speed after that in my bid to get under 10 minutes/km, and even had a half-decent finish chute split.

I didn't really know what to expect as far as the strength of the field was concerned (I'm running an open men 3-day class). The winning time, around 43, was about where I expected it to be but there was more depth than I expected, suggesting that the 21s make up a fair slice of this field.

It was a bit of a surprise to arrive at the start and see Brett Weihart as the start official (although not as much of a surprise as it was at the Norwegian World Cup a few years back to see Cassie as a start official).

O-ringen organisational logistics were as impressive as ever - my favourite being that there were officials stationed at turns in the cycle route to the event (it was rideable from the event centre, and walkable from the centre of town) to point people in the right direction.

First foray into the Swedish terrain, in the form of the forest northeast of my current abode in Boras - using a 1:12500 map of the whole city and surrounding forests which, it was quickly apparent, was stitched together from existing maps with minimal fieldwork of the parts which weren't on existing maps. Set out early in the hope of beating the rain which was forecast to (and did) fall for much of the day - didn't completely manage that, but conditions not too bad.

The object of today was to get my "terrain legs". They will want to be better when racing than they were today because this was a struggle with no real fluency - although the terrain is pretty tough and others have found the first two O-ringen days hard going. Had a "welcome to Sweden" moment when I went knee-deep into a marsh within two minutes of leaving the tracks...

At one point I saw numerous control flags and at first wondered whether I was somewhere I shouldn't be, but it turned out to be for the trail-O.

A swim wasn't really part of my original agenda for today, but when Cassie made plans to take the family to the indoor swim centre I was happy enough to come along and get some laps in while they were taking in the waterslide. Half the rest of O-ringen had the same idea which made for a very slow line to get in, but the lap pool was reasonably uncrowded. The swim itself seemed to drag on for a long time but was reasonable on the while.

Fairly predictably woke up at 4.something this morning (to the sound of rain reminding me that maybe hanging the washing outside wasn't such a brilliant idea). Didn't need to be anywhere in any great hurry this morning (the bus to Gothenburg was at 11) so headed out 7.30-ish. This was definitely an improvement on yesterday (which wouldn't be hard), but still finding climbing hard going.

Spent most of the rest of the day making my way down to Boras - realised in the process of changing buses there that I haven't been in Gothenburg (except passing through on a train) since 1996. I haven't done the Oslo-Gothenburg road since then, either, and can't remember whether the monstrously large shopping complex on the freeway at Uddevalla (a fair bit of the target market for which, I suspect, is Norwegian) was there in 1996 or not.

C • Shopping center 1