Training Log Archive: blairtrewin

Event: World Masters Orienteering Championships 2018
 

My first proper experience of indoor-O (at least at running speed), using a multi-level school and a nearby building - lots of randomly open/closed doors and other barriers, plus tables in classrooms arranged into mazes to complicate things a bit more.

Before starting, I was hearing things like "the hardest thing I've ever done" and "richtig schwer". Anything which increases the navigation-to-running balance is likely to be to my advantage, and so it turned out after I settled into the map - managed to avoid disaster, which is the main thing here, although it was a bit annoying that a small route choice error on the last leg cost me five places (dropping me from the front to the back of a close bunch). Ended up 13th out of 180-odd. Heaps of fun - pity we're never likely to have an event like this in Australia (and not only because our schools tend not to be four-level buildings).

Was feeling a bit old this morning at the Helsingor hostel - I think the 90th percentile of the age distribution there would have been about 12. Also had a look around the outside of the castle (passing en route the Hamlet nursing home), seeing in the process some very drought-bleached grass.

Brief trot around the WMOC model map, mainly just to check out some map interpretations.

Seem to have finally shaken off my Chinese stomach bug after 10 days. Maybe it was the classic Swedish pizza in Gothenburg yesterday (chicken, banana, pineapple, peanut and curry sauce) which did the trick.

C • You brought that up again! 3

A training run on the WMOC 2015 model area in Gothenburg. The hills and rocks are still as steep but the ground vegetation was unrecognisable - the leaf litter was as crunchy as a Bendigo February, and marshes (at least the ones I tried) were nonexistent.

Found the steep hills hard going and wasn't always sure if I'd found the correct places (with no flags out), but a delightful bit of terrain to be out in. Perhaps the nicest bit was found by mistake when I came the wrong way off a hill and ended up going through some lovely open forest along the side of a lake. Not feeling too bad running.

Continued to Denmark this evening.

Slightly different scene today - from Heggedal, south of Asker, while the kids were enjoying themselves (immensely) at a bike park. It was on the shore of a lake and I thought that going around the lake would be a good option, but there wasn't a path along the shore so instead I headed up the hill to the west of town - a sharp climb which I handled better than I thought I would. Hard work at times but definitely felt better than I did on Monday, and starting to show signs of attacking some of the small ups and downs later.

Headed down to Gothenburg this afternoon. The buses definitely aren't up to Chilean standards (but not many are), but for 3 1/2 hours it's fine. (The Oslo-Gothenburg train service is pretty ordinary at the best of times, and at the moment is shut down altogether for trackwork). Arriving in Gothenburg - at least that part of it which isn't a building site - certainly made it very obvious that Sweden are still in the World Cup.

With only slight improvement since last week, I decided it was time to get myself checked out and put the Norwegian health system to the test (verdict: it takes a long time to get seen, but thorough once it is). The verdict once I actually saw a doctor was that there wasn't anything seriously wrong, although a bit of dehydration (as expected) and I just need to ride it out, which hopefully won't be too many days more.

Given said dehydration (and that I didn't get back until after lunch), I thought that going out in the peak of one of Oslo's hottest days of recent memory wasn't a brilliant idea.

Today was my 40th orienteering birthday, so to speak. It would have been nice had there been an event (the 30th was on a WMOC qualifying day), but there wasn't, so instead I had a go at getting my terrain legs on one of the local areas - a strip of moraine mapped at 1:5000. Never really got on top of working out what was what on the map (and, without flags, it wasn't that easy at times to determine whether I'd found the control), and not a lot of energy. Good to be out, but didn't fill me with a lot of confidence about running myself into a final in five days' time.

Didn't notice the heat that much (it was 28, but the humidity was low) - Guangzhou did me good in at least that respect. Forest was almost as bone-dry as a Bendigo February.

I'm not sure if someone neglected to check the acronym, or did check the acronym and was being deeply subversive, in proposing the Trump administration's latest salvo, the Fair And Responsible Trade Act.

Travel day: started in Hong Kong early in the morning and finished in Oslo in the late afternoon (with a few time zones thrown in to elongate it). Flights themselves were fine, with a few minor annoyances at each end - at the starting end, taxis are no easier to find at 6 on a Sunday morning in Hong Kong than they would be in the Melbourne CBD (also, I suspect, showing the effects of a big Saturday night was the person who spewed in front of me in the passport control queue - I wonder what the Hong Kong equivalent is of a "dodgy kebab"?); at the far end, the Oslo luggage system wasn't having one of its better days but my bag did arrive eventually.

According to flightradar24, it was the busiest day in global aviation history, and it would be fair to say that neither Helsinki (in the midst of what appears to be a needed terminal expansion) nor Oslo were coping too well with the crowds.

Didn't get to see as much on a daytime flight as I would have hoped; the Gobi Desert wasn't being terribly deserty and there was barely a break in the cloud between Hong Kong and Novosibirsk.

C • Oslo luggage system 10

Quiz question: in which national event did Jenny Casanova run against Maureen Ogilvie?

C • I’m gonna say it’s somethin... 9

Seemed to be a bit more improved this morning, so decided it was time to take the plunge. Didn't feel as bad as I expected to (not a high bar to clear), but glad I wasn't going any further. Essentially did a circuit of Yuexiu Park, which is quite hilly (in contrast to my last outing here).

Headed to Hong Kong this afternoon, which went pretty smoothly as far as the station in Hong Kong. My hotel is in the middle of three MTR stations, but in my usual state of bloody-mindedness I thought that getting a taxi was an indication of surrender. By the time I'd walked 10 minutes uphill with my gear in the humidity I was ready to dissolve in a ball of sweat. (As for how much I actually saved by doing so, I suspect it was well under A$10).