Run ((orienteering)) 43:00 [3] ** 7.0 km (6:09 / km) +90m 5:46 / km
spiked:15/15c
I'm used to doing some interesting things with runs to fit best in the day's logistics but this was one of the better examples. I was dropping Mum off to the airport for a 7.15 flight, didn't fancy battling back through back-end-of-peak-hour traffic to get home, and thought this would be an excellent opportunity to get out for a terrain run in Woodlands Park.
It turned out to be one of the nicest runs I've done in ages, on a cool, sunny evening, at Skippy time with Skippies out in abundance. Thought it might not go so well when my back arced up on the first erosion gully exit, but it quickly settled and from there the run went smoothly. It says everything that needs to be said for this run (and perhaps one of three months ago) that, re-running my course from an event in early July, I was only 10 seconds slower despite not trying particularly hard. (Of course, not having to punch controls counts for a little, and I think I got better lines across the main erosion gully this time).
I needed a nice run, because it was a somewhat disturbing day at work. Sometimes in this game one has the sense that one is documenting an unfolding catastrophe, and if that sense wasn't already there over the last week at home, it certainly was today when the monthly numbers came in from Brazil, and revealed that Manaus, at the core of the Amazon basin was running 4 degrees above normal for September, and 80% below normal rainfall for August/September. (A single day 4 degrees above normal is rare in equatorial regions; Darwin's record is something like 5.5). Drying out of the Amazon is one of the big "tipping points" we worry about (in that, once it starts happening it is probably irreversible - and that's even without encouragement from people clearing it or setting it on fire, something the Brazilian authorities have got a lot better at stopping in the last couple of decades). I hope that what we're seeing now isn't the beginning of that process, but those are not numbers I like the look of.
(I had been thinking of posting online the Brazilian temperatures map for September alongside another image that's been seen a bit this year, and labelling it something to the effect of "one of these images strikes fear into the heart of anyone who understands its significance, the other is an ISIS flag", but on the day that the new metadata laws came into effect, searching for websites where one might find an image of an ISIS flag might be asking for trouble).