Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

This weekend had a dual purpose - part of it was to be a tourist, but another part was because Fontainebleau looked to be the most interesting event option available within reasonable range of Geneva ('reasonable range' is defined differently for Australians than for most people) - the other possibility which looked interesting was in the sand-dune terrain at Bordeaux, but I would have had to fly.

Fontainebleau is famed (unusually for a central European area) for its rock. This turned out to be one of the less technical bits of the forest (which covers about 200 square kilometres) and the rock was mostly a backdrop rather than the main player - only two of my controls were on rock features - but it was still quite an interesting area, fairly flat but with just enough contour detail to make it a map-reading challenge rather than compass and hope (except for #8) - and the block of forest that #2-4 were in was one of the most delightful I've run in for a long time.

The run was pretty good - didn't quite pinpoint three of the controls (6, 7 and 17) in the flatter stuff, but no more than 10-15 second apiece, and felt better running than in most recent events (despite a bit of early right knee soreness), although I was tiring a little at the end - probably unused to the soft ground. I was running the second-longest normal course (there was also a track-free option); fastest when I left was 43 with the top four all being 16-18 year old juniors (three boys and a girl). (Update: a late starter did 35, which is more like what I'd have expected of a decent elite runner).

Nick Campbell (a Brit living in Paris) was my logistical support for the day, working out how to get to the event by public transport and joining me for the trip. It was a 3.5km walk each way to the assembly area but this was quite pleasant (might not have been quite so pleasant had it been raining). Nick also pointed me to one of his clubmates to borrow a compass when I got my Northern Hemisphere compass (unused for a year) out to discover it was now largely liquid-free. (Not sure how I would have gone trying to use a Southern Hemisphere compass on an area like this where bearings were important).

Got back to Paris a bit after 2 and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring, without really going into anything (given the queues at the major, and even not-so-major, attractions). Lots of people out on what will probably be the last warm weekend before winter. Pretty tired now - probably did about 15km of walking all up in addition to my course. About to get the train back to Geneva.

C • Fontainebleau 2

Staying just across the street from Gare de Lyon (with an 11pm arrival last night I didn't want to spend any longer moving on once in Paris than I had to). One advantage of this from a running perspective is that it's within striking distance of the Bois de Vincennes, about 3km away down a boulevard with wide footpaths and not a lot of traffic across or along it early on a Saturday morning. The Bois itself is proper forest once you get into it - nice spot to be relatively close to a large city (although I wouldn't want to orienteer in the bits I saw - flat and thick). In a pretty good mood and moving quite well once warmed up. Perfect conditions at this time of the morning, on what became quite a warm day (the news headlines mentioned 'records des temperatures', but I think these must have been elsewhere - 22-24 in Paris in October is warm but certainly not record-breaking).

There was setting up for some kind of public event (perhaps a run), and someone wasn't too happy about not being allowed to drive into the area, with much horn-blowing and gesticulation. (There was to be more of this when there was a prang pretty much right in front of the cafe where I was having breakfast).

The plan for today was to head out to Versailles, then do other things with whatever time I had left in the day. This proved to be a rather more complicated process than I thought (starting with the ticket machines not accepting foreign credit cards - an occasional problem in France, I've had issues with petrol stations here too - and needing lots of coins). Part of the rail line was shut down for weekend works with replacement buses, but they haven't worked out (as Melbourne does) that to do this efficiently you need express buses as well as all-stations ones (which have to go into side streets which aren't really designed for buses - and certainly aren't designed for two buses to go past each other - to get to each station). This took so long that by the time it came to the end of the bus trip, our tickets had expired and we had to get new ones for the last part of the journey (in total it took 2 1/2 hours for 25km) - I wasn't too impressed, and neither were some Americans who were voicing their non-impressedness somewhat more loudly (no national stereotyping here :-).

Still, it was worth it when I got there (I wasn't exactly the only one there, but that was expected). Didn't end up having much time for anything else afterwards before dark - having found a more efficient route back - except a walk down some of the Champs-Elysees. (I'd done most of the other must-sees the last time I was here, in 2008). Hoping to find some good food tonight (one would hope it shouldn't be too hard in this part of the world).

C • Gallic efficiency! 6

It's been a decent week of training - perhaps I'm feeling more relaxed because I'm getting more sleep than I would at home (and possibly because I'm a very long way away from anyone who cares about what Tony Abbott is saying). The positive mood extended to this swim - not so much because of the quality of the session itself (which was fairly standard), but because a pool that I previously haven't enjoyed very much is now a bit more enjoyable - they actually have a fast and a slow lane now, so although it's still relatively crowded, you don't have people trying to go past you at two or three times your speed. I actually managed to get through an entire session here without crashing into anyone.

Off to Paris this weekend, to be a tourist tomorrow and then to run on the legendary Fontainebleau terrain on Sunday.

A favourite, if challenging, Geneva run - the Le Lignon loop, out to the footbridge and back along the far bank of the Rhone. I probably wouldn't have had the confidence to take this on a few days ago, although I'd forgotten just how many times this goes up and down the escarpment once alongside the river - I'd remembered a couple of very steep, if short, climbs from doing this with Neil a couple of years ago but had somehow airbrushed the other three sets from my memory. Still, I coped with this reasonably well, and wasn't too perturbed that this ended up being 15 minutes longer than I was originally planning on today (although I hit the wall pretty hard in the later part of the day and spent a bit of time on the couch on arriving home before summoning the energy to prepare dinner).

Perhaps the best few minutes of this came in the kilometre after the footbridge, alongside a classic western European rural scene - green field, forest patch alongside with gradually yellowing leaves, an old farmhouse on the hill, and a few cows. It was certainly easy to imagine yourself a lot further than 4-5km from the city centre (at least if you didn't look east and see the apartment towers rising above the other riverbank).

The neighbourhood I'm in has a few signs of novelty: the cafe next door accepts Bitcoin as payment (although how they keep track of the wildly gyrating exchange rate is an open question), and numerous shops have signs offering cannabis legale - it's been legalised in Geneva in the last few months.

Doing some trawling of national climate summaries today, I discovered that the highest temperature of summer this year was the lowest on record for both Sweden (which didn't get above 28) and Denmark (which didn't get above 27), whilst Norway's was the lowest since 1998. (That said, both Norway and Sweden got considerably warmer in late May than they managed during the three summer months).

It probably won't come as any surprise to anyone who orienteered in Scandinavia during the alleged summer of 1998 that it features prominently in such records, the mudbath campsite at the Modum 2-days being a particular highlight. There were a few of us there; from memory, Ecmo, Rob Preston, Andy Hill, and probably others I've forgotten. (This was my last big trip in impoverished-student mode; I started working the week after getting home).

Another reasonably encouraging day, this time going out past the UN complex and feeling steady (if not very fast) going up the long hill past there - something which hasn't been the case for the last couple of months, most of which has involved even a couple of contours being a struggle.

With a new starting point comes new turnaround points, and for this run it involves the path which runs between the US mission (as intimidating as you might expect) and the WHO. (I'd spent a number of visits wondering what the OMS I was seeing on bus destination signs was, until I realised that that's the WHO in French).

A much nicer run today, although still a bit slow and somewhat disjointed at times by traffic. Was hoping to get out to a reasonably familiar haunt, the Bout-du-Monde riverbend, but ran out of time before I got that far out. Running reasonably smoothly, and for the first time in a while felt like I had plenty still left in me at the end.

It's the first time since 1989 that I've been in Europe at this time of year. It's the last couple of weeks of daylight saving with consequently late sunrises (at the moment it's getting light at about 7.15, which will probably be after 7.30 next week). My Geneva rain-repelling qualities are also again in evidence - none has fallen since I've been here and none is forecast in at least the next 8 days.

My walking route to the office takes me past the Icelandic UN mission's office. I suspect not a lot of productive work was done there this morning.

C • The Iceland team 6

Got back to Geneva last night and settled into my quarters for the two weeks, an apartment in the middle of the Paquis district (very close to where I stayed the first time I was here). By Geneva standards it's considered a bit seedy (it was a block away from here that I once saw a 'lady of the night' soliciting custom in clothing that was a long way short of being suitable for the -9 degrees it was at the time), but nothing too threatening.

The run, not to put too fine a point on it, was rubbish. Back was a bit iffy but the engine was worse, notwithstanding that this was about as undemanding as it gets (40 minutes along the Geneva lakeshore). Won't read too much into this in my early days here - took a bit of a backwards step today in the jet lag department, waking up not long after 4 and not really getting back to sleep.

The first day of the meeting went well (we've got a range of experts meeting for two days, then I spend the rest of the time distilling everything into a hopefully coherent report). There will be a lot of distilling to be done, because so far I've got 50+ pages of contributions for a statement which will be not much more than one-tenth that length (and I haven't even started my own bit yet). This time round we actually have somebody involved who knows properly what they're talking about when it comes to sea level, although she had to make an early exit this afternoon as the result of the third in the list of life's great certainties - death, taxes, and the French air traffic controllers going out on strike.